draft miniver A little, sure. A little ad-libbing in every beginning. Spontaneity seems more like stream-of-consciousness sort of idea, though, no? -- than a sleepywriting, autowriting sort of idea? Shall we suppose, instead...carelessness. And maybe a little disinterest. And maybe laziness and lack of focus, too. And connect-the-dots, and pre-plotted courses, and subtle grammatic templates. Which, I suppose, took a little cleverness and creativity and spontaneity itself, at one point. Homeric, at best. Contrived and repetitive, at most likely... 001010 ... Barrett Heineken on draft. mmmmmmm beer. 001010 ... tourist When I was eighteen you had to register for the military draft,You could't buy alcohol legally but you could be forced into armed conflict with people you didn't have a problem with. It had been changed to a lottery system where numbers from one to three sixty five in one drum and days of the year in another. Two military representitives picked one slip at a time from the two barrels matching numbers to dates. The lower the number the greater the chance of being called , the date corresponding to your Birthday. My number was two hundred and sixty something ,well beyond the expected body count replacment projection. I felt that I won the Lottery that day. I never had to make the hard decisions of go and fight, or go to jail, or leave my country. I respect all who did. No matter what their choice was, and hope that we don't put ourselves into that dillema again. It ruined a lot of lives no matter what path was taken. War Sucks. 001117 ... Norm This stuff I find to be more potent. Yes sir. I prefer it as a matter of fact. It hits me close to home, you know? 010826 ... phil do not be fooled into believing you are being drafted for any other reason than to be murdered by your own country and murder those members of another. 020318 ... Raina He sat out on the front porch, holding a picture of the woman he'd been married to for the last 62 years, and at the thought of her recent death-he shed one solitary tear... When the wind picked up, the draft carried her voice lightly past his right ear, and said "Love, as long as you don't forget, I'm still here" 040628 ... pete I can have a beer at the end of the shift from the head manager... as long, he says, as the juniour manager, who knows I'm underage and is anal about it, doesn't see me drink it. So the juniour manager spends the last hour of my shift, with my beer hidden, in the kitchen making sure all is well. Oh the joys! 040629 what's it to you? who go blather from