Radio soup

I have a problem. I bought a used car, which doesn’t have an auxiliary cable output to plug in into my smartphone. It does have a tape player (into which I can put the tape gizmo that connect to my smartphone), just like my old deathtrap of a car had, but that’s where the problem lies: the tape player makes loud knocking sound.

The solution to the problem is to buy an FM transmitter, which will connect to my smartphone either through Bluetooth or a cable and at the same time will transmit to one of the FM channels, allowing me to listen to my smartphone through the radio.

Until I bought it, however, I have to listen to the radio, since I generally don’t like driving in a car in silence.

Here is another problem: we are in the middle of Sfiras Ha’Omer. Which means I can’t listen to music. Which creates the same problem as the years ago, before I started listening to Chassidus on mp3 player: I have to listen to a talk radio station, not music one. Which back in the day left me only with NPR (in New Orleans, we used to call it National Palestinian Radio), before I discovered Rush Limbaugh station. Sfiras Ha’Omer few years ago coincided with the Lebanese war. I was so disgusted with the liberal media’s coverage of it that I decided I’d rather listen to all the mechanical problems that my engine had than to that drivel.

Well, today I gave NPR another try. And then Rush Limbaugh station (which I am not sure was airing the Rush at the moment). And then NPR again...

NPR: a new movie with Will Ferrel. “Those were the times when my mom could leave me alone in the car when she’d go grocery shopping. And I would listen to those songs.” “Can you sing one right now?..”

Rush: Democrats suck... (Another problem, which is a general problem with Conservative radio hosts: they tend to sound not like normal polite human beings, but like captains of cargo tankers.)

NPR: Some Black farmer talking about how Mississippi river is killing his corn. Freedom riders in the South.

Rush: Democrats are crooks.

NPR: Now that Osama is dead, maybe we can pull out of Afghanistan?

Rush: The Democratic Congress person is wrong. There are not ten million “undocumented people” in this country. First of all, there are one hundred million...

NPR: Syria presents a problem. On the one hand, its leader is killing its citizens. (Thought: so does the American government, with the war on drugs. And government-run roads. And the socialist tunnels whose ceiling falls down on the cars. But whatever...) On the other, Syria — especially being so close to Israel — presents a stabilizing force in the region. (Here comes the star of the program...) Therefore, although the government is dictatorial, repressive and murderous, without it, there would be chaos. Trumpets. (And people would eat each other alive. We know.)

Rush: ...Second of all, they are not “undocumented workers”. They are illegal aliens. They are invaders of this country!

Doctor Who: We are not fighting an alien invasion. We are leading a revolution.


(starting 0:09)

The last two bits (the one from NPR and the one from Rush) hit it home: these are statist fish swimming in a statist soup. They can’t even imagine that there is anything else possible...

Is there a libertarian radio station? Maybe I’ll just go to BestBuy and buy this.

(I could also use my headphones, but that would require not leaving them at home in front of the computer...)