people who know me, know that i am an npr junkie. i really can’t get enough of it. my car has three public radio stations preset. yes – three. if there were more stations in the chicagoland area, i’d probably have them all preset. so it wasn’t without a little trepidation that i followed the metafilter thread that promised to reveal what the “personalities” looked like. these are people that i’ve listened to for over 10 years. i’ve got a pretty concrete mental image of what they all look like and it’s not just like you can go destroying mental constructions willy-nilly. and yet, despite my better judgement, i peeked. some, like sylvia poggioli are close [ although, to be honest, i expected any picture of her to show an unfiltered, roll-your-own cigarette somewhere in the frame ]. others, like linda werthheimer couldn’t be more different than i had expected.
o.k. maybe i’m a little more dedicated to public radio than most people, but i’m certainly not quite as bad as this person:
“And, as is perhaps inevitable with virtual families, I’ve assigned all sorts of personal qualities to all my NPR friends and lovers. Given them hairstyles and tics and birthmarks. I’ve ascribed ethnicities and magazine subscriptions and favorite foods to them. (I feel quite strongly that Steve Inskeep is a chili dog guy, for instance, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt where Ann Taylor shops for her blouses.)”