Serious set of swings

The last edition of “What Sidney Said”

Goodbye, Mr. Bush. A sad day indeed. I will miss you, Sidney. Good luck.

Band of Brothers: Defending Carentan

Get it while it’s hot. Watch it to the end. (It’s only nine minutes, but it’s pretty intense.)

Joseph Heller meets Franz Kafka

The Bush Administration and the Pentagon find yet another creative way to support the troops. Wounded Iraq War vets are being ordered to return their signing bonuses because they can’t complete their tours of duty.

H2H, Thai fisherman’s pants and “quick feet are happy feet”

The weather today was unseasonably warm. A bit of color still clings to the trees but the sky is metallic gray and the wind is picking up. It’s November, but those of us in denial about fall can take refuge in temperatures approaching 70. I never did put on a jacket today. I even went for a long walk in my shirtsleeves. Felt good.

But to start it all off, I went outside in sandals and Thai fisherman’s pants (hemp, saffron-brick) and threw around a kettlebell. I’ve become fascinated recently with Jeff Martone’s hand-to-hand (H2H) drills, and I had to try some of these moves out.

I’ve got some of the simpler drills down and was soon happily winded and perspiring. After a short break, I decided to try flipping a 16 kg kettlebell from my left hand to my right. You can probably guess how that turned out. I’ve had some close calls with kettlebells before, but none so close as this. I (wisely, for once) decided to let the bell drop when it became clear I had no chance of recovering it. I jerked my left foot backwards, almost as an afterthought. When I looked at the space where my big toe had been less than a second earlier and saw 35 pounds of cast iron sunk several inches into the damp earth, I laughed and shouted “Quick feet are HAPPY FEET!”

I live next door to a funeral home, and there happened to be a funeral procession queuing up as I was working out and trying to make strawberry jam out of my lower extremities. No disrespect intended with my outburst. I’m just happy my feet and I are still on speaking terms.

Some hurtin’ bombs

What can I say? I’m a sucker for a training montage. Also note the kettlebells.

No more Friedman units?

YouTube killed the clip of Tommy Friedman explaining that “we hit Iraq because we could” and that we needed to have our soldiers go house to house and tell Arabs to “suck on this” because we would look weak otherwise. Truly a loss. But what’s really interesting is that YouTube may have pulled it because Tommy was embarrassed about it.