[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: Driving in my car, I turn on the radio

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Posted by The Night Writer:
Driving in my car, I turn on the radio
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1174961162.shtml


   It was a beautiful spring day - temperatures in the 70s, sunny and
   still too early for bugs. Of course, I was stuck in an office building
   all day, but once I got out to my car I wantonly rolled down the
   windows in wild abandon. I kept my hand near the window button,
   however, because it is March in Minnesota and it could start snowing
   in five minutes. Not today, though.
   That's not to say that there weren't white-out conditions, however. I
   drove home via the University and those crazy kids there couldn't wait
   to bare arms, legs and pasty torsos to the thin sunshine. The co-eds
   had that kind of vulnerable, bedraggled look of a Monarch butterfly
   just out of the cocoon. A sign of spring, all the same, and I can't
   blame them -- around here if you get a nice day this early you've got
   to jump on it.
   I had in mind to blog about something much darker today, but I'm going
   to let that notion pass for now. It's been too nice a day and I don't
   really feel like going to that place right now. We're sure to have
   rain sometime this week, and maybe I'll do it then. Driving home today
   about the only metaphorical cloud in the sky was the fact that I
   couldn't seem to find a radio station that wasn't in the middle of a
   bank of commercials.
   Normally during my evening drive time I bounce between KFAN, The
   Patriot and KTLK. I'll listen until they come to a commercial and then
   my itchy finger moves on down the line. Today, for some reason --
   perhaps a meteorological one that delivered us an unseasonably warm
   day but also mysteriously synchronized radio signals -- every station
   was paying bills, and two of them were playing the same commercial. It
   was like being chased through Dinkytown by Tom Shane. Now I've been
   told that I have a face for radio, but if there's anyone who does not
   have a voice for radio it's Tom Shane. I know it's hard to hear that,
   Tom, but you're my friend (albeit in the diamond business) and I've
   got to level with you. Your voice is scary, and the only way you'd
   sell me any jewelry is if you cornered me in a dark alley, which by
   the way, I wouldn't be surprised to find you in.
   Ok, switch to plan D -- rather, plan CD -- to get some tunes going
   lest I be seduced into getting my basement waterproofed. I couldn't
   remember what the last thing was I had playing in the CD player, but I
   figured I'd give it a shot. Uh-oh, Tom Waits. What had been perfect
   musical accompaniment on a cold, rainy night last week seemed
   jarringly out of place on a soft spring evening. Of course, Tom Waits
   can be jarring anytime. There was an amusing incongruity, however, in
   hearing him croak about something being as cold as a gut-shot
   wolf-bitch with nine sucking pups pulling a number 8 trap up a
   mountain in a snowstorm with a mouthful of porcupine quills. Now
   that's cold. And that's probably the forecast for next week.