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Two hours out of every day – one in the morning, and one in the evening – I drive the highways of this great country. It’s a fascinating world out there, full of interesting sights, breathtaking landscapes and novel personalities, all available to take in if you know where to look.
It gets boring after about 20 minutes.

For hours and hours and hours.

I’m to the point now where I could negotiate the roads between my apartment and my office in my sleep, or with my eyes closed, at least. (Hell, I’ve probably done it once or twice — I’m not really great at mornings.) Needless to say, I need something to help pass the time, something to keep me awake and keep me company. Luckily, there’s always the car stereo for when conversation with my imaginary friends wears thin.

Oh, PostSecret and NPR. You always make me feel smug and superior.
National Public Radio is my commute-noise drug of choice. It’s interesting enough to hold my attention for indefinite periods, but dull enough for me to tune it out into soothing background speech if the mood strikes me. It lets me look down my nose at people who don’t keep up with every detail of the coming revolution in East Crapistan, and I can pepper my conversation with, “I heard on NPR the other day…” I’m told this conversational gambit is a big hit at parties.
But sometimes it’s impossible to countenance another day of Important Voices discussing Important Topics. The past two weeks have provided political convention coverage that’s alternately driven me into a frothing rage and bored me to tears. I mean, I like to have a constant stream of news into my head, but even I have limits, and that’s not news anyway.

God, I hate humanity
Next, there’s music, a whole world of it. The iPod is ubiquitous, and mine holds every song I’ve ever liked and about 2,000 that I don’t like very much and don’t remember downloading. I’d use that to keep things interesting, but I don’t drive the kind of schmancy car that lets your music device connect with the dashboard mothership, and I have a dim memory of my drivers ed teacher admonishing us to never wear headphones while driving. I don’t know if it’s actually the capital crime he implied it to be, but I’m not taking any chances.
Sometimes I burn mix CDs and play them as I drive, but I spend the rest of the day plugged into an iPod and the Internet. A CD holds 25 songs, tops. How ya’ going to keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?

I just got the “Dingo and the Baby” joke when I searched for this picture. What is with me?
Then there’s the radio. Since we’ve already established that my car doesn’t feature nice things like iPod connectors and a working back passenger window, we can rule out both of the satellite services. That leaves terrestrial radio.
Let me tell you about terrestrial radio: I have this dream sometimes where there’s a revolution, complete with political upheaval, social unrest and barricades in the streets. In this revolution, all the Morning Zoo radio hosts and their sidekicks are the first against the wall. It’s a nice dream.
That rules out all the options but one: driving in silence and engaging in quiet contemplation.
Yeah, I’ll pass.

You have got to be kidding me.