On my way to and from work, I often drive through the I-10 tunnel while listening to a radio show. This means that just as Dennis Prager or RC Sproul is making some fabulous point, I can’t hear him for 30 seconds or so, an excruciating interruption. I have actually found myself leaning forward as if moving my body closer to the exit will accelerate the reappearance of the radio signal. This does not work .
Then I get angry. First at the radio station, as though they prefer me to not get the signal. Next at the tunnel engineers, as though they set out to irritate talk show listeners. But then I must eventually admit that I have known of this problem and could have avoided it by going up the ramp and over the tunnel on the streets. “But that would have been slower!” Yes, of course.
And so ultimately I have to merely be angry at the circumstance of not being able to drive as fast as I want and listen to the radio I want without any interruptions I don’t want all of the time. Did I mention I’m an American?
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My mother rarely used her sewing machine. But there was one time when I was a teen and was taping a special radio program on British Invasion music onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder to keep for posterity, and Mom decided to work on some outfit that required sewing. The sewing machine, which she had inherited, was one of the early electric models, and because of its primitive design it put out an e.m. signal that created a “zhwah zhwah zhwah” clatter on my radio. I went into the room where she was sewing, my hands clasped together in a pleading gesture, and asked, “Is there any way that you could delay your sewing project until the top of the hour when this radio program is finished?”
“Um, sorry, no. I want to get this done.” she told me. I kept taping and she kept sewing. “Zhwah zhwah zhwah….”
There is some sort of radio station goof-up in which two different programs, or else one program and a commercial, play at the same time. It can go on for minutes before someone corrects it. I have heard this on both secular radio and on Christian radio.
A fun topic for the Tallman show might be whether the reason for that happening is the same regardless of whether it occurs on secular or Christian radio. I remember that a faith healer who missed some days from his daily program on a different Christian station (not KPXQ) said when he was back in the saddle again, “Old Slew-foot tried to get me off the radio by pushing me down in the shower.” The slip and fall had resulted in a foot injury that required hospitalization.
Would that particular faith healer say that technical glitches at Christian stations are the direct result of Satan’s meddling, but the same sort of glitches at secular stations are simple human error?
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