I went out for a beer with a friend after work today. Or, more precisely, he had a couple beers while I took a few sips of mine. Drinking is a bit of a chore for me because I don’t have a great swallow. And keep your dirty comments to yourself. And we were in a bar, which means I have to work a little harder to make myself heard above the din. But it was good to hang out and just talk guy stuff. We talked about going to Ground Zero, which is this club in northeast Minneapolis that is frequented by the goth crowd. My friend has a thing for goth women and I think it’d be fun to go and check out the scene. Anytime I go to a club, I can usually forget about talking to anyone because my voice simply isn’t loud enough. So whenever someone tries to talk to me in that setting, I feel a little awkward. Oh well. One less guy for the women to be annoyed by. But there was that one time I went to the Gay 90s and…
We’ll save that story for another time.

I wish we lived in a Star Trek universe where every door opened automatically, complete with cool whooshing sound. Heavy manual doors are the bane of most wheelchair users’ lives. I always have someone with me, which makes things a little easier. It would be much more difficult getting around if I was alone. Minneapolis is better than most American cities in terms of accessibility, but there is still the occasional door or entryway that can be a real pain to navigate, even with another person accompanying me. If I had a dollar for every time I thanked someone for holding a door for me, I could buy out Microsoft. If we can engineer a robotic dog, surely we can devise a cheap and easy way for making every door automatic.

Good news! The likelihood of our planet getting smashed by an asteroid just got smaller. So now can we please destroy every copy of Armageddon in existence. God, I hated that movie. But I did see Master and Commander today, which is worth your time. Lots of old-fashioned swashes being buckled and so forth. My nurse was all ga-ga over Russell Crowe and his flowing tresses. I thought he looked a bit doughy myself. If Russell Crowe and I got into a barfight, who do you think would win? I may be small, but I fight dirty. Maybe I should write his agent a letter and challenge him to a no-holds-barred fracas at the venue of his choice. We could make it into this huge pay-per-view event. I could be rich! Rich, I tell you!

By no means do I support our government’s decision to invade Iraq, but it’s really interesting to read newspaper accounts of postwar Germany and note some of the striking similarities between the past and present. Go here or here to see what I mean. I think it’s a good reminder that peace and stability are not achieved overnight. But it would have been nice if someone in the Bush administration had done a little historical research when drawing up the invasion plans. My mom was a kid living in Germany during that occupation. I should ask her what her memories are of that time.
Unwatched programs are starting to pile up on my TiVo. I read an amusing article about people who are beginning to resent their TiVos because it represents one more list of tasks to complete in an overtasked world. One guy was skipping the gym so he could keep up with recordings of Dawson’s Creek repeats. Okay, I don’t know what’s more pathetic, the fact that this guy is too dumb to remember why he bought a TiVo or the fact that he admits watching Dawson’s Creek.
Extra credit to those of you who can identify the singer quoted in the title for this entry.

I knew the whole Rock the Vote thing on CNN last week was just a lame attempt to pander to us younger voters, but is it really necessary to plant such inane questions? Can we please get the clueless media out of the election process, just for a little while? And did you see some of the campaign videos that were designed to appeal to the “young people.” They were all identical. It was as if every campaign manager thought, “Okay, what are the kids into? Music videos! Check! Raves! Check! Ecstasy! Check! You, there! Gather together some stock campaign footage, download some obscure techno on Kazaa, pop some X, and edit everything together! You have three hours!”
Being a state employee, I had Veterans Day off today. It’s kind of weird to have a day off in the middle of the week. It throws off my whole internal calendar.