Some of you have probably already heard about Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden and her brilliant proposal that people should barter for their health care. She suggested chickens as one form of currency. Naturally, I started wondering how many chickens I’d have to have on hand to pay for my 24-hour nursing care. My condo isn’t that big, so I’m not where I would put the coop. And what if one of my nurses is a vegetarian? How many eggs equal one chicken? And can I pay for my ventilator on the chicken-installment plan or is it going to set me back a couple goats?

Keep thinking those big ideas, Republicans.

Margaret Atwood is one of those authors whom I’ve long wanted to read but never got around to actually picking up her books. That oversight was corrected when my book club selected Oryx and Crake as our monthly selection. The book tells the story of the friendship between Jimmy and Crake, a couple of privileged kids who grow up in one of the heavily guarded corporate Compounds that dot the near-future American landscape. The world beyond the Compound walls is a grim one. Climate change has ravaged the planet and most people live in the blighted urban centers known as pleeblands. Genetically engineered pathogens run rampant in the pleeblands and sometimes infiltrate the Compounds. But the corporations that operate the Compounds are also engineering new plants and animals that might prove commercially successful in this rapidly changing world.  Against this backdrop, Jimmy and Crake grow up, drift apart, and reconnect just before the world ends. They also both fall in love with a beautiful and secretive woman named Oryx.

Atwood’s dystopia contains a lot of familiar elements: megalomaniacal corporations, a privileged elite living in isolation from the suffering masses, science run amok. While these elements are a little well-worn, her characters are nuanced and complicated; especially Jimmy. Jimmy yearns for the approval of both Oryx and Crake, but he can never quite get beyond his own narcissism, not until the world ends and even then it’s a struggle for him. Without Jimmy, this book would just be another stroll through Armageddon. Jimmy acts as our guide and our imperfect voice of conscience as we travel with him through his broken world. His presence elevates the book from mediocre to something pretty great.

Incidentally, Atwood just published The Year of the Flood, which tells a parallel story set in the same world. It’s definitely a must-read for me now.

Kick-Ass is a violent and funny examination of why more regular people don’t appointed themselves as superheroes and defenders of the innocent. As the movie graphically depicts, being a superhero isn’t all that glamorous. You might get lucky once and manage to take down a few petty thugs, but most of the time you will be woefully outnumbered and outgunned. But even that knowledge doesn’t stop high school outcast and comic aficionado Dave Lizewski from creating a goofy costume and taking to the streets as a masked vigilante. He nearly is killed in his first attempt to mete out justice, but he soon gains a kind of celebrity status on the Internet after one of his more successful forays is captured on a phonecam. He also discovers that he’s not the only costumed avenger on the streets.

The movie has generated some controversy for its portrayal of Hit Girl, a crime-fighting 11-year-old girl who brutally dispatches her opponents while swearing like a character straight out of Tarrantino’s oeuvre. And sure, it’s a bit discomfittig to hear a little girl say “cock” and get viciously punched in the face, but it’s consistent with the movie’s over-the-top tone. The movie is in love with the idea of regular people as superheroes, even if those regular people are kids. Most comic book movies are carefully formulated efforts to cash in on known franchise. Kick-Ass, based on a more obscure series, is profanely endearing and one of the better examples of the genre.

I’m not in the market for a new computer right now and probably won’t be for at least another year, but I spent a little time pricing out components for what could be considered a mid-range system. I wasn’t particularly surprised to see that the price came out to be the same as my last build, but with a significant boost in raw power and storage. My current rig is no slouch and can still handle just about everything that I throw at it, although it is beginning to gasp a little when I go crazy with the multitasking. That was difficult to imagine a few years ago when I was amazed at just how snappily it performed.

And there’s no way I’m getting a Mac. The additional cost is considerable and I can get just as much performance for several hundred dollars less, not to mention the fact that Windows 7 is just as shiny as OS X.

A colleague informed me today that this blog is now blocked by the web filters at work. I checked for myself and, sure enough, I received a warning message stating that the site was blocked under the somewhat curious category of “Message Forums”. I’m guessing someone finally got fed up with my frequent critiques of the governor, my obsession with fishnets, or some combination of the two. While this move may slightly affect my hit counts (a few of my co-workers would check out the blog over lunch), I view as a kind of affirmation of my corrupting influence. I’m now an official malcontent whose efforts to speak truth to power are threatening enough to merit censorship. Today, it’s just the Minnesota state government, but soon it might be the whole of China. I’ll be the Salman Rushdie of the digital age.

I’d better start hiring my security team of Amazonian women whose uniforms will consist entirely of fishnets and Lycra. I’ve already done the sketches.