When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can't bear it, you cannot help but turn everything into a joke.

I wave to the double-decker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction?

Maybe this is all a bit of a myth, a willful desire to give each place its own unique aura. But doesn't any collective belief eventually become a kind of truth? If enough people act as if something is true, isn't it indeed "true," not objectively, but in the sense that it will determine how they will behave? The myth of unique urban character and unique sensibilities in different cities exists because we want it to exist.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

For years we have been taught not to like things. Finally somebody said it was OK to like things. This was a great relief. It was getting hard to go around not liking everything.

The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.