I’ve been on Spring Break the past week — hence the dirth of postings — and have been spending the time driving hither and yon in the Southeast, checking up on old friends (they’re all good), taking the pulse of the American newspaper economy (it’s all bad) and getting my forehead horribly sunburnt.

Whilst driving, I’ve had some odd thoughts cross my mind, the side effect, no doubt, of driving into the sun for many hours. Among them:

• Why can’t the Chik-Fil-A cows spell better? They’ve gotten to the point where they can read — and they have enough coordination to, apparently, take over a fair number of the nation’s billboards. Isn’t there some cow who looks back as the herd is sneaking away and says, “hey, wait, we spelled ‘chiken’ wrong”?
  
• The ratio between residents of North Carolina and country music stations is approaching parity. Is there really a need for each individual to have their own country station?
  
• And speaking of music … The FCC or somebody should step in and start regulating the airtime new pop songs receive. Everytime I go on a long-distance car ride, I end up hearing the same songs over and over as I go from one station’s coverage area to another’s. The big offender this time was a little ditty named “Yellow,” which I hadn’t heard before. It was pretty catchy the first time or two I heard it and really began to grow on me the third and fourth times; by the eighth airing of it, though, my head began pounding — and when, a few minutes later, Cold Play’s ducal tones came out of the radio three times in a row as I was scanning, I began looking for a tractor trailer to pull in front of.
  
• The phrase “Satan is working overtime” is much beloved by radio evangelists. Strange, but I always thought of the devil as more of a salaried employee. Of course, if anyone is going to be monkeying with FLRB guidelines, it would be the Prince of Lies … but shouldn’t he be more subtle about it?