I’m busy reshuffling my Netflix queue. In an effort to bolster my cineaste credentials, I’ve decided to explore the French New Wave movement. I figure that my knowledge of Francois Truffaut should extend beyond his appearance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Any recommendations?
From the Department-of-No-Fucking-Way, here’s a story about a young man in a wheelchair who was crossing the street when his handlebars somehow became embedded in the grille of an oncoming truck. He was carried along at speeds of 50 MPH before the police finally managed to inform the oblivious driver that something was amiss. Remarkably, nobody was hurt.
I will not be at all surprised when this incident is recreated in the next Jackass movie.
Who has tickets to see Prince next month? Why, that would be me. After living in Minneapolis for almost twelve years, I figured it was about time that I experienced the spectacle of the city’s most famous son in a live performance. From what I’ve heard, Prince’s concerts can be either puzzlingly experimental or unabashedly pop. I don’t mind some surprises, but I would like to hear “Purple Rain”, “Raspberry Beret”–songs that I strongly associate with a wasted youth spent watching MTV whenever my parents weren’t around.
In the New Yorker a couple issues back, they ran a profile of a Microsoft engineer who is attempting to record and preserve every aspect of his daily life. Every e-mail he’s written, every photograph that he’s taken or appeared in, he even records his conversations with a small digital recorder. He seems to think that before long, everyone will be documenting their lives on the fly.
I think I’ve previously mentioned my compulsion for saving old e-mails and archiving my college papers and atrocious poetry. And I have sometimes daydreamed what it would be like to have some sort of brain augment to capture, store, and catalog every second of waking life. Think of all the facts I could harvest from such a record. How many hours of my life have I spent in front of the computer? How many kisses have I received and from whom? Did I really say that awful thing to you that one time? Imagine if each one of us was constantly and subconsciously compiling a personal almanac that could be referenced at any time. It could be a great way to correct misunderstandings (“See, I did return that tennis racket I borrowed from you.”). But it might also drive home the unceasing and cumulative tedium of existence (I’ve spent how many hours of my life in the bathroom?”).
Time for another look at the songs I can’t get out of my head:
For people with severe physical disabilities like mine, the fear of institutionalization is never far removed from our thoughts. It looms at the periphery of our daily lives, an ominous reminder of the precariousness of our independence. The closest I’ve come to institutionalization is when I was thirteen and first put on the ventilator. Hospital officials suggested that I be put in a facility for medically fragile children, which would have required my parents to surrender legal custody of me. My parents refused and that was the end of the discussion.
Through luck or circumstance, I’ve never been in serious danger of being placed in a facility since then. But I recognize that my comfortable living situation hangs by a tenuous thread. If I suddenly lost a couple nurses, I would be in serious trouble. I don’t have much family in the area to provide backup and it takes time to find replacement staff. I’m fairly confident I could figure something out, but it would be touch-and-go for a while.
Remaining independent and keeping myself out of a facility is probably one of the primary driving forces of my life. It takes precedence over any other long-term goals I might have. I can’t have a career, I can’t see the world, I can’t have a relationship if I’m warehoused in a nursing home. Fortunately, it’s not an immediate concern at the moment. It’s more of a low-level anxiety that can usually be ignored, but it will most likely never go away.
Battlestar Galactica will be ending after its fourth season airs in 2008. As much as I will miss my weekly dose of Gaius Baltar’s pompous sniveling and Caprica Six’s icy hotness, the producers are probably right to bring the story to an end before inertia sets in (I’m looking at you, Chris Carter). Ideally, the success of BSG will foster the development of more intelligent science fiction, although the Darwinian economics of television typically don’t select for intelligence. In the meantime, I suppose I better start saving up for the inevitable Super Exclusive Collector’s Edition DVD Set (Ultimate Super Exclusive Collector’s Edition DVD Set sold separately).
Tell me if I did a bad thing here. I’ve been mulling ways to increase the number of hits to the blog. One day, I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for spinal muscular atrophy. I noticed that it included a mention of Ami Ankliwetz, who is featured in the the horribly-titled documentary 39 Pounds of Love (I’ve commented on the film previously). And I thought, I’m at least as interesting as far as external sources go. So I did a little editing and added a link to here. And ever since, I receive about 5-10 hits daily from the Wikipedia link.
Shameless self-promotion or an appropriate contribution to a body of knowledge? You decide.
The Historian is a novel in search of a coherent narrative structure and a paring knife. The premise is interesting enough, if a bit rehashed: the vampire Dracula is alive and well in the mid-20th century and making life difficult for several scholars around the world. Rarely has a novel made such a concerted effort to depict life in academia with what is intended to be excitement. but any thrills the plot generates are effectively rendered stillborn by the plodding pace and the novel’s baffling construction. Flashbacks can be an effective narrative device if used judiciously. Unfortunately, the author chooses to tell much of the story via extended flashbacks that kill the forward momentum of the main story. And then there are the flashbacks-within-flashbacks. I’m not one of your MFA instructors, Ms. Kostova. Put away your bag of tricks and just tell the damn story. And quit having your characters exclaim “Alas!” and “Alack!” Even during the Eisenhower years, nobody talked like this.
Overall, this is a mediocre retread of vampire mythos. You’re better off picking up Bram Stoker’s classic. It’s shorter and the dialog, while baroque, is less likely to make your eyes roll.
Next up is Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin.
Today’s Strib features an article about disability and sexuality, while also highlighting a local entrepreneur with a disability who has developed a device that facilitates sex for people with physical impairments. I haven’t had a chance to check out the particulars of this invention, but if it’s similar to other devices I’ve seen, I assume it provides support for maintaining certain sexual positions. Speaking from experience, I can attest that a little creative engineering is required to achieve a happy ending for both parties. And sometimes the positions that work aren’t necessarily the most natural for the human body to maintain. It’s good to see more devices like this going to market. See, capitalism does work.
Naturally, I’m curious to try out some of these inventions myself. The disability community needs responsible, impartial reviews of products like this and who better than a semi-respected blogger like me to provide such a service. But that will have to wait until I find a willing, er, collaborator.