(And a prize to anyone who gets the allusion in that subject line! Hint: The original is something like, "Lord, deliver us from LL Bean!" And let me start right off with the disqualifications: Emil, you can't play.)

But anyway. Before my drives these past few days, I was wondering what I would do when the CBC cuts out (somewhere around Chelsea) and I have to find a new radio station. I thought, no problem: WKAR (the MSU national public radio - NPR - affiliate) will kick in at about that point, and unlike WUOM (UM's affiliate), it's not talk radio, it's classical music. Which is what I like.

But - as the rotten fates would have it - as it turns out, my travel time happens to coincide with Morning Edition (in the morning, redundantly enough) and All Things Considered in the afternoon. I hate those shows. There's nothing I hate more than rich liberals (unless it's conservatives, rich or otherwise). I listened to three stories on NPR this afternoon: One was about how we're going to run out of oil by Thanksgiving, 2005 (scarcely comforting to someone who now has a Killer Commute - but a thread that seems obviously to descend from the Ecology Movement of the 70s), the second was about the kerfuffel that's being made over Kerry's military service and subsequent denouncing of the Vietnam war (they ended with a commentary whose writer said, in essence, that it's time to put the debate behind us and move on - but the mere fact that it was being read indicated that we haven't exactly moved on yet, have we?? - and they barely mentioned that, if we're going to throw stones, we might mention that Bush dodged military service), and the third . . . well, I'm repressing the third, but it was in the same vein: All of them added up to, We're Going to Hell in a Handbasket. Brought to you by the Annenberg Foundation, the Chubb Group, and all sorts of other Liberals with Money who don't have to care where we're going, and interspersed with contemplative musical interludes that tell you how to feel about what you've just heard.

I just about gasped with relief when I finally got to Chelsea and could get CBC. The big news there was about a whale that was stranded somehow from its home in the Bay of Fundy . . . they turned off power in some Nova Scotia power plant until the tide rose, with the hope that the whale would benefit from the calm and quiet, and then be able to find its way home . . . Apparently the whale was hale, hearty, and happy, and frolicking in the bay (or wherever it was). Now that's the kind of thing I like to hear.

I suppose I'll have to investigate Books on CD soon . . .