B and I saw the movie about Roger Ebert, Life Itself. Unlike the title, the movie was a tad too long but I liked hearing RE describe movies as "machines for creating empathy." I get that, though I think it can be expanded to stories altogether. Maybe they help keep the herd assembled. They're definitely one of my favorite aspects of being human. On vacation we were very lucky to run into a lot of great storytellers. Some were deliberate, like the team running our literary pub crawl in Dublin and the kid giving "free" tours of Galway. Most were extemporaneous, like the Caherlistane house caretaker's explanation of satellite reception and the horse guy's hundred (at least) things. They made the vacation pretty fabulous.

PS - I am still committed to listing a hundred nifty things; however, the one-a-day part got away from me. I'll try to post doubles or better until I'm caught up.