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August 31, 2005

but you can't take the venuzuela out of chavez

chezJoel.com remains 100% independent of all political factions in Venuzuela.

"They shouldn't call it the 700 club," my old friend Clint groused, "they should call it the double-oh-seven club." I laughed, raised my beer and drank to that. The next day Chavez showed his ideological cousinhood with megalomaniac Sadaam Hussain by calling for Pat Robertson's extradition.

Whether Rev. Robertson's words were wise or not, I have this to say to foreign dictators intent upon meddling with the civil rights of American citizens: get on your apparatchik hobby horse and ride out, goat roper.

Is it just me or do the slobberiest of crazy-eyed leftists seem to be lacking in any sense of proportion? They evince all the humor and perspective of a three legged moose on an ice floe. I just love to troll VHeadline.com so I can hear them screech about the evils of bourgeoise democracy (as opposed to regular democracy) and carp about how even "capitalist demons" admit that government's power doesn't come from God. Phah!

I particularly enjoyed Arthur Shaw's spicy commentary Can Chavez hold out until the revolutionary proletariat matures in Venezuela? He writes:

Universal eligibility for participation in the electoral side of the state does not along [sic] imply democracy because this feature is commonly present in cheap and fake bourgeois democracies ... like those in the US and UK.

Democracy in the unqualified sense requires a lot more than just electoral participation by the poor and exploited.

We Americans would do well to take this to heart: just because any non-felon among us may vote, hold public office, own guns and shoot pumpkins on the weekends, start a blog, newsletter or glossy magazine and lambast our commander in chief for the Bushy-McChimp-Fuhrer we can't believe Pat Robertson won't admit he is, none of that means we have democracy in the unqualified sense, because, because...well, that's obvious isn't it, you reactionary bourgeoise swine entrail-hoof-snout scum SUVs?

Returning to brother Karl Marx...

And, may I say that I, for one, welcome our new Karl Marx overlords...

...the identification of democracy whatever its content with a form of dictatorship is today ... and was yesterday ... distasteful and abhorrent to middle class democrats and liberals who visualize "democracy" as the coming to the new Kingdom full of pure freedom, liberty, bliss, and license. In deference to the sensibilities and the semantics of the middle class democrats ... who are strongly disposed toward fantasies ... we must more or less withdraw from this self-evident identification. By and large, the middle class "participates" in democracy by becoming the tail of the bourgeoisie while the middle class fantasizes about the "absolute freedom of the individual, no less" that bourgeois democracy is supposed to bestow on the whole population, most are whom are actually and savagely being held down.

Ah, Camelot. We hardly "participated" in ye. And what a tail of woe this is, with our Sam's Clubs and Costco's foisting deep discounts upon a democratic American middle class so strongly disposed toward fantasies. So what if we can band together as liberals united by the visualizing of the new Kingdom, and ban Walmart from our tasteful suburban communities? We may grow oranges, but isn't it time we woke up and smelled the coffee of the true dictatorship which is our pure freedom, liberty, bliss and license? Stop reading if this makes any sense.

In the United States, the politically conscious and politically active sectors of the working class should ally with the democratic bourgeoisie to restore bourgeois democracy which the GOPs, under George W. Bush, have destroyed while the GOPs retain, according to US Senator Robert Byrd, only the "cloak of legality." This principle should define and shape the participation of the conscious and active workers in US politics.

The scuttlebutt I'm hearing is that the venerable and wise Senator Robert Byrd would finally be confirmed as cheif justice of the Supreme Court if only he could get back that darned cloak. Damn you, Grand Old Parties! But Arthur follows this zinger with another tragic nutshell:

But lamentably, the politically conscious and active sectors of the US working class are somewhat small and not very conscious and almost completely inactive.

See, now I'm lamenting. Like a polar bear clambering onto an ice floe.

Posted by joel at 11:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 25, 2005

hello sabbath

I'm reading a book called The Power of Full Engagement. I hate these books designed to make executives more effective, with all their catch-phrases like "corporate athelete" and "organizational energy." But this is still a pretty good book; the authors posit that humans were meant to have cycles of full engagement (when energy is expended) alternating with periods of restoration (when energy is restored). Sounds almost Deuteronomic. Check out this quote from physiologist Martin Moore-Ede, president of Circadian Technologies and author of The Twenty-Four-Hour Society:

At the heart of the problem is a fundemental conflict between the demands of our man-made civilization and the very design of the human brain and body...Our bodies were designed to hunt by day, sleep at night and never travel more than a few dozen miles from nunrise to sunset. Now we work and play at all hours, whisk off by jet to the far side of the globe, make life-or-death decisions or place orders on foreign stock exchanges in the wee hours of the morning. The pace of technological innovation is outstripping the ability of the human race to understand the consequences. We are machine-centered in our thinking--focused on the optimization of technology and equipment--rather than human-centered--focused on the optimization of human alertness and performance.

Martin, I've been thinking similar thoughts myself lately. I work in IT, and have long noticed that these machines which were supposed to have been our slaves have somehow turned the tables; I check email at all hours, I carry a cell phone, I blog and work long hours on after-hours projects which don't have anything to do with restoring my energy. I say "Down with computers! Kill the beast! Écraser L'infame!" And on that note, I'm going to bed.

Posted by joel at 11:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 22, 2005

googlewhacked!

I found--nay, I created a googlewhack, and that googlewhack is me. I am prodigiously proud to blurt that the googlewhack "coining googlecentechelon" yields, this writing, exactly one result, and that result is chezJoel.com. And the icing on the cake is that my site is firmly ensconced in the Googlecentechelon for the both the phrase "coining googlecentechelon" and the word "Googlecentechelon" itself. Ah, sweet, sweet triumph.

Posted by joel at 04:38 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

August 18, 2005

googlecentechelon

K_sra has three short posts which got me thinking about a name for the tenth item on the tenth page of Google search results for a given phrase. And so I'm coining it: Googlecentechelon. Its fun to say. Googlecentechelon.

I hope my site enters the Googlecentechelon for the word "Googlecentechelon."

Posted by joel at 12:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Welcome to chezJoel! Spammers made me make you register to comment, but I dropped that whole "give me your email" thing, so hopefully its not such a drag. I love your comments! -Joel

Posted by joel at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

crossing the blogosphere

I am delighted to report that I am a guest blogger at The Dawn Patrol, where I extend this site's discussion of the profanity-ridden lyrics I used in my short montage A Membrane For Choice. You can read my DP exclusive here: "Membrane" Crosses A Thin Line.

Posted by joel at 12:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 17, 2005

raksha, respect, remember

I think it's quite masculine, don't you?
Can you smell what the rakhi's cooking?

This is the rakhi my youngest sister gave me today, on her birthday. It is a traditional Indian thread which sisters give as a gift to their brothers on the holiday called Raksha Bandhan. But as she explains, this gift has strings attached:

On this day, sisters take brightly colored or beaded laces or bracelets and tie one onto their brother(s) wrist(s) in a show of respect. The brother who receives a rakhi, as they are called, is compelled by this reminder to protect and care for his sister and offers a token gift in return.

Alas, although my brother and I took her to dinner for her birthday, I came up short on the token gift. I keep forgetting to get her a token gift. I need some way to remind myself to get her a token gift...some kind of a mnemonic, a reminder, something unobtrusive, yet near at hand which will jog my memory...hmmmmm.

Posted by joel at 12:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 11, 2005

a membrane for choice

If you haven't seen PPGG's fatuous film "A Superhero for Choice," Dawn Eden has a list of places where you can go to see PPGG deliver the profilactic prescription to anything and everything. They look out over this land and see nothing but condom-nation (nyuck, nyuck, hic. It's late).

But why watch theirs when you can watch ours? Theirs is not nearly as entertaining or as informative as this brief public service announcement featuring Cypress Hill (please be warned the music in this short contains some profanity).

Night of the Pro-Life dead is coming. Are you protected?
Night of the Pro-Life Dead. Are you protected?

Insane Choices In The Membrane (4.9Mb, requires Windows Media Player)

Posted by joel at 04:45 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 10, 2005

voice of "dian" six of eight

If you haven't heard about the blogstorm kicking up over a cartoon created by Planned Parenthood's Golden Gate chapter, you can catch up by checking out The Dawn Patrol: Eden breaks the story, digs into PPGG president Dian J Harrison's possible conflicts of interest and interviewed one whom PPGG daydreams of killing.

I was watching the decapitation/dismemberment of a non-violent "anti-choice" demonstrator in the closing credits when I noticed the name of the actress who performed the voiceover for the character Dian/Dianisys. Unless Tina Marie Murray is an old chum of Harrison's and owed her a favor, I must assume PPGG spent a pretty penny in the production of this film. Tina has a thriving career in theatre, commercials, voiceovers, training films and a couple of spots on television's Nash Bridges. She's a creative writer and a singer of jazz. She is manifestly multi-talented. And speaking of family planning, she was not aborted. She is the sixth child of eight.

I'm so thankful for my parents' steadfast and vocal opposition to abortion; none of my four post-roe-v-wade siblings were aborted. Today these siblings are pillars; true friends, bringing spirit, humor, spouses and nephews with them when we gather. We're now shifting out of our twenties and into our thirties, and it seems like things are just starting to get good.

We often say that when my youngest sister arrived, God tipped over the talent cup and dumped the rest of our family's alotment on her. There was a lot left in those rich dregs: our five of five is an actress, playwright, singer/songwriter and photographer. As a child she did the voice of an unborn baby in a pro-life radio commercial; a performance so riveting and gutwrenching it had grown men crying.

My parents got guff for rearing such a large family, even from other Christians. My mother was no stranger to the look which said, "what, another one?" And I know it was challenging for my parents, who often struggled to make ends meet. But for each one of us, up to and most wholeheartedly including the "Littlest Littlest," my mother and father both believe it was worth it.

Posted by joel at 09:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 09, 2005

hold my chips

I don't know if it was the chocolate beet cake, the two beers, sibling rivalry, or destiny, but I lost. Texas Hold 'em: the name has good advice built right into it, wisdom for the ages which I could have used. One minute I'm play-acting "bad-hand-Luke" with a pocket full of aces, reeling in the chips from my buddies who think they smell bluster on the breeze. The next minute I'm locked in a bidding war with my mother's son, dumpin' discounted chips like Southwest vs. Value Jet.

At that hazy moment, on a full throttle of competative adrenalin, I went all in. I trusted my queen and jack, but they left me grounded. "Here come the guns," my brother said, flipping over his pair of kings.

I found three consolations: 1) the third beer tastes really good when you're not busy trying to play poker, 2) being the permanent dealer is kinda fun ("Joel...JOEL!!! It's time for the flop.") and 3) my little brother kicked the other two guys' butts with my chips. And that's really what it's all about.

Posted by joel at 01:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 07, 2005

day dreams

Two twenty-something men and a twenty-something woman sat at a table talking about subjects which ranged as far as childbirth. At one point the most exuberant of the young men said, with obvious excitement in his voice, "Someday we'll all be, like, vice presidents and we'll sit around and say, 'hey, remember back in the day when we were all just lowly station managers?'"

I thought to myself, I don't know what business you folks are in, but what are the odds you need so many veeps, and then the odds those offices will hold you three station managers in particular? I think the same thing was passing through the minds of the other two; neither of them said anything audible. But hey. You gotta have dreams.

I remember when I was just a lowly station manager. Look at me now. I am in charge of my own website, with complete editorial control over every aspect. If I want to write a solipsistic shout-out to my future self, or even my past self--heck: "hey there, present self!" (*smile*wink*nod*click-click* "hey yourself!")

One of my favorite moments today happened as I sat on a park bench in Central Park near the theatre they use for Shakespear in the Summer. My friend walked up, sat down and asked, "What are you thinking about?"

This is how I knew I was lost in reverie. "Oh," I said, preparing for descent to planet earth, "I was just wondering if I look midwestern to all these people here in NYC."

"Look midwestern?"

"Yeah, like a midwestern...vibe. What do you think?"

"You're more calm. Contemplative."

"Ah. New Yorkers don't do calm?" I asked, fully expecting a nuanced answer.

"No," she said, "they don't."

Perhaps some day we'll all be New Yorkers, and we'll sit around and I'll say, "hey remember when we were calm and contemplative?" And everyone will just look at me, or mumble something inaudible. At that moment I'll see myself back on that park bench in Central Park, and I'll mumble quietly, "hey yourself." You gotta have dreams.

Posted by joel at 12:11 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 05, 2005

death, faith & jurisprudence

As she so often does, Dawn has sparked off a terrific discussion on her blog ("Come for the Dawn Patrol, stay for the comments!"). The topic to jour (or yesterjour, to be strickly picky, is the death penalty. She kicked off the discussion with a comparison/contrast of two writers, one from the right (pro) and one from the left (anti).

And the commentors took it from there. What's interesting to me is how the death penalty issue seems to cleave the pro-life alliance of catholics and conservative protestants. I'm not sure I understand the catholic rationale. Of course this is a simplification; Many of the commentors break these types, as in this comment from "Mary" (who I believe to be Catholic, because of her comments on previous Dawn Patrol posts). She answers another commentors criticism of the DP (other commentor's words italicized):

for the death penalty is not in a line with other punishments. A five-year sentence and a twenty-year sentence, even a life sentence, are related as more or less severe forms of imprisonment. Execution belongs to another order of punishment.

By the same token, assault, rape, and robbery are all more or less severe forms of crime. Murder belongs to another order of crime.

And I wrangled valiantly with the intrepid "Steve G." over the question of whether the New Testament provides a basis for the discontinuation of the use of the death penalty.

But most remarkable to me are the comments of recently (and righteously) dooced former Dayton, Ohio prosecutor Lance Salyers. Lately (or soon to be?) Soonerized Salyers posse'd up around 12:05am. Here's an excerpt:

Good discussion here. For what it's worth, here are the thoughts of this prosecu . . . er, um, former prosecutor.

As I have read these comments, various people have argued variations on the following themes:
1) capital punishment is about vengeance, which God claims for himself
2) in case of actual innocence, capital punishment is irrevocable
3) capital punishment doesn't accomplish anything except the death of another human
4) capital punishment demeans the value of human life

There are other arguments, of course, but those are the four that jumped out at me. I'm not going to get between Joel and Steve G. on the issue of how Jesus' teachings on personal morality affect society's exercise of capital punishment. They seem to be doing just fine on their own there. As for the others . . .

1. The first is nonsense. Regardless of whether the Biblical cliche (as it is used, not as it was written) is talking about societal vengeance or purely individual bloodlust, one cannot rationally raise it vis a vis capital punishment while still accepting other forms of criminal punishment. Vengeance is not an act; it is a motivation to act. It is no less inherent in a prison sentence as it is a death sentence. Unless one is really advocating for removing the all forms of criminal sanction from the Government's quiver, one cannot raise it against capital punishment and remain intellectually honest...

I was going to copy Lance's comment wholesale, but I see he's posted it to his blog. In the interest in saving you some valuable time, go read Lance's comment on Ragged Edges (his blog) by clicking here.

Posted by joel at 10:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 03, 2005

eagre i

"You and me are floating on a tidal wave." --Coldplay, X&Y

I was four going on five the day I rushed into the house and excitedly gushed, "Daddy is building a playroom for my sister and..."--here I paused every so briefly, trying to remember the appropriate grammar rule--"and I," I finished.

Those were the days when my mother, consumate grammarian that she is, did not sigh at such errors from her children. "sister and me," she patiently corrected.

"Oh," I said, with a dejected look. "Just girls, huh?"

This episode was hardly the shot heard 'round the house in the long and protracted battle my mother waged against the low linguistic predilections of her children. She and my father were field commander and general, respectively. My father is a teacher of history. He instilled into my siblings and...me a profound sense that words are inextricably connected to ideas, and that ideas matter. And so my mother's constant corrections were a serious matter. We tried, we all tried to speak the Queen's English.

If we siblings still occasionally stumble, I, at least console my mother that I am one to whom the question of my own son's grammar is a serious matter. I am no perfect copy of either mother or father, but I am, in some sense, both of them rolled into one.

I have had long arguments with a college educated colleague over the subjunctive mood. While I would summer in Florida if I were Santa Claus, he would summer in Cancun if he was St. Nick. While we don't know much about Geography, it doesn't take a cartographer to see where we're heading. English is a widely used, complex language, influenced by contact with many cultures, and many languages. Change is inevitable.

So we fight the fight one young pupil at a time, while the wide eyed English-speaking world experiments with unsightly alternative forms. "You and I speak English" gradually becomes "You and me speak bastardized English." And as the weight of the culture squashes our tongue to broad, the Children of Those Who Do Not Correct Their Childrens' Grammar become writers of dictionaries.

I could almost forgive some of these changes, if only they represented logical simplifications of our complicated language, instead of the cobbling on of yet more exceptions. "You and I speak English" has the advantage that it can be altered consistently to "I speak English." "You and me speak English" cannot boast such consistency; the phrase "me speak English" is still generally only spoken by those who don't.

We may not be able to stop the rise of complexification in English, but we can fight to ensure the language changes slowly. And there are advantages to a slowly changing language. Clear communication between a wider set of people is improved if they all speak a relatively identical language. Plus, it just sounds better.

Posted by joel at 11:35 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

get off my case

My son's computer seems to hover on a glowing blue field.
My son's computer is complete except for the operating system, mouse and mousepad.

I was pleased this evening as I finalized the assembly of my son's new computer. And I just couldn't get over that lovely beige microATX case which I purchased online about four years ago for six bucks.

"Six bucks!" I crowed to my brother.

"So it only took you another $300 to make good on your fantastic savings on a six dollar computer case," he responded without the proper enthusiasm.

"Yes. The point is, that six dollar case isn't just sitting around doing nothing anymore. I have a sense of satisfaction that I'm making use of it."

"And it only cost you $300."

"Yeah."

"The glowing blue feet are cool."

"Yeah."

Posted by joel at 02:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 02, 2005

get kofi outta m' icann

The UN is a worldwide democratic body mainly comprised of the most brutal, bloodthirsty, power-grabbing people on the planet. They seldom all agree on anything, but today the general concensus seems to be that the Internet is shiny, and they want it. Please don't take that the wrong way. The UN is worse than useless for many things, but good for certain other things. For instance, I believe a UN controlled Internet governing body could be trusted to keep the net safe for predatory porn sites and unscrupulous spammers.

While the pretentiously named Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) could not agree on the precise means they'd like to use to suck the life out of the online community, they did manage to issue a report which contained four options, which in turn contained a net total of one idea: "gimme." Here are our options (source: BBC):

In otherwords, Godaddy.com isn't user-friendly enough. Registering a domain name should involve phone calls to Botswana.

In otherwords, China and North Korea don't appreciate all this secretive imperialist stuff going on over here, like so-called "chat" and other hegimonist activities like blogging without official government-media outlet oversight.

In otherwords, IP's and domain names are boring. But let's have an agency heavily influenced by the world's dictators in charge of every other aspect of the Internet.

In otherwords, let's grab the IP's and the domain names, build a shiny skyscraper with Uday-style penthouse offices for every dictator's porn-crazed nephew (web address coming soon!) and finally, get some people who can legislate the crap out of the internet until you can't send grandma an Internet Message without violating nine international treaties and activating arrest warrants from the World Court.

Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn) is right to say "none of the above" in response to this baldly avaricious grope by the UN's techno...um, I was going to say "elite," but these people barely know what they're talking about (Kofi: "Internet, Internet...you mean like my Blackberry?") This is the bunch that fudged the oil-for-food contracts, kluged Kosovo, raped the Congo and doesn't dein to deal with Darfur. If the developing nations like our Internet, let 'em build one like it. It isn't going to help anybody to put Communist China in charge of blocking spam.

Posted by joel at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

winding up my fristwatch

"David asked him, 'Why were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the LORD's anointed?'" --I Samuel 1:14

I feel I must offer some further clarification in my next retort to Tulsa Blogger Don Singleton. Don's main point (or what I believe to be his main point) is one that I agree with. He says, with respect to in vitro fertilization, that "the evil was in creating so many extra humans, just to discard them." And I agree with him on that point. I think he is right to advocate limitations on the creation and destruction of excess embryos as a routine part of IVF. However, he appends to that argument the idea that since so many existing embryos are going to be destroyed anyway, why not get some benefit from them?

To this I would reply that it matters who does the killing. The stem cells harvested from embryos must be living stem cells. This means they must be taken from living embryos. This means that the harvesting of the stem cells becomes the process which destroys them. In otherwords, if life begins at conception (as Don Singleton and Bill Frist and I all say we believe) then the harvesting of stem cells from an embryo harms, and generally kills a human life. The fact that such human lives are "routinely destroyed anyway" is immaterial, from a moral standpoint.

And even if it were possible to get viable stem cells from dead embryos, to do so would be to form a partnership with those who created the embryos in the first place. Inevitably we become bound to those who create excess embryos doomed to destruction by the cords of commerce. It is analogous to the settlements which various state governments won against Big Tobacco several years ago. Once lucrative settlements had been awarded, with billion dollar payouts to state governments stretching over the coming years, suddenly the states' efforts to stamp out evil and dangerous tobacco use became less credible. The tobacco companies saw an opportunity to become the golden goose, and they took it, and a strange, greasy fellowship ensued, with states who had been roaring about the expense and suffering caused by tobacco suddenly going quiet. And the kids just kept lighting up.

And like the conflicted winners in the battle against Big Tobacco, the Fristian sabre rattling about the sanctity of life from conception gets a little quieter, and a little less credible. And Frist's words become a little more Orwellian, as when he said recently that we must "ensure the highest level of respect for the moral significance of the human embryo." His arguments for life are losing strength; it's hard to argue that you're famished when your mouth is full.

IVF's frozen leftovers have the potential to become a golden goose. When viewed as a repository of stem cells, they are a gold mine. But then, you and I are a gold mine too, when viewed as a source of transplantable tissue and organs. And the Jews of Europe were viewed as a gold mine by the Nazi party of mid 30's Germany; a valuable source of confiscated property, of labor, of research test subjects, of gold fillings, and of human hair. Would to God this could never happen in the West again. But if it is happening again, we ought to keep our arguments sound and strong, and we ought to advocate, and remonstrate, and be of some help in bringing humanity back to sanity.

Posted by joel at 12:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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