XM Radio

So we got this new car, and it's nice to have a new car, because if you've been driving older cars you're not used to that little eep-eep door-unlocker thing that Tom Cruise has probably taken a stand against since he traded his Wonka Chocolate in for The Seven Moods of Sea Monkeys or whatever logical emotional guideline brochure he's hawking now that everyone thinks his brain is made of "celebrity mousse." The new car has all these detachable and foldable/removable seats, and you can wipe it off, and there are all kinds of speakers, and this roof-window thing that lifts very slightly, and it can go on snow if you need it to. We may need it to go on snow during the winter, so this is a worthwhile feature. But the main feature of interest is "XM Radio."

The car comes with "XM Radio," which is a satellite radio service. They have probably fifty channels (I do not remember numbers larger than fifty unless they are a million, but it is unlikely that they are going to base the next "Rain Man" on me) and we set ten of them up immediately. It's great; you get to hear genuinely deep alternative album cuts (by Talk Talk, Boomtown Rats, Echo & The Bunnymen), genuine punk canon (Cro-Mags, DK, OpIvy, Germs, Misfits, MDC), and even obscure bluegrass or early country-western, depending on the channel. Yes, it's all commercial-free. The problem? It's like $13 a month.

I know, I know. Thirteen dollars is not a big splurge, especially when you consider how little it costs Sally Struthers to feed her Chambord habit these days ($257.90/24hrs). But once you get a household going you realize that you pay like $13 a month just to run naked-time mats through the dryer, and that's literally the tip of the iceberg.

I wanted to write more about this, but at the end of the day, I am not going to pay $13/month to listen to "Video Killed the Radio Star." Also, I need to stop typing on the computer and telling people about things I will not pay for. This isn't 1997, dammit.