Some people see Black Friday as a much-needed break for their wallet. I see it as retail outlets showing the customers the full weight of their contempt. The frenzy to buy cheap crap from China, the human downgrade of people fighting with each other over items they can probably live without, to me, is an insult.

Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.

Everything I do, writing, touring, travelling, it all comes from the punk and hardcore attitude, from that expression - from being open to try things but relying on yourself, taking what you have into the battle and making of it what you will, hoping you can figure it out as you go. Make some sense of it.

Don't let despair mutate your flesh Look at my twisted stumps of thought See the fingers, listen to the voice I am slowly becoming the end of the line.

What I'm saying is America has a job deficit because hundreds of thousands of jobs went elsewhere. Not because [Barack] Obama raised your taxes. He, in fact, lowered them. They are lower.

For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home.

The times I have tried to get close to someone resulted in me feeling threatened and weak.