SHHHHHH.

I can't be the only person in America who hates the crap music you have to listen to in every restaurant, department store, doctor's office, mall and retail outlet of every kind. Most people tell me they don't hear it, lucky bastards, but I do and it spoils every experience. Why should I be forced to listen to someone else's taste in music when I am the customer, the bill payer, the person who should be pleased? I am not even sure the proprietor knows better. I think companies like Musak sell him a bill of goods, tell him that people want music, that it increases sales and then pipe in the cheapest, low royalties crap because they know people are sheep, and unlike me, won't complain. Most offensive are the new so-called songs, which aren't songs at all, just a trite beat and a single lyric line repeated as often as 25 times. Yesterday at Einstein's Bagel they played two such songs right in a row: "You Don't Know a Thing About Me" and "Come Away With Me". Those titles are pretty much the entire song lyrics and are sung by some third-rate female singer dozens of times. You can't get much closer to the Chinese water torture. And there are a hundred such songs, including maddening hits like "This Girl is On Fire." If only. Americans are tense, neurotic, and angry. Much of the reason for that is that they never experience silence in public. I am sure everyone would be happier in a society that providing more quietude and relaxing silence, but I will never know since such an experience isn't available in today's fill-every-moment-with-noise world.Wherever they go they are required to listen to music over loudspeakers. In many cases it drowns out conversation. But nobody complains, except me.Why? Because people feel they have no choice. Even when they are the customer,the purchaser, the patient.  I recently asked my very expensive vet why I had to listen to rock music while I waited for my cat to be seen. He had no answer and just turned the volume down a little. Not only did I hate being forced to listen to pop crap, I doubt that the dogs in the waiting room liked it any better.