As I listened to my Mogwai and Fluke channels, I thought about a 26-year old telling me about her Lady Gaga channel the day before. “Really?” I thought to myself. You could stand at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, stare up at it and say, “No, I think I’ll stay here and have a drink from the toilet”?

The promise of Internet radio, from the moment those guys at Real figured out how to get audio to stream (barely) over a 28.8 modem in the mid-90′s, has always been to revolutionize the music industry by opening the doors to a flood of musical talent that was inaccessible through the corporate radio model, and usher in a new era of direct connections (and revenue) between musicians and their fans. Yet, here we are fifteen years later, and the music industry is a trainwreck and the Gen Ys still crave a steady diet of the basic corporate gruel. What went wrong?

I know that Pandora won’t be the same forever. I know you want your large and well-deserved payday for yourself and all the musicians who brought Pandora to life and sent broadcast radio to its ignominious death. I know the day will come when some media conglomerate will buy Pandora and you’ll retire in Bora Bora with naked nymphets in diamond-encrusted tiaras serving you drinks with paper umbrellas in them, but I know that it will also signal the end of Pandora as we know it. Someone else who is not concerned with the purity, the algorithmic perfection of the musical selection process behind Pandora, will come along instead and exploit the “Lady Gaga” effect, as I’ve decided to call it. But it will be a sad day for us all, as the beauty of what you and your loyal minions have created slowly degenerates into the pile of corporate shit it will eventually become, and the cycle of radio begins again until the next supposed revolution.

I know it’s coming, I don’t know when, and I know I can’t do much about it, but I’m enjoying the ride while it lasts. Thanks for driving the magic bus this far.

Ordinarily, finding a 4th-gen F-body like this 1997 Firebird in a junkyard is a good thing. But not today. This one was badly mangled and came with its own eerie warning.

You can just barely see the remains of a badly damaged LT1.

Looking at the hood, and the front framerail, it doesn’t look at all like a tree impact. This car hit something man-made, my guess is the base of one of those lightpoles in a mall parking lot.

This interior actually doesn’t look that bad, I’d say this one was survivable. In really bad crashes there will be bloodstains on the seats and airbags, but this one doesn’t appear to have any and the passenger compartment is mostly intact.

Here is our first clue of what happened. The tachometer, temperature and oil pressure gages are all as they were at the time of the crash. It would’ve been nice if the speedometer was too, but it obviously went to 0 when the car came to a sudden stop.

Deep into the redline on an automatic. LT1′s usual redline is 5700rpm, this looks like it’s at about 6400. Probably a reprogrammed engine computer.

This tells us what was happening at the time of the crash. But it doesn’t tell us why. The real cause of the crash I found on the floor behind the driver seat.

Take a look at the full-size image close up. You’ll see pink panties, a black lace bra, a used condom, and smokes. Clearly, way too much was going on in this car.

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