Identity

The Omega Point

The day will come, they aver, when we will hit upon the Magic Algorithm that will allow computers to think and act with the depth of human beings.

The Lesson of Tito

Ours is not to eradicate but to compromise and aid them in compensating.

School Records

That book is closed and I shall not open it.

A Gong-Tormented Sea

All my life, as I've moved in an agonized trance among you, I've heard you say "Joel, you have to consider other people's feelings. You have to consider other people's feelings."

I Knew I Should Have Trademarked My Name
Oh dear. A younger me coming up in Vancouver, B.C....

Rhinoceros at Retreat

It wasn't the people who drove me away from the Meeting but that person who sits inside me, who must declaim and perform.

Canonical Proportions

I decided to go on a hunt for my Buddha nature.

Politics vs. What is Important 2

Politics must be seen in perspective. To make rational decisions, we must calm our anxieties.

Politics vs. What is Important

Everyone talks Fear: the Bushites tell me that terrorists prowl the streets, armed with nuclear-tipped balsa-wood gliders; the Kerry-outs tell me that four more years of Bush will destroy the nation and offer no plan for reversing the situation.

Reagan and Prozac

Yule Heibel often writes of a future -- and a present -- where human beings have become assembly line products.

Mars and Venus

No amount of New Age synthesis of bad astronomy (astrology), bad corporate style mysticism (e.g. the Transcendental Meditation movement), and bad pop psychology is going to convince me that we're limited to being the paper mache idols that degree mill-made "Ph.d" Gray erects.

Of Shining Worlds

In the wake of last week's parting of the ways, I've felt a brief lurch and a halt in my creative energies.

A Different Kind of Angry White Guy

I feel frustrated these days by the news.

Thank God For Judgemental People

Once I heard a woman -- who was totally unaware of the irony in what she said -- declare "I hate judgemental people." I do not

The Brights 2: Rhymes with Own

Call me a None.

Michael Jackson

What I've missed in all the discussion about Michael Jackson is reference to his pathetic self-destruction aided and abetted by American attitudes towards people of color.

Big

If I could give six inches of my height to anyone else, I would.

Litany of the Doll

...when I see the doll flap its jaw and people react to the doll, not me, I feel very sad. The doll gets all the attention.

The Song I'd Heard Before

That would have to be "One is the loneliest number", punching its repeated note, reiterating its theme.

Portrait of an Inner Critic

He looks a lot like me except he doesn't wear a beard.

Joel the God?

I rejoice in my limited consciousness. Complete awareness would drive me mad

Resurrection of the Dead

A and T inadvertently did the cruelest thing I think a person can do to a person without cutting or shooting them. They saw me as another person, T's dead brother who'd killed himself I don't know how many years before.

The New Slogan

Excuse me you may ask? How did you get to be socialist and libertarian?

Joel 101

Two things you should know about me

Justifiable Spectracide

I think that I must kill the anthropologist.

Two Symphonies by Sibelius

If I were damned to be inanimate, I would like to be one of the symphonies of Jean Sibelius.

Sleek Gophers

Sinclair Lewis probably wouldn't find America different from what he saw in the 1920s except that the locus of banality has shifted. Carol Kennitcott would be just as miserable in today's California suburbs as she was in Gopher Prairie.

An Actual Conversation, with Extension

I'm not about to start hanging out in lesbian bars, passing. But there are other strange little coincidences in my life that make this self-definition interesting.

100 Facts
Just to get the thing done with and to show that I am as self-absorbed as the next blogger, I've...

Five things you wouldn't know about me from reading my blog

You'll just have to look!