
I'm not buying Sirius, at least not the package the rental has.
The radio in the car had 240 choices, at least thirty dedicated to broadcasting each MLB's local radio production and NASCAR and NASCAR and NASCAR. There are ten stations of stand-up comedy. There's CNN and MSNBC and Fox This, Fox That, Fox, Fox, Fox. There's Music of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and station after station of suck upon suck.
I'm not going to listen to Deep Cuts, a station dedicated to filler tracks from albums of dinosaur bands. I'm not going to listen to The Coffee House, a station that proves Mojo Nixon's wisdom about folk singers and another hole in my head. I'm not going to listen to the Elvis station, the Springsteen station, the Jimmy Buffet station. I lasted fifteen minutes on the Grateful Dead station before flashing back all I needed.
We settled on First Wave, whose playlist requirements include one song every two hours by The Cure, The Smiths, The Pretenders, and Gordon Fucking Sumner's Band of Toxic Shit. Perhaps there are more choices - there was no classical, no jazz, no current indie, no world - but if this is the total package, Sirius isn't getting money from me.
The photo above is the view out the window of the Holiday Inn in Richmond Indiana, a town not nearly as charming as its tourist board, Wikipedia, and the Earlham College Committee for Propaganda promised us it was. It's not a hole, but it's not the postcard midwest town as advertised. When you get off I-70 you're greeted by one of those 100 foot tall metal crosses motherfucking christers plant in their motherfucking church's front yard, and US 40 looks like Rockville Pike for two miles before hitting downtown proper. Downtown is meh.
Earlham is cute, tiny. We saw a mother and child skunk snurfing for food. The campus was eerily deserted.
Today is going to be hard. We all agree this is a good idea. We all are fighting the urge to get in the car in ten minutes and go home now. Happy Fathers Day!
I am on a hook I baited myself: if asked, I will drive eight hours next Saturday to take Planet out for a two hour dinner and drive eight hours home Sunday.

A LITTLE TOOTH
Thomas Lux
Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all
over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,
your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.