To understand the cosmic ripples that have been set in motion this week, you have to understand one key fact - I own the worst car radio in the world. I would be happier – infinitely better off and more satisfied – if the radio didn’t work at all; then I could just write the whole listening/driving thing off entirely and use my commuting time to do something useful like meditate or bird-watch or something. Unfortunately, my radio works just well enough that I keep hoping against all hope that I will actually be able to listen to something on it. In short, I own the Red Sox of car radios.
The tuning knob works fairly well. True, it does fall off from time to time and rolls around my feet, occasionally wedging itself under my clutch pedal, preventing me from shifting gears until I can knock it loose with my toe in a sort of three-dimensional foosball, but compared to the rest of the radio, it's really not so bad. For instance, the balance knob doesn’t seem to serve any function. Turning it in any direction doesn’t seem to affect the sound from either of my speakers (although they do cut in and out on their own, switching back and forth entirely at random). I have a theory that the knob is there strictly as a replacement for the tuning knob in case it rolls under the seat. Also, while it is easy enough to change radio stations, it is almost impossible to change back again, because there is no display to tell you what station you are on at any given time. There are numbers of some sort that flash on and off at random intervals, but they don’t seem to correspond to any particular set of factors, although, for a while I was convinced that it was some sort of altimeter.
I don’t recognize the brand-name of my radio, one so forgettable that in spite of the fact that I stare at it for a couple of hours each day, I can’t recall it now. In any case, my radio was produced by a completely obscure electronics firm, dedicated (I theorize) to opposing all sound media. I am convinced of this because on the few occasions I’ve been foolish enough to put a cassette in the tape player, it has played perfectly, just long enough to lure me into a false sense of complacency, then devoured the tape with a thoroughness that can only be described as vindictive.
Unfortunately for the anti-media cartel who manufactured my radio, they left me one loophole – a small jack-hole in the faceplate, labeled “cd”. For the past year, I have been plugging a portable compact disk player into my car radio and listening to that on my way to work. Well, when I say “a” portable cd player, I am actually referring to a series of such players, which are stolen off the front seat of my car with startling frequency. In a society where every man, woman, child and houseplant owns a Discman, mine seem to hold an allure that makes them irresistible to thieves.
I lost another one this week. I happened to be at a conference at a fairly posh resort, so it is likely to the point of virtual certainty that the thief was a wealthy-but-bored adolescent boy vacationing there with his parents. My one consolation in losing my latest cd player is that there was a cd in it at the time and perhaps – just perhaps – the thief will be exposed to some decent music – in this case, Barry White’s All-Time Greatest Hits. Maybe the cd will be tossed into the back of a drawer and retrieved years from now by a date of his who is looking for something to listen to. Maybe the date will go really, really well and they will fall in love and get married. Maybe she will turn him around and make him a decent member of society. Alternatively, maybe she will catch him fooling around with the nanny, take him to court, strip him of every worldly possession and make him wish he’d never been born. (Guess which one, I’m hoping for.)
I choose to believe that the creepy little thug who stole my cd player isn't connected to Barry White's death a few days later. Unfortunately, if I eliminate Beevis from the equation, the responsibility reverts back to me. Suddenly denying my radio - my supernaturally bad radio - of the music it wants is apparently a very bad idea in a karmic sense. I will replace the cd player (again) and leave it in the car (again) with a Tom Waits album. We lost Barry this week; Tom must be protected at all costs.
