The trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming WWII film, Inglorious Basterds (the misspelling is Tarantino’s, not mine), is now available on Apple’s website. The violence is mostly implied rather than shown, but it leaves little doubt that geysers of blood and mangled entrails will be splattered across the screen. I’m not sure I buy Brad Pitt’s Kentucky-fried accent, but I have a feeling this movie will be winking at the audience for the entire running time.
To pick up yesterday’s travel theme, the local press is speculating that some of the stimulus money might be used to start work on a high-speed train corridor between the Twin Cities and Chicago. Although it probably won’t be completed until I’m pushing 50, I like the idea of being able to hop on a train and arrive a few hours later in the third-largest city in America. And unlike air travel, I won’t have to get out of my chair and I won’t have to put up with getting frisked by some overeager TSA agent who also wants to swab my ventilator for explosive residue. They might even build a branch to Green Bay, which could spare my parents from making the long, boring drive to visit me and my sister (although I’m probably overdue for a trip back to the Land of Cheeseheads).
When it comes to planning trips and vacations, most people with disabilities have to act as their own travel agents. Most mainstream travel agencies have no clue about how to find an accessible hotel room, book a wheelchair-accessible taxi, and otherwise ensure a barrier-free holiday for a paying client. Craig Grimes, a British entrepreneur who is also a paraplegic, has created an on-line travel agency aimed at travelers with disabilities. According to Grimes, the site will offer detailed information on accessible lodging, transportation, and other services.
If it lives up to its promise, this site could be a boon to travelers with disabilities. It’s tremendously difficult to get accurate information from a desk clerk on a hotel room’s layout. And even the most meticulous research doesn’t prevent the occasional surprise (like discovering that foot-high curb in front of my hotel in Paris). The article mentions that the site will include San Francisco in its initial offering of travel destinations. Hmm, I’ve been meaning to visit my brother…
Here’s a choice passage from yesterday’s Times article about twentysomethings trying to get by in the Big Apple without health insurance.
“My first reaction was to start laughing — I just kept saying, ‘No way, no way,’ ” Alanna Boyd, a 28-year-old receptionist, recalled of the $17,398 — including $13 for the use of a television — that she was charged after spending 46 hours in October at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan with diverticulitis, a digestive illness. “I could have gone to a major university for a year. Instead, I went to the hospital for two days.”
The article goes on to describe how the hip and uninsured are resorting to diagnoses via the Internet and treating themselves with expired medications. New York’s governor is proposing a change in law that would allow young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance policies until age 29, but that won’t be of much help to the vast majority of the state’s uninsured young adults. Most of them also make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, even if they work a minimum-wage job.
As Dr. Atul Gawande pointed out in his terrific article on health care reform in The New Yorker, “In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty.” The fact that a short hospital stay can saddle a young person with crushing debt is only one of the many cruelties to be found in our current health care system. President Obama has promised to make health care reform a major component of his forthcoming budget plan. Let’s hope it makes life a little less cruel for the folks in this article and everyone else coping without health insurance.
One other interesting note about the Times article: it mentions a young woman who got hit by a car and subsequently turned her experiences into a one-woman show called Hot Cripple. I just want to point out that she totally stole the title of my planned memoir.
After years of whining to my friends about not being able to find a book club, I decided to take matters into my own hands and started my own on Meetup. I have no idea if it will take off, but it’s attracted enough interest for me to realize that I might actually have to set up a meeting. Any suggestions for our first selection? And please, no cribbing from Oprah’s list of approved titles unless you want me to permanently lose all respect for you.
And if you’re curious about our budding literary circle and want to join in on the fun, e-mail me and I’ll send you the details.
Late last week, Vice President Biden announced the appointment of Kareem Dale as Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy. Dale is a longtime Obama associate and served as his disability advisor during the campaign. Dale is an attorney and he has a visual impairment. According to Biden, Dale will “have absolutely direct access to the president.”
Assuming that Dale really will have the president’s ear, it’s an encouraging sign that the administration will give serious attention to disability issues. In his remarks, Biden also acknowledged that the disability rights movement is part of the larger struggle for civil rights:
I started off in the civil rights movement. This is a civil rights movement. This is a movement to make sure that we guarantee that all peoples in the world have the opportunity to succeed to the degree they are capable.
That’s great, Mr. Vice President. Does that mean we can finally get around to ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities? Not to pressure you or anything, but Qatar and Azerbaijan have already ratified it. I’m just saying.
The last few episodes of Battlestar Galactica have been exceedingly good. Bleak and depressing, but really good. The writers deserve heaps of credit for letting the characters be true to their natures. When the chips are down, Adama turns into a tyrant, Gaeta becomes a self-righteous traitor, and the president wallows in self-pity. Throw in a few millennia-old robots and you have some pretty compelling television. I’m going to miss this series once it’s gone in a few weeks, but it’s good to see go out in top form. There’s still plenty of time for the show to jump the shark, although that doesn’t seem likely.
I’d better start saving up for the DVD box set.
A new dating website, Til-Death-Do-Us-Part, is aimed at people with terminal illnesses. I can’t decide how I feel about this. It might offer a venue where people can be forthright about their health status and find open-minded companions. Or it might be a flocking ground for devotees, predators, and other unsavory characters. But there’s probably some kind of law of nature that requires every dating site has to have its proportionate share of jerks.
I’m still trying to get venture capital funding for a dating site aimed at early-model cyborgs like myself. I keep telling them there’s an untapped segment of the dating population who gets totally turned on by the sound of mechanical ventilation and the sight of extra body orifices. They keep saying “Prove it.” So the market research continues.
A few disability-related links to close out the week:
If you’re a junior attorney in a large law firm and you still have a job to go to tomorrow, consider yourself lucky. A flurry of pink slips went out today to associates in major firms around the country including Faegre & Benson, a Minneapolis firm that recruited several of my former classmates. My sympathies go out to any 2L or 3L who’s seeking employment. You might want to consider doing what a friend of mine did. After she practiced law for a few years, she decided that she wanted to study medicine. So she took the MCAT and got accepted into Stanford med school.
(I have some freakishly smart friends. Just thinking about it is giving me an inferiority complex)
But back to my original point. Sure, you’ll have to take on some additional debt, but you’ll get to wear a lab coat and ogle the naked bodies of strangers. That’s way more fun than writing a brief on eminent domain.