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?

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.

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.

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.

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.