Just putting it out there...

I don't intend to make a habit of issuing broad proclamations about what Should and Should Not Be Done in Public Radio, but my extravagant daily work commutes have begun anew and the local NPR affiliate is probably the only thing keeping me from falling asleep and plowing into a ditch every day.

So I'm grateful, but...

The morning announcer for my public radio station sounds like he wants to kill himself. He sighs with crushing world-weariness in the middle of sentences, as though he's honestly considering throwing in the towel before the end of the period. He also leaves long, ominous stretches of dead air between his station ID's and the start of the NPR feed.

I wonder what he's doing in those blank moments. Staring at the insulated walls that bind him? I wonder this as I stare at miles of flooded corn crops, waiting for the monster 18-wheeler hauling farm equipment wider than the lane to bear down on me and pass me. Being and nothingness in rural Texas, all the intersections of life and death and the pititful in-betweens coming up fast behind you. No way to start a day.

And then there's the melodious afternoon woman, who would have the perfect neutral radio persona were it not for her annoying habit of bringing the flow of information to a screeching halt in order to pronounce foreign words and names with native authenticity. In a region of the country where language is pretty much half and half anyway, this makes for a tortured, Intro to Spanish-like delivery. Plus there's something a little too overeager about it, like someone from up north ordering their first "en-chi-lada and marrrrr-garrrrr-ita."

This is also the woman who does all of the classical programming, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays I get to hear her sprain her tongue on nearly all of the world's old school languages as she introduces German aurias performed by Czechoslavakian singers accompanied by Latvian orchestras performing in Israel. These are the people who make familiar names foreign again-- she adds a giant loogie to Bach and makes Debussy sound almost pornographic.

But these are minor quibbles. Some time I'll have to tell you about public radio in Mississippi.