Pyrric Victory.

The other night, out of boredom, I decided to look at the web sites of the newspapers I once worked for.

I couldn't find the web site for the Eastside and South County Journals outside of Seattle, where I worked, and suffered mightily, back in 1997 and 1998. The place damn near killed me.

A little digging turned up the news from two years ago that, after losing money for more than a decade, the owner pawned it off to a newspaper chain from Canada. They promptly shut the joint down, keeping the profitable commercial printing division.

Ha, ha.

While I hate to see a newspaper close, I find the news gratifying. Working there broke my spirit.

I've compared it before to the hot-shot test pilot who takes on a new ride, only to find that everything that worked for him in the past no longer holds true, and he's in an unrecoverable flat spin. Everybody back at the base is going to blame him for losing control and crashing the plane. Oh, and did I mention that the ejection seat's broken?

Well, in my case, I was able to bail out in time, though suffering severe burns of a sort. The scars are still visible if you know where to look.

So, to my departed comrades who built that vehicle of terror, I say:

You got what you deserved. Fill in your favorite string of expletives here on my behalf.