I don't care how impossible it seems.

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 hear about stuff from their friends or a magazine or a newspaper.

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.

I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

There was an op-ed piece in The New York Times by an evolutionary biologist or somebody - which was a curious place for the opinion to come from - and he said that there's no such thing as a completely free, uncensored medium, that people censor themselves all the time, in deference to hurting other people's feelings, or offending other groups, or in their own, not to provoke a fight. And you do self-censor certain things, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just the way human social interaction works.

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