This is evolution,

the grim reaper trimming the toenails of our odd and wayward race like that Baghdad sniper videoed popping off Marines who weren’t keeping their heads tucked far enough into the Kevlar.

Which is what I was thinking this morning, waking up on the floor of the living room underneath the tasseled lamp that Roaul gave Sandy last year at Christmas, and which he kindly passed on to me on my birthday.

This is evolution at work: drinkers reproduce with other drinkers and produce more drinkers, for who else can stand their breath? Put up with their slobbering, jabbering, poking-about-in-the-sack excuse for sex at the end of another long evening out with Johnny, Jack and Stella?

But sadly, impotence and liver disease, the natural predators of the boozer, take their toll. Numbers are shrinking.

More cheerful news, though, for Iraq. If we keep the soldiers there for a few generations, they will gradually become stumpier necked because of the higher mortality rate suffered by the long-necked ones. A report I can’t now track down suggests that, because of global warming, these genetic changes are already in evidence after just 4 years.

And so to with the desk jockeys and the paper pushers. Lower mortality rates equal larger numbers, though a combination of low metabolic rates and unattractive hip-fat (so hopefully called “love handles” by a more optimistic generation) countervails. Nobody I know would intentionally mate with a teletubby.

The weak and the stupid will always outbreed the smart, and the brave are more often killed in action than the not-so-brave. It’s just how it is.

It’s time to give away that lamp. Who has a birthday coming up?