After a lot of tinkering and persistence, I managed to get my old copy of Fallout running successfully on my computer. As I paid another visit to Vault 13  and the surrounding environs, I thought about the prevalence of post-apocalyptic memes in popular culture. It’s a trope that has inhabited my imagination since I was a kid (thanks, Ronald Reagan!). That cheesy TV movie The Day After both enthralled and terrified me back then and I remember thinking that maybe my hometown of Green Bay was too small to be worth the Soviets’ attention (I later learned that Green Bay was indeed a target for the Russians).

For more of that mid-Eighties-we’re-all-gonna-die vibe, there’s the uber-bleak BBC docudrama Threads (which you can watch here at Google Video). I watched this a few months ago when I was home with a cold. Not recommended viewing if you’re already feeling nauseous.

The whole nuclear holocaust thing seems a little retro now, although the publication of books like The Atomic Market makes me wonder how much longer our dumb luck can hold out. Of course, we now know that there are any number of interesting and creative ways we as a species can do ourselves in. Maybe these stories we tell ourselves serve as some sort of pressure valve; a way for us to indulge our dark fantasies so that we don’t feel compelled to fire off a few missiles just to see what happens. And maybe they also encompass our ardent hope that, should everything turn to shit, that some remnant of what we once were will survive and endure.

I think I’ll take advantage of this overcast day and try to make a dent in my reading pile. More later, perhaps.

It doesn’t surprise me that much of the fiscal wrangling between the governor and the Legislature in these final days of the session is centered on the health and human services bill. The HHS bill, which funds nursing homes, public health care programs, and a host of other services, is a frequent source of contention in these budget battles. The governor has already vetoed the first version of the HHS bill sent to his desk and is threatening to veto the next one. The DFL-controlled Legislature is attempting to undo many of the 2003 health care cuts, as well as provide funding for some much-needed mental health service improvements. I don’t think we’ll see a special session this year, but the legislature might simply throw its collective hands up in the air and send the governor a bare-bones bill with no new funding. That would be a shame and here’s hoping that our elected leaders can demonstrate an ability to compromise for the public good.

When I’m cruising the streets in my wheelchair, I often find myself thinking, “Gee, I really wish this thing had a DVD player. And a water tank. And a laptop computer. And enough lights to illuminate a city block.” Well, Jesse Leaman hasn’t just thought about it. He’s gone and built the Gryphon Shield, a wheelchair so pimped out that it should be starring in its own music video surrounded by gyrating women in thong bikinis. No word on whether the rumors linking Gryphon Shield with Lil’ Kim are indeed true.

I’m a simple man when it comes to accessorizing my chair. All I want is a built-in artificial intelligence that will discuss current events with me, as well as assist me in my nefarious plans to achieve world domination. It should sound similar to KITT from Knight Rider, but slightly less prissy.

Sunday’s Styles section of the NY Times asserted that we gimps are getting all uppity and “confrontational” vis-a-vis society’s general discomfort with our gimpiness. The article points out that media depictions of people with disabilities are changing, citing examples like The Amazing Race (which featured a contestant with an amputated leg) and CSI (which features an actor who is also an amputee). Not to put too fine a point on this, but I think it’s fair to say that these people are on television because they’re disabled but not too disabled. The guy on CSI appears perfectly normal until he starts walking. The Amazing Race contestant is still a conventional-looking hottie who happens to be missing a leg. They don’t slur their speech. They don’t drool or piss into a bag. They don’t have oversized heads or undersized bodies. I’m not sure these examples signify some radical paradigm shift in both Hollywood and the larger culture regarding attitudes towards disability. If anything, they represent a very incremental acceptance of people with disabilities.

The article goes on to say that NBC is developing a sitcom that will feature a cast with a variety of disabilities. If the show uses actors with disabilities and doesn’t shy away from some of the topics that still elicit freak-outs from the public (disability and sexuality is probably the most potent example), I’ll be both surprised and impressed. How viewers react to a blunt treatment of disability is another matter. I guess the present state of affairs is better than the good old days when we were kept out of sight and mind. But I’m also not going to be satisfied with tokenism.