People keep saying that the system has grown out of control. That's a lot of crappy-crap. I'll tell you why, too. The reason that the system hasn't grown out of control is because it was always out of control. Systems are action patterns that function on their own, with only exterior stimuli necessary to charge the process. The only reason a system fades gently into a goodnight is because it becomes outdated. If a system doesn't jive with a majority of people, then a new system replaces...

Culture slithers forth, tastes the air, tests it, before ascending the throne. Haughty, sinister, the word sounds like vulture, stinks of well-powdered carrion in my nostrils. In the name of the concept, I smile, I bow; meanwhile, the gorge collects itself, preparing to mount an assault. The seeds of my life are stories. This journey has bloody, vital roots but ends in banality. My grandparents gathered secretly along a cod-stinking wharf, in a basement Fado bar in Porto with other pl...

In 1894, a Hungarian "Rabbi", Leopold Cohn, firmly established the roots of Jews for Jesus in an unaffiliated but intimately related movement in America. He founded the American Board of Missions to the Jews, a title later streamlined into the more attractive-sounding "Chosen People's Ministries". Sounds like the "A" League baseball team at a parochial school, does it not? His method was simple: he set up shop in Brooklyn around the turn of the century, and provided "English and citizen cl...

Ghostwriting is a terrible way to live, but there's all sorts of crap people do to pay the bills. First of all, some of us have what's called a "faulty decision-maker". We believe we have greatness inside, and we don't want to spoil the deal. The theory then goes on to describe how sinking into a couch, while holding a soggy beer cozy that sports the logo, '"Welcome to Moronville, population: YOU" in your hand leads to greatness more readily than seeking gainful employment. Some of us, ...

I do not live in Iraq. I've never been there, though I have spent time in the Middle East. I am not a soldier, and I do not patrol the streets of Baghdad, or fight to maintain safety while Iraqi citizens attempt to control the direction of a new government. But news reports and military maps seem to suggest an unfortunate reality. United States and the coalition of armed forces appear to occupy only a tiny section of the whole, while insurgents continue to struggle. I cannot attest to ...

Regular Users of Joe like myself probably found themselves somewhat shocked when the new, revitalized forum layout arrived the other day. I spent about an hour fiddling with the buttons and switches, locating forum threads, and trying to determine who mudflap was, the lucky SOB. Maybe one or two months into my term here at JoeUser, it occurred to me that this site is FREE. While there are many free blog sites out there, most require the purchase of upgrades to create an adequate venue. S...

I encountered a slightly different variation on this riddle once again in LABYRINTHS OF REASON by William Poundstone. Anyone with the slightest interest in logic and the concept of paradox should read it. A man by the name of Bernard Lowell, at the age of twenty, moved from his home in a small town in Ohio to Las Vegas, Nevada. He was fascinated by the games of chance, and by the people who thought they could beat the games. Games like craps and roulette held little interest for him. ...

Note: I have heard this riddle presented in many forms. Most recently, I read this version in LABYRINTHS OF REASON by William Poundstone. The jury found the prisoner guilty of the worst sort of murder. Well within his rights to sentence the prisoner to death, the judge could not indulge himself and have the manner of the murderer's death exceed a simple hanging. Nevertheless, the nature of this specific crime filled the judge with outrage, and he struggled within the bounds of his man...

I am not rewriting metaphysical treatises on existentialism or empathizing with Joycean characters neglected by Dublin, Ireland. But time parted for me and I held the universe in my palm for an endless segment of reality. This took place as the New Year began. Slumped back into this hairy, soggy desk chair as usual, typing into an article my half-formed thoughts, I suddenly understood a simple, yet profound truth: I am using a computer. I admit that I am no genius. I feel comfortable...

What kind of arms do you bear? When you are not bearing your arms, where do you store them? In general, how often, would you say, do you bear your arms for the purpose intended by the Second Amendment to the Constituion of the United States of America? There is a right, as provided by the Second Amendment, to bear arms. Debates continue in and out of courtrooms as to how such a right should be protected, limited, and monitored. While discussions tend to polarize our citizens along p...

You silly, silly people. What have you done now? All of your focus on saving poor, defenseless American flags has blinded the educational system and warped your children's sense of values. They all believe that killing Iraqi civilians is freedom, while seeing a blurry, surgery-enhanced nipple is worse than. . ..No. It's so bad that there's nothing worse, anywhere. BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer reports that "more than one in three high school students said it [the First Amendment to...

Horrors are easy to come by these days. Horrors arrive in torrential rains or waves, or rise from the earth when subterranean rock plates collide. There is something altogether different--a sense of truth, perhaps--when one human kills another, however; you wonder about reasons and God, morality and faith. Horror derives from a lack of apocalyptic finality after millions die in trench fighting or succumb to rampant disease in World War I; or when neighbors kill neighbors in Civil Wars th...

My mother's father, Reuben Hoffman (you can look him up), had a defect in his color-responsive cells, the cones of his retina--making him colorblind. He passed the X-chromosome to my mother, and she forwarded the darned thing on to me, and to my younger brother, too. You get a lot of you-know from people--friends, family--everyone, for the most part, when they find out about the colorblindness. I mean, you're not missing a leg or commoding into a bag. They can make fun of you if they like...

Hate for the Sake of Feeling You lose friends, sometimes. Casual friends, intimate friends, you lose them in places that you know the best. Forget them: that's the easiest way to do it. Take them for granted. Try to make them responsible for your well being. You lose them before you even know they're gone. Sometimes they resurface, unbidden and unsought. They forget why you left them behind, and the forgetting makes them angry. They feel something and they want an explanation. ...

A Sense of Time A strange sun follows me where I go trying pale white water paint to pretend colors I cannot believe: a pale blue mountain side becomes a thin, pale sea. I am in the forest underneath the trees where the rivers run under a lazy, speckled sun running through river bells to a moonlit, soundless sea. Tossed far into the running winds my way of life passed into dreams: should one death hang me so? I hang, dripping from the sky into the tremendous wealth and...