Encounters with Stupidity

You can have too much music in your life. Who has time to listen to it all? A few days ago I bought a satellite radio and signed up for a free 3-month trial. The receiver was free too, with a deal my brother found on fatwallet.com. Actually, with rebates I'll end up making about 25 bucks. My brother is always finding deals like this, where he can do this and that and send in these rebates and end up with $100. Even though it was free, the satellite radio had a negative side effect: it brought me past the brink of music overload. Let's take stock of my current musical options. I'm a dedicated NPR listener, so that or KXCI is usually on in my car. I also listen to NPR in the mornings while reading The Economist as part of my new morning routine (see separate post). At home I also have a few hundred CD's, and an old 10 gig ipod with FM transmitter with another 3000 songs. At work I have my computer with an undisclosed number of tracks. And for good measure, throw in my trusty 512MB Creative Nomad, basically a non-white (ethnic?) Shuffle.
On the rare occasion I stay in a hotel good enough to have cable TV, I'm overwhelmed by the options and invariably get Channel Anxiety. Now I get to experience Song Anxiety every day of my life; in my home, in my car, and at my desk at work. It's important, however, to keep things in perspective. I'm not suggesting that choice is bad, as some researchers are now doing (see recent Scientific American article). Choice is the result of free minds operating in a free market. The best thing about choice is that one can choose to have more or less. When my free trial is up, I'll dump XM radio and 200 choices along with it.