The 19th Floor

Bionic Woman

Apr 042006

A short entry tonight because it’s past nine and I just got home. Via Digg, here’s a story about a woman, blinded several years ago in a car accident, who has had some vision restored with the assistance of a small eyeglass-mounted camera that is jacked into her brain. The technology requires her to wear a bulky computer and she can only see flashes of light, but it offers yet another glimpse into a future where neural implants are the next wave of innovation in medicine. Between genetic manipulation and cybernetic augments like this, our collective definition of “human” might need some serious reworking in the next hundred years.

Teenage Angst

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Apr 032006

I attended a performance of Hamlet at the Guthrie last Friday. This is the last play to be performed on the Guthrie’s original stage before moving to its new facility in the fall. This particular interpretation employed a World War II theme in which the men wore suits and tuxedos with tails and the women wore dresses and big hats. It wasn’t the most original reimagining and the director added a few lines to elicit laughs from the audience, but the lead actor was appropriately manic and brooding. Now, I feel like picking up an annotated collection of Shakespeare’s plays to go over the phrases whose meanings were more obscure. I took an entire semester of Shakespearean lit in college and I had this great hardcover anthology, but unfortunately I borrowed it from a friend because I was too cheap to buy it.

Not Going Anywhere

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Apr 022006

You guys didn’t really think I was gone, did you? The whole bit about Scientology simply screamed “April Fool’s!”

However, I promise that I’ll never say anything more about departing the blogosphere unless I absolutely mean it.

Regular programming resumes tomorrow.

Hanging It Up

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Apr 012006

This morning, I woke up and realized I have absolutely nothing left to say. After all, how many entries can one person write about how incompetent the Bush Administration is? How many entries can one person write about his assorted geek obsessions, most of which are of interest only to the writer? And I’m sure you’re as tired of reading about my hapless attempts to find a girlfriend as much as I’m tired of writing about them. I mean, who am I kidding? I’m never going to get a book deal from posting any of this crap. I’ve basically been phoning it in for the past few months, anyway. It’s time to find a new hobby, one that doesn’t keep me chained to this computer. In fact, I’m seriously considering donating my computer to an elementary school or something. When I think of all the hours I’ve wasted at this desk, I’m filled with a profound emptiness that is starting to make Scientology look pretty damn appealing. There’s a Scientology center just down the street. Maybe I’ll go in for a personality test later today.

So long, everybody. It’s been real.

Matters Of Principle

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Mar 312006

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to move my money out of TCF Bank. The notion that my hard-earned cash is supporting those wingnuts over at Powerline finally became too noxious for me to tolerate in good conscience. I opened an account this morning at Affinity Plus Credit Union and the difference in service was immediately apparent. The person who helped me set up the account was quite pleasant and it felt like I was dealing with a real person rather than a corporate cog. I also like the idea that a non-profit is managing my money. I’m not thrilled about having to edit all of my automatic withdrawal information, but I can accomplish that on a Sunday afternoon. I think I’m also going to set up an interest-bearing savings account at one of those on-line banks like ING. If I’m going to do all that traveling I discuss here, I’d better start replenishing my funds.

Hell Is Other People

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Mar 302006

To the woman I rode up with on the elevator today: I’m sure you’re a great person, but it really wasn’t necessary to speak to me like I’m a lobotomized toddler. It’s people like you that make me think I should, before every social interaction with a stranger, hand him or her a business card that says, “I’m a 32-year-old man with an attorney’s license, a full-time job, and a violent distaste for condescension.” It’s people like you that can make life so damn exhausting sometimes because 90% percent of the population sees me the same way you do. It’s people like you that make me want to buy an island somewhere and invite all my gimpy friends to live there with me so I don’t have to prove myself to anyone ever again.

But my nurse thought you were hot, so I guess you have that going for you.

Land Of The Rising Sun

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Mar 292006

One place still on my list of Places to See in the World is Japan (Tokyo, specifically). I’ve always thought of Japan as a country that isn’t terribly accommodating to people with disabilities, but those perceptions were corrected when I read Tom Shakespeare’s article on his visit to an accessible Tokyo. Maybe I can become one of those celebrities who is virtually unknown in America but who is a minor deity in Japan. I just have to do something that appeals to Japanese sensibilities, like inventing a wheelchair that can transform into a sixty-foot-tall battle droid capable of leveling entire cities.

Honestly, I don’t get most Japanese anime. Lots of maladjusted protagonists with destructive impulses and the creepy, doe-eyed, hypersexualized women who love them. Bleh.

Critic At Large: Case Histories

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Mar 282006

Case Histories is ostensibly a mystery novel, but it’s really about loss, the ways in which life can violently veer out of control, and how people endure in the wake of tragedies that rob them of the ones they love. The novel weaves together the stories of three separate families, each of them seeking ways to heal long-open wounds inflicted by another’s death or disappearance. While Kate Atkinson paints an unflinchingly bleak and desolate picture of human existence, she imbues the book with moments of dry humor–scattered asides and observations that her characters make in the midst of even the most horrific of circumstance. Like a lot of British writers, Atkinson understands that the world isn’t necessarily a good or safe place, but that sometimes people need to laugh in the face of its assorted cruelties.

I need to pick up my reading pace. Next up, Stephen King’s Cell or Ian McEwans’s Saturday, depending on my mood. I’m also looking for nonfiction recommendations.

Rethinking That Vacation To Pyongyang

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Mar 272006

Reuters reports that North Korea has very few, if any, citizens with disabilities. One physician who fled North Korea alleges that infants with disabilities are killed soon after birth as part of government-sanctioned efforts to maintain the “purity” of the North Korean people. Assuming this is true, I suppose it’s not exactly shocking news. Authoritarian regimes are fond of segregating and even exterminating people with disabilities for purposes related to both eugenics and propaganda. After all, you can’t boast of your people’s genetic superiority if people with disabilities are mugging for the news cameras and making a nuisance of themselves. If North Korea’s isolation ever ends, I would be very interested in learning the true scope of its maltreatment and abuse of people with disabilities.

Getting My Groove On

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Mar 262006

The Kleptones, the mashup artists response for the Queen-inspired A Night at the Hip-Hopera, just released a new album entitled 24 Hours. I’m going to give it a listen and post my thoughts later.

A friend asked me to post a link to his burgeoning on-line business, Getella. I so don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. I can barely sell my allotted tickets for a fundraiser next Sunday.

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