For example, in Paris, if one desires to buy something, you enter the store and say "Good morning, sir" or "madam," depending on what is appropriate, you wait until you are greeted, you make polite chitchat about the weather or some such, and when the salesperson asks what they can do for you, then and only then do you bring up the vulgar business of the transaction you require.

I have a beard. Just not on my face.

Wikipedia celebrates its 12th birthday today. Of course, I have no idea if it's true. I read it on Wikipedia.

The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle?

I aim to please. I'm nothing if not a vaudevillian.

The new Pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is now Pope Francis the 1st. Francis was not his first choice for a name. But the Vatican wisely talked him out of Pope Boo Boo.

I think that clearly it has an influence, to be coming of age during the punk rock era, to come from a difficult and sporadically violent background, to have been in and out of such chaos, I think it actually helps. But I don't know for sure.