Well, we just wrapped up our USA tour, and I can't say how happy I am. The tour dirigible stinks of soybean oil, Phil's fungus-encrusted socks, and the incense I've been lighting to honor the Tibetans and Georgians who were massacred while the rest of the world watched 16-year-olds jump around on a balance beam. If Jonny tells me about one more Croatian composer of early-electronic music who was unjustly ignored by history, I'm going to strangle his pale neck.

And the songs. Always the same bloody songs night after night. We really only have five albums to pick songs off of (our first two albums being, in my humble opinion, dreadful hunks of donkey shit, almost as bad as an Oasis album), and that means we end up playing, for instance, "Everything in its Right Place," twenty-seven times in thirty days. Now, that isn't quite my idea of hell, because it in no way involves Margaret Thatcher, but it's awfully close.

I really don't know how the Rolling Stones keep up their touring, after all these years. I suppose love of money can take you a long way, but I don't have their drive.

The worst part of touring, however, isn't the traveling conditions, or the mind-numbing repetition, or even going into the bathroom right after Phil uses it. It's the fact that, every time I go to America, I'm reminded that its inhabitants are stark raving bloody lunatics who are two hundred pounds overweight, believe that God is helping them find a good parking place, or, more usually, both. When I'm at home, I can at least pretend that those are unjust stereotypes, but the truth is Americans are a good deal uglier and crazier than the rest of the world gives them credit for.

Not all Americans are terrible people, I should clarify. Neil Young was American, and he wrote some pretty good songs, one of which we just covered in this video. Ah, I'm being told he was actually Canadian. So I guess I take that back about not all Americans being terrible.