So much for spring. Plus, I've got a cold.

I dodged sickness for all of this winter (thank goodness!), but number has finally come up.  Now I've got runny nose, congestion, and sore throat.  Now -- when the thermometer tops at 80.  So annoying!

I'm going through facial tissue left and right, too.  Bleh.  But enough about me!

Let's talk about me!

I absolutely tore my way through Craig Ferguson's autobiography, "American on Purpose".  Read it in one evening between my leaving work and going to bed.  I picked up the book after watching clips of him from "The Late Late Show".  He's on after David Letterman on CBS, which is far too late late for me now.  (On a related subject, I took a nap today at 7pm. after work and dinner.)

The clip that really caught me on fire was a show he did recently.  An "experiment", as he called it.  Apparently, he's carved his own niche into the flock of nighttime talk shows partially with experiments.  For example, his 1000th show was conducted entirely by him using a puppet.

I'm not sure I'd be up for that, but I did like his late-February experiment: he did his show without an audience or a monologue.  It was him and Stephen Fry, talking.  As someone who appreciates discourse by interesting people on interesting subjects, this was my pornography.  It was such a gluttonous pleasure of words and ideas, I needed a cigarette.

Luckily, I don't have any.  Because they're atrociously harmful, don't you know, and they tend to make you stink.

Anyway, the show was amazing.  Just before the end, Craig brought up their mutual love for America.  Both men grew up as citizens of the United Kingdom, but in 2008 Craig became a U.S. Citizen.  During the discussion, Craig rolled up his right sleeve to the elbow, displaying a tattoo of the famous "Join or Die" political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin (depicted in this entry's header).

This is a man who is proud of his country.  In many other clips, Ferguson constantly refers to "our country" when speaking to his audience.  And he does it in a way so completely free of cynicism or irony that it commands me to take notice.  I suppose it's just like the open secret amongst religions that the converts are always so much more zealous than the native-born.  They get that way because they make the decision -- it's not a matter of being forced to go to church each week.  The converts have decided with a whole heart.