Once again, Santa failed to deliver my Tricia Helfer look-alike robotic nurse with the strapless red dress (sold separately). And I tried so hard to be good this year. I’ll attempt to drown my disappointment in spiked eggnog and Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums. There’s always next year, I guess.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. Now get off the computer and go call your grandmother to thank her for that sweater.

Here’s another article teasing me about the possibilities of writing with a neural interface. The article describes a more invasive technique for measuring neural input: placing electrodes directly on the brain. That’s a little further than I’m willing to go, but I stand ready to be a guinea pig for the first implantable chip. And by implantable, I mean that it can be implanted inside my melon with a small incision that won’t mess up my hair.

Until then, I’ll stick with my circa-1987 headset technology. It’s old and decidedly unsexy, but it gets the job done. And it keeps my neck muscles buff.

During the first few minutes of Avatar, I thought “This is pretty cool.” By the thirty-minute mark, I thought “This is absolutely stunning.” By the end of the first hour, I thought “I need to see this again.”

Avatar is set in the mid-22nd century on the forest moon of Pandora. Earth is dying, but the discovery of a highly valuable mineral prompts humans to establish a mining colony on Pandora. In order to win the trust of the native Na’vi, the corporation leading the expedition creates genetically-altered Na’vi “avatars” that can be remotely controlled by human operators. Jake Sully, a former Marine who is a paraplegic as a result of a combat injury, is brought to Pandora to operate one of these avatars. Through a series of events, sully befriends a Na’vi woman and her tribe. But things take a grim turn when the humans decide to forcibly move the tribe in order to mine the rich vein of mineral beneath their village. I’m not giving too much away by disclosing that Sully decides to make a stand with the Na’vi.

Cameron’s attempt at world-building is a marvel of artistry and technical wizardry. Pandora’s vibrant and lethal ecosystem is fully realized to dazzling effect, but Cameron really outdoes himself by breathing life into the Na’vi. They are every bit as expressive and nuanced in both movement and emotion as their human counterparts. Without them, the movie is just so much eye candy and explosions. The Na’vi provide the film’s emotional core.

The story itself is a bit kludgy and bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain western. And I could have done without the forays into Gaia-inspired mysticism. I’m not sure why Hollywood has to portray alien civilizations as either technological utopias or primitive utopias. But that doesn’t make Avatar any less of a crowning achievement and one of the best science fiction movies of the decade.

Congratulations to my kid sister, who gets married today. The little girl with the impossibly curly hair who screamed bloody murder at me whenever I called her “Cushy Butt” is now all grown up. Best wishes to her and her new husband as they embark on a life together.

Note to self: bring cash to bribe the DJ so that I don’t have to listen to a single Celine Dion song.

I missed it when it was first published, but this poignant Times essay about a man with polio who falls in love with and eventually marries one of his former attendants is worth reading. The author perfectly encapsulates the profound insecurities that plague people with disabilities when contemplating romance. Or at least, he encapsulates my insecurities:

And I was the keeper of an obscene little secret I had known perhaps since I had been stuck in the iron lung, and surely from some vague moment later, the point where I realized I would never walk again. It is a thing that will sit rancid in my gut until the day I die, a thing that until then had eaten away at any illusion that love and marriage for me would be like it was in books or movies. And it was this: I would be physically dependent upon those who might love me. I am a chore, an obligation, and I will ever be so. I could not rationalize how a woman might love me and not soon come to hate the millstone I believed myself to be.

I’m more than a little familiar with the horribly seductive ease of believing the worst about oneself. It can become a kind of mantra that takes less and less effort to recite. And on these dark, cold winter nights when loneliness pays more frequent visits, it can be mighty tempting to hold regular pity parties with a guest list of one. It can be mighty tempting to think things will always be this way. But articles like this remind me that I really need to get over myself and just let life happen.