With the impending birth of my first child coming up in late May, I decided to see if there was anything to astrology. I did a survey of famous people of substance whom I respect: Richard Feynman, Obama, John Adams, Einstein, Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, etc. It turns out they all, every single one of them, had birthdays in the Fall or Winter, with a few in Spring. Not a single one in June or July.

Kookery about planetary alignment aside, might the environment of the child’s first experiences shape their thinking? I can’t imagine any baby whose first impressions of the world consist of pool parties and people in hot pants turning out to be a person of substance. But maybe my observations were just due to the fact that people simply have less babies in the Summer for some wierd social reason?

As a control I then did birthday checks of the worst human beings I could think of: Pamela Anderson, Jessica Simpson, Tom Cruise, Kanye West, Courtney Love, George Bush, and the worst person to walk the planet since Hitler: Linsday Lohan. Their birth months? June, June, July, June, June, July and July. Incidentally, George Bush is the only world leader I could find who was born in either June or July.

This isn’t scientific, but nor did I have to cherry pick. This shit is real. Gestate faster, Michele!

Update: I’m relieved to find out that a few good friends were born in June. So, astrology is rebunked. But July is still highly suspect…

Final Update: Alex just squeaked in before the buzzer, born May 28th, 2009. Good boy, Alex.

Thanks to Dikipedia.org for help with the research for this article.

So, my wife is now 22 weeks pregnant.

A few nights ago I dreamt we were allowed, by some new medical advance, to have our baby taken out early so that we could have a little meet and greet, and then he’d have to be put back in to be born normally a few weeks later. When we got to hold him, he looked like a regular baby, with his eyes tightly closed and his face scrunched up.

Then, he started to relax, and opened one eye, then he cautiousy opened the other and looked around. My wife was holding him so that he faced me, and we both got excited that he was already looking around, way ahead of schedule. He then locked eyes with me and said “Hi, Jonathan!”

“You know my name?!?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, you told it to me earlier, you’re my dad,” he replied, as if it was obvious. He then
started to try to move around and crawl, but was too weak.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “your brain has been getting good exercise with us talking to you in your mom’s belly, but your muscles haven’t been able to, what with you all squeezed in there. Speaking of that, how do you like being stuck in there all curled up in a ball?”

The baby shrugged stoicly, as if to say, “What can you do?”

“How do you feel about the fact that you gotta go back in there in a little bit?” I then asked. He shot me a wide-eyed “Say what, now?” look. The dream ended.

Additional detail: the baby had red hair and a receding hairline with a widow’s peak. He looked sort of like a miniature David Caruso. What the hell does that mean?