New York, NY: Being a glutton for punishment, I invested in the necessary portions of a plug-and-play Sirius™ satellite radio system recently: a stereo with car kit, a home 
kit, and a subscription.
The car kit was easy to install. All I had to do was attach a magnetic antenna to the car. Oh, and run the attached cable under the seal around my rear window, down into the trunk, behind the upholstery, through the back seat, down the passenger side of the car under the carpet, past the front seat, under the floormat, and up the dashboard. On the bright side, I found three dollars in loose change in the process.
With a car, you have two options. If you have an auxiliary jack in your stereo, you just plug your Sirius™ unit into your stereo and you’re done. If you are a part of the 99% of people who don’t have this option on their stereo, your Sirius™ unit will transmit its signal to a radio station, so you can tune your regular stereo to the appropriate channel and pick up your Sirius™ music. This also means you get the sound quality of regular radio (complete with static and noise from interfering stations) combined with the subscription price of satellite radio.
At home, you just have to set up the home kit (which of course is not included with the stereo and car kit). For $50, you get a docking station, an indoor/outdoor antenna, and approximately two feet of cord fewer than you need to get your antenna to a place where it will pick up a signal. Because, despite the fact it is called an “indoor/outdoor” antenna, it will only work with a clear and unobstructed view of the Sirius™ satellite, which translates to “put this in your window if you want any music at all.” Possible obstructions could include walls, trees, power lines, curtain, random pieces of paper fluttering down the street, and light breezes.
Once you’ve installed all your hardware, you’re ready to set up your subscription. You can do this online or by phone. I chose to set it up by phone, meaning I got a helpful automated voice system that instructed me over and over to spell out my first and last name, then failed to understand no matter how slowly and clearly I spoke. Eventually, a customer service person who was marginally more able than a computerized system to understand me helped me get set up.
Now you’re ready to start surfing through hundreds of channels of music and entertainment! Here are some options for you.
Sirius Hits 1: Top 40 radio. Hey, dumbass. You can get this on your regular radio.
Sirius Love: Love songs. Make-out channel.
50s/60s/70s/80s/90s channels: Period music. Also known as the “I was a young adult during this decade” channels.
24/7 Channels: If you want to hear nothing but Elvis, or Neil Diamond, or Bruce Springsteen, listen to these channels. Or, just put in a CD and be done with it. These artists have to be prolific (read: old) in order to have produced enough music to be a 24/7 channel.
Jam Bands: AKA the “Phish and Dave Matthews Band” channel. Light up, hippie.
Lithium: Alternative/Grunge Rock. “Hey, we play nothing but Nirvana anyway, we might as well steal one of their song titles for the name of our channel.”
The Coffee House: Because Starbucks already has its own radio.
Radio Margaritaville: A place for the 20,000 Jimmy Buffett songs you don’t know the words to.
Blues/Jazz/Electronica/Opera: “What are ‘channels nobody listens to,’ Alex?”
CBC Radio 3/Iceberg: Canadian music. Don’t worry, Celine Dion isn’t on there.
Martha Stewart Radio: Live from Cell Block B, it’s… oh, wait. Too late for that joke.
ESPN Radio: “We have Mike & Mike in the morning. And crap the rest of the day.”
NFL Radio: Come on. Even ESPN only devotes a half hour a week to NFL programming in the off-season. What can you POSSIBLY talk about all day long?
Sirius NASCAR: How can you make a boring sport more boring? Describe it on radio!
NPR: You put this into your pre-programmed channels just so you’d seem intellectual when someone else was channel surfing in your car.
Playboy Radio: In case you’d like to pop a chub during your morning commute.
Traffic and Weather: Don’t worry, this isn’t available in your city.
All in all, it’s a worthwhile investment. Provided that you pay for a year in advance, to get a month free. And you get them to waive the activation fee. And their satellite doesn’t fall out of the sky three months from now.