Movie: Lars and the Real Girl

Good. See it.

Cyberstalking JR Salzman

Back in the early days of the blog, one of my daily reads was the now-defuct bentbrokenme.com, a diary of JR Salzman, a guy that was worried about the sorry state of outdoor sports and trying to resurrect some quality in the sport of birling, or logrolling. I thought it was fascinating, because it was not at all like my live in Orange County.

bentbrokenme faded away. He started a more career oriented site at jrsalzman.com, which had a never-updated blog page. He was too busy winning metals at the (again now-defuct) Great Outdoor Games.

Then 9/11 happened, and he eventually signed up for the National Guard and was sent to Iraq. An IED took one of his arms and part of his remaining hand.

There was article on him at ESPN.

As always, I don't know what to think or what to do. With more resources, more commitment, we might, might be able to bring some stability to Iraq, but, there is no guarantee that will happen. Or we could run away and stop sacrificing our young men and women.

We should never have been there in the first place, but, now that we are, what are we to do?

But it goes to show just how separate and privileged I am that my only connection to the war at all is an old blog by a rural teen that I used to read years ago.

Housing in the 90016

I'd like to point out an insightful post by Mike Gran in the LA Times property blog. Mike notes that there are a few houses in the sub-$400k range and that sales seems to be slow.

The comments to the post demonstrate some of the standard westside though process: for example, a guy named Steve notes this:

The reality is you are risking your life on anything below $500K in LA, is that worth it?

Aunt Linda, is that you?