On that same tour we ran into a band at Aylesbury Friars, a biggish venue in Oxfordshire, England. They were a four-piece from Ireland called U2. They seemed like nice fellows and they sounded pretty good, but we didn’t keep in touch. They’re probably taxi drivers and accountants by now.

A new study says by 2030 household robots will dominate every phase of our lives. The study says the No. 1 field for robot growth is medicine. That makes sense. Robots already perform well in surgery. That is, until there is a power outage. Then it's just a coat rack leaning over you as you bleed to death.

Rush Limbaugh says if the health care bill passes, he will leave the country. The Democrats are upset, because if they knew that, they would have passed the bill years ago.

We do have a big kind of history in literate tradition of Vikings and we have a lot of Viking blood in Scotland, I mean especially up north wherever you go you see a plastic Viking sitting outside a shop and Viking calendars and - because they - you know they came down and stole all our chicks and then some of them didn't quite get back and ended up settling down here. So there's a lot of Viking blood in Scotland.

There's just a feeling you get from certain things you do in life that just kind of feel pure and independent of what's actually, physically, going on.

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.

Sober alkies are often asked: "When did you hit rock bottom?" but a more informed question might be: "How many times did you hit rock bottom?