This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: TSO

  • Defending N.B. Forrest

    Your semi-annual SPLC update…

    SPLC sent their ridiculous update around yesterday, and failed to let us know how Alex’s A.H. was doing in the Case of the Magic Coin. Frankly, I am devastated, since their lawyers seem to have such a fantastic grasp of the law and Newtonian physics I figured Alex A.H. would be elected Sheriff of the county by now or something.

    Nonetheless, one of their articles of note was about a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest being moved from the TN State House to a different location. Why this is huge news is beyond me, but that SPLC feels it is kind of cracks me up. However, GEN Forrest history is a bit of a hobby with me. In fact, my friend Brown Neck Gaitor got me the Nathan Bedford Forrest Biography for Christmas. (BNG gives me damn awesome gifts, I gotta tell you.)

    Anyway, I’ve always liked stories of Forrest. During the Civil War he killed 31 Yankees, and had 30 horses shot out from underneath him. Sayeth he: “I was a horse ahead at the end.” Forrest hated West Pointers and advocated maneuver warfare, also things I love. One time he got shot in the hip, and the shooter rode off. Although grievously wounded (in fact, he thought the wound was mortal), Forrest demanded a horse be brought so he could go after the guy. Sayeth he: “No damned man kills me and lives.” Point here is that he was a badass.

    But, he will always be remembered as “the founder of the KKK.” Mind you there is significant evidence to the contrary, nonetheless, that’s what history will record. But at the time, the KKK wasn’t what it would become later. Not going to go into all that now, because it would take too long. Two years after the founding, whether he was involved or not, he urged and accomplished the complete dismantling of the Klan. The current band of misfits and inbred idiots is from a 1920 revival of the Klan, started in Indiana, you know, NOT A SOUTHERN STATE.

    My question here though is about redemption. Everyone knows that Senator Byrd was in the Klan. He has subsequently renounced them, and largely seems to have been successful in doing so. And yet Forrest repudiated them a long time ago, and closer in time to the events, and no one forgives him. Strikes me as completely unjust. And just how much did he repudiate them? Well, on July 5, 1875 Forrest was invited by the “Jubilee of Pole-Bearers” to give a speech. They were an all black Southern organization. Here is his speech:

    Ladies and Gentlemen, I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the Southern states. I accept it more particularly as it comes from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God’s earth who loves the ladies I believe it is myself. (Immense applause and laughter.) I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. I believe I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to elevate every man, to depress none.

    I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going. I have not said anything about politics today. I don’t propose to say anything about politics. You have a right to elect whom you please; vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, you and I are freemen. Do as you consider right and honest in electing men for office. I did not come here to make you a long speech, although invited to do so by you. I am not much of a speaker, and my business prevented me from preparing myself. I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict. Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I’ll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand.

    After the speech, he did the unheard of for his time, he publically kissed a woman there. In the 1940’s we still had segregated water fountains, and here was NBF 60 years earlier kissing a black woman. Why is it that we seem to have forgiven Byrd, and yet not NBF?

  • RIP Bob Howard: Reporting for Duty at the Elysian Fields

    Cross Posted from The Burn Pit. I generally avoid doing that, but everyone should know this man. Come comment over at my shop as well as here if you would.

    Bobhoward

    One of the toughest men to ever live passes on to the everlasting.

    “If you love this country as an individual, you can make a difference.”

    (more…)

  • Can someone explain to me why this dude isn’t in charge of everything?

    michiokaku_commons
    Look, I’m a reasonably sharp guy. I have a doctorate, am qualified for admission MENSA (actually 3 times, by virtue of IQ test, GRE and LSAT), and I don’t sniff glue. Just yesterday I had a nice converstion with Blue Cyclone about the Mohorovi?i? discontinuity, which is a kinda intellectual topic. I do logic games books to relax, and love taking practice GRE tests. Sure, I can be a bit retarded on certain things. I think all kinds of wacky shit, like why do they sell soft and super soft toilet paper, but no hard toilet paper. Not like I want to wipe my ass with sand paper, but every now and again a man wants to be able to dig, you know? Anyway, much like Socrates and Plato to Vizzini, this man makes me a moron.

    According to his wiki page, Dr. Michio Kaku

    was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents, and attended and played first board on the chess team of Cubberly High School in Palo Alto in the early 1960s. At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, N.M., he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a B.S. degree in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and held a lectureship at Princeton University in 1973.

    So yesterday I was sitting at home after work, watching a little TV. Actually, I was playing WoW and listening to the TV. As usual, I had the TV on something Geek, I think it was the Science Channel. Anyway, this cat comes on and does a special on how he would make a spaceship to transport him to Alpha Centari. I didn’t really understand some of it, but damn man, who doesn’t want to go off and make it with some blue alien chick, a la CPT Kirk? (You can watch part of that segment here. Exit Question: Just me or does he sound like an Asian Jon Lovitz?)

    So after he solved that little problem, he spent another 1/2 hour telling us all to make invisibility suits. Just imagine how this would revolutionize college locker room shower scenes in movies. He even dropped a few Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter references.

    Here he is talking about light sabers. You show me a kid who didn’t want a light saber, and I will show you a guy who grew up to enjoy musicals.

    But (and here is the point of this asinine post)….guess what his first job was? I mean, what would the smartest dude on the planet do for a first job? Simple my dear Watson, he was an INFANTRYMAN. Yup, this cat was a grunt before he was a theoretical physicist and futurist.

    The Infantry, is there anything we can’t do?

    [As an aside, I was talking to Caro last night about how I have a Tom Brady-level mancrush on this dude. I’m explaining the spaceship to her and she asks if it has left yet. I’m like no, he only plans the shit out he doesn’t build it. Then this happens:
    Me: Dude also explained how to make an invisibility suit.
    Her: Was he wearing it?
    Me: No, he was just talking about it.
    Her: Is anyone using it?
    Me: No hon, it’s theoretical, they have made things disappear, but only for mili-seconds at a time.
    Her: What things?
    Me: Well, just atoms, something about stopping the electrons or something. Not sure, got attacked by a Jormunger while I was watching that part.
    Her: So no suit?
    Me: Not yet.
    Her: How about a glove?
    Me: No, nothing yet.
    Her: That’s dumb. Call me when he at least makes a finger sock disappear.]

    I literally have $5 through next Tuesday, so if anyone has any of this guys books that they could part with, would love to borrow.

  • For those who question why I loathe Fox News

    Then/Now: The Cast of ‘ALF’
    alf20cast_slideshow_604x500

    The Cast

    A sarcastic extraterrestrial from Melmac crash-landed in a suburban garage in 1986, and for a time became the king of network television.

    We tuned in to ALF’s hair-raising antics with the Tanner family until 1990, but once the NBC sitcom ended, an ALF animated series, a Marvel comic, a TV movie, and even a talk show were there to fill the fuzzy, alien-shaped hole in our hearts.

    But where is the original TV show cast today? If you’re still suffering from ALF withdrawal, read on.

    REALLY?

    This is news? My 3 year old niece this weekend kept farting and blaming it on the dog locked up in the basement. That is about as important a news story as where the cast of Alf is. I haven’t read it yet, but let me guess:

    The Dad is doing hairclub for Yeti commercials, one of the two chicks loves carpet, the other is hooked on meth, the Mom hates that she was typecast as marrying a douche, and Alf is now a throw rug somewhere.

    How is this shit news?

  • I would apparently make a shitty parent

    OK, so my beloved GF sent along this video to me, which is worth a few chuckles, or so I thought:

    Just to give you a basis on my sense of humor, I get it from my Dad. When my brother was 18 and I was 20 my Bro came down with “Hyper Kalimic Periodic Paralysis.” I spelled it wrong, but basically his potassium level would change and he would get paralyzed from the neck down for a few hours. Parents thought he was going to die or something and let him do a bucket list like you’ve never seen. This after he had already convinced them he was retarded (no lie) to get out of doing school stuff. For one Christmas he got like an Intellivision, and I got a chalk board. If i got a C in school I would get the lecture: “Your brother is not too bright, so you have to apply yourself.” Dummy the retarded paralysis guy now owns like 2 companies, works at a third, has a beautiful wife and somehow created my two nieces.

    Anyway, once he was in a kids hospital as they tried to figure out what was wrong with him. He wasn’t a kid, but it was a childhood disease. So the Dr’s shoot him up with potassium to induce paralysis, and then just leave him hooked up to machines to monitor. My Dad gets bored, decides to go outside. As he’s coming down the elevator, Ms Teen Vermont, all of like 16 gets on with her sash and crown. My dad starts talking to her and finds out she takes teddy bears and shit to the kids, and reads them Horton. So my Dad says: “My youngest son is here, and he’s very sad. Would you mind visiting, it would make his life so complete.” She says yes, but she has to go to another room first.

    So my dad runs up to his room again, takes one of my Bros hands and shoves it down his pants, takes the other and shoves the finger up into his nose, then just walks out. Ms Vermont arrived shortly thereafter to find a young man playing Al Bundy while digging for Gold.

    We used to get Bro paralyzed and then put like rubber ducky floaties on him at parties and throw him into the pool. Another time his buds tied his hands to strings and walked him around like Weekend at Bernies. When my brother got beaned in the head with a softball a few years ago he had bleeding on the brain. 2 days after they let him out of ICU, he was running around the neighborhood with a hockey helmet on asking people if “anybody seen my baseball.” My sis-in-law wasn’t quite as amused, but I still found it hilarious.

    Anyway, here are some of the comments to that video above:

    LxoIxo (4 minutes ago)
    This is so sick. How dare you do this to your poor child? Do you see him, the poor? thing is CRYING! Your are EVIL people. Mostly when you FINALLY tried to get ur freaking kid out he was screaming you were laughing! You broadcast your kid in pain? What kind of EVIL, SICK, MESSED UP parents are YOU? Disgusting. I reccomend you see a phycologist. This isnt the LEAST BIT funny. I dont get how anybody could be so sick as to LAUGH at that. Do you really think that this kid wants you as a parent? Loser

    kathleenburns (24 minutes ago)
    the meanest parents this is child abuse. what if the child got an electric shock, they would just laugh. i? hope they are reported for child abuse. with parents like this the child may never stand a chance to grow up.

    abrame1023 (39 minutes ago)
    this is sick. these parents tormented? their son when all he wanted was to get out from behind the couch. they took the time to record their son in pain just so they could have their 15 minutes? ridiculous.

    Really people? Does the kid look all that traumatized? Give me a break. If the worst thing that happens to that kid on any given day is getting stuck behind the couch, that’s a safe day. I used to put my brother in a sea chest with pillows and toss him off the roof. One time the little bastard decided to slide down a board he leaned against the roof and got like 300 splinters in his ass. I laughed as they pulled out each one to accompanying screams. I even tied him up in fishing line and threw him down the stairs once. Dude, this is what kids do.

    I suspect this kid will survive. Probably grow up to own private detective firms and work as pharmaceutical sales reps living in New Jersey.

    BTW- I will be out for a few days to take aforementioned GF to meet aforementioned retard and his wife and spawn.

    Update: S6R just reminded me of some other funnies with my brother. He lived with me and 2 other dudes in an efficiency when I first moved to DC. Me, a jarhead, my brother and this DJ from a local bar I knew. Obviously, we were broke as hell, but figured out that $1.07 would get you a hot ball (dinner) and a 40 ouncer of Mikey’s (desert). Anyway, he was going through PI school, and I was an intern at the NRA. So what we would do is try to pick up girls using the stupidest methods ever. (These were Georgetown girls, so wasn’t hard.) But Bro would be my wingman by acting deaf, and asking a girl to dance. If she said no he would start yelling in Deaf Guy voice that she wouldn’t dance with him because of his impairment. I would step in to calm him down, and then send him off. Then I would offer the girl a drink to make up for it. It was simply awful, and I don’t believe it ever worked once. We also used to introduce ourselves as brothers to two girls, and then tell the girls what the other’s occupation was. So it would be like “Hi, I am TSO and this is Bro. Bro here is an extreme Skiier.” And he would go: “Yup, and he is an herb salesman for restaurants in town.” The only rule was you had to stay in character or you lost.

    Although this is much funnier spoken than not written, I learned that night that “Thyme” is pronounced “Time” and not the “th” sound from “the.” Also, saying “that’s what we call it in the business” is not a good saving throw.

  • Women in Combat, being my reply to Kayla Williams

    This morning during my daily dumpster dive over at the House of Beeker Dicksmith, I came across this post by Ms kayla Williams. I don’t really have much against Ms. Williams, in fact, I have enjoyed reading her testimony before Congress in the past. I don’t care for her husband, and I don’t care for the circle she runs in (VoteVets) but she is fairly cordial to me, and has never once been rude or dismissive when I took issue with her. As usual, I took my objection to her directly, and she encouraged me to do a post on the subject. Ergo this post.

    Her basic premise is that women should be in the military (or perhaps in combat, she seems to use them interchangeably) and that all arguments to the contrary are without merit. She lists for us 5 strawmen, and then proceeds to explain why they are not accurate.

    Regarding the overall premise of women in the military, I am in agreement. Which makes the line I walk all the more difficult here. I do, however, oppose women in the direct combat arms units, understanding however that they do engage in combat. My distinction being essentially, units that patrol for a week or more, or are on FOBs out in the sticks, I oppose a female presence. But, let’s look at her 5 points of her argument.
    (more…)

  • SPLC is completely fuggin retarded

    Seriously, absolutely retarded. And what is more, they care only about symbolism, not substance.

    Today I get their email and they claim:

    SPLC sues to protect rights of African-American teen
    SPLC filed suit against a Mississippi school district for expelling a student with a promising academic and athletic career over tossing a penny on a school bus. The suit contends that the district violated the boy’s rights and coerced a false confession from him through threats and intimidation. This is another step in SPLC’s campaign to keep children in the Deep South in school instead of in alternative facilities or abusive detention centers.

    So I click there, and go to their site to read about it.

    Filed today in Hinds County Chancery Court in Jackson, the lawsuit claims the school district failed to follow its own rules as it targeted the 16-year-old boy, identified as A.H. in the complaint, and coerced a false confession through threats and intimidation.

    The school’s actions stemmed from an incident that occurred while A.H. was riding the school bus home from Terry High this past September. During the ride, A.H. and five other students were tossing coins back and forth. A penny landed on the bus driver, who was not injured.

    Now, let’s just say you are wondering who A.H. is. I mean, they are using initials, so it must be hard to track down, eh?

    Yeah, except his name is mentioned on every page from 22-31. Nice job at secrecy asshats.

    Haven’t read the brief yet, but I bet it is chalk full of shitty goodness.

    Want A.H.’s mailing address? Mom’s name? That is all in there too. With lawyers like these, who needs enemas.

    Someone might want to write to SPLC’s lawyer that put this shit up (Poonam Juneja poonam.juneja@splcenter.org) and let her know if she cares at all about this kid’s anonymity she ought not to broadcast it.

    And the case is too stupid to even go into. The kid got suspended for 10 days*. So SPLC because they have jack shit else to do want to turn this into the Scopes trial. Yeah, good luck with that. I’m sure the mom and kid will love having their info spread willy nilly all over the internet.

    * (Correction on that, the letter says 10 days, the suit says 6 months. So I have no clue.)

    BWAHAHAHA: Just how stupid is this:

    He [A.H. Secret Identity that Anyone Can Find Out By Clicking] and five other students were allegedly tossing coins at each other on the back of the bus. One of the tossed pennies inadvertantly landed on Ms. Geneva Reid, the bus driver.

    Excuse me while I channel my inner Arlen Specter…..

    Ok, we’ll assume this was your standard, garden variety of blue bird. Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I give you, the north American standard school bus (Standirum Norto Americanski Bussillium. Kingdom: Bus, Phylum: School, Class: Non Special Needs, Order: Bluebird, Family: Itsabus)

    bus

    Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, let us assume for now, subject to compelling evidence to the contrary, that Ms. Geneiva Ried, no doubt a lovely woman who does not look like Geraldo Rivera, was in fact driving the bus from the front. This is in fact where most North American busses not featured in animated cartoon faire are driven from. Let us further suppose on this intellectual jaunt into the great unknown, that fraulein Ried was driving from the “drivers side” being that portion of the front of the vehicle which resides to the left of the centerline when viewed facing the direction of travel, assuming that the vehicle is not making that annoying beeping noise that always cracks me up when someone makes about a fat woman proceeding in a backwards direction.

    We are to understand further, that A.H. secret identity known but to Spongebob and those who can use a mouse, was seated in the back.   Notice if you will our bus has 12 evenly spaced windows.  We shall here forward divide the bus into 3 equal sections, calling them (from the back of the bus):  “the back of the bus”, “the middle of the bus”, and “close enough to Ms Reid to smell any effluvient that leaks from her backside.”  The last category is a bit wordy, but you get the idea.

    Imagine if you will the game that all children play in societies ranging from native Maori children, to Siberian lads raised by wolves, to the Children of Hind County, Mississippi, to wit, the “tossing of pennies game.”  Ah, who among us doesn’t on occasion lose ourselves in a sunny remembrance of those halcyon days of old spent whiling the days away tossing pennies at one another.  The rules of said game need not now be reiterated, as we all know them so well, inculcated as they were in daily activities.

    Now, the question at bar begins and ends with the tragic, and nearly deadly trajectory of the coin.  If coin it were.  For Ms Reid no where states that it was a coin, but rather refers to an “object” which “hit my windshield and then hit me.”  Ah, what merciless missile of Beelzebub was this object de assassination?

    Knowing as we do the rules of Penny Tossing (again, owing to the innumerable times each of us has played this game) we know that the rules hold that one must toss the pennies.  Any hurling of the coin at the head of another is verbotten, often resulting in a yellow card, and offering the opposing team a “pitch” or “Rochambeau” as it is called in France, Ontario, New Orleans and other frenchified regions. We know that since the schism in penny tossing rules brought about at the Council of Taint in 1952 (wherein Winston Churchill famously remarked that the previous rules were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”) that the Western Hemisphere rules hold that the coin be tossed in an underhand manner, rather than overhand (like Lamar in Lambda, Lambda, Lambda threw his javelin.)

    We must therefore consider the relative distance between AH and Ms Ried therefore must be 30 feet. We know this because the penny came forward, therefore AH was facing the front of the bus at the time he propelled it in and underhand manner. Therefore, assuming that 4 children were playing the game (rule C12, standardized rules of Penny Tossing, 1987) AH must have been in the last seat of the bus, or perhaps the one immediately in front of that one, the penultimate seat if you will.

    We are thus faced with the question, assuming that the laws of physics operated in the standard fashion on Ms Ried’s bus, and there were no sudden deceleration, how did said coin travel 30 feet, and still have enough momentum to bounce off the windshield and then hit Ms Ried with enough force to get her attention. Now, we know from our friend Newton that an object in motion will stay in motion until it is operated on by an outside force. Since striking any of the backward sides of the seats would have deadened the forward momentum, we must conclude that the coin travelled at some velocity (V*) down the walkway of the bus. Since it was underhand, and AH was complying with the rules of being seated, there is simply now way that it could have gone that far, unless it had some wholely unbeliveble bounces betwixt his seat and the windshield.

    No my friends and ladies and gentleman of this supposed jury, we might look to an outside source, for there is no way that the tossed coin of AH could possibly have travelled at such a velocity on the arc dictated by physics and the laws of gravity, that it might bounce off the windshield and strike our poor driver.

    My friends, I put it to you: There was another Penny Tosser on the Grassy Knoll. September 28, 2009 had the standard weather for Hinds County Mississippi. There was some humidty, but no rain. Thus, the third window from the driver on the left hand (as before mentioned “Driver Side”) was open, as it customarily was. It is only through this window that this “Magic Coin” could possibly have come from.

    I will discuss the possible individuals responsible for this in a later post. Several of the theories I am currently exploring include: Cuban President Fidel Castro, the anti-Castro Cuban community, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Mafia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), E. Howard Hunt, and the Eastern Bloc – or perhaps some combination of these.

    Please stay tuned for more. And remember this is a This Ain’t Hell Exclusive.

  • Tiger wins AP Athlete of Decade. Now meet the man I would have voted for.

    Cross-posted to The American Legion’s BurnPit.

    JR Salzman

    Seven time World Log Rolling Champion, wounded Iraq Veteran, military blogger and all around good man: J.R. Salzman

    Probably everyone knows by now that Tiger Woods was named the AP Athlete of the Decade. I am not here to say it wasn’t deserved. His record is incomparable: 64 tournament wins, 12 major championships. I’ve always been a fan of Tiger’s, but possibly for a different reason: his dad was Special Forces during Viet Nam. In fact, while I was training for my stint in the Ghan, Tiger came down to Bragg and ran with the troops and gave out some golf lessons. The whole debacle going down now makes me sad, because Tiger should be known for what he does with his putter, and not what he does with his…..um….putter.

    But, Athletes should be rated on how they compete in Athletics. We don’t rate our church leaders on how well they hit a dimpled ball, and neither should we rate our sports stars on how they conduct their private business.

    But, it is only human to factor in such things. It’s why everyone loves or hates Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco, and why my favorite players have always been Mark Bavaro and Larry Izzo. But, a good case can be made that the most deserving person for Athlete of the Decade is 7 time World Log Rolling Champion, wounded Iraq Veteran, military blogger and all around good man: J.R. Salzman.

    For those of you unfamiliar with logrolling, (shame on you) here is the wiki definition:

    Logrolling, or birling, is a sport that originated in the lumberjack/log driver tradition of the northeastern United States and Canada, involving logs in a river (traditionally) or other body of water. After bringing their logs downriver, the lumberjacks would have a competition to see who could balance on a log the longest while it is still rolling in the river.

    The contest involves two lumberjacks, each on one end of a log floating in the river. One or the other starts “walking” (or “rolling”) the log, and the other is forced to keep up. The contest involves attempting to stay on the log while attempting to cause the competitor to lose their balance and splash into the water. It is also commonly known as log birling.

    JR had a MILBLOG while he served overseas, and it’s kind of interesting to follow his adventures there if you have time, so go read Lumberjack in the Desert. If you have less time, go and read the long ESPN article about JR, and his road to recovery.

    Now, none of you have any strong desire to have me recount it all, and you’d rather watch video. Well, so would I. So I am including two (TWO!) videos for you. If your house is on fire, only watch the second (shorter) one. They are largely the same, but the first and longer one was done prior to July of this year. The first is roughly 9 mins, the second is about 2.

    Before you click play though, I advise you to come up with an excuse for why your eyes are watery. I went with “Damn dusty apartment, must be my allergies.”

    One good thing that came of our day of silence yesterday (and that post will remain stuck at the top through Saturday, so PLEASE GO READ) was that a mutual friend of mine and JR’s sent me his Facebook page. Naturally I friended him, and started up a conversation with him. He and his wife are doing well, and JR remains in school. In fact, he’s studying for finals right now. When I asked him how everything was going he replied:

    I’m finishing a paper now, I have a final from 2000-2200 tonight, and another tomorrow from 0800-1000 followed by another from 1400-1600. I still have another eight pages of writing to finish up after that and another final on Monday. But I’m hanging in there and I’m in the top 5 or 10 in all my classes. Not bad for a guy with TBI and one arm.

    When I got back to law school classes when I returned from GWOT, I had some hard times. All my original classmates had graduated and I found myself with new folks who didn’t know me. There was an article one day in the law school newspaper by a first year whining about how it was the hardest year anyone could go through. I wanted to strangle that person with dental floss. I mean seriously, are you really complaining because you missed some sleep while sitting in your heated apartment, Simpson’s on in the background while you cogitate on the Law Against Perpetuities? JR is doing it missing an arm and with a bruised grape. I know it is all perspective on these things, but damn, the man is in the top 10 in his class.

    This morning when I logged on to get a picture of JR for this post I noticed his Facebook Status:

    JR Salzman is wondering if anyone wants to go snowboarding at Afton either fri night or sat to celebrate my Alive Day. (Beers could follow)

    I wish I had a car, because I would be driving to Wisconsin right now. Either way, Friday at our company Christmas party I will raise a frothy beverage and thank the Almighty for bringing JR through this, and for the men and women who helped him get back up on his log.