i just checked my site meter and we're now getting 22 unique visitors a day! woo-hoo! that means i'm now getting twice as many visitors per day as i was getting a few weeks ago. i hope people keep coming back. and don't worry if i go a day or two without updating. i PROMISE, there will always be something new here at joel's pub.

dionne and like 10 other women all got together last weekend for her wedding shower/bachelorette party. di's sisters simone and keisha both made it to providence. so did her friends kristen and alexandra. here's a foto...

big idea of the week...

i went to the beach friday morning and stayed out there for about 4 hours or so. i made sure to wear suntan lotion, but i missed a few spots and now have bright pink spots on my wrists and ankles where i didn't distribute said suntan lotion evenly. but that gave me a great business idea.... i would like to buy a couple of these sunless tanning booths that spray a bronzer on you from all different angles with multiple nozzles. i'd buy these and outfit them to spray on suntan lotion, and then put them at public beaches. beachgoers would pay a couple bucks for a full-body suncreening that is guaranteed to cover every nook and cranny. it would be soooo much easier than trying to put the lotion on while you're already in the sand. now you better not steal my idea!

this week it was reported that al qaeda was considering trying to sell poisoned cocaine on american streets. apparently the cartels said "no gracias" on the grounds that it would be bad for business. the more i think about it, though, i don't think even the threat of terrroist death would keep a crackhead from hitting the pipe!



imagine the irony if America's Super-Villian #1 Osama was the man who finally won the war on drugs for us.

hoppo called me up yesterday and made me promise i'd take down my post about his blog. i think i called it "ignorant." i'm not taking it down, but just for the record, hoppo is an extremely enlightened young man. he's like a young plato (minus the buggery, of course).

oh, and while i'm at it... if any of my millions of readers are looking to hire someone (or know of a good job opening), let me know. hoppo is gainfully unemployed right now and while i like my suggestions (go on welfare, get food stamps, cash in on unemployment), i think he actually IS looking for work.....



and no, crab jockey is not something he's interested in.

read this interview with the leader of the "womyn's prohibition league." this is pulitzer-worthy journalism, if you ask me.

here's a long list of seriously cool links. all kinds of random cool stuff is there.

my boy hoppo has a blog now, in addition to his regular website at johnhopkinz.com. here's his blog, john's studio. and yes, it's some ignorant shit. that's why he's hoppo. (in my best "human traffic" voice...) nice one brotha!
here's a pic...

sorry for the lack of updates lately. things have been a bit on the hectic side. di had her bridal shower and bachelorette party yesterday. 10 girls hanging out and getting silly together was too much for me to handle, so i high-tailed it outta the house.

luckily, jay (whose fiancee sharon was at di's party) was up for hanging out. we hit the beach for a couple hours. went to narragansett town beach and was really blown away with how nice of a beach it is. his mom hooked us up with the resident passes you need to get in free, so it worked out great.

jay's mom and aunt fed us and then we headed over to his friend greg's beach condo near scarborough beach a few minutes away. plenty of booze-filled madness there... especially when we all got kicked out of some divey beach bar place. hilarious.

tomorrow, i think di's friend alexandra and i are going to hit up block island for the day. her and di are flying down to new orleans in a couple days for a mini-vacation, so di has to work all day and can't go. oh well.

eagles update...

T.O. and his agent are still angling for a new contract. the latest scuttle has been that T.O. and his agent are demanding a trade.... i personally like eagles g.m. joe banner's comment on what it's like dealing with T.O. and rosenhouse... "'If we were dealing with somebody who was looking at this logically and was going to come to a common-sense conclusion, you'd say [he'll report to camp on time],' Banner said. 'But you're dealing with two people here who, frankly, don't think in common-sense terms. 'Anything can happen. They're not going to necessarily do what makes sense.'"

so i pretty much picked out the tuxedoes for the wedding. we're going to go with a classic look. none of this fancy 5-button jobs or pastel colors. we're going to wear single-breasted jackets with shawl lapels (the curved ones without notches), black bow-ties, wing-collared shirts, and cumberbunds. here's how i think we'll look...

i went to a tux shop yesterday and was hit with a lot of questions i had no idea how to answer.... bow tie or regular tie? white or off-white shirt? what color tie? what type of jacket lapel? cumberbund or not?

so far i'm leaning toward a jacket with a shawl lapel (the curved type of lapel without the points sticking out, like james bond would wear.). i still don't know if we should do bow ties or not. bow ties are more classic looking, but a nice wide tie with a windsor knot looks good. i think we'll go for the vest and cumerbund, too. as classic a style as possible.

here's another eye-opener: practically every known suicide bomber ("suiciders" as bush calls 'em) of the past 20 years has blown him or herself up for one main reason: out of anger at a foreign power's military occupation of his or her homeland. unfortunately, it's become taboo to talk about things like this in american discourse, but you can read here about what researchers have discovered about terrorists.

Meet the people of gaza...



in the next two weeks the israeli government will forcibly evacuate thousands of right-wing israeli "settlers" from gaza. these people aren't likely to leave willingly. expect some serious israeli on israeli violence.

here's what's really going on in gaza.

i've been diggin on tons o' funk lately. i stumbled a jazz band leader named lou donaldson who ventured into some really funkity music in the 70s. he also had probably the baddest-assed album title ever...

lately i've been perplexed by the question of who invented the biohazard symbol. a few days ago i was reminiscing about a job i had the summer after senior year of high school at the great valley rehabilitation hospital. i worked as a "maintenance associate"...OK, i was a janitor in a hospital for old people on their way out (and a few poor teenagers and kids who got royally fucked up in car crashes. ah. .. the ole BTU...brain trauma unit. what an uplifting part of my day it was to visit that part of the hospital. anyway... i sometime wonder who it was that came up with the "biohazard" logo, since we'd always be dealign with trash bags that carried that log. it turns out it was a u.s. government scientest named charles baldwin. good job, charles!

i sometimes have these conversations in my head where i try to figure out something using only the logic and specific information already in my head. basically... i "talk" to myself in my head. i like to think of it more as mental gymnastics than a symptom of schizophrenia. anyway... some asshole broke into di and my (mine? our? ours?) apartment about six months ago. this piece of living, breathing shit only got away with a dell laptop. not a HUGE loss. it left more of a violated feeling than any financial pain. anyway... everyone suggests getting renter's insurance. i thought about it, but i always tried to do some mental math to figure out the probability of my house burning down or everything i own being stolen. accoridng to anxietyculture.com there's only a small chance that my shit will get stolen. ergo, the only the people who should be hoping i get renter's insurance are the soulless muthas in hartford.

wedding update...

di and i did the tasting menu yesterday for the reception. the caterer (via roma) gave us an absolutely huge amount of food to sample. i was expected a little doggie back-type thing. this was two huge aluminum buffet trays full of stuff. here's what i think we chose...

entrees:

veal marsala

dijon chicken

(each person gets to choose)



with:

grilled vegetables and roasted potatoes

gemelli pasta with pink vodka sauce

caesar salad

cannolli for desert (di was a little reluctant to go with the cannolli, but hopefully she'll play nice.)

a few weeks ago i happened to read a about a survey of readers that found that male readers tend not to read novels by woman authors. i mentioned to di that i haven't read that many myself, and she got really mad at me. i don't think i conciously avoid woman authors, but iwas already in the dog house. so yesterday i finished reading "sex, drugs and cocoa puffs" by chuck klosterman.... and she made me promise i'd read a novel by a woman author.

i think this one looks like a good bet...

maybe the biggest asshole of all time? that would have to be rick santorum, the pennsylvania senator, who suggested that the catholic clergy sex scandals were caused by boston's overall sexual wickedness. frankly, if boston is any more perverted than pennsylvania, i've never noticed. but anyway, you know some people hate you when you can google yourself and get this. (don't click on link if you just ate lunch.)