World? Are you listening? To the outcry of the pitiful? To the tops of the lungs of the miners and the Marines? This dude I knew named Noah Pier died in Afghanistan. I didn't watch him get buried because it was at Arlington National and it was not a good weekend for me and I was busy and there were other things going on and this and that and chitty chat chat; (Kurt Vonnegut suggested that semi-colons are the hermaphrodites of the English language). . . I saw Robby Burns lay in the same room, J.T., Elizabeth, Kathleen, and Mike Robertson, all friends dead at an age younger I now know to be appropriate for death. I'm talking 15 to 18. Noah was 25, I guess. I stood in line with Bill Fehr and we viewed the body and the family and the family viewed us and we smiled and we cried and Bill and I jedi'd the Marines and we felt the heat of an IED burn us and we knew it meant that Noah's younger brothers would one day fight against these here evil doer's and all.
