John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940. There was no time of birth indicated on the image of his birth certificate that I came across. It is popularly believed he was born that evening or night, during a German bombing raid. However, at least one person disputes the claim about the raid. I have also read a page of comments on an astrology Web site which include some by one astrologer who swore that John Lennon told someone close to the astrologer that he was born on the morning of October 9, 1940. So, for my calculations, I will consider that he was born sometime between 12:00:00 AM and 11:59:59 PM on that date. Since British Summer Time was in effect, he was born between 11:00:00 PM GMT on October 8 and 10:59:59 PM GMT on October 9, 1940.

He was killed on December 8, 1980. His death certificate gives the time of death as 11:15 PM EST. This was 4:15 AM GMT on December 9, 1980. Thus, he was alive for forty years (including ten leap days) plus sixty days and approximately five hours and fifteen minutes to sixty-one days and approximately five hours and fifteen minutes.

My birth certificate indicates my time of birth was 11:08 PM EDT. (I won't give my date of birth here, but you can figure it out if you're so inclined.) That was 3:08 AM GMT the following day. So far, I have lived forty years (including ten leap days). So, sometime between 4:23 AM EDT on Tuesday and 4:23 AM EDT on Wednesday this week, I accumulated more time alive than John Lennon did. I don't know why I find this noteworthy, but it is not a happy milestone for me.

I imagine some people who read my rants about my MySpace account getting deleted dismissed my protests based on the reasoning that MySpace is a private entity that can do as it pleases as long as it doesn't violate the law, or that I could just go to another Web site, maybe even set up my own. Well, here's an article that addresses those contentions: Rights like free speech don't always extend online. Here's an excerpt that I think is most relevant:

Service providers say unhappy customers can always go elsewhere, but choice is often limited.

Many leading services, particularly online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace or media-sharing sites such as Flickr and Google  Inc.'s YouTube, have acquired a cachet that cannot be replicated. To evict a user from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town.

Other sites "don't have the critical mass. No one would see it," said Scott Kerr, a member of the gay punk band Kids on TV, which found its profile mysteriously deleted from MySpace last year. "People know that MySpace is the biggest site that contains music."

Yes, The Donnas' message boards were a different story; they were microscopic compared to MySpace, so the above didn't apply to them. But the leaders of those boards and much of the rest of their membership took pride in the community of the boards. As a community and not a group like, say, the student body of a military school, views that were differing and reasonable should have been tolerated.

As I cleaned the kitchen sink this morning, I looked out the window into the back yard and saw seven feral cats there. (The ferals here go into neighboring yards, too, so they don't actually "live" in mine.)

Earlier, I was outside removing the battery from my car (it lost its charge, I'm not sure it's dead) when a feral appeared, laid on the grass and watched me. I started talking to it.

(I'm not actually listening to Message in a Box right now; I was listening to it earlier.)

UPDATE July 1, 2008 6:29 PM PDT:

I have since counted eight kittehs in my back yard at one time.

Recently, as I was washing dishes, a kitteh walked on the brick "barrier" that surrounds my back porch and came up to the window above the kitchen sink and sat there, watching me.

Last Tuesday morning, I heard mewing and I found an abandoned feral newborn kitten in my garage. I took it out of the garage and placed it under the back porch (because I have seen kittehs take shelter there) in the hopes that an adult feral would adopt it. On Friday morning, I found it dead.

In May of 2006, Morrissey, while speaking to the audience at one of his concerts, sent a message to employees of animal testing laboratories: "We will get you." (Here's an article online; there's more at Morrissey Solo.) I hardly gave it much thought at the time. But one night last summer, as I surfed channels while watching TV, I caught the beginning of 28 Days Later, which was being broadcast, dubbed in Spanish, on a Spanish-language channel. The opening scene of the film depicts animal rights activists breaking into an animal testing lab. Man, that got my blood boiling, and I recalled Morrissey's statement.

Another animal rights activist in the aforementioned article says of Morrissey, "I suspect when he said 'we will get you' he wasn't talking about violence at all, but about exposing these people for what they do." I don't buy that. Morrissey is rabid enough when it comes to animal welfare and enough of a bastard in general to have been thinking of violence against the workers.

I feel my ways of listening to music nowadays leave something to be desired. Mostly, I do it in one of two ways. I listen to my Sirius satellite radio boombox in the bathroom while I shower, etc. as I prepare to leave the house. (In that case, I listen either to Sirius satellite radio — see the Music section of my interests on my profile for my favorite channels — or to one of the albums I own using an mp3 player connected to the boombox via its aux jack.) Or I listen to AOL Radio on a computer with dinky computer speakers. Years ago, I used to listen to CD's with a decent pair of headphones. Now, I wonder how much of the music I listen to I am missing. I daydream of having an entertainment room with a good-quality (not necessarily high-end) audio system and a recliner so I can relax while listening to music. I wonder, though, if I would be able to appreciate the improved sound such a setup would provide — I fear I have a tin ear. Furthermore, in the physical world, I have a degree of tinnitus and my ears produce a lot of wax; those conditions can't help my ability to appreciate music.

As you may have figured out, that daydream includes making time to listen to music and not doing anything else at the same time. I suspect I'm missing a lot by not being an active listener. Not that I think it's wrong to have music as background entertainment, it's just that, except when I attend a live performance, that's the only way I listen to music.

I have decided to delete the list of my favorite artists from the Music section on my profile. There are still artists I prefer over others (very much so), but since I don't actively listen to anyone's music, it just doesn't feel right to me to elevate a handful of artists over all the others whose music I also listen to (if less frequently). I'll make an exception for The Beatles by keeping their official MySpace in my top MySpace friends.

People buy small cars even though they can be deadly
by James R. Healey, USA Today
First posted August 19, 2007
(alternate link)

Excerpts:

As a group, occupants of small cars are more likely to die in crashes than those in bigger, heavier vehicles are, according to data from the government, the insurance industry and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

The newest small vehicles, of course, meet today's strict safety standards and can be laden with the latest safety hardware, such as stability control and side air bags. They are safer than ever. And differing designs mean some small cars are safer than average. But even the safest are governed by the laws of physics, which rule in favor of bigger, heavier vehicles, even in single-vehicle crashes...

"People are looking for ways to save fuel, and they need to know that if they decide to buy a much smaller vehicle, they are putting themselves and their families at risk," says Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. IIHS, supported by auto insurance companies, follows traffic deaths closely...

Even when you adjust for the typically younger and less-experienced drivers often behind the wheel in small cars and focus even more tightly by counting only driver deaths, the statistics still are troubling...

The deadly potential of small cars isn't, as many people presume, because SUVs crash into them. Just one of every 11 people — 9% — who died in small cars died as the result of collisions with SUVs, NHTSA data show.

By contrast, 53% of small-car deaths in 2005 involved only small cars. Either a single small car crashed into something such as a guardrail or tree or two small cars crashed into each other, according to the NHTSA data.

I am not posting this to dispute that global warming is taking place or that it is being caused by humans. As Spock points out in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, "logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." All people must reduce their carbon footprints and one of the ways to do this is by consuming less fuel for transportation. If someone can reduce his or her consumption of transportation fuel without resorting to driving a small car (e.g., by going out less), more power to him or her. But if such measures don't result in a large enough decrease in fuel consumption, then he or she is morally obligated to bite the safety bullet, so to speak, and drive a small car.

According to this, the number one country song in the nation the week I was born was "I Wanna Live" by Glen Campbell.  (I don't recall ever hearing it, but I looked up the lyrics. "Rover is big, Tabby is small"? Good grief!)

At least the number one song on Billboard's Hot 100 that week, "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & The Drells, wasn't bad.

EDIT 10:21PM PDT: After I posted this entry, I thought about the fact that Billboard gathered the survey data for its lists from one week and then declared the resulting lists were for the following week (ending on a Saturday) [correction in following edit]. So, to be a stickler about it, the singles that were most played and bought the week that I was born were named the number ones for the week ending May 25, 1968. Therefore, during the week that I was born, the record that was in the process of becoming the number one record on the Hot Country Singles chart was "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro. Wikipedia reports, "The Cincinnati Inquirer reported that the song frequently appears on 'worst songs of all-time' lists, and in April 2006 CNN named it the 'Worst Song of All Time'."  Fabulous. Over on the Hot 100 chart, "Tighten Up" was on its way to being number one again. However, I see that Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" was number one the following week (i.e., for the week ending June 1, 1968). Man, it would've been awesome if that record was in the process of becoming the number one record on the Hot 100 chart during the week that I was born.

EDIT 11:04PM PDT: AAARRRGGHH! And YAAAYYY! According to this, if I'm looking for the record that was in the process of becoming number one on the Hot 100 during the week of my birth, I have to look at the record that was named number one for the week ending June 1, 1968. So "Mrs. Robinson" it is!  I can't find a similar description of the compilation of the Hot Country Singles chart, but as far as I can tell, "Honey" was number one on that chart for the week ending June 1, too (and the week ending June 8), so no change there.

It's about musicians and fans interacting via the Internet. Read it while it's available for free.

Why can't it be only about the music?

EDIT June 15, 2007 @ 3:53 PM PDT:
Please don't put your life in the hands
Of a Rock n Roll band
Who'll throw it all away
Noel Gallagher/Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"

Due to changes in my listening habits, I've changed some of the Sirius satellite radio channels that I list as my favorites. Recently, I added Sirius Gold and '60s Vibrations to the group. Just now I added Totally '70s and removed The Underground Garage and Left of Center (college, indie and underground rock). Listening to oldies is something many more old people than young people do, isn't it?

       GET OFF MY LAWN!
   /

(What I'm listening to right now: AOL Radio's Acoustic Blues channel)

UPDATE January 29, 2008 @ 5:07PM PST For a few months or so now, I've been listening to The Underground Garage and Left of Center more than I have to Sirius Gold, '60s Vibrations and Totally '70s. So I am changing the list of my favorite Sirius channels back to what it used to be.

While I'm on the subject of Sirius, I'll relate the following. A couple of nights ago, I was in a neighborhood restaurant that plays the Sirius Hits 1 channel on the premises. Normally, I can tolerate it. (Heck, I don't even skip that channel when I surf Sirius channels at home.) But while I was there that night, Sirius Hits 1 played two tracks that had me fuming, a mashup of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" with something that sounded unfamiliar to me, and Tegan and Sara's "Back in Your Head" (the standard version of which I already disliked after hearing on Left of Center) with a dance beat. I decided never to return to that restaurant again!

At their next shows, The Fab Faux will perform songs recorded by the members of The Beatles following their break up. Here's what they wrote in their latest e-mail:

Presenting a Beatles Album That Might Have Been

"The album that never was" - of course, we'll never really know - an honest description of such a work might include a qualifier that many of the songs comprising a 1970 Beatles album remain unwritten. Trying to imagine what might've been is, at best, an imperfect exercise - after all, it never was - for neither us, nor them.

At the end of The Beatles in 1970, the proportion of songwriting output among the band's members had shifted significantly. George Harrison and Paul McCartney, to name two, drastically changed their game plans that year. Harrison had a huge backlog of songs; the balance of power in the Beatles up 'til then favored Lennon and McCartney, partly due to George's relatively late emergence as a prolific songwriter. His need for an outlet was finally satisfied with the release of an epic double album + jam LP, All Things Must Pass.

McCartney, on the other hand, deliberately made a relatively non-competitive, homespun, do-it-yourself record with his self-titled debut. It's safe to assume, had there been an actual group album to deliver, Paul's released songs that year would have been quite different - and much more typical of his work on other Beatles albums.

Ringo Starr had his one pop single that year with "It Don't Come Easy" - recorded just two months before the group's breakup in May, but remaining on the shelf unreleased for 11 months - while his pop standards (Sentimental Journey) and country (Beaucoups of Blues) albums came out.

John Lennon, of course, released a hit 45, "Instant Karma (We All Shine On)", as well as the primal therapy-influenced minimalist masterpiece, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

In addition, there were leftover songs which would be recorded on subsequent solo albums: Lennon's "Jealous Guy" was originally "Child of Nature" - written in India in early 1968; McCartney's "Another Day" and "Back Seat of My Car", and Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" and "God", all date from the Get Back sessions of early 1969; and Harrison's "Beautiful Girl", "Not Guilty", and "Circles" also had their beginnings during The Beatles period, completed and/or released many years later.

So this is what we in The Fab Faux had to work with - essentially, a trio of albums (the pop/rock ones) and singles, a few embryonic sketches, and a handful of leftovers. The challenge for our band was to combine what little we did know, put together a musically entertaining set for live performance, and try to simulate the balance between the members' contributions on a typical - if a bit George-heavy - actual Beatles album (e.g., Revolver.)

It was decided to give this collection of material a title, like a "real" album. We chose Hot As Sun in honor of a story written in 1970 for Rolling Stone magazine, about a fictitious "lost" Beatles LP with that title, whose master tapes were stolen (very similar to McCartney's later concept for his 1984 Give My Regards to Broad Street.) Other than this, our goal was set to present as strong material as possible by each of the four, with December of 1970 the cutoff for when a song was started to be written.

There was some disagreement among us as to what to include: was the otherwise wonderful "Back Seat of My Car" marred by that odd "auctioneer" vocal? Would "God" ever come out on a Beatles album, no matter how late in their career, with its "I don't believe in Beatles" line? Could "Teddy Boy" have ever made the cut on a Beatles LP after Lennon's ridiculing "square dance" call - his reaction captured on a Get Back-era rehearsal tape? Would McCartney's beautiful but delicate "Junk" have made the record ahead of the heavier, funkily rocking "Oo You," a Paul groove in short supply in this period? Hopefully, the answers will be as entertaining as the questions are intriguing. Tune in March 13 & 14 at Webster Hall to find out ...

Read the article Reuters sent out today here.

UPDATE March 15, 2007 at 8:37 AM PDT: For anyone who's curious, here's the setlist:

FIRST SET (Hot As Sun)
(Start: 9:15 PM)
It Don't Come Easy (Ringo)
Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) (John)
My Sweet Lord (George)
Oo You (Paul)
Gimme Some Truth (John)
Another Day (Paul)
Jealous Guy (John)
Hot As Sun / Glasses / Suicide (Paul)
Every Night (Paul)
Remember (John?)
Mother (John)
Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul)
What Is Life (George)
All Things Must Pass (George)
(End: 10:20 PM)

SECOND SET
(Start: 10:41 PM)
Power to the People (John)
Wah-Wah (George)
Band on the Run (Paul)
Whatever Gets You Through the Night (John)
Let Me Roll It (Paul)
How Do You Sleep (John)
Jet (Paul)
Any Road (George)
Jenny Wren (Paul)
Cold Turkey (John)
Photograph (Ringo)

ENCORE
Free as a Bird (from one of the Anthology volumes)
Hey Bulldog
And Your Bird Can Sing
I Am the Walrus
(End: 12:06 AM)