Sirius and XM have agreed to merge.

And once again, I must re-iterate…

Let us start with the simple stuff. XM has certain little radio boxes that talk to certain little satellites. Sirius has their own set of little boxes that talk to certain little satellites. And the two were made incompatible on purpose. So, how do we deal with that? Who gets new boxes? And which satellites stay and which ones get sold off to burn up in the atmosphere?

Where’s the new headquarters going to be? Which channels stay and which ones go?

And what about the whole FCC business? This will, technically, be a monopoly now.

Those are just the simple-to-ask, but very difficult-to-solve questions. Now the more complicated stuff: will prices go up, forcing more listeners to pay for Howard Stern’s extravagant salary? Will content suffer under Mel Karmazin’s rule? Will commercials come back to music channels?

What will become of Opie and Anthony?

And does anyone remember Canada? Don’t they have to approve the merger too?

Lots of questions, that so far have no answers. The higher ups are a little too busy seeing dollar signs right now to care, leaving consumers in the dark. Way to go, guys.

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I just had the dubious honor of discovering that I have Sprint’s default call center hold music in my music library.

For anyone who’s interested, the name of the song is “Cranley’s Gonna Make It” by Broken Social Scene. It’s the last track off the “Feel Good Lost” album released in 2001. Anyone with iTunes can search the music store for “Feel Good Lost” and find it. Double clicking on the track will give you a free 30 second snippet.

If you’re brave enough to buy the track (it’s 99 cents), you’ll find that Sprint’s call centers seem very fond of the parts of the song just after 1:31 into the track, and then again after 4:00.

It’s a catchy tune, and sounds much better in stereo at full bitrate. Too bad every time I hear it now, I have the urge to be ready to recite my PCS phone number starting with the area code, and account password.

I’m not sure what’s worse: that I’m THAT much into indie music have this song in my music library, or that I’ve been on hold with Sprint’s customer service department long enough to identify their hold music.

So, Psychonaut Lisa Nowak is free after posting bail. And after we’ve already seen her lovely mugshot, she decides to cover her face as she leaves. As if we don’t already know what she looks like on a bad hair day.

A future astronaut sums up my response:

Yes, these are images of the same person. Meet Lisa Marie Nowak, the photo on the left being a mugshot taken on one of her off-days. Seems that romance does happen in the space program, and evidently, it can get ugly.

So what happened? Another astronaut, Bill Oefelein, was allegedly in some kind of “relationship” with both Nowak and a second female astronaut. Nowak didn’t take kindly to this, and…

Shipman [the “other woman”] told police that she arrived at [Orlando International] airport at about 1 a.m. but had to wait two hours for her luggage to arrive.

Once she retrieved her bags, she said she took a bus to the lot where her car was parked, noticing a woman wearing a trench coat who appeared to be following her.

Fearing for her safety, Shipman quickly stepped into her car, the police report said, adding that she reported hearing “running footsteps” behind her.

Shipman closed and locked her car door as Nowak slapped the window of the car and tried to open the car door, the report said.

Nowak told Shipman her ride had not arrived and asked for help, but Shipman refused, saying she would send help instead. When Nowak complained she couldn’t hear Shipman and started to cry, Shipman opened her car window “about 2 inches” — and Nowak sprayed pepper spray into the car, police said.

There’s more. After police were summoned, they found a folding knife, a steel mallet, and discovered Novak trying to dispose of a wig and a pellet gun. Someone had plans!

By the way… Nowak is married to someone else, and has two kids. Who knew NASA had such a riveting real life space-opera going on?