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In my attempts to keep you abreast of the latest developments in forensic history, or in the re-telling thereof, it would appear that even if George Armstrong Custer had ridden into the valley of the Little Big Horn with a million troopers, they would've still fallen to defeat at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who had been bathed in 'an invisible ray' that rendered each of them impervious to Misters Remington and Colt.

No, really.

According to Weekly World News the self-appointed 'World's Only Reliable News', and Dr. Angela Day Brewer, these protective rays left 'mysterious ultraviolet scars' in the earth of the famed 1876 battle. "These scars can only be seen through special infrared scopes." Or if you spend a few hours up at the Parkman Bar with a couple of my Cheyenne and Crow buddies getting your beer-goggles on.

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Call me naïve, but I never suspected what havoc writing a book about conversation would wreak on my social life.

When I meet someone new, however well we are getting along, the instant this fact is revealed the other person takes a deep breath, then a step back.  Then they start apologising,   assuming I'm about to rate their conversational prowess.  Or - and this is worse - they expect me to dazzle them with spontaneous repartee.

I'm not yet a recluse, but it took some temptation to break my post-Christmas party fast last week, when I ventured from my home to Albemarle Street, an elegant Georgian thoroughfare off Piccadilly. 

You might make such a trip for several reasons. 

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I begin with a bit of self-disclosure.  I don't have a religious or spiritual bone in my body.  But this doesn't mean that I'm not open-minded about research on happiness and religion.  As I write in my book, The How of Happiness, just because (most) religious beliefs cannot be empirically tested or falsified doesn't mean that the consequences of having religious faith, participating in religious life, or searching for the sacred cannot be studied.  Indeed, a growing body of psychological science is suggesting that religious folks are happier, healthier, and recover better after traumas than nonreligious ones.

 Consider just two examples:

If you are having serious cardiac surgery and receive strength and comfort from your religious faith, you'll be almost 3 times more likely to be alive 6 months later.

47 percent of people who report attending religious services several times a week describe themselves as "very happy," versus 28 percent of those who attend less than once a month.

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It shocked me yesterday to hear that Lux Interior was dead, because I was under the impression that he'd been dead for a long time. I don't mean that I had a memory glitch. I mean that Lux, the panting and frothing and writhing and moaning and crotch-rubbing and microphone-sucking frontman of the Cramps, played the role of the sexed-up rockabilly horror-movie zombie so utterly and brilliantly to the hilt that it never even crossed my mind that he might actually be a human being.

I mean, the dude never broke character. I own four or five Cramps albums and I don't even know what Lux's real name was, and I don't want to Google up the obituaries and find out, because I feel as though that would be oddly disrespectful.

It's better to remember Lux Interior for The Thing that he built with such dirty and beautiful precision: a creature from the black lagoon of American lust and fear and psychosis.

When I say that Lux Interior and the Cramps meant more to me than Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger and the rest of those boomer bores, I'm not exaggerating or striking a useful book-promoting pose. I mean it. I think the guy was one of the funniest, most riveting, most kinetic and inspired performers rock & roll has ever demon-spawned. (If you'd had a televised Battle of the Libidinous Yowlers between Jagger and Interior, I'm telling you, Lux would've won hands-down.)

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My spine aches. My shoulders are sore. I'm sitting on an American Airlines flight to Chicago - my publisher is sending me there to talk about X Saves the World downtown at The Standard Club - and I'm wondering why I choose, time and time again, to inflict such agony upon my muscles and joints. 

See, it's my fault. I'm entirely responsible for the wear-and-tear that will one day force me to hire a chiropractor and take up Ashtanga. Moments ago I pack-muled my way through a terminal at LaGuardia with, oh, roughly two or three tons of cultural paraphernalia in my bags - and probably half of it never had to make the trip.

I became a magazine writer because I love magazines, so of course I've got a floral assortment of glossies splaying out of my shoulder bag: The New Yorker, Time, Wired and Fast Company (yes, I know they compete with each other, but they both said nice things about my book and I happen to be equally fond of them), Vogue, Stop Smiling,  Tricycle  (that last one's a sentimental holdover from a two-year fling with Buddhism; my meditation practice became completely shot to hell a few months after I got the contract to do XSTW). Wedged in between the magazines, like sprigs of baby's breath in a bouquet, are odd portions of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New York Post. Yes, I subscribe. Yes, they're delivered. Yes, on paper.