I Siriusly Miss My Kia

I’ll explain. My wife is driving my Kia, and I’m driving my truck this week. This probably sounds crazy, right? I love my truck! My truck is awesome. Why do I miss my little, itty-bitty Kia? It’s the radio.

Damn you, Sirius! (See, it wasn’t a typo after all) You’re like nicotine for my ears. You’re like the extra chunky chocolate chip cookies that make me eat more than one. You’re that salty deliciousness in Utz potato chips that makes me want to eat the whole bag. And the saddest part is… you’re not even all that great anyway.

I am on glorious Rt. 32 for about two hours each day, and what else is there to do besides yell at the other cars, than to sing along with the radio? Sirius has several channels that play music I like, and very few interruptions. For about five bucks a month, I get to hear a wide variety of music, clicking past songs I don’t like with the little magic button on my steering wheel. That song again? Click. Hasn’t Blake Shelton named those damned dogs yet? Click. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, sweet child…” Click.

I equate Sirius to Safeway though. If I find something I really like at Safeway, like Bertolli’s Stuffed Shells, or Finlandia Swiss Cheese, or Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Burritos, Safeway is legally obliged to stop selling it. I have data to prove this. Well, I don’t, but I don’t care about that. Now if I find a new product that I really like, I just tell Richard the store manager that I hate it and can’t understand why they’d carry such an awful product. It buys me time. Oh yes, it buys me time.

Sirius is the same way. Let’s take the most awesome song out at the moment, “Shoot Me Straight,” by the Brothers Osbourne. I’ve now heard it three times on Sirius. Lee Brice’s “Boy,” 154 times. Keith Urban’s “Female,” 732 times (That’s just this week though). Blake could have named the Dalmatians twenty times over by now. Finally, “The Rest of Our Life,” by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, which is a beautiful, heartfelt love song, that I’ve heard… Click. Slowest, most boring song ever, and I grew up when the Carpenters were on the radio. AM radio for crying out loud!

But now, I’m in my truck. A fine specimen of a 2004 Dodge Ram (Yeah, it’s got a Hemi in it), with 20-inch wheels, an imitation hood scoop, and an AM/FM radio which has commercials, announcers, interviews, and interruptions. I can’t stand it anymore. It used to be all I had. Hell, AM radio was once all I had. WCAO played everything I needed at 600 kHz on the AM dial on my Panasonic radio. It was just fine.

Now that I’ve had a sip of that uninterrupted music, that Hair Nation hit, that toke of The Highway or Prime Country, or that Classic Rewind of ambrosia, I can’t stand hearing commercials. There are literally millions of channels on Sirius. (That’s an exageration) I have even stopped on the French pop channel up in the Canadian band when I get bored with the other 173 channels. You do what you gotta do, right? I don’t necessarily want my car back. I want my radio back. Sirius, you win. You’ve dangled your little shark fin antenna in front of me and I took the bait. I am weak.

If you see me along Rt. 32 and I’m pounding away on my steering wheel drums, or if I’m belting out a tune behind those closed windows, you can be sure of a couple of things. First, you should know that I know the words to very few songs, so I’m totally making stuff up. You should know that I’m probably headed toward work, because A.) That’s when I’m more likely to be doing those things, because B.) if I’m going home, it’s dark and you can’t see me, and I’m probably not in the mood anyway. The last thing is, you can be sure I’m not listening to the news channels which are full of Zyppah (Anti-Snoring Thing) and Erectile Dysfunction (You know what that is) commercials.

If you see me in my truck, however, you should know that I can also do a burnout if I have to (for emergency maneuvers only, of course) because the truck does NOT have traction control. Maybe I’ll just keep that truck after all.