Letter of Annoyance

January 28, 2000

The management
FM 96

Dear Sirs,

We wish to express our considerable annoyance at your radio station's refusal to divulge potentially explosive information about the nature and origin of the universe.

Over the New Year's weekend your radio station ran a special countdown show called "the Top New Rock Songs of All Time". This show has caused us considerable metaphysical indigestion. Over the course of the show no song older than the late 1980s was played on your station.

Now it would seem that any song is "new" on the day it is first released. "Hard Days Night" was new when it first hit the airwaves as was "Heartbreak Hotel" or even "Rock Around The Clock". We could conclude that the show really dealt with the Top New Rock Songs of the past dozen or so years. But, wait! Your special was called the Top New Rock Songs Of All Time.

We have inquired by e-mail as to your exact definition of "New Rock" and "All Time" and have received no response. We can only conclude that that you are harboring secret knowledge. We can only see one possible solution to this logical conundrum.

• The universe arrived, fully formed, sometime in the middle 1980s.
• Any artists who performed hit songs before this time do not qualify because they never really existed.
• Time, as we know it, has been around for only 15 years.

We think you owe it to your loyal listeners to come clean about our shiny new universe. Sure, it would have taken some of the fun out of the millennial celebrations, but it is important information none-the-less. We hope you take this important advice with the seriousness with which it is given.

Sincerely,

John Sloan, TG

For the Emily Chesley
Reading Circle