The only thing about sanctions is that, like a lot of drone strikes, there are countless unintended victims. Cutting off aid to Uganda only increases the pain there.

Have you ever heard the expression 'one hot mess?' I think the term was custom-made for the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.

Well, there's Katrina, but you can go through lots of Kurdistan and it looks like Katrina was just there but there's people living in it.

We city dwellers, we residents of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, are for the most part urbanized to some extent. We know deadlines, start times and traffic.

Sometimes I would get invited to a party or to go out to dinner by one of them and I would decline. Part of me wanted to go, but those kind of outings always made me feel even more alienated than usual. Hearing them talk made me feel lonely and hateful at the same time. Lonely because I didn't fit in, never did. When I was reminded, it hurt. And hateful because it reaffirmed what I already knew, that I was alone and on the outside.

Whenever I write lyrics, in the back of my mind I always see a guy driving to work, driving to a really bad job, one of those horrible institutions, or one of those low squat buildings in Los Angeles. I write with that person in my mind.

It's hard to judge literary merit.