Friends, comrades in arms, beleaguered Democrats and idealist demagogues,

First, let me welcome a number of recent initiates to this long- running mass email (and propganda) list. For the first time in ears, I have newly added UGA students to my mass email list. In the past, their additions would be futile, as many of them see me rather frequently. But as I'll be moving to the District soon, I'll need a better way to communicate with some of them.

Once again, I write to you in a period of transition. In about two weeks, I'll be off fulfilling my destiny in Washington, D.C. as part of the Washington Semester for Politics and Journalism
(www.wcpj.org). Quick program recap: Basically, I was one of the lucky dozen students picked out of a pool of applicants and placed in different D.C. bureaus. We each get paid $3,000 -- not bad for a D.C. internship, and twice a week we all get together for luncheon seminars with bigwig journalists and politicians like Bob Dole and Tom Brokaw (those lines are pretty well rehearsed by now).

Now for the recent news . . . When I got this internship I had no idea what bureau I'd be placed at. I figured I'd get a small, weird corporate bureau and end up writing for small Nebraska papers about state park appropriations bills. So, you've got to understand how shocked I was when I found out I was placed in the nation's second largest and one of the most influential papers, the Wall Street Journal.

Just a few years ago, I used this email list to disseminate communist propaganda, filling it with weird rhetoric I didn't understand. I religiously stayed away from business courses at
college and I barely avoided my first collegiate C in my one required financial class -- Microeconomics -- last semester. And throughout my journalism career, I've written on a wide variety of subjects -- from crime to politics -- but never once ventured near the business realm.

Now, in a feat of poetic justice worthy of only the most ironic of storylines, I'll be working for the Washington bureau of the nation's longstanding bastions of capitalism. Times have changed. No doubt bolstered by word of my Wall Street Journal spring work, I landed a summer internship at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where I'll be getting paid $550/week for 10 weeks to work at my hometown newspaper. Oh, and guess what section I'll be writing for?

The business desk. Go figure.

Anyways, I'll be moving up to D.C. at the end of the month, living in a Georgetown house with four other students a block north of the campus, a 10-minute walk to the Georgetown bar area and a 20-minute bus ride to work.

I absolutely can't wait to finally get there, a sentiment that has been magnified by my current job situation. Basically, in order to get a better grip on the "business world" (and to tide me over while waiting to get to D.C.) I landed a job at a local hospital auditing personnel files. It's a typical, boring 9-to-5 job and I'm getting pretty good money -- $12/hour -- to basically delve into the secrets of every employee. What a job to give to a reporter! I know what janitors have criminal records, what nurses have drug abuse problems and can't dispense narcotics and what administrators are secretly at each others throats.

Thursday my job ends and I'll be on the road to Athens with my beautiful girlfriend where she'll celebrate her 21st birthday two days early with friends. The next day, Friday, we'll be on a 10-hour bus ride to New Orleans, site of my fraternity's formal. There, we will virtually spend our last days of the school year with our friends, comrades and each other while also celebrating her Saturday birthday and our 15 month anniversary. A scant two days after we return to Athens, Sheryl will be boarding a plane that will whisk her off to a semester abroad in Italy. A week later, I'll be on my way to D.C.

We are both living our dreams -- she has wanted to go to Italy since her days of drawing pictures of Venice as an 8-year-old and has been looking forward to this day since the first day of her freshman year. As for me, it's been my dream to work in D.C. since my journalistic revelation my junior year in high school. The very chance to be working for one of the world's most respected newspaper in the heart of the world's most powerful country at a time when the world is teetering on the brink of war is tantalizing and sends my heart racing. Unfortunately, Sheryl won't be around to send it further racing.

Okay, that was my last corny line.

Friends, I'll be keeping in touch through this mass email as well as personal emails. Don't hesitiate to email me at gdog152@hotmail.com, call me at (404) 444 4077 and to visit me in D.C. between February and the end of May. Good luck with your school/work/political propaganda and keep in touch.

-- Greg

P.S. Quick history lesson before my summary:

---> On April 17, 2000, in the 10th message of this group, I wrote: "On this festive occasion (or, as the French say, occashauwn), we of the Communist Voters Society of America would like to remind our supporters, accountants, conformers, and subregional youth sports coordinators to allow yourselves to remain sovereign and untouched by the cruel, chubby, pink claw of capitalism that will try to sway you in the coming weeks."

While I still have no idea what that means, I now will be working for that very same aforementioned claw of capitalism. My, how things change.

P.S.S. Summary for Swails

1.) From pretending to be Nikkita Kruschev Jr. to the Wall Street Journal -- it's been a long strange trip with more to come.

2.) I can't believe this hospital is paying me $100 a day to dig up dirt on their employees. Nevertheless, it's an utterly boring and unfulfilling job, but I've set up a routine of sending emails all day, taking half-hour bathroom breaks and exploring the hospital's vast halls throughout the day.

3.) Hospitals really, really smell.

4.) Sheryl's older than me.

5.) Visit me in D.C. and we'll tear up Georgetown, vandalize monuments and wake up notorious politicians. Or we'll just go visit museums. Whatever floats your boat.

6.) And this summer, if you have any inside business tips in the ATL, I'm your guy.