I wonder how many people under about 50 years old have actually listened to Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction".

Go download it right now. I'll wait.

Every time I happen to hear this song on the radio, I continue to be amazed that it was actually a mainstream hit in 1965.

The vocals, intended as a scratch track but kept because the song was leaked out in unfinished form, are amazingly rough for a pop single of that era. Hoarse, gravelly, grunting, microphone-popping, half angry half just plain tired, it's got to be one the happiest accidents in the history of rock. Compare it to the relatively polished accompaniment.. it's like Captain Beefheart fronting the Turtles.

Starting out merely tired sounding, by the time the song reaches the line about "hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace", the spittle- and phlegm- powered aggression reaches a level that makes one expect balls-to-the-wall screaming to occur next. Unfortunately it does not. But the fact that it even came this close, in a genre otherwise associated with the Mamas and the Papas and the Fifth Dimension, is pretty damn awesome.

"Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation. "

Note that I have linked to the wayback machine version of this page, as the live site is infamous for exceeding its geocities bandwidth limits on a regular basis.

written at LAX, 7:51 AM, without wifi; blogged later

I feel like a lush drinking beer at this hour; but (a) it's lunch time according to my biological clock, and (b) I want to make sure I sleep on the plane.

On that note, is there any reason why you wouldn't be able to buy beer with an expired driver's license? Or for that matter, use it for any other random identification purpose? It's your ability to drive that the state requires you to renew every few years, not your identity. Right? Has this changed? Why the hell would the person who sold me the beer need help finding the expiration date on a Georgia license? What use could they possibly have for that information? I'm still the same person, and still over 21, even if I fail to renew my license. I wonder if they'd have let me past the security gate if it was expired.

I guess if I'd bothered to set up twitter on my phone, I could be twittering this instead.

obLosAngeles: Next time I'm here, I swear I'm finally gonna make the time to approach the place as a roadgeek.