October 31, 2005

Monster Mash

Before you slip off into a diabetic coma after stealing half of your kid's Halloween candy (or from scarfing down that whole bag of Reese's Miniatures you bought at Target), check out these photoshopped versions of classic art featuring a menagerie of nefarious characters. I especially like facehugger getting cozy with Norman Rockwell.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

Personal History

The other day, I was going through some of my e-mail archives. I'm something of a digital pack rat and I tend to save e-mails that I think I might want to read again someday. My archive goes back to 1998 (it would go back further, but I seem to remember some kind of system crash that caused me to lose a bunch of older messages) and going through it has evoked a mixture of nostalgia and embarrassment. There are the tentative e-mail exchanges with potential employers while I was still a law student, the back-and-forth between my brother and I as we planned for a trip to Los Angeles, the silly little newsgroup flame wars I got into as a way of proving how intelligent and clever I was, the messages from the med student on whom I had a galaxy-sized crush (and my carefully composed and wincingly overearnest replies), the random correspondence with friends and family as we made plans for a dinner or a weekend visit or a marathon evening of gaming on my computer, the messages from friends and colleagues I haven't seen or thought of in years.

When I'm gone, I like to think that my e-mail archive will be the best available record as to what kind of person I was. It does a pretty good job of recounting the transitory ephemera of my adult life, as well as illustrating the more immutable passions and eccentricities that made me...well, me. Maybe some distant descendant will collect all of this crap and make a school report out of it or something.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2005

Fresh Faces

Last night's concert was a notable for the energy and the easy informality that all three bands brought to the stage. I had the impression that a lot of the band members were still at the "holy-fuck-we're-on-a-REAL-stage-and-playing-in-front-of-LIVE-people!" stage of their careers. The Go! Team was especially fun to watch. It's impossible to reproduce the sampling and mixing that's present on the studio version of the album, but they know how to shape their songs for a live audience. We were even treated to a few cuts that aren't on the album ("Ice Storm" was especially good). It will be interesting to see this band again in a year or two. Will their music still be as upbeat or will they try for something darker and more menacing? And what will be the first television show or film to incorporate their music into a soundtrack?

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

Sick Pleasure

I have tickets to see The Go! Team at First Avenue, so I'll try posting a longer entry later. But before I go:

Is it wrong to grin and maniacally rub your hands while reading the news?

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2005

Into History's Dustbin

Somewhere in Georgetown, a woman named Harriet Miers is curled up on her sofa in her spartan but meticulously clean 1-bedroom apartment, tears silently streaming down her face as she watches a tape of the President announcing her SCOTUS nomination. She rewinds the tape again and again, basking in the blue glow of past glory, the fleeting apotheosis of decades of concerted ass-kissing and kowtowing. And now it's gone. All gone.

If Miers had a public history of being a loud and proud right-wing zealot, she would have survived the confirmation process. If she had a CV that illustrated a long and rich career of Constitutional litigation and scholarship, she would have survived the confirmation process. She had neither, and that's what killed her. Now we wait and see whether the next nominee will trigger holy war or not.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

School Of Thought

The Village Voice had a recent article on disability studies and how the field is gradually gaining recognition in colleges and universities. I'm not sure why the Voice treats this a new development. There have been several well-known scholars who have written extensively on disability theory for many years. I have mixed feelings about identity studies in general; there seems to be a lot of time spent navel-gazing while not really engaging with society in an effort to create change. But a desire for a better society that is grounded in the theory and history of a group's oppression can be a powerful thing. Since people with disabilities inhabit every circle of society, it would make more sense for disability not to exist as a separate academic ghetto, but instead it should infiltrate other fields such as literature, the social sciences, etc. Others might disagree with me, but we spend so much time fighting for inclusion that it seems counterintuitive to create a wall around our own academic playground.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:29 PM | Comments (1)

October 25, 2005

Idiot Box

Lifehacker is a kind of self-improvement blog for geeks. It offers little bits of advice on things like how to do your own podcast or where to find an especially useful Firefox extension. About a week ago, they featured a clever article distinguishing between television and television programs. In summary, plopping yourself in front of the television and randomly flipping through channels is bad. Using your television as a monitor for specific content (whether a DVD or a TiVo'd program stripped of ads) is okay. Which is a relief, considering that the latter describes how I use my own television. But I do need to get out of the habit of having it on as I get ready in the morning. There's something about starting your day watching various items of bad news scroll across the bottom of a screen as the pretty anchorwoman chirps happily about the latest technology fad that is jarringly absurd.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:32 PM | Comments (1)

October 24, 2005

Playing Favorites

I've been ruminating over Time Magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923-present (of which I've read about 15%). It's a curious list. I was surprised to see two thematically similar SF novels (Neuromancer and Snow Crash), along with two fantasy classics (you can probably guess which ones). It's nice to see the genres getting some love, but I might have picked someone like Bradbury over Stephenson. A lot of the selections are relatively recent, as well. Never Let Me Go was released just this year, while White Teeth and The Blind Assassin were published in the last five. And to not include anything by John Irving seems negligent almost to the point of criminality.

Lists like this are silly, anyway. It's impossible to pick 100 books and declare them artistically superior to all of their peers; such declarations being inherently subjective and more than a little arbitrary. But I'm curious to know what other works you think should have been included in the list. It might give me some ideas for my next book run.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:50 PM | Comments (3)

October 23, 2005

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

I was also going to mention that I ran into my Con Law professor when I was at the Law School on Friday. I was impressed that he was able to call me by name, considering that he's probably had a few hundred additional students in the intervening eight years. For a brief instant, I thought he might ask me to explain the difference between rational basis review and strict scrutiny and my palms got all sweaty, but I was able to talk myself down without anyone noticing my momentary panic.

The Harriet Miers jokes were also flying at the symposium, both from the left and the right. If Miers wants to have any chance of getting through the confirmation hearings, she'd better start putting pen to paper and charm the Judiciary Committee members with some of her trademark eloquence. "Dear Senator Specter, you are the best Senator EVER! You are the smartest man I know (who isn't President). Pennsylvania is blessed. Much Admiration, H. P.S. Can you recommend any good books on Constitutional law? This is a little embarrassing, but I kind of had to fake it when you asked me about the Griswald (sp?) case. Won't happen again, promise."

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 01:02 PM | Comments (1)

October 22, 2005

Smooth Talker

Yesterday, I attended a symposium on the Supreme Court and one of the presenters was the Chief Inquisitor of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Ken Starr. Much to my astonishment, he does not have horns growing out of his forehead and his eyes do not glow with a sinister red light. These last few years at Pepperdine must have mellowed him out some. In fact, he has a very polished speaking manner similar to those narrators of books on tape. I, for one, would pay good money to hear Ken Starr do an uncensored reading of Valley of the Dolls.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2005

On The Go

It's been a busy day and I have a few things to share, but I'm leaving soon to see North Country with a friend. If I'm feeling ambitious when I get home, I'll post again.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 05:57 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2005

Dirty Laundry

If I do ever find myself in a senior management role in a government agency, please, someone, do not let my assistant write embarrassing (and badly spelled) e-mails about me. The career staff at FEMA must be reading these disclosures about former director Mike Brown's aloof incompetence with a mixture of relief and shame. At least these revelations are being publicly aired, but the agency's image and reputation has already been badly damaged. Jesus, couldn't have someone at least told the guy that it might be a better idea to grab a bite at McDonald's? What exactly does this Administration have against anything resembling meritocracy? It's fine to appoint people who supported you back in the day, but shouldn't those people have some demonstrated skill, some evidence of expertise in managing complex, changing situations? Maybe it's the fact that Bush himself is the personification of mediocrity, and so he feels most comfortable around other people of mediocre skills. Maybe it's the fact that he still has a knee-jerk disdain for bright, insightful people that probably goes back to his frat-boy days. Sure, he has a few genuinely brilliant people in his inner circle (like Rice and Rove), but in general he seems to value loyalty over capability. And that's okay if you're mayor of a confederacy of dunces. But it's not okay when you're the President of the United States.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

I Feel Your Pain

Bill Clinton is coming to Minneapolis in a couple weeks and I totally forgot to get tickets. If anyone can hook me up with two tickets, I'll give you a year's worth of free computer repair. I view Clinton with mixed feelings. I thought he backed down too soon on issues like health care and he too often tried to play the centrist when a bold stroke of progressivism was necessary. But I miss his ability to speak articulately and without a script, as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of policy issues both prominent and obscure.

Ugh, it's late. I had to teach a Civics class tonight and was planning on being home by 8. But then I joined the class for beers afterwards and traffic coming home on I-94 was a bear. Long story short, it's now 11:30 and I should stop dallying and get to bed.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:36 PM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2005

The Usual Suspects

A day or two after last year's election, I told a conservative friend that Republicans now have enough rope to hang themselves. I'm astonished that it took them less than a year to oblige. The progressive media are as jittery as a bunch of kids on the night before Christmas because of the indictments that are almost certainly forthcoming from special prosecutor Fitzgerald in the Plame leak. After living on page 10 in newspapers for more than a year, it looks like this story is about to get the front-page treatment. Of course, conservatives (who love to decry our culture of victimization but who also cry alligator tears as they bemoan their never-ending persecution) are spinning this any which way they can. For them, this "criminalization of politics" is the Left's desperate ploy to thwart the conservative agenda. In other words, conservatives are so good at playing politics that the Left has to resort to quaint concepts like "rule of law" to derail the conservative Utopia that was this close to being realized.

Let the schadenfreude commence.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

Head Of The Class

Today's All Things Considered featured a story on a college degree program in Seattle for students with intellectual disabilities. The program's founder rightly points out that special education has focused exclusively on K-12 with little attention paid to post-secondary education. But I think that reflects broader attitudes on education in this country. Since the 19th century, K-12 education had been a quasi-fundamental right for American children. The same can't be said for higher education. A college degree is not seen as an entitlement, even though volumes of research support the notion that college graduates have higher-paying jobs. Perhaps programs like the one discussed on ATC will be part of a growing trend to provide more universal access to higher education at a time when global competition demands a more skilled workforce.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2005

Top Of The Charts

Dudes, I'm a little high on paint fumes right now, so I'm going to keep this short lest I start proclaiming myself King of the World or something equally embarrassing. I haven't done a music-related post in a while, so here are a few albums that have been making me happy in recent days:

Plans - Death Cab for Cutie--I'm almost embarrassed to admit that this is my first purchase of a full-length Death Cab album and I feel like I'm coming late to the party. Ben Gibbard lets loose with his inner Heathcliff, but makes his melancholy sound upbeat. Kind of like a soundtrack for a rainy Monday that ends with a spectacular sunset.

Twin Cinema - The New Pornographers--More Canadian power pop with hooks that embed themselves deep in your brain. Neko Case, as always, is the highlight for me on this album, but new singer Kathryn Calder adds some fresh texture.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike - The Go! Team--Genre-defying, hyper-caffeinated ear candy. If you don't smile when you're listening to this album, you're either dead or overmedicated. Call it cinematic hip-hop. Call it electroclash. Call it what you will. It will command you to move. I'm listening to it right now and my head is bobbing so much that I'm having difficulty typing.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:08 PM | Comments (1)

October 15, 2005

Bare Walls

Spent much of today painting my condo. And I must say, it's looking good. Tomorrow, we do the bedroom and that should be a wrap. Pictures forthcoming.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

Critical Analysis

Over on Daily Kos, someone wrote a diary on people with disabilities and the how our interests fit into the Democratic Party's agenda. It's not a bad analysis, but I might try to write a follow-up diary if I have the time. He glosses over some of the reasons why people with disabilities aren't more engaged in politics, including the rampant poverty that persists in the disability community. My experience in the 2004 campaign showed me that it's difficult to engage people on political issues when they're preoccupied with finding a PCA to get them out of bed in the morning. The author wants to know why there aren't more politicians with disabilities. That misses the point. The real question is why aren't there more teachers, business owners, accountants, computer programmers, attorneys, journalists, pastors, actors, mechanics, doctors, salespeople, and so on and so on with disabilities?

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Video Killed The Radio Star

I'm taking bets on when we'll hear the first reports of someone getting fired because they were caught in their cubicle watching porn on their video iPod. While watching movies on a tiny screen doesn't interest me much, the ability to download television episodes for a small fee is likely to be far more groundbreaking in the long run. It will be interesting to see how many content producers get on board with this concept and license their stuff to Apple. Could Apple risk becoming a monopoly in its own right as the dominant purveyor of digital entertainment? Such a scenario would be deliciously ironic.

Speaking of irony, my brother is due to get a now-outdated audio-only iPod as a belated birthday gift. I wonder if he'll be pissed.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:14 PM | Comments (1)

October 12, 2005

Self-Doubt

I've spent the last hour trying to help my sister connect her TiVo to her wireless network. I failed. Am I losing my geek kung foo? This is very disconcerting. Perhaps I'll feel better about myself in the morning.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

Growing Pains

I listen to the Nightline podcast from time to time and they recently did a show on adults with autism. I give Nightline credit for doing a story on adults with any kind of disability. Every local news station in the country probably has an entire shelf in their archive labeled "Cute Handicapped Kid Stories." But adults with disabilities aren't as cuddly, at least not according to the media. (I happen to be very cuddly, but that's another entry.) The story discussed the enormously important role that parents play in the lives of their grown children with autism, and how the transition to adult services can be quite jarring for these families. School is the bedrock in the lives of a lot of kids with disabilities. School gets them out of the house and is often their only forum for making friends and building social skills. When that familiar setting is gone (and a lot of people with developmental disabilities crave routine), it takes a lot of effort to replace it with something else that gets them out into the community.

And where the hell are the disability podcasts? I just did a quick Google search and the results were disappointing. There are podcasts out there featuring people talking about, I shit you not, their bowel movements and we can't come up with a disability-themed podcast? Don't make me do it myself. The disability community must have a bunch of better-sounding people than me who could do a weekly podcast. So where are you?

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:05 PM | Comments (1)

October 10, 2005

With A Little Help From My Friends

I'm organizing a painting party to paint most of the walls in my condo. With new floors going in soon, I decided it was time to go with a color scheme other than white. The living room will be a combination of a medium gray and brick red, while the bedroom will be done in blue. Since I have so many windows in my place, it shouldn't take long to get the job done. My job will be to supply food and drink, while also roaming from room to room to give approving nods and offer helpful suggestions like, "You missed a spot there."

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:42 PM | Comments (2)

October 09, 2005

It Can't Happen Here

The reports of 20,000 dead in Central and South Asia put our own hand-wringing about Katrina into some perspective, don't you think? I certainly am not implying that one tragedy is inherently worse than the other. But we Americans have a curious reaction to large-scale disasters. I think we're accustomed to reading about disasters in faraway places as we sip our morning coffee. But when the shit hits the fan here on the home turf, we act all shocked and surprised, like we're the first people anywhere in the history of the planet who had to go through this. Because we're Americans, goddamnit. If it doesn't happen here in the States, then it hasn't really happened yet. We're such a media-saturated culture that we can't place disaster outside the fictional realm of television and movies. When the media interviews the poor schlubs who are coping with the aftermath of a disaster, at least one of them will say, "Man, it was just like what you see in a movie." Maybe that's a consequence of both our geography and technological sophistication. When the Big Bad, whether natural or man-made, does slam into our reality, we don't have any context for it other than a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

For some reason, my keyboard died (the physical one, not the on-screen version). So I'm off to hunt a replacement down.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

October 08, 2005

A Step Backwards

I picked up a computer game on eBay (probably my first such purchase in a year) and I'm going to dive into it soon. But first, I wanted to point out a Cornell study that shows that the employment rate for people with disabilities actually dropped a couple points in recent years. Not great news for those of us in the world of disability policy. The systemic barriers that prevent people with disabilities from working are still multitude, and the assumption that people with disabilities can't work is one that remains deeply ingrained in our culture. I wish I knew the catalysts that will eventually reverse this trend. Maybe it will be the aging of the boomer generation. Maybe it will be some unforeseen technological leap. But the policies that currently exist aren't working. To be successfully employed, people with disabilities need a comprehensive range of supports that include health care, transportation, personal assistance, training, housing, and so on. Right now, we aren't doing a terribly good job of delivering those supports in one comprehensive, coordinated package. We make it really difficult for people to navigate and understand the services that are available, so it should be no surprise that most people simply give up and choose the easier, more secure option of remaining unemployed.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 06:38 PM | Comments (1)

October 07, 2005

Facelift

I was just checking out Salon's new page design. I used to read Salon all the time before it went subscription-based. It was one of the first websites that I visited on a regular basis. In fact, it played a major role in introducing me to a lot of music and books that I probably never would sampled otherwise. Now I read that, holy fuck, Salon is celebrating its 10th anniversary next month. When the hell did that happen? Too bad Suck isn't still around. Suck had some brilliantly funny writers. But I digress. I like the redesign well enough that I think I'll finally purchase a subscription. And maybe if I write enough kiss-ass letters to the editor, they'll let me do some guest-blogging.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2005

Don't Fear The Reaper

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether federal law trumps the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which allows physicians to prescribe lethal doses of narcotics to terminally ill patients who wish to die. I have a particular interest in this case because, as some of you know, I published a law journal article regarding the ODDA a number of years ago. Since the Court has chosen to take such a scattershot approach to federalism in recent years, I'm not going to even venture a guess on how they will rule. The Court likes to bang the states'-rights drum when Congress presumes to pass some touchy-feely civil rights law (witness the ADA), but the hammer of federalism comes down hard when states try to pull something subversive (like prescribing marijuana for medicinal purposes).

In the years since I wrote that article, my own views on the ODDA have evolved. Everything I've read indicates that the law has been implemented responsibly and my initial concerns regarding abuse were never substantiated. I do think that laws like this need to be crafted with extreme care and they need to contain muscular oversight provisions. This is not euthanasia as practiced in places like the Netherlands. The ultimate decision is left to the individual, where it rightfully belongs.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2005

Talking Down To Me

Over the weekend, I went to see a movie and the kindly old man who took our tickets looked at me, smiled his best condescending smile, and said, "Hey, you're going to a movie! Alright! That's real good!" I wanted to tell him, "Yes, every once in a while the facility lets me go on an outing. But I can't wait to get back because tonight they're serving us Jell-O with those little marshmallows in it. They even said I could pick between red or green Jell-O! And Derek--that's my roommate--he usually doesn't eat his dessert because on Saturday nights he likes to sit in the community room and watch the cars go by on the street outside. So maybe I can have his dessert too!"

But I didn't say anything. Instead I smiled, nodded, and found my seat in the theater, where I proceeded to watch a movie that depicted Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello doing a sixty-nine and included graphic depictions of gangsters getting their faces blown off. I must confess, after receiving the old man's benediction, I felt kind of dirty about sitting there and enjoying the copious amounts of on-screen sex and violence. But only for a little while.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2005

Dark Horse

First of all, Shana Tovah to those of you who are so inclined.

I'm really not sure what to make of the latest Supreme Court nominee. The right seems pissed and I suppose that's a good thing. But Miers doesn't have much of a paper trail for either side to examine. This could make for a confirmation hearing heavy on style but lacking much substance. I don't think we'll be lucky enough to get another Souter, but hopefully she won't be as scary as some of the people who could have been nominated.

I leave you tonight with this photo from the Onion. I must figure out how to do this with my chair.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2005

Pros And Cons

Things I like about my new office:

- The magnetic walls (perfect for hanging copious amounts of art)
- The uncluttered (for now) look
- Having my workstation next to my door so that I can see people come in

Things I don't like about my new office:

- The malfunctioning motion sensor that makes my lights turn off every 90 seconds
- Still no window
- The $#@%ing (but temporary) parking situation

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:42 PM | Comments (3)

October 02, 2005

New Digs

Tomorrow, I report to work at the Department's new building in downtown St. Paul. For nearly the past four years, my office has been in Roseville, which is only a ten-minute drive from downtown Minneapolis. The commute to St. Paul will take a little longer. Another wrinkle: the parking ramp at the new building is not yet complete, which means I'll have to park at a remote site and take a shuttle to the new building. I've been assured that the shuttle is accessible, but I have little doubt that getting to and from work is going to be a cumbersome process for the next couple months. But I'm also looking forward to being at the new building because more of us will be officed at the same location, which means I won't have to drive as much between various sites. I'm not that familiar with downtown St. Paul and perhaps this will be an opportunity to overcome my Minneapolis-centric perspective.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2005

A Soft Touch

Today's carnage in Bali should, if nothing else, serve as another nail in the coffin of the whole WE ARE IN IRAQ TO FIGHT TERRORISM meme. Terrorism will never be stopped through military means. The only thing that brings an eventual end to terrorism are real and substantial changes in the economic and political conditions of the regions where violence flourishes. Unfortunately, that takes time and effective leadership on a global scale. I may be blindly optimistic, but I believe that someday things will get better. To believe otherwise is to give in to hopelessness and nihilism. In the meantime, we need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the United States, through sheer brute force and the reckless expenditure of resources, can make the world a better place. It's take a little more political deftness and sophistication, not too mention patience, to realize grand visions of peace and democracy. Too bad we're stuck with an administration that has all the deftness of schoolyard bully.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)