Anyone been reading Doonesbury this week? Looks like B.D. has become a new citizen in the Kingdom of Gimp. I’m more than a little curious to see how the strip addresses his adjustment to a life with a disability. Will Boopsie freak and leave him? Will he get his coaching job back? Trudeau gets big props from me for not simply killing off a character. The thousands of wounded coming home from Iraq are, to be quite honest, a bigger story than the number of dead. The military has the medical technology to treat wounds that probably would have killed these soldiers ten or twenty years ago, but now they’re coming home with a range of disabilities that will require treatment and other support services for years to come. I think it would be fascinating to do a longitudinal study that examines the quality of life of wounded soldiers now compared with a decade in the future. At a time when states are slashing budgets for disability services, what kind of homecoming will these soldiers face?

I TiVo’d Chris Rock’s latest HBO special and got around to watching it last night. Hilarious. I did notice that the audience seemed a little subdued during his more political material and got more lively when he switched to more bawdy humor. Rock’s bit on the difference between being rich and being wealthy was one of my favorites. “Shaq is rich. The guy who signs Shaq’s checks? Wealthy!” Pretty much sums up everything. If you watch it, also pay attention to his analogy regarding affirmative action. Brilliant.
I need to clean out my bedroom closet. I have clothes collecting dust that probably date back to high school. Don’t tell anyone, but I used to wear a lot of sweat pants in high school. Sweat pants are kind of the de facto fashion choice for people with physical disabilities. They’re easy to get off and on and they’re loose fitting so they don’t cause pressure sores. And I wore them all the time until I realized that I looked like a complete dork in them. I think that someone in an episode of Seinfeld once said that wearing sweats is like announcing to the world “I give up!” Well, I haven’t given up and even if I’m on my deathbed, I’m not letting anyone ever put another pair of sweats on me ever again. If I’m gonna go, I wanna go out stylin’.

I started my search for a new nurse today. I’m a little more confident about the process this time around and I have a pretty good sense of the type of person I want working with me. So I’m following up on some leads from my current nurses and I’ve also sent ads to some of the nursing schools around here. Incidentally, if any of you know of a nurse in the metro area who might be looking for some part-time work, send them my way. Here’s the ad:
NURSE: Unique home care opportunity for RN/LPN. Client is active 30-yr-old man who is ventilator dependent, living in DT Mpls. Mostly evening/weekend shifts. LPN: $27/hr; RN: $37/hr. Applicants should be outgoing, laid back, have good interpersonal skills. Vent experience preferred but not required. Ideal for someone looking for part-time/casual hours. For more information, e-mail Mark at msiegel1@mn.rr.com.

I feel awful for the women in the adult film industry business who contracted HIV from a fellow performer. Yes, porn is a risky business, but so are lots of other jobs. Some people will condemn these women for their behavior and loudly proclaim that they deserved to be infected. I’m not interested in condemning anyone. People get into porn for any number of reasons, but nobody deserves to face death because of that choice. My only hope is that they receive appropriate medical care and that the industry mandates protected sex for all performers.

They found Dru Sjodin’s body today. I hope that brings some small measure of comfort to her family. I also suspect that this development will reinvigorate the debate from last fall when our governor suggested that we bring back the death penalty to Minnesota. The judge for whom I once worked told me that he would quit the bench if that ever came to pass. I think a lot of judges would be really ambivalent about imposing death on someone. Minnesota may be an increasingly conservative state, but I’d be shocked if we brought back capital punishment. There’s enough remnants of progressive Scandinavian sensibilities around here to keep our bloodthirstier impulses in check. But I do hope the county attorney’s office can build a strong case and incarcerate the bastard who did this for the rest of his life.

I thought I’d wait a couple days before commenting on the President’s news conference. You know, get some perspective, avoid any knee-jerk reactions, that sort of thing. But it isn’t helping. Those sixty-two minutes were absolutely devoid of any meaningful substance regarding our policies in Iraq. The closest thing we get is “it’s been a tough week.” I want to think our president has some capacity for seeing things as they are rather than how he wishes them to be. I want to think his intellect is agile enough to react to changing circumstances. But I’m not seeing that. I see a man who, when asked why he has to appear with Cheney before the 9/11 Commission, blatantly and unimaginatively dodges the question. I see a man who cannot think of one mistake–not one—he has made over the last three years. Jesus, if all he had said was that he once put on a pair of mismatched socks, that would have been preferable to watching him stammer for thirty seconds like a kid who hadn’t done his homework. I thought that along with the whole born-again thing came some humility. I’m not seeing humility. I’m seeing a smug sense of arrogance that is getting people killed.
Okay, I’m done.
Some people in the disability community are protesting the new film United States of Leland. I guess it’s about a teenager who murders another kid with autism. A lot of people are upset because apparently the film asks the audience to feel sympathy for the killer and because the kid with autism is treated as little more than a plot device. I got an e-mail at work asking people with disabilities to write letters to the editor criticizing the movie. This kind of protest bothers me. I’m not about to criticize any work of art I haven’t seen myself. And even if the movie is a worthless piece of shit, don’t we have better things for which to fight? One movie isn’t going to make or break society’s attitudes about disability. Yeah, yeah, I get that negative stereotypes of disability in the media is a bad thing, but are we gonna also start burning copies of Moby Dick because Ahab is one major amputee prick? How about Dickens and his whole pity party for Tiny Tim? I’m sorry, but sometimes identity politics really piss me off.