Where have all the guitar-strumming Girl Scouts on the beach gone?

I guess there are some pleasures to which we must say "goodbye" forever because our adult minds just can't suppress the idiocy of them. I've been realizing this as I borrowed some of my kid's Greatest Hits of the Beatles sets to listen to in the car, and I keep finding myself unable to get past the first six bars of many of the songs without hitting the advance button and growling, "Oh, SHUT UP!"

It's been a very long time since I even thought about sitting around singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," as I once did by many an Oregon beach campfire in my teen years. The last time I even considered it, my sister (only son a Navy submariner) and I (eldest son a Marine helicopter pilot) looked at each other and knew we could never get through it without falling apart.

Now at least I can close the book on this song with less nostalgia, knowing that (a) Joan Baez is still flogging it as she plays the center ring in the Great Crawford Bash-America Cirque de Cindy, and (b) Norm Geras at Normblog has used the lyrics to illustrate once and for all the difference between actual fascism and the fascism of fascionable left-wing rhetorical fantasy.
Check this out (recommended for over 14 years of age). http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/08/song_of_peace.html