July 31, 2009

Before Ripley

Ridley Scott is on board to direct a prequel to Alien, the 1979 movie that made John Hurt's viscera famous. Since it's a prequel, I can only assume that every human character dies or is otherwise prevented from returning to civilized space to tell the tale (otherwise, the original movie wouldn't make much sense). I'm not sure it's a necessary story, but I'm intrigued nonetheless. The years have not been kind to the Alien franchise and it desperately needs to be saved from itself. Between this project and his slated adaptations of The Forever War and Brave New World, Scott could spark something of a revival for serious, well-crafted science fiction films.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2009

Now They're Just Giving These Things Away

My Dear Professor Hawking:

Let me be one of the first to congratulate you on your receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It's well-deserved, I'm sure. Please give the President my warmest regards when you see him and also inquire as to whether he has firmed up a departure date for our shuttle trip to the space station. I need a little advance notice so that I can put in my vacation request at work. Some of us don't have the luxury of skipping town whenever the impulse strikes.

Incidentally, you might want to consider wearing your newly-acquired medal for the fight. Television audiences love their bling. And it might make you seem a little less pathetic after you crumble like a stale cookie, unable to withstand my brutal lesson in physics.

Salutations & Felicitations,
MS

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2009

The Devil You Know

Here's what I take away from the latest NYT/CBS poll on health care: people are quite capable of holding two completely opposing beliefs simultaneously. To wit:

In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system.

As a whole, Americans are deeply ambivalent of government's ability to implement any kind of complicated social program. That's what thirty years of conservative ideologues bashing government will get you. But once those programs are up and running, they tend to be pretty popular. Nobody talks seriously about eliminating Medicare or Social Security anymore because it would be political suicide. But we have a high tolerance for putting up with intolerable situations. As intolerable as our current health care system is, it is familiar. It's like that beater car you once had; the one that leaked oil and pulled to the right and always needed a jump when the temperature dipped below freezing. It got you from place to place, but just barely.

If Congress can pass a decent reform bill, it could go a long way towards restoring our faith in good government. I'm just worried that decades of declining expectations for civil institutions of any kind have left us incapable of imagining something better for ourselves.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2009

Just What The Doctor Ordered

Still waiting for that elite unit of Scandinavian nurses to arrive. I'm assuming they got held up in customs and will show up at my door before long. It had better be soon because the water for my sponge bath is getting cold.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:23 PM | Comments (2)

July 27, 2009

Gesundheit

My body and I are on pretty familiar terms and I've learned to pay attention to its early-warning system. A nagging tingling in the back of my nose is the usually first sign of a cold virus taking up residence in my body. Then comes a certain lack of focus. An e-mail that would usually take me five minutes to write suddenly takes ten or fifteen. Then the sneezing begins. That sums up how things went at the office today. A sick day is in order for tomorrow, along with plenty of fluids and next month's book club selection. Please send vitamin C tablets and an elite unit of Scandinavian nurses clad only in fishnets and silk camisoles.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:38 PM | Comments (1)

July 26, 2009

Herds Of Nerds

As obsessed as I am with pop culture, I really should make a point to go to Comic-Con one of these years. I've been catching up on the coverage from this year's Con and it sounds like my kind of scene (although I could do without all the Twilight fanatics). It would be a memorable experience, right up to and including the moment I get bounced out of the convention hall for putting the moves on the cute brunette dressed up in the Princess Leia slave outfit. Perhaps some dreams are better left unrealized. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for watching awesome lightbike sequence from the trailer for the upcoming Tron movie and waiting patiently for the Shepherd Book comic.

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

July 25, 2009

Imaginary Girlfriend

Loneliness pushes people to seek comfort and solace from some unusual sources. For some Japanese men, the source of that comfort is a manga character printed on a pillowcase. These men belong to a particularly obsessive group of otaku--hardcore fans of anime and manga. They profess to having genuine romantic feelings for their favorite fictional characters, most of whom are prepubescent girls drawn in a disturbingly erotic fashion. The implied pedophelia is downright creepy, but Japanese society seems to tolerate these...eccentric?...man-children who have removed themselves from the realm of human love and romance. If an American guy showed up in any kind of public place carrying around the likeness of a half-naked cartoon girl, he would meet a much more hostile reaction. 

I suppose this is a sign of things to come. I can foresee a time when digital actors could be indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood people; real enough to become objects of desire for people who wouldn't give an animated character a second look.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 01:53 PM | Comments (3)

July 24, 2009

Setting A [Belated] Example For The World

Obama announced today that the U.S. will finally sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The announcement comes on the 19th anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Senate must now ratify the treaty and I can't imagine it will be a controversial vote. But Republicans being Republicans, I'm sure they'll take the opportunity to wax paranoid about how ratifying this treaty will put blind pilots at the controls of the U.N.'s black helicopters or that we'll have to make the space station wheelchair-accessible.

Obama also made this statement on disability rights:

I am not satisfied I am proud of the progress we have made but I am not satisfied -- and I know you are not either -- until every American with a disability can learn in their local public school in the manner that’s best for them. Until they can apply for a job without discrimination and live and work independently in their communities, if that is what they choose, we have got more work to do.  As long as we as a people still too easily succumb to casual discrimination or fear of the unfamiliar, we've still got more work to do.

Now might be a good time to mention that I'm still waiting for that phone call from the Obama administration.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:41 PM | Comments (3)

July 23, 2009

XXXVI

I was going to do another health care post today, but then I realized it was my birthday. I've now logged 36 journeys around the sun. And suddenly, forty isn't just a number. It's my imminent future.

My thirty-fifth year was something of a landmark. I started a new job that I continue to enjoy and that suits my interests and abilities quite well. I once vowed that I wouldn't stay in government long because I didn't want to slowly transform into a gray and humorless bureaucrat. But it turns out that I'm pretty good at this stuff (at least, most of the time). Check in with me in a decade or two to see if I'm still the enthusiastic public servant but, for the moment, civil service is quite satisfying.

I get a little anticipatory around my birthday, wondering what will come next. It could be amazing or...not. I'll find out soon enough.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 07:58 PM | Comments (3)

July 22, 2009

Health Care Musings Part I

Medicaid didn't get much mention during tonight's presidential news conference, but it's getting more attention from the media as competing health care proposals bounce around the Capitol. Governors are coming out strongly against potential Medicaid expansions and I can't blame them. Medicaid eats up a huge portion of state budgets and that portion has only grown since the economy tanked. Even if the feds pick up the costs of expansion for the next few years, as some bills propose, states could still be left in a lurch when the next downturn comes.

Medicaid could be an important tool in achieving universal coverage, but we need to re-examine its current cost-sharing model. States cannot be expected to cover more people while receiving only slightly more federal aid. And we need to ensure that health care reform lowers costs in public programs as well as in the private sector. More on that tomorrow.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2009

Past My Bedtime

As you can tell from the timestamp of this entry, I have stayed up far too late fiddling with my new equipment. But I did manage to fix the audio problems I mentioned yesterday, so I'm feeling kind of smug about that. Regular and mildly interesting blogging will resume tomorrow.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2009

Early Birthday Present

I don't splurge on myself often, but when I do, I tend to do so extravagantly. After my DVD player died, I decided to replace my whole entertainment system. One trip to the local big box electronics store later resulted in a hefty commission for a lucky sales associate and a LCD television of embarrassing proportions, complete with all the fixings, sitting in my living room. I haven't had a chance to play with it much yet, but I expect I will weep tears of reverent awe when I pop in the Blu-Ray version of Watchmen. That is, assuming I can figure out why I'm only getting intermittent audio from my spanking new Blu-Ray player.

If anyone is interested in a gently used Tivo and or Kenwood receiver, both of which are in perfect working order, feel free to e-mail me. My prices are very reasonable. I'm also available for movie nights and televised sporting event get-togethers.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2009

On A Deadline

Book club is coming up Tuesday and I still have about 100 pages to go in my reading assignment. It's like being back in school, except I don't have to worry about the professor calling on me. Fortunately, I've read this book before, but I want to refresh my memory so I can do more than nod and say, "Hmm, interesting observation." I read quickly, so it shouldn't take me long. Off I go.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:50 PM | Comments (1)

July 18, 2009

Help Me, Nerds!

My DVD player died last night, so I made a rare trip to Best Buy today to find a replacement. The place was nearly deserted and a little eerie. I decided to purchase a Blu-Ray player since I'll probably replace my aging tube television before long. The player also streams Netflix video, which is a nice plus. But when I got home and hooked it up, the newfangled thing produced a shaky, wobbly image.

What follows is technospeak that may assist fellow geeks in offering suggestions to my dilemma:

I hooked up the player using the component video cables that had worked just fine on my old DVD player. This produces a shaky, distorted image. When I hook it up using the red, white, and yellow RCA cables, it produces a stable image. Any ideas?

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

July 17, 2009

Big Brother Is Watching

When I buy a book, I don't expect the seller to march into my house to take the book away when the publisher wants to remove it from circulation. But Amazon didn't have a problem deleting electronic copies of George Orwell's 1984, among other titles, from customers' Kindle book readers after the publisher got cold feet. Setting aside the epic irony of the story, this is exactly the kind of shenanigans that makes the average reader reluctant to buy e-books. Hell, it makes me reluctant. The only books I'll be purchasing from Amazon in the foreseeable future will be the paper kind.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2009

Apt Pupils

I was talking with a friend and colleague earlier tonight about how people with disabilities continue to be marginalized in various domains of everyday life, like employment and education. And then I came home and read Tyler Cowen's wonderful article on autism and academia. Cowen's thesis is that the skills and abilities needed to succeed in academia are the same skills and abilities that many with autism possess. Here's a snip:

Autism is often described as a disease or a plague, but when it comes to the American college or university, autism is often a competitive advantage rather than a problem to be solved. One reason American academe is so strong is because it mobilizes the strengths and talents of people on the autistic spectrum so effectively. In spite of some of the harmful rhetoric, the on-the-ground reality is that autistics have been very good for colleges, and colleges have been very good for autistics.

But the passage that really struck me is this one:

Current prejudices are based on at least two mistakes. First, too often autism is defined as a series of impairments or life failures, thereby ruling out high achievers. It is more scientific and also more ethical to have a broader definition of autism, based on differing and atypical methods for processing information and other cognitive and biologically defined markers. That way we do not label autistics as necessary failures, but rather we recognize a great diversity of outcomes including successes.

If only we could recognize the great diversity found in the whole realm of disability. Each person with a disability has been shaped by a singular combination of experience, opportunity, and innate talent. The disability is only one variable in the equation. But our schools and workplaces consign whole groups of people to lives of ignorance and penury because they cannot conceive that a life with a disability is a life of possibilities.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:59 PM | Comments (2)

July 15, 2009

Deliberative Body

Health care reform reached a significant milestone today when the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee passed a bill that includes a universal mandate for everyone to be insured, a strong public plan, and government subsidies to assist families with modest incomes to purchase coverage. While this is an important step, I fear that the Senate is currently Public Enemy #1 when it comes to meaningful health care reform. Ryan Powers writes a forceful post illustrating the Senate's long history of obstructing progressive legislation. The Senate operates in a weird parallel universe where majority rule isn't good enough. Instead, a super-duper majority of 60 senators is needed to pass most major legislation. Why? Because tradition demands it. Even though the Constitution says nothing about super-duper majorities, the Senate prefers to observe decorum rather than actually, you know, pass legislation.

For health care reform to attract 60 votes, it will have to be watered down to appease so-called moderates who can't quite bring themselves to confront the true extent of our existing system's fucked-upness. I'm starting to think that real reform can only be accomplished through the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority. And the Obama administration seems to be similarly inclined.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 11:21 PM | Comments (1)

July 14, 2009

That Doesn't Look Like Fun

Add this to the "plus" column of having a severe physical disability: I get to avoid the more unpleasant household chores. My shower recently had a clogged drain and one of my nurses kindly offered to clean it out for me. Similarly, I have never scrubbed a toilet or washed a pile of crusty dishes. And I'm not ashamed to declare that I don't feel like I'm missing out by not being able to perform these tasks. They strike me as both boring and more than a little disgusting. I am, however, happy to supervise from a suitable location such as my computer desk or the general vicinity of the television.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2009

Stay Out Of My Head

Computer engineers are warning that neural interfaces, like the kind that will eventually control wheelchairs and computers, could be vulnerable to malicious hacks in the future. Great. So a few years from now, I shouldn't be surprised when some geek hired by the Russian mafia hijacks my neural chip to download credit card numbers. This is why I'm going to demand that my chip run on Linux. The last thing I want is to be turned into a living spambot because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to patch a Windows vulnerability.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2009

More Of A Good Thing

I enjoy reading about forthcoming books that I will buy and get around to a year or two later, so I was perusing this Millions preview of fall releases when I received a happy surprise. Jonathan Lethem has a new book coming out called Chronic City. I've been a fan of Lethem since devouring his coming-of-age epic Fortress of Solitude a few years ago. Even better, Chronic City is based on the terrific short story "Lostronaut", one of the few New Yorker fiction pieces I bothered to actually read. I might have to find a way to sneak this into my book club's suggestion box in the next few months.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2009

On Display

I'm so bummed that I don't live near Trafalgar Square and therefore can't participate in the One & Other project. One & Other is a public art exhibit that invites people to sign up for an hour to occupy the top of the Fourth Plinth, an empty space typically reserved for commissioned statues. I would totally make the perfect living statue, don't you think? I have the whole not moving thing down cold.

For those wheelchair users who are considering signing up for a slot on the Plinth, the organizers have assured that it is fully accessible. You can also watch streaming video of the project here.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2009

Another Possible Recruit For My Gimp Army

Susannah Breslin, a writer and blogger who did much to bring attention to The 19th Floor back when I was still a fresh-faced n00b in the blogosphere, has a great interview up on BoingBoing with Sarah Scott, who blogs about life with a spinal cord injury. Here's a snip from the interview:

SB: Why do you blog?

SS: I started blogging for a few reasons. I was desperately lonely and going through all these sort of insane experiences that no one could understand, and I was desperate to be able to explain them in such a way that people would be able to understand without reverting to all the chair stereotypes that I was just a bitter, mean, crazy person now. There were a lot of people in my life that didn't make the transition to be able to see me first and the chair second, and it was heartbreaking. I thought online I could control things in such a way that people would see me again. In the beginning, it was very much about control.

As things have evolved, I started to ease up on that obsessive level of control and start showing the darkness too. It turned out to be hugely therapeutic for me, and I hope that it humanized me for a lot of people as well. More than anything, I want people to see me as a person and not as an object of pity or otherwise. My story is really about grief and catastrophic change, and I think most people at one time or another in their lives can relate to that.

Sarah's blog, mayday productions, contains some lovely examples of her photography as well as some sharp and honest writing about coping with the clueless and the cruel. I've added Sarah's blog to my feed list and I look forward to reading her on a regular basis. And big kudos to Susannah for continuing efforts to bring attention to the work of bloggers with disabilities.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2009

Botox, Stat!

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror the other and noticed that I have this furrow between my eyebrows. I'm calling it the "WTF" wrinkle because it makes me look like I'm in a perpetual state of irritated puzzlement. My life is fairly uncomplicated, which leaves me wondering how I ended up with worry lines at age 35. Perhaps it's the cumulative effects of the radiation from my computer monitor. It can't be because I'm getting old, can it? Maybe it will go away if I make a conscious effort to keep my eyebrows raised all day starting now.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:43 PM | Comments (2)

July 08, 2009

Things Could Be Worse

About ten years ago, I contemplated a move to California. I had a possible job lead and I liked the idea of never experiencing subzero windchills ever again. But now that California has revealed itself to be a political and economic basket case, I'm kind of glad I stayed away. The state's budget woes are hitting people with disabilities hard, prompting protests and sit-ins. I'm no fan of my governor, but at least he's not suggesting that my nurses and I get fingerprinted as a fraud mitigation measure.

California doesn't have a fraud problem. It has a structural deficit problem. Minnesota is in a similar boat and is only one more anti-tax governor away from having to issue its own I.O.U.s.

Thanks to Scott for the tip.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2009

Infernal Machines

Computers are still too complicated. I just helped one of my nurses remove a nasty and tenacious bit of spyware, but only after several scans with an antispyware program. It finally fled the scene, but there's no way my nurse could have identified those pop-up messages as spyware and downloaded the appropriate removal software without my intervention. Windows didn't provide any helpful dialog box telling her "Hey, this is spyware and here's how you remove it." More importantly, her web browser allowed her to click on the link that downloaded the spyware in the first place. I'm certainly not expecting Windows (Vista, in this case) to have air-tight security, but it should spend less time freaking out when a new program is installed and more time focusing on real security threats.

Computers are great at scaling up to a user's sophistication, but they still suck hard when it comes to holding the hands of users who don't have the time or the inclination to become sophisticated.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2009

Getting To Zero

My e-mail management technique over the years has left a lot to be desired. Ever since I completely switched over to Gmail, my inbox has gradually swollen in size because I was too lazy to do anything with all those e-mails that, for one reason or another, I wanted to preserve. My inbox's clutter finally started to annoy me, so I spent a couple hours sorting and archiving 1,000+ messages. My inbox is now completely empty; a null void of nothingness. It's actually a little unnerving.

As I was going through all those e-mails, I noticed that I had failed to respond to a few people. If you're still waiting for a reply to that e-mail you sent me in 2006, you might want to send it again. My response time should significantly decrease, at least until my inbox starts filling up again.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:31 PM | Comments (1)

July 05, 2009

Where Does The Time Go?

Not sure where today went. I started out by writing a whole page (that regular writing schedule still eludes me), followed by an afternoon with some of the comics that have accumulated in my to-be-read pile (incidentally, Incognito is a raucous, grim take on the pulpy serials of yore), and then scanned the day's news (Nick Carr's NYT article on the historical quirkiness of Minnesota politics is worth checking out). Now it's going on 9:00 p.m. I need to get to work on that side-project again: the one where I add more hours to the day.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2009

Critic At Large: Public Enemies

You wouldn't know it today, but St. Paul used to be a hotbed of criminal activity during the Depression. Ma Barker spent some time hiding out in St. Paul, as did Machine Gun Kelly. And John Dillinger, the infamous bank robber and subject of Michael Mann's latest film Public Enemies, also made St. Paul his home for a brief while. The movie makes no mention of Dillinger's sojourn in Minnesota, but it does follow his trail of mayhem through Indiana, Chicago, and Wisconsin. Mann has always been fascinated with dangerous men and their dangerous business; Public Enemies is no different. Johnny Depp inhabits Dillinger's character with a retro mixture of charm and malice that hearkens back to the early days of Hollywood. The movie even draws a sly comparison between Depp and past leading men in a scene set inside a darkened cinema.

This being a Michael Mann movie, there's gunplay. Lots of gunplay. The shoot-out scenes here are carefully orchestrated and stretch on for several tense minutes, surpassing that climactic gunfight in Heat. The whole notion of bad guys in trench coats and fedoras wielding tommy guns and making their getaways in lumbering Fords is cliched, but Mann makes it work. Christian Bale is great as the G-man determined to catch Dillinger while French actress Marion Cotillard play's Dillinger's resilient moll. Mann knows that we've seen this all before, but it's still compelling stuff.

Posted by wintermute2_0 at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2009

Questionable Decision

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)

July 02, 2009

I Warned You This Was Coming

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 (1)

July 01, 2009

It Even Comes With A Cupholder

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)