It's a holiday, so I get to engage in my very favorite morning routine: total sloth.
Basically, I stay in bed and listen to a full hour of public radio before I'll even consider getting up. In that half-awake state, my brain tends to do interesting things with what I hear. And I often spend the day wondering if I really know something -- Steve Irwin killed by stingray?! -- or if I've just imagined it, based on some dream that started in the middle of a news story.
During this morning's broadcast, I drifted along for a while with thoughts about one of Chicago Public Radio's big sponsors, Angie's List.
I've never used Angie's List, which offers recommendations on contractors, plumbers and other services, and I'm sure it's all wonderfully helpful. But I have a distinctly bad impression of "the list," as it is referred to by insiders, based on some neighbors who seem to be obsessed with it. For them, Angie's List approval is pretty much the only acceptable criteria upon which a decision can be based. Not price, certainly. Not local word-of-mouth or gut feeling. Only the consensus of the all-powerful list. So I've started to think of the people who participate in the list-making as all being just as neurotic and approval-starved as these neighbors.
This notion was knocking around in my head when it occurred to me that, in a very real sense, Craigs List is the absolute opposite of Angie's List.
And, although the lack of an apostrophe does bother me slightly, R. and I are commitedly Craigs List people. We bought our car through Craigs List. And (yes, I totally caved) our baby's crib, too. And we're using it to search for baby nurses and nannies.
Suddenly, it became clear to me that there are two types of people in the world. They are Angie's List people. We are Craigs List people.
From there, I envisioned a whole scenario in which "Craig" actually attempted to date "Angie" and things, of course, went horribly badly. Because he was all, "Let's try this place for dinner . . . ." and she was all, "No way. Three people in Lincoln Park had bad shrimp there in 1997."
Not strange enough for you? Here's another NPR-inspired mental trip I took this morning . . . .
Continue reading "Why a person should be fully awake when listening to NPR" »
Debra Picket is a columnist for the 