Happy Happy Joy Joy

Last night BZ and The Rockheads came for dinner for the first time since they got to town last weekend, and this morning they took off for a day in Muir Woods and Sonoma. They'll all finish their second year in the Brown graduate geology department this May and will presumably all have finished their work for a Masters degree, although that appears to be of little import to PhD candidates.

It sounds like a big deal to Plotnik, though, who after all has only one year of graduate school on top of his undergraduate degree in Uselesness from Cal. His one year in the Vietnam Avoidance Department at SF State did come in very handy, however.

If you study geology, you're supposed to use it. If you study Vietnam Avoidance you're supposed to use it too, and Plotnik did, managing by the thinnest skin of his teeth to avoid getting shipped to Asia for even less reason than the poor kids that are now being sent to Afghanistan.

For what? For what? In two years or four years we will be gone, the corrupt bosses who run the place now will have been replaced by the corrupt bosses who run the place then and all the kids who die there will still be dead.

Does anyone read a paper anymore? Even the Morning BirdWrap has two pages devoted to international news. Here's how it reads:

IRAQ: Suicide bombers kill 137 in market!

AFGHANISTAN: Suicide bombers kill military chief!

PAKISTAN: Suicide bombers kill 35 at wedding!

IRAN: New missile tests reported!

This is where we want to send our children?

Hopefully, they don't need any geologists in South Waziristan.