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May 22, 2005
spammers gamble on chezjoel.com
You know your blog has reached a milestone when the comment spammers overcome their onsies-twosies shyness, and flood your site with comments, each of which includes a very helpful link to the iridescent gates of Online Casino Land. And while the comments are generally warm, fuzzy and encouraging ("your page is inspirational"), I rather think upwards of 70 of them in three minutes is killing me with kindness. Some examples:
My friend told me about your web site and I really enjoyed it. Very nicely done. Very interesting!
This is, of course, a lie. Spammers don't have friends. They have victims and cronies which they may call friends. But victims and cronies are not true friends, because either group would sooner see the spammer rot in a Venezuelan jail as win big at the best online casinos.
Nice site. You are doing a great service to the web.
A comment-spam free website might be considered a great service to the web, but my admiration is reserved for the person puts comment spammers into Venezuelan jail.
I have learned a lot from your site. Thanks!! I will return in the near future.
Oh, please don't make a special trip. And thanks so very much for reporting to jail in Venezuela in the next 12 hours. You'll learn a lot there, too.
Ok, I will sign your blog. I really love your site.
Ok, this is why we can't have nice things. Alas, my dear friends (by which I mean to include my victims and my cronies) I regret to announce that I must turn off unregistered comments here at chezJoel.com. I still crave commentary from any friend or foe who isn't written in the Perl programming language, but unfortunately you will have to have a TypeKey.com login first. As you patiently endure this added inconvenience, please think of a Venezuelan prison cell, wherein langishes a commentor who didn't pass his physical.
Posted by joel at 03:32 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
May 20, 2005
is this guy for real
New York blogger Joey McKeown scooped to conquer today as he claimed, with near flawless perfidy, to know the meaning of the buzz behind the Dawn Eden's enigmatic blog entry today, crowing incoherently about a Vegas mainstream media milestone:
Dawn and I are going off to Las Vegas this weekend to get married (Dawn's little fling with some guy named Joel was a ruse). The wedding will not only be sponsored by The New York Daily News, but I'll be live-blogging the event. Finally, mainstream media and the blogger world unite.
Mr. McKeown couldn't live-blog his way out of a wet paper bag if you threw a couple mad cats in with him. Apparently, when he isn't trolling the online personals for male nudist roomates, or rebuffing the belles of Cleveland, he's prevaricating like a lawyer on glue. For I spoke to Dawn Eden myself today, and she insisted the Daily News has nothing to do with the wedding.
Posted by joel at 11:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
clones by any other name
The NY Times carried an interesting piece yesterday about a breakthrough in stem cell research through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Actually those S. Koreans' paper fuzzies it up a bit more, shortening S.C.N.T. down to just N.T. And who would object to good ole N.T.?
Well, the President's Council on Bioethics takes a dim view, as does the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as does the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics and religious liberty commission. All the usual suspects are lining up to deliver knee-jerk condemnation of an amazing medical breakthrough almost before the egg is hatched.
And yet surveys seem to indicate the American public would disapprove of it too, if only they knew what SCNT was. 72% of us approve of SCNT, but when you ask us about it using the common term cloning, why then the approval rating drops to 38%. But my concern is that whatever they do, could they please not use dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) to do it?
Posted by joel at 03:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
treacherous faux
"Excuse me, but there's a problem."
"Oh?"
"This isn't leatherette."
"Ah, yes, actually you're correct--"
"It's some kind of fake."
Pause. "Ah, hmmm." Corner of an amused smile. "It's faux leatherette."
"Yeah, it's not the real deal."
"Sometimes referred to as faux faux leather."
"I guess so. What are these made of?"
"Leather."
Posted by joel at 10:35 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
May 10, 2005
crutches
"I realize now that I want to leave you some sense of transcendence." I looked up from my book and glanced around to see to whom the old man spoke. There was no-one else nearby. The old man sat in a wheelchair with his back to me, not two feet away. Before him, on one of the tables so often devoted to chess, stood a a small stainless steel thermos. After a moment he continued. "This sense that I have --that I am connected to something bigger-- is something that most children probably have from the time they are born. Growing up is usually the process of becoming disconnected from that."
I waited silently, certain that he would momentarily realize the person to whom he spoke wasn't around. He reached forward with a slow, careful hand to feel the thermos. Then, having gotten hold of it, he screwed off the cup-lid and poured himself a cup. The faint smell of coffee drifted past me on the breeze. "I felt it sometimes as a young man." He sat pensive as he sipped his coffee. "I smelled it in the secondhand smoke of the other house painters, as they roughened up the morning with wry curses. I tasted it in coffee. If I had been a beer drinker then, I'm sure it would have been in the bar after hours." He paused and sipped again. "You and your comrades buck the system in little ways, and stare some small amount of danger in the face, like an inoculation against all the dangers you can't talk about.
"I didn't have a family of my own back then. So I had no place speaking of the dangers of working too hard. My young and green place was to listen quietly with an aw-shucks grin about how hard it was to raise kids. If I felt talked-down-to, I could sense that it was necessary. I needed the older men to gripe about all the stuff I could not know about, and they needed me; needed me to be young and ignorant, and unlikely to take their advice. We helped each other reinforce the pattern that reassured us.
"But that particular bigger something was never big enough. That was one of the dangers we could never talk about. We all knew that we could joke about women or the boss or taxes, but in the end, we were not safe from anything simply because we named it and laughed about it.
"I can see how young people get caught up in the 'isms.' Whether it's Communism or Islamism or feminism or environmentalism, the 'isms' fill that need for comfort; the need, not just to be part of something bigger, but to be part of something bigger that will survive."
He exhaled wearily. "My son, we all pick one. I did, and I've never regretted it. When you decide what 'ism' you want to be a part of, I hope you'll take your time. I hope you'll give yourself time to think clearly. I hope you'll search your own heart, because the Good Lord put the keys in your heart. There is only one 'ism' that can truly make you safe. All the other 'isms' were created as just another temporary port in the storm of life."
The old man sat still, apparently finished speaking. Having absorbed this message without confessing I was a stranger, I was now hooked by fascination and hidden in embarrassment. The breeze blew at the pages of my open book, and the paper rasped as I reached out to hold my place. I waited. The old man sipped his coffee. And the silence slowly became our mutual understanding; he understood that I heard him, whoever he thought I was, and I understood that he needed to speak. I understood that I needed to hear. I believed, in that moment, that the silence reassured us both.
There was the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path, and I looked around to see a young man approaching. He obviously pertained to the old man, for he looked at me with an indirect glance of suspicion. "Hang onto your coffee, grandad," the young man said, "Mom's bringing the car." He wheeled his grandfather back down the path, and carefully did not look at me as he passed.
Posted by joel at 10:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 07, 2005
anatomy of a fairy tale (part 2)
[Click here to read part one.]
"I come down stairs, and there set this man--"
"A man was in your house?" deputy Phil Kelly asked skeptically, crunching his lips to the left. Why do these fellows never look at me when they're talking? he wondered.
Frank Lomack swallowed, his adam's apple sliding silently up and then down. He cleared his throat. "Ah, no sir, I was over at the Pony Club." He trailed off, as if he expected the deputy to respond to this revelation. Phil kept quiet and waited.
Frank sensed the silence growing, so he darted back to his topic. "Ah, so this man set there eatin' his breakfast--"
"They're servin' breakfast at the Pony Club?"
"Beg pardon?"
"You said he was eating breakfast. I didn't know they served breakfast."
"Well...I guess they do. At least this fella was eatin' breakfast."
"Ok, go ahead."
"So I'm just mindin' my own business and he pipes up and says, 'Is there anybody else in here this morning?'"
"And what did you say?"
"I ain't one to meddle or tell tales. Gentleman never tells."
Phil sighed. "Frank, you ain't a gentleman. So what happened?"
"Well, I said I reckon he ought to mind his own business, and then he came up out of his chair real fast, and come toward me." Frank stopped, glanced at Phil, and then stared at the floor as if he were finished speaking.
"Go on."
"That's all that happened." Frank leaned to the side in the metal folding chair parked in front of Phil's desk, pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, and wiped his nose. Phil noticed the hand-stitched monogram that Lynn Lomack had stitched on the hanky: FWL.
Phil twitched his mouth back to the right, with a flash of amusement in his eyes. "That's it? End of story?"
"Yeah, well--"
"Frank, that story ain't even a story. What happened then?"
Frank paused, holding the folded hanky in both his hands on his lap. "I figured it'd be best to leave."
"Is that right."
"Yessir."
"So you got right out of there."
"Well, he was coming at me."
"Did he have a weapon in his hands?"
"Don't remember. Coulda had a concealed weapon of some sort."
"Ok, this is a fine story, Frank, thanks for stoppin' in," Phil said brusquely, swinging his feet off the desk to the floor.
"Cam was there last night, and his truck was still there when I left."
Phil leaned forward against his desk, his thick arms draped across the desk calendar, and scowled out through the venetian blinds at the overcast street. "Camerin Bonamy was there?"
Frank nodded vigorously. "Yeah, but he hadn't come downstairs yet, least not before I left."
Phil sighed. "Damn you people," he mumbled, rubbing his bleary eyes. "I guess I gotta swing out there and check up on things." He stood and pulled the keys to the SUV from the hook on the wall behind his desk. "Maybe I'll get some breakfast out of it."
Posted by joel at 02:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 05, 2005
invoice of God
My son was quite disappointed the other day. We were listening to the New Testament on CD as we drove to school, and just as we arrived at our destination, the Book of the Revelation began. "Aw, man," he began in exasperation.
"Don't worry," I said. "When I pick you up tonight we'll start at the beginning of Revelation."
It is no wonder a boy of ten favors that book from all the books in the New Testament. He is not without a certain philosophical bent; his comment on C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain (also on CD) was "some parts of it were really interesting--I liked it." But children love stories. He loves the gospels as well, but for sheer visceral details and bizarre creatures on which young minds thrive, Revelation has no rival.
So I have listened to it twice in the last couple of days; once after I dropped him off at school that day, until I picked him up, and once again together with him.
Much of the cataclismic detail in Revelation is devoted to the fate of the whore Babylon. I've heard all sorts of theories: it's us, it's them, it's figurative, it's literal, it's historical, it's prophetic. But whatever Babylon actually is or will be, one cannot help but look at her attributes and wonder to what extent we fly her banner. There is, in chapter 18, a glimpse of her economy at the instant of its permanent interruption, dissected and exposed in the manifests of merchants' ships:
"The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more- cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men." --Revelation 18:11-13
Because the list progresses from precious metals and gems down to foodstuffs, I have the impression that this list is also meant to indicate a descending order of market value, and thus Babylon's priorities. And languishing conspicuously at the bottom of the list are human beings, both body and soul.
I will not attempt, using armchair eschatology, to pin the harlot's tail on the donkey of our modern age. But as the old adage goes, if the shoe fits, wear it. And this shoe is oddly fitting: the struggle over the value of human life defines our era. If all the things in Revelation are yet another thousand years off, surely future historians will look back on our era with a mixture of righteous disdain and revulsion. For while our technologies will not impress them, the ends to which we applied them surely will. The modern era has been the age of superefficient extermination of man by men. From Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung and Pol Pot to the abortion industry, the mind recoils to account for their staggering millions of dead. Other ages have seen their plagues and disasters, but when have men ever valued other men so cheaply as in our age?
And over against this new world order is juxtaposed the economy of the Lamb who was slain:
And when he had taken [the scroll], the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation." --Revelation 5:8,9
If Christ is God, and the Son of God, who sits at the right hand of the Father, could there be any commodity more precious in heaven or on earth than the blood of his veins? Surely, if anything else on Babylon's shopping list would have sufficed to purchase us, he could've afforded it without effort. Yet he expended his blood, his very life for us.
As for all those other cargoes, they take their place in heaven; the writer describes many of the building materials in detail. Apparently, in heaven's marketplace, the cost of gold makes it at least slightly preferable to asphalt. And if it is so in heaven, we must pray that it will be so here on earth also.
Posted by joel at 12:19 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack