For the longest time, my weekday evening routine has been numbingly predictable. Come home, go straight to computer, check e-mail, check work e-mail, think about blogging, surf web, think about blogging again, surf some more, promise myself to start blogging after checking one more site, realize I wanted to add a couple things to my Amazon wishlist before forgetting, stare at screen, think for the nth time that I should find another hobby that requires less concentration, write first sentence, rewrite first sentence two or three times, glance out window at night sky, finish blogging, berate myself for not getting any project writing done, turn away from computer bleary-eyed, eye my growing stack of unread New Yorkers, berate myself again, turn on television.

And all this occurs after spending much of each day in front of another computer. I think the collective dose of gamma radiation is starting to dehydrate my brain, so I’m going to conduct a little experiment on myself. Rather than make a beeline for the computer when I return home, I will instead read a few pages from a book, leaf through a magazine, go for a walk. Anything that doesn’t involve a screen. Lemon sorbet for the mind, if you will. I make no promises that this will improve the quality of the blog. The surest way to improve quality is to bring in new management. But it might spare you from having to read three or four rambling posts on health care policy each week. Oh, who am I kidding? At best, my experiment will make those posts a little more readable.

Now, what was I going to add to my Amazon wishlist…?

My fellow Minnesotans are, by and large, sensible folk. But even we are prone to moments of deep and profound stupidity. Residents of Michelle Bachmann’s congressional district seem particularly vulnerable to the stupid bug. Consider this quote by one of her constituents at a recent town hall meeting:

I’ll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism.

Words fail, don’t they? The gentleman who offered up this gem is also a town council member, which leads me to suspect that the residents of that town have incredibly low standards for their local leaders or they just enjoy a good joke.

Behold, the precursor to my robot nurse:

There’s a bit more R&D that needs to be done before I can order the Jessica Biel model, but I guess this is a start. I’m not sure I’m down with the whole bear motif, though. I’m actually surprised that the Japanese went with a robot design that isn’t a half-naked, doe-eyed prepubescent girl; perhaps that’s next year’s model. 

Hollywood will probably never get World War II completely out of its system. Fifty years from now, we’ll be watching the hologram remake of Saving Private Ryan and raving about the unflinching realism of the D-Day scene. WWII as a historical period lends itself particularly well to the devices of cinematic storytelling. The bad guys are clearly defined, the locales are distinctive, the props are iconic, and the ending is never in doubt. In Inglourious Basterds, director Quentin Tarantino demonstrates a solid understanding of the conventions of the WWII movie. He also introduces a dense verbosity and a visceral brutality that isn’t found in most war movies.

Basterds is ostensibly about a group of American Jewish soldiers who are sent into Nazi-occupied France to terrorize the Germans with acts of unspeakable violence, but the Basterds’ screen time is surprisingly limited. Much of the film centers on a French Jewish woman who, years earlier, escapes a Nazi massacre and manages to blend into Parisian life. Her fate and the fates of the Basterds intertwine as a result of a series of outlandish plot twists typical of a Tarantino movie. It’s important to remember that Tarantino is using WWII as a springboard for a more fantastical story that is not rooted in historical fact. But the liberties he takes with the facts are easily forgiven in light of some truly enthralling filmmaking. There’s a remarkable scene set in a divey French bar that is a textbook example of building and sustaining tension until the orgiastic violence of the climax. It’s funny and bloody and filled with sharply written dialogue, the hallmarks of a Tarantino movie.

You either like this kind of thing or you don’t. I left the theater smiling.

I had the opportunity to go sailing for the first time today. Long ago, back in 2008 at a silent auction, I bid on a sailing trip offered by a friend of mine and we finally made good on it today. My experience with riding in airplanes did translate somewhat to this form of transportation. As long as there’s a place to plop down my ventilator and me, I’m usually good to go. And it was pretty great. My brain is usually a hamster that never gets off the wheel, but the combination of sun on my face and the sway of the boat somehow managed to take my higher cognitive functions offline for a while. Not a bad way to end the summer.

Photographic evidence is below. My nurse and my friend took turns supporting my ginormous melon of a head, which was no small feat.