Ah, Boston! I’m embarrassed to say I’d never been before. My minions, yes. Of course. But while I did take a trip some years back to Salem (business, not pleasure), and was in New York recently, to see my good friend George Steinbrenner, to chat and renew an old contract that had lapsed in ‘04, I just never found time to visit Boston.

But finally, after all these years, here I was! In Boston! Home of the famous tea party! What a delightful little rebellion, and for such a wonderful cause: I love tea! (Although I don’t know how wise it is to drink it from the harbor.) Of course I walked the Freedom Trail, rode on one of those charming swan boats, ate a bowl of baked beans, and feeling decadent, washed it down with a cream pie! And the pièce de résistance? A Duck Tour (“Quack Quack!”). What a day! So many emotions! So many memories!

Now, I’d been told Cambridge was a center of freethought with clever people everywhere. And I do so enjoy the company of clever people! As the original freethinker—not to boast, but the devil has no use for false modesty, either—I couldn’t wait to visit!

But if I’m to be totally honest here—and, again, why shouldn’t I be?—it was not intellectual stimulation I was looking for in Boston. I’d heard there was a quaint Particle Physics and Cosmology Laboratory at Harvard I thought I might drop into. (All I can say is, anyone can take a machine apart, boys. It’s putting it back together that’s the hard part.) But the truth is, the mechanics of the universe aren’t all that interesting once you’ve seen the engine room. I leave the nuts and bolts to the Oompa-Loompas.

But it’s cute. Men, like their cousins the monkeys, are curious little creatures. Some think of curiosity as a species of evil. I like to think of it the other way around. Evil is merely the consequence of curiosity, and curiosity is man’s nature. Without it, without his desire to follow it even at great cost to himself and the species, what would he be? He would not be capable of evil, it’s true. He would still be milling around in a pretty little terrarium in a terrestrial zoo for someone’s idle pleasure.

You mustn’t fear evil, is my point. It’s the price of knowledge. And a small price, when you consider that knowledge is the way to freedom.

But—oy!—I digress. It’s my worst vice. My ex-wife says I even chatter on incessantly in my sleep, too! I’m working on that in Group. That and quitting smoking were my New Year’s resolutions.

As I was saying, it wasn’t knowledge I was seeking in The Hub of the Universe, as the natives call it (ironically, I think).

It was… love.