drivetime

sometimes i do really bizarre stuff while i am driving in my car. some of those things show up on my guilty pleasures confessional, but there are so many more than could ever be named there. one of the major problems i experience in my car is the dilemma of entertainment. sometimes i listen to my ipod and that is always a winning choice. usually i listen to minnesota public radio and that satisfies me about 80% of the time. but occasionally, i find myself in a dire predicament. MPR is playing either some dude talking about money or some very annoying person who speaks only in the form of questions (usually the call-ins, not often the actual guests) even though the content of their sentences is strictly declarative. this is what happened this morning. annoying call-in on MPR, too lazy to reach for the ipod, so i had to surf. this is easy at night when i can just switch it over to the AM dial and listen to art bell or some randoms in beulah rambling on about the huge animal they shot last weekend and the expression on the animal's face at the time. gross, i know, but the conversation is extraordinarily entertaining, so i can look past the grossness. but in the morning, i have to get creative. so one of my favorite things to do when i have few choices is to listen to genres that i hate and try to imagine what it would be like to be someone who thinks this is good music. so i switched the dial to OUTLAW COUNTRY! they have a point, this shit should be illegal. i think that i have created a country-free bubble around myself, because whenever i do this, i always hear some song that i think is outrageously hilarious (which, in the country world, also means quite sad) and i try to learn it. for example, while driving to williston one time, jan and i learned of this song called red-neck woman. (she ain't no high class broad) we were stupified. beside ourselves. what is this music and can any other human beings hear it right now? so, proud of our new discovery we arrived at our destination and tried to tell people about this crazy song we had just heard and how bizarre the lyrics are and who the hell records this stuff. we mustered up a few of the lyrics that we could remember and suddenly everyone else begins to sing the whole freakin' song! everyone (else) knew this song! we learned that what we thought to be a true treasure of a find on some dusty radio station was actually pretty much the most popular song on the country charts. pathetic as that is. over time, we have had similar experiences with lyrics like "praise the lord and pass the ammunition" "she's my little whiskey girl" and something about a dusty red road and drinking beer and having sex. i know, that really narrows it down, right?
so i try to build personality profiles around these lyrics. what kind of person truly admires a song called "praise the lord and pass the ammunition"? and what would it be like to be a woman who loves to listen to "She needs somethin' with a little more edge and a little more pain She's my little whiskey Girl My Ragged-on-the-edges girl Ah, but I like 'em rough" i just can't imagine being someone who longs for characteristics reflected in that song. or who longs for a man to sing about me as "his" little girl of any kind. who is flattered by this shit? i listened to a song this morning that was about "something to be proud of " or "a life you can hang a hat on" or something like that. i didn't listen too carefully because i kept trying to picture hanging a hat on life and i didn't get it. it was a loose and lazy metaphor and i lost interest. then a woman started to sing about "do ya still love me or am i the biggest mistake you ever made?" do ya', do ya'... blah blah blah. here's what i'm thinking: one ought never to spend that much time offering possibiliities like this. perhaps the audience of this song had never thought about it, but now that you mention it, you ARE kind of a big mistake. thanks for pointing that out. god, i hope jan never hears that song! basically, the bottom line is this: i can't stand country music. there was a time about 15 years ago when i did, but it was different then.. people were playing in rivers and fighting over lovers. and little poor girls were growing up to be whores. eventually, i lost my taste for all of that and have spent the last 15 years wondering what the hell i was ever doing with all those tapes. now country music is even more disgusting. and more misogynistic. and more reflective of cheap patriotism. and more xenophobic. and i hate it. and it strongly affects my mood. i start to think that i should just pull out my hair in fistsful because at least then i wouldn't be focused just on the sounds of the "music". i bet that if i wore my heartrate monitor while an entire toby keith cd plays, i would eventually be burning fat, my heart rate would rise so high. i am going to try it. i'll let you know...