I guess I’m not surprised by the Senate’s vote to open the ANWR to oil drilling. I’m not convinced that it represents the environmental catastrophe that some make it out to be, but I’m certainly not thrilled with the decision. To claim that drilling in the ANWR will relieve our dependence on foreign oil is delusional thinking. If we believe the most liberal estimates, the ANWR contains about ten billion barrels of oil. On average, the United States consumes about twenty million barrels of oil a day. The oil in ANWR represents enough oil to completely meet our needs for about a year and a half. Yes, fellow Americans, energy independence is now within our reach. The only people really benefiting from this are the Alaskans’ pocketbooks; more oil flowing means bigger oil subsidy checks in the mailbox of each Alaskan.
I now expect to receive the severed head of a dead polar bear in the mail from some pissed-off Alaskan.

TiVo has signed a deal with Comcast to provide software for the cable company’s DVR boxes. The new boxes should be available sometime in 2006. This should put at least a temporary hold on the TiVo deathwatch. Now, if only TiVo would sign a deal with Time Warner, preferably before my current TiVo box dies.
A nasty little virus has been migrating around my workplace over the last couple months. People who’ve had it say that it kicked their ass all the way into the next week. I’ve managed to avoid it so far, but I’m getting paranoid. If I’m in a meeting with someone who’s coughing or sneezing, I’ll sit in the opposite corner of the room. I’m thinking about asking everyone who comes into my office wear a filter mask. I’ve even drafted plans for a plastic bubble that will envelop my entire wheelchair. Speaking of, wasn’t that the cheesiest movie ever. It’s so cheesy that to call it such is an insult to cheese. It’s the Cheez Wiz of television movies. John Travolta should have dropped dead as soon as he stepped out of that damn spacesuit. Now, that would have been cool.

I’m certainly no expert on terrorism, but the recent descent of the IRA into thuggery reminds me of the collapse of Shining Path in Peru. Once Peruvians got tired of the indiscriminate killings practiced by SP (and with more than a little help from President Fujimori’s dictatorial rule and merciless crackdown on terrorists), the group seemed to lose sight of its original leftist goals and took up narcotrafficking and kidnapping for ransom. Now we see the IRA engaging in common criminal enterprises such as bank robberies and barroom killings. And then they try to make amends for the slaying by offering to shoot those responsible. Was that really intended to impress anyone? The IRA needs to come to terms with its own irrelevance and Sinn Fein needs to start behaving like a sincere, responsible partner for peace. Perhaps by St. Patrick’s Day 2006, we will see a return to the original vision of the Good Friday accords. The people of Northern Ireland have waited long enough.

I owe various people e-mails and edited manuscripts, so I’m keeping this short tonight. Random thoughts: I was getting my the ramp on my van fixed earlier this week. While I was waiting, this old guy who I think owns the place comes up to me and starts prattling on like he knows me. I realize he’s mistaking me for someone else, but I don’t say anything. “How old are you now?” he asks me in this you-must-be-a-big-boy-now tone. I should have asked him the same, but I was polite. I’m always polite. But someday I’m going to get tired of all the condescending, infantizing bullshit I put up with and go medieval on someone’s ass. And it will probably be some poor little old lady, but I’ll still get a sick kind of pleasure out of it. Because sometimes I just want to be bad. I want to drink, ingest hallucinogenic drugs, urinate in public, tell a cop to fuck off, date a stripper, proposition the next pretty girl I see in the elevator, and generally be a bastard. Just for a day or two. But I’m not sure my superego would ever let me do such a thing. My head would probably explode or something equally unpleasant.

I’ve mentioned previously the federal grant I’ve been working on for the past few months. The official press release for the grant has been published. It’s essentially a research project; we’ll be offering Medicaid-type services to a limited number of employed people with mental illness who don’t yet qualify for traditional Medicaid. The idea is to test whether a set of early interventions will prevent these people from becoming completely disabled and ending up on Social Security. I think this project has the potential to yield some interesting results and I’m looking forward to getting it up and running .
The book is now past 100,000 words. I’m hoping that it will cap at 150,000, but that should come down once I start editing. I’m worried I may be chasing too many plot threads, but I’ve lost all perspective.