Here at Joel's Journal, we are constantly striving to find ways to make your browsing experience as delightful as possible. To that end, our staff has spent the last several hours tagging the most interesting entries according to their topic. We hope you will enjoy clicking on whatever topics below catch your fancy, and then scrolling down to see ( Read more... )

I almost stapled myself in the medulla oblongata today. Last week, I stood on a roll of plastic and slid off a roof into a pile of shingles. The week before that, I shot a three-and-a-half-inch nail lengthwise through my thumb and into the palm of my hand. A couple weeks before that, I tried to swat a blackfly while using a pair of electric hedge ( Read more... )

Well that was a nice birthday! I mean, considering I was basically locked in my office all day working, it went very well. All day long, friends and family were calling to wish me happy birthday, until my cellphone died after hearing from kesdra. It wasn't her fault -- I had talked to everyone for a long time! (I guess I was avoiding work, actually. ( Read more... )

I don't use MySpace.com. I know, I know. I *have* a Myspace account, so it *looks* an awful lot like I use Myspace. Sometimes, you'll even see my icon with a little "online now" tag below it. Looks are deceiving, I'm afraid. I don't use Myspace.

There are plenty of reasons not to use MySpace. Here are a few of my favourites:
( *reasons to hate on MySpace* )

For all of its intellectual pretensions, academe produces more than its share of bad grammar and unorthodox diction. I know this, but it still bothers me when academics insist on adding to their words every loose suffix or prefix to which they lay their hands.

I just came across this in a book I'm reading for class:
"The Russians were the ( Read more... )

I have not left my bed for three weeks. My dinner, when it comes, is slipped through a grate in the wall which is promptly slammed shut. At four in the morning, a man with stick bangs on my door and tells me I can turn off my light and go to sleep. Three hours later, a buzzer sounds to wake me up again, but am still not allowed to leave my bed ( Read more... )

I'm celebrating a small victory over the injustices of scurrilous financial instutions today.

( check it out )

I do not think that they will sing for me."

Boy, am I feeling J. Alfred Prufrock-ish these days! "I grow old, I grow old." I know, everyone is getting older these days, even the little gaffers. But it's hard to age gracefully when you still want to catch frogs and read Archie comics in bed while eating ketchup chips. I guess I don't feel like ( Read more... )

It's been 24 hours since an elm tree and a school bus conspired against our power supply, yanking it from the outside wall and plunging our house into darkness. When I got home from the pub last night, I had to pick my way over coils of insulated wire, chunks of hacked up elm, and three upside-down shopping carts wrapped in caution tape to get to ( Read more... )

Today has been fun, and it's only 8:45 AM! I woke up to the sound of rain being whipped furiously against my windowpane by a gale force wind. I opened my blinds and watched the elm tree outside my second floor window rocking madly in the storm, decided I would study American Evangelicalism at home instead of walking to school, and settled back ( Read more... )