Preface To Space Junk: Junk In Space!

There are lots of articles online about space junk, which is stuff we humans have sent into space which is now just cluttering up the place. It's not just satellites that no longer work - it includes trash we've left up there, & paint chips that have come off the space shuttle, & hatches blown off space modules. & these pieces of junk orbit the planet at around seventeen thousand miles an hour.

It's such a problem that there are several agencies, like the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies which is tasked to tracking & making sure stuff up there doesn't run into spacecraft or the International Space Station or anything we send up there (like currently functioning satellites). Here's a little animation to give you an idea what it's like up there. They say they're tracking 22,000 objects up there.

It doesn't just stay up there - lots of times the orbits degrade & the space junk returns - & you get news headlines like "Satellite Heading For Earth" & "NASA Satellite Falls On Canada: No One Hurt".

If you didn't want to click the little movie up there, here's a similar image from the European Space Agency:

Ninth Anniversary Coming!

That's right! It's been approximately nine years since Self Help Radio began! Actually, it's officially eight years & three hundred & sixty three days, since Self Help Radio first went on the air on October 9, 2002. The management at KOOP radio immediately regretted their error but were too nice to say anything about it.

When I do my anniversary shows, I revisit an old theme - adding music I've discovered since the show aired, & sometimes tweaking the theme a bit - but this anniversary I'm doing something else that's special: I'm giving away tee shirts!

I've asked the original designer of the beat-up Self Help Radio bear, Suloni Robertson, to make a ninth anniversary version, & so she has. You can listen to show Monday for a chance to win!

I'm also going to give a couple of shirts away on my Facebook page, but you have to "like" the show to win. More information about this - & a preview of the new design! - will be forthcoming.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Fifteen

Sadness in the house of A Joke A Day! The death & dying of "jokes" causes a funereal atmosphere that may infect your own mailbox! Unsubscribe now!

The misogyny continues:

A guy walks into a bar and orders a shot of whisky. He gulps it down and peeks into his shirt pocket. He orders another shot of whisky, gulps it down and peeks into his short pocket. He orders a third shot and does the same thing. After the sixth shot, he asks the bartender for the bill, pays and starts to walk out.

Curiosity gets the better of the bartender and he says to the guy, "Excuse me, but I noticed that every time you drank a shot, you kept looking into your pocket. I was wondering what's in your pocket."

The guy slurs, "Well, I have a picture of my wife in my pocket. I keep drinking until she starts to look good."

Should we laugh at the drunken man for his choice in unattractive mate? Or should we pity evil time which ages women, turns them into wrinkled shrews that require poor husbands to supplement themselves with the demon rum in order to simply share a bed? In the world of the A Joke A Day misogynist "joke," a husband picks a wife for her looks alone, unwisely foreseeing that age will take away the facade that makes her harpy-like personality bearable. Ha ha ha ha!

But women are all gold-diggers anyway, right, A Joke A Day?

Dear John,

I have been unable to sleep since I broke off our engagement. Won't you forgive and forget? Your absence is breaking my heart. I was a fool, nobody can take your place. I love you.

All my love,
Belinda. xxxxoooxxxx

P.S. Congratulations on winning this week's lottery.

Let's hope John reconciles with this obvious greedhead so he can make jokes about her once she's grown prune-faced & old!

There was one slightly clever joke I liked this week. It was this one:

TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?

DONALD: H I J K L M N O.

TEACHER: What are you talking about?

DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.

A possibly true story!

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If you're reading this today, Thursday the 6th, & you'd like to hear me sub WRFL's classic rock show The Belfry, you can do so from 4 to 6pm Lexington time on the 88.1 frequency, or you can listen online at the same time at wrfl dot fm. But I have to listen, you don't. I understand your reluctance.

Whither Come Home?

Have you always had a home to come home to? Apparently about one in every two hundred Americans is either homeless or finds themselves homeless every year.

Oftentimes on Self Help Radio, a particular phrase is explored - the show has explored songs with the construction "here i/you/he/she/it/they come(s)," for example. This week you'll hear nothing but songs about coming home. Mostly as a command: "come home!"

If the show were more popular, & you were abroad, or had otherwise abandoned the show, & the show knew it, the show might advertise itself with "Come home to Self Help Radio!" Self Help Radio, alas, is no one's home, so coming home to it is by definition impossible.

A lot of people spend a lot of time at WRFL, so it feels like home to many people, & to many radio shows, like Self Help Radio. Listen to Self Help Radio playing songs about coming home in its current home tomorrow (that's Monday) morning at 7:30am. You can listen in Lexington at the 88.1 frequency or you can listen online at the WRFL web site.

Actually, Self Help Radio is lucky enough to have two homes. It works at WRFL but rests at its own web site, self help radio dot net, where tomorrow's show will come home to later in the day.

Either way, please listen!