Well, here it is, the last episode before everything goes ten kinds of nuts.

General Grant and I have had an interesting relation over the years. As a kid, I was always interested in historical figures who ultimately lost, but in a brilliant manner. As a result, I was all about Lee and, so I thought consequently, against Grant. I couldn't even bring myself to read anything involving Grant that didn't have as its fundamental premise that he was a meat-grinding drunk who stumbled his way into victory.

Then, one day I was in our local "library" which had, somewhere amongst the forty computers of kids playing Runescape and checking their MySpace accounts, a book. Specifically, a book about the generalship of Grant and, having nothing else on my plate I checked it out.

One of my favorite things in life is to find that I am incorrect in my dislike of something or someone. So it was with Grant. The dude was a mensch. After his initial successes, he could have easily taken the presidential nomination away from Lincoln. He was approached several times, urged to run, especially by members of Lincoln's own party. Grant categorically refused, saying that it was his deep conviction that victory in the war would be impossible with anybody but Lincoln at the helm. Grant went back to fighting. Lincoln got re-elected, and the story went on.

Grant. Mensch.

- Count Dolby von Luckner

It is true.

Much like Poe up there, we are about to light the fuse on whatever exactly we have been wiring up for the last, oh, sixty episodes or so.

--Geoff