“I come from the land of the ice and snow, where the fringey boots and the mullets grow”

I live in a metropolitan statistical area where you are guaranteed to run into at least three people per day who are baffled by revolving doors. And where you are guaranteed to hear the same song from the following artists at least twice per day on any of the local radio stations: Journey, The Damn Yankees, Dire Straits, Foreigner, Styx, Lita Ford, and Warrant. And when I listen to local radio as I make my daily commute, I always have to look down to make sure my legs are not encased in acid-washed jeans with zippers at the tapered ankles.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to be rocked like a hurricane on my way to work. I beg of you, 96.1 FM, What’s WRONG with playing something that didn’t share the national zeitgeist with Zubaz pants? I did not ENJOY my years in junior high. I don’t want a daily reminder that I once applied bleach handprints to the rear pockets of a denim mini-skirt. I don’t want to remember that my hair was higher than Robert Downey, Jr. in Less than Zero. I prefer NOT to take a mental trip back in time to an era when every time you pulled the string in my back I said, “Makin’ cop-eeeeeez!” Please, Ninety-six one-TCX and WOZZ and WAPL, consider changing your formats. I don’t LIKE doing the time warp again and again and again as I simply try to make my way down the Wisconsin state highway system to my humble little office. Because it’s not true when they say you get your money for nothin’ and your chicks for free. I am not Dirty. Rotten. Filthy. Stinking. Rich. If I want two tickets to paradise, I must pay for them with money. Money that I earn via gainful employment in a respectable establishment. And is it wrong to want to arrive at my cubicle as mentally stable as I may have been when I left the house in the morning?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to some independent music on Accuradio.com in order to cleanse the dirty film now coating my inner ear and/or soul.