June 30, 2003

The Buck Stops...Where?

This amusing little anecdote has been floating around the blogosphere today:

Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, “Are you in charge of finding WMD?” Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn’t his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. “Who?” Bush asked.

I should have some mildly exciting news to post tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2003

Party!

I used to work for a trial court judge and just about every year he throws a party for his former clerks, so I'm off to the 'burbs in a little bit. The weather is great and it should be fun to see some former colleagues. And for your Sunday reading pleasure, here's a wonderful commencement speech delivered by Tony Kushner (Angels in America). Enjoy.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 04:15 PM | Comments (1)

June 28, 2003

Bookslut

If you have a book fetish like me, you should be reading the blog over at Bookslut. She's great fun and isn't a snob, which means she'll cover everything from literary fiction to comics.

Speaking of comics, I was reading Marvel's press release regarding Neil Gaiman's new mini-series entitled 1602. Not quite what I was expecting, but it could be interesting. In the meantime, I should get to the 3 or 4 graphic novels sitting on my desk.

I don't usually buy computer games at chain stores, but my departing nurse and I wanted to get in one last fix of FPS goodness. So I probably paid $10-$15 too much for Elite Forces II. It's been fun so far, even if the first mission does retread the whole Borg thing.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2003

Seek And Ye Shall Find

Google still amazes me sometimes. I've had this fragment of a song playing in my head for the last few days. but I couldn't remember the title or artist. So I finally went to Google and typed in the few lyrics I remembered. I found it in less than a minute. The song, by the way, was The Life of Riley by The Lightning Seeds. The Web is the ultimate solution to the Tip-Of-My-Tongue Syndrome.

I've been following Howard Dean's blog lately and I'm actually starting to like the guy. He may not have the gravitas of Kerry, but Kerry is just so boring! Dean reminds me of Martin Sheen's character on The West Wing, who is also a progressive former governor from the Northeast. And Dean just might have the chutzpah to take on Bush without seeming accommodationist.

When did Liz Phair become such a hottie?

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:32 PM | Comments (6)

June 26, 2003

Voices

I never thought I'd say this, but the Supreme Court is actually making me proud to be an American lately. Today's decision overturning Texas' anti-sodomy (and, specifically, anti-gay) laws is an example of the better angels of our collective psyche shining through. Here's a good line from Kennedy's majority opinion:

The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.

And from O'Connor's concurring opinion:

A law branding one class of persons as criminal solely based on the State's moral disapproval of that class and the conduct associated with that class runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause, under any standard of review.

Meanwhile, Big Tony is somewhere in the wilderness screaming about the "homosexual agenda." How sad.

Speaking of obnoxious, mouthy conservatives, today is Michael Savage Day. Read this. Then read this and this. Laugh and be merry.

I finished the first chapter of my book. I'm happy with it so far. I just hope I can keep the momentum going.

I e-mailed this cute girl I met at a CLE yesterday and asked her (clumsily) for a date. I say "clumsily" because I always get this shrill voice in the back of my head, kinda like Gollum in The Two Towers. I suspect this happens to quite a few people with disabilities when contemplating dating. For me, it goes something like this:

Positive Mark: Hm, she's attractive. Perhaps I'll ask her out.

Extremely Negative Mark: Stupid cripple! Ugly cripple! Hasn't we's taught you anything?

Positive Mark: What? She might be interested. I'm moderately articulate. Hell, I'm an attorney! That has to count for something!

Extremely Negative Mark: Nobody likes you! Go on, ask pretty lady! Watch pretty lady get uncomfortable! Pretty lady never speak to us again!

Positive Mark: Stop it! Go away!

Extremely Negative Mark: Go away? Ha ha ha! Where would you be without me? I keep us realistic! I keep us from looking foolish! Silly cripple! Now go crawl back to our precious computer and write in blog! Yes, precious...

Or something like that, anyway. So the whole dating thing makes me a bit self-conscious. But that's probably not much different from most guys.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2003

Pow! Thwack!

Four Color Hell is a great new blog about comics and the comic business. It's written by people who know comics but aren't the scary/weird fanboy types. I already have some ideas for titles to check out.

So RIAA has decided to litigate file-sharing out of existence. I'm skeptical. Over fifty million people use P2P networks. And most of them don't have deep pockets, which means that the cost of suing will be more than any damages they hope to collect. But I think I'll avoid Kazaa for a while.

I need to write up some kind of summary for this blog so that people don't start reading this and wonder who the hell is writing this crap. But that's assuming people actually read this thing.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2003

Take Cover!

We're having some exciting weather here in Minnesota with a few twisters touching down in the outer metro area. I'm not too worried as it would take a Category 5 hurricane to take down my building. Tornadoes have fascinated me since I was a kid, but I've never actually seen one in person. Here's some "torn porn" for all you storm chasers.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:10 PM | Comments (2)

June 23, 2003

Jurisprudence

Good news and bad news from the Supreme Court today. First the good. Michigan Law School's affirmative action admissions process was upheld. To be sure, the undergraduate system was found unconstitutional, but that can be remedied with some tweaking. The five ruling justices rejected the woe-is-us arguments of the pouty right and realized that we still have many miles to travel before we live in a society that isn't burdened by our racist past.

Unfortunately, SCOTUS also upheld a federal law requiring public libraries to install filters on their Internet connections to be eligible for federal funds. Apparently, protecting our kids from photos of bare breasts is more important than free and unfettered access to information and knowledge. More good discussion at the Shifted Librarian.

Did I mention I'm writing a book? There, I just did. This is meant to be the literary counterbalance to my SF pursuits. It's also meant to be a bigger canvas on which to paint my own mediocrity.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 06:39 PM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2003

Reading List

Because I have no life, I read lots of other blogs. I've listed them under "Vital Blogs." Go read interesting things written by interesting people with actual lives. Enjoy.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)

Dead Drop

My sister has been staying with me for the past few weeks because she's taking a summer class and needed a place to stay. She is an avid Harry Potter fan and had the new book FedExed to my place. But the delivery guy left the package sitting on top of a trash can by the elevator, even though there's a concierge in the main office 24 hours a day. She would never have found it if she hadn't called them. Not sure what he was thinking.

Sat on the deck yesterday and tried out my iPod. I got a nice tan going on my arms. Unfortunately, because I don't move much, only the top sides of my arms get sun, leaving the undersides pasty white. And I'm not the kind of guy to take my shirt off. Let's say the cops need to clear a lake because some idiot dumped a school of hungry piranhas into the water. Then maybe you could talk me into taking my shirt off. Maybe.

Bill Turner of brilliantcorners.org has assembled a List of Bests that compiles various "best of lists" regarding books, films, and music. It's a great idea and not a bad measure of cultural literacy. I'm going through the list of SF books to get some ideas for my summer reading list.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2003

Man vs. Machine

As an early b-day present, my dad snagged me a 10 GB iPod on eBay. I was really stoked when it arrived in the mail yesterday. I thought I'd have it crammed full of music in an hour or so. Twelve hours later, I had it working. First, I discovered it wouldn't work with the FireWire port on my Audigy, so I had my sister run to Best Buy to get a FireWire card. Then I had to install the damn card, which isn't exactly easy when you have to verbally direct someone else who has never even cracked the case of a PC. After that, I hooked up the iPod to the new FireWire Card, only to have my system crash every time it detects the iPod. Now I'm mad. I poke around Usenet and then uninstall some software that might be the culprit behind the crashes. I reboot...

...Windows won't load. All I get is an arcane error message. I feel nauseous. I can't even access Safe Mode. I pull out my Windows XP CD. After some incantations, conjurations, the sacrifice of a small goat, and much gnashing of teeth, I manage to restore my system with pretty much everything intact. By this time, it's after midnight and I'm now on a personal vendetta against my iPod. No way am I letting some pretty little piece of plastic and silicon kick my ass. I reconnect it to the FireWire port.

It works. Within a few minutes, I have a couple gigs of MP3s loaded up. Victory is mine.

Thanks for the great product, Apple. But fuck your easy-to-use rep. And fuck your crappy MusicMatch software. Ephpod rules.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2003

You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry

The news is really weird lately. Like this story about the girl and the exploding bonbon. Poor thing.

Reviews for the Hulk seem to be mixed, but I'll still go see it. When I was a kid, I religiously watched the Hulk TV series (the one with Lou Ferigno). The Hulk in the movie looks a little silly, like he OD'ed on steroids and protein shakes.

So the reason four firemen came to my door the other day was because the batteries on my wheelchair died and I didn't have enough juice to get in the van so I could take it in for repairs. Apparently, it's not unusual for them to get these kinds of calls for assistance. My nurse that day took one look at them and began tripping over her own tongue. My tax dollars at work.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

Up All Night

It's almost 1:30 in the morning and I'm still up. Not sure why. But it's a beautiful night and if I look out my window, I can see the city stretch out under a clear and dark sky. When I first moved in here, I instantly fell in love with the view. There are moments, like at dusk when the sun is casting rosy light through my window, when my life just seems really cool.

Anyway, blah blah. Oh, remind me to write about earlier this week when four firemen came to my door. Sounds like the opening of a gay porn film, doesn't it? More later.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 01:39 AM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2003

Perspective

Boy Breeds Beetles in Body: Read this story and try not to gag. Yeesh.

GW was stumping in Minnesota today. Meanwhile, his administration continues to ascribe the whole concept of global warming to the wild imaginations of some kooky left-wing scientists.

I was just about to leave work today when a young woman who is an attorney called me asking for advice on how to get into the field of disability law. We talked for a few minutes and I hope I was helpful, but I was reminded of being in the same situation only a few years ago. I graduated from law school with no clue as to what I wanted to do. I actually had concerns about even being to find a job--any job. But five years and four jobs later, I'm doing better than I had any right to expect.

I'm hoping to go see the New Pornographers at First Avenue next month. They, for lack of a better phrase, fucking rock. Maybe I can convince the super-cute girl who was in the elevator this afternoon to go with me.

And just to put everything in perspective, here's a picture taken by the Hubble Telescope of the universe as it was twelve billion years ago:

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2003

Ariel

I saw a production of The Tempest at Lake Harriet last night. It was actually pretty good. The woman who played Ariel was this really cute redhead who was a perfect match for the part. Anyway, off to bed.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2003

Scattershot

In no particular order...

Tempted to get Radiohead's new album. OK Computer was one of the best albums of the last decade, but Kid A and Amnesiac just left me feeling cold. BTW, the new album for the New Pornographers kicks ass. They're coming to First Avenue in July and I hope to be there.

A new V? This miniseries from the 80s holds a special place in my heart even though it's incredibly cheesy. I have vivid memories of begging my parents to let me stay up to watch it. It will be interesting to see what they do with this.

It's sad that every new technology will sooner or later be used for prurient purposes. Case in point...

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2003

Lost and Found

I just finished Less Than Zero. Besides being a study in upper class West Coast nihilism, it is an amusing study in 80s pop culture detritus. Every ten pages seemed to contain at least one reference to Betamax or Atari or some crappy band. I thought about renting the movie, but the reviews make it sound like some treacly just-say-no anti-drug propaganda. Too bad.

Is it me, or is the whole search for WMD in Iraq turning into a parody? "No, really, we totally know where they are! We're pretty sure we saw nerve gas cannisters in this ditch outside Tikrit, but then the Rangers had this massive kegger and we kinda forgot about it and when we went back the next morning we were like 'Dudes, WTF?' But we swear we saw them sitting there last week. But don't worry, we got mad skillz when it comes to finding shit and we'll have a major WMD stash sitting on the front lawn of the White House faster than you can say 'Osama bin Laden.'"

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)