Before I go any further, let me get one thing straight. I like my life just fine. In fact, things have turned out a lot better than I ever thought they could. Having said that, I’m also someone with an imagination. If I woke up tomorrow morning and discovered that my DNA had somehow patched itself and I was just another able-bodied dude, these are the five things I would want to do first:

• Eat a cherry. I choked on one of these as a kid and never touched them again.
• Learn to drive. It can’t be as complicated as it looks.
• Get a tan on both my front and back.
• Backpack alone across Europe.
• How to put this delicately. Rhymes with “faster rate”. Actually, this one might have to go to the top of the list.

Jack Nicholson gave a fine performance as the Joker in the 1989 Batman film, but it’s a performance accompanied by a wink and a smile. Nicholson’s Joker has a cartoonish quality that detracts from his menace. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker is one of the most nihilistic villains I’ve seen on screen. Ledger imbues the character with a twitchy, sharp-edged psychosis that is both terrifying and enthralling. It’s truly a shame that such a gifted actor is no longer with us.

This movie could easily have become a one-man show, but the rest of the cast is strong enough to hold their own. The complex story elevates the movie above traditional comic book fare and the action scenes are operatic in staging and execution. Director Christopher Nolan brings the same dark, brooding sensibility that he first exhibited in Memento (which you should really should check out if you haven’t seen it). He gives us a brave vision of a hero’s place in amoral, vicious world.

A new version of the Barbie doll is arriving on storeshelves in September. The doll is clad in leather and…fishnet stockings.

I want to go on record as saying I had nothing to do with this idea. As far as I’m concerned, fishnets should only be worn by living, breathing adult women. I don’t appreciate some toy company appropriating my fetish and marketing it to grade-schoolers.

The BBC is currently running a reality series called Britain’s Missing Top Model, in which eight women with disabilities compete for a modeling contract. I can’t judge the series on its content because I’m on the wrong side of the pond and can’t watch the on-line episodes. It’s no surprise that all of the contestants are quite pretty and telegenic. After all, this is television. While the show’s concept strikes me as incredibly cheesy, but it’s difficult for me to judge whether it strays into exploitation. The BBC strikes me as an entity that has at least some clue about how to portray people with disabilities. Perhaps someone can send me the DVD collection so I can have a more informed opinion.

I’d make a terrible model. Can you imagine me in some Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, all bare-chested and oiled down? I do get compliments on my eyes, so maybe if I was just photographed from the nose up.

A recent survey commissioned by Disaboom (sorry, but the name just make me cringe) finds that 52% of Americans would rather be dead than severely disabled. The survey also reveals that individuals with higher levels of income or education are more likely to prefer death over disability. Unsurprisingly, older people are likely to be more accepting of a severe disability than younger people.

The only thing that surprises me about these results is that the percentage of respondents favoring death wasn’t higher. Otherwise, this is pretty ho-hum stuff. But I’m also a little frustrated with the survey’s methodology. Here’s how the researchers framed the question:

Which would you choose: Living with a severe disability that forever alters your ability to live an independent life, or death?

I mean, that’s kind of a stark choice, isn’t it? It doesn’t get at the nuances of actually living with a severe disability. Maybe something like this would be better:

Which would you choose:

death?

I realize that’s an equally horrible survey question, but you get my point.