It's a scene in Barry Lyndon. Actually, no. It's another scene, from The Grand Illusion. Jean Gabin has escaped from a German prison camp, it's WWI. He's French. If he's caught he'll die. A German woman takes him in. He's the enemy. But she's starving for love. Together they transcend war and politics and everything in the world. For a short time, life is only the two of them. Isn't that all we ever want? Sometimes isn't that all we ever get?

Big big ups to Grey Albert on the killer bass solo and to Jacob Blumberg for being able to get "a little bit of rotary speaker" on the guitars at the end, which you should know is a vanishingly difficult thing to achieve.

I only worked retail for two and half months but we have that experience to thank for the line "My heart is tired and my spirit is broken" I pushed out a little receipt paper and jotted that down, stuffed it in my pocket. I was a terrible cashier. I didn't even care if anyone paid for their items, it was all junk. I'd just bag it up. Sometimes customers would complain, "But wait, you didn't charge me for this." They had too much money and the store had too much money.

I was a temporary holiday employee and they kept dangling it over our heads - if you do well you can stay on. I think I was doing well, too. But I'll tell you what got me. There was a big box of broken or unsellable items in the basement and the assistant manager let us know we could have them for half price. I picked out some things and told the manager about it and she said "What? No! That all is going to be destroyed, otherwise how would we know employees wouldn't break things in order to get the discount." Two days later I let her know I wouldn't be finishing out the season. "You're the third person to leave me this week," she said, "Why does this keep happening to me?"