I was organizing my music collection today (my life is one nonstop thrill ride) and I discovered that I have a little over 8 gigs of music. Almost enough to fill my entire iPod. So now the question becomes: how long can I go before I upgrade to a larger one? I found myself browsing 20 GB models on eBay today. What’s really pathetic is that I got this one for my birthday only a few months ago.
General William Boykin is a devout evangelical Christian who is also a senior Defense Department official. Describing a battle he fought against a Somali warlord, he said, �I knew that my God was bigger than his God. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.� He also claims that Bush was elected because God wanted it that way, using as supporting evidence that a majority of Americans didn’t vote for him. He has made some feeble attempts to explain himself, but not before the press aired all of his boneheaded remarks from over the years. I actually have some sympathy for evangelicals like Boykin. They are desperately trying to keep themselves true to their own rigid moral compass, from being washed away by the tides of modernity and pluralism. And when your beliefs are so hopelessly medieval as to be almost irrelevant, you probably feel the need to shout all the louder just to be heard above the din. I think that’s what’s going on here. In some ways, evangelicals remind me of the Amish and Mennonites. The key difference is that those groups realized that mainstream society would never change to accommodate their beliefs, so instead they chose to live apart in their own insular communities. I wonder if we will one day see a similar phenomenon among evangelicals.

As I suspected, my law school reunion blew. There were only about 5 people there from my class (1998). Oh well, perhaps I’ll have better luck at the ten-year reunion. Maybe by then, people will be more inclined to boast about themselves.
I dropped about $20 at the iTunes Music Store last night. They make it way too easy to start clicking and buying. I’ll have to set myself a monthly cap. I had a discussion with one person who thought $.99 was still too much for a song. I think it’s eminently reasonable. Compared to the obscene prices for CDs and the morass of mislabeled files and porn that is P2P, I’ll gladly pay $.99 for the conveniences of getting the song I want at a decent recording quality. And I like iTunes a lot as well. Almost makes me understand why people buy Macs. Almost.

I think I’ve recovered from my Tiny Tim moment yesterday, but it got me thinking about politicians and disability issues. In my own experience, most politicians are clueless about the disability community and how to interact with them. There are some exceptions: Paul Wellstone was a respected figure in disability circles. So is Senator Jeffords. And Clinton demonstrated remarkable ease around people with disabilities. But most politicians, Republican, Democrat, whatever, probably give little thought to issues like accessibility, personal care services, employment discrimination, etc. People with disabilities are mostly viewed as handy photo ops to demonstrate one’s compassion/charity/sainthood/whatever. And I’m not sure what can be done to change these perceptions. Part of the problem is that we need more people with disabilities who are politically active, especially in the inner circles of campaigns and congressional staff. But that’s a bit difficult to ask for when almost 70% of adults with disabilities are unemployed. Every time get a well-meaning but extremely annoying “God bless you” from some stranger on the street or encounter another business owner/employer that has never heard of the ADA, I despair that things will never change. But then I look around at my own life and realize that twenty years ago, someone my age and with my disability would most likely be dead or in an institution.
So while I sometimes wish we would just hurry up and get enlightened already, I realize how far we have come in just a short while.

One of my nurses asked me to go to a Kucinich rally this evening. I’ll probably go for no other reason than that I’ve never been to a presidential rally. I think he has absolutely zero chance of winning the nomination, but I admire his passion. Maybe I can score a picture or two while I’m there.
I’m not a huge baseball fan, but even I’d watch a Cubs-Red Sox World Series. I’d be curious to hear from long-suffering fans from of both teams, unless you’re afraid you’ll jinx everything by talking about it.

I saw Kill Bill yesterday and will most likely see it again. Some of the visuals in the film are so striking that they demand a second viewing. I also fell in love with the spaghetti western overtones in the soundtrack. And the extended anime sequence was a poetic piece of filmmaking in and of itself. Like some of the critics, I wish there had been more of the verbal fireworks I expect in a Tarantino film, but I’m expecting that Volume 2 will satisfy that wish.
I spent much of the afternoon finishing a novel I’ve been reading. I can read quickly and I think I went through about 150 pages in one sitting. I remember a college class I had on the Victorian novel. If you’re looking for light reading, look elsewhere than the Victorians. We had to read massive tomes like Vanity Fair and Middlemarch. I dreaded the daily reading assignments, which were usually 50-100 pages. I actually faked my way through some of that class because I didn’t always feel like doing the reading. But now, I almost wish I could do the class over