I'm not sure what Sarah Palin hopes to accomplish by resigning as governor. The two biggest knacks against her during the election were that she couldn't be taken seriously and she had a penchant for stirring up angry crowds. The demagoguery might still work for her (Republicans are still pretty pissed about the general state of affairs), but I'm not sure how resigning elected office burnishes her still-shaky credentials. Perhaps she just needs more time to squeeze in all that reading she does.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

This is what you get when you fuse narcissism with technology:

It won't be long before I'm producing and starring in a whole series of avant garde amateur videos featuring women in fishnet stockings reciting Victorian poetry while giving me hot-oil massages.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

In the fullness of time, you can get used to anything. And you don't realize it until it's brought to your attention. Last week, I tried out a new ventilator that is both smaller and lighter than the decades-old model I've been using and that hasn't changed much since Reagan was president. The new vent felt...different. It's hard to explain. The airflow created by the new vent is subtly different from the old vent, but it was enough to make my body say, "Hey, hey, what the hell is this? This won't do at all."

A little tweaking of the new vent's settings helped me feel a little more comfortable and I'm sure that I would eventually adapt. I have fuzzy memories of how strange breathing felt when I first started using this vent, but I adapted without much trouble. I'm like the guy who's been driving the same Ford Escort for the last 23 years and is now test-driving a Prius. From every technological aspect, the Prius is far superior, but it doesn't have the familiar hum and rattle of the Escort.

I'll probably give the new vent another try after the manufacturer modifies a few things; it would be nice to do away with much of the bulk that sits on the back of my wheelchair. And I don't want to be one of these middle-aged cripples who resists change out of habit and caution. My current vent has served me well, but it's only a machine.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:10 PM | Comments (1)

Congratulations to my neighbor, Al Franken, on finally emerging as the official victor of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race. Today's Supreme Court ruling brings an end to a political race that stretches back through the mists of time into early 2007. As a friend pointed out, I am now represented by a Jew, a woman, and a black Muslim. Minnesota: it's like a bigger version of Berkeley but without the legalized pot.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

Here's why the Japanese are still on track to rule the world. While GM and Chrysler are subsisting on government cheese and figuring out how to make cars that don't burn through a quarter tank of gas on a trip to the grocery store, Toyota is developing thought-controlled wheelchairs. Toyota's brain control interface appears to be one of the most advanced yet, capable of analyzing and interpreting brain waves in less than a second. The user still has to wear the obligatory goofy-looking skullcap that seems to come standard with any sort of thought-controlled device, but it's still cooler than anything that has come out of Detroit in the last couple decades. Companies like Toyota and Honda understand that all those billions of dollars in R&D can be invested in products other than yet another sports sedan--products that might also have higher profit margins. Meanwhile, GM is still struggling to bring a working electric car to market. Yawn.

I patiently await delivery of Toyota's next generation of transportation devices for people with disabilities: giant thought-controlled robots built to look like samurai warriors.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:48 PM | Comments (2)

I've been watching the latest season of Weeds on DVD and thinking about dark comedy has matured into its own distinct television genre. It used to be that half-hour comedies had to revolve around zany family dynamics or workplace shenanigans. That changed somewhat with Seinfeld and the the like, but comedies were still breezy affairs that didn't take many risks. It's only because of the growing ambition of premium channels like HBO and Showtime that writers have been able to explore the funny that lurks in the shadows. And Weeds is so funny. It amplifies every stereotype about disconnected, materialistic suburban life, but not so much so that it seems absurd. In just the last few episodes of this ongoing story of a pot-dealing single mom in SoCal, it's touched on euthanasia, mourning rituals, absent parents, political corruption, and the perils of the cross-border drug trade (natch). Bleak stuff, but the writers are experts at mining humor from the bleak. The show's spirit is captured in this piece of dialog where slacker uncle Andy is explaining the meaning of life to his teenage nephew Silas:

Silas, look. Life is just blah blah blah. You hope for blah and sometimes you find it. But mostly it’s blah. And waiting for blah. And hoping you were right about the blahs you made. And then just when you think you’ve got the whole blah-damn thing figured out, and surrounded by the ones you blah, death shows up. And blah. Blah. Blah.

You won't find that sentiment in an episode of Cheers.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 01:57 PM | Comments (1)

I can count on a couple fingers the number of times I've been crossed the threshold of an Abecrombie & Fitch store. I'll happily shell out $70 for a pair of pants, but I prefer to do it in a place that doesn't assault my ears with horrible Europop and the clothes don't make me look like a douchebag-in-training. I don't need another reason to avoid shopping there, but A&F's corporate masters gave me one anyway. A sales clerk at the London store was banned from the sales floor and forced to work in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn't comply with the company's "Look Policy". The clerk, also a law student, is now suing the company for discrimination. My guess is that the case will settle quickly and a few middle managers will get sent to diversity training.

Stores have the right to enforce a dress code, but A&F's actions in this case border on the absurd. Are A&F customers so phobic of physical imperfections that they would be driven away by an attractive clerk with a prosthetic arm? If that is the case, perhaps the company should change its logo to something more fitting, like a swastika.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)