Welcome to a Sunny California Day in the Mind of Joel J. Rane.
I might not be available at the moment; however, my precious computer will always take your requests. If you find yourself stunned by the power of the Internet, perhaps you should visit the hippies responsible for it all, the illustrious PARC think-tank, formerly operated by Xerox.
These four ladies of the Day Family, my great-great-aunts Gladys, Grace, Neva and Oza, are enjoying a smoke while they vamp about in men's clothes. There is no life sweeter than a Southern life.
The links to various documents on these web pages are just below. If you're merely interested in li'l old me, keep on reading. You can check out this Hollywood child's life in pictures, my celebrity friends at the Catty Librarian page on MySpace, or my elaborate Facebook fan page. You are invited to peruse the California Libre blog, my futile screeds against war, death and ignorance. Perhaps you're strangely fascinated by my up-and-down career as a librarian, or some of my bizarre habits. Nature lovers, would you like to know what my favorite creatures are? Perhaps you're curious where my friends and I are hanging out (when we're not working so damn hard), or maybe you need to relax with my inspirational thoughts for today. Read on, friends...
Typically, you're already mad and want to send a flaming hot e-mail to joel at joelrane dot com.
Yes, I am also a writer. It's so much fun I gave it a separate page, and you can read or download some of my work there...or you can search for my more successful colleagues' work. But why write? What is my damn generation looking for in life, anyway? Just the chance to get the hell out of here? Maybe so, maybe so. In any case, we've got to think globally if we're going to survive on this lovely little rock of ours. Enjoy some of my wanderings and stories thereof on my travel page as well.
Although I'd often like to renounce my citizenship, I am a third-generation Los Angeleno. I was born at San Vicente Hospital, now an abortion clinic at the intersection of San Vicente and Olympic, and lived on Wonderland Avenue, an infamous road in Laurel Canyon above the Sunset Strip. My mother couldn't deal with the winding roads or the filthy hippies, so we moved to Mayberry-like Burbank. 
When I was a mere lad I escaped to UC Berkeley, back when it was still a quaint campus of political idealists and doped-up zombies across the bay from San Francisco, not the artificially progressive bedroom community it is now. As a requirement of a special advanced degree, I lived for three years in friendly and pleasant Barrington Hall, with fellows like Bob there on the left. Luckily I survived to graduate and return home, continuing my so-called studies at USC, finding my true self and putting that self into debt for the next fifteen years. I practiced creative writing in the Master of Professional Writing program. A few people I knew there found jobs eventually.
Maybe you'd like to read about my career as a writer? That didn't quite take off right away, so after some crappy jobs not worthy of a high school graduate, I became a librarian. You can read about that career as well.
Since we're so cozy now, let's reveal all to the Internet. What do I do in my spare time? I drink a little, contemplate alternate realities, and bemoan the fate of my contemporaries. Sometimes I meditate, read, and try to learn something from my mentors, like Frida Kahlo. Like some of you out there, I wonder when our generation is going to finally shut up and let ______ have it! (Fill in the blank.) Are we waiting until the Messiah brings a new world on a plate? Maybe you'd like to help me make California independent someday. Free that Bear!
I also enjoy wandering in the desert, away from the ravages of the Twenty-first Century...click on the photograph of the Famous Mojave Pay-phone (now disconnected) to visit some of my friends on the Outside. When the revolution comes, you'll find me out in Joshua Tree National Park, burning down the ranger stations! Maybe some old friends will help. I've even bent an elbow at the Li'l A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada, near mysterious Area 51. However, I prefer the ruins left by our human predecessors in the Southwest, the Hisatsinom and Hohokam peoples. 
I'm also one of those strange men who study coins. Not merely any coins, but particularly those of the Mexican Revolution, and I'm not alone in this behavior. Got a life? Get a life! This is a life? You suckers can blow your own money at Ebay.
Gee, but I hang out with so many arty types...my photographer pal Robert Barkaloff wants you to look at his possum, and the Goddess only knows what our buddy Sicko wants you to look at. If you like my California Libre screed, perhaps you might enjoy the ranting of my compadre, writer, filmmaker and painter Mark Norris. Arty subversives will enjoy a visit to the intellectual styling of Simmons and Burke and their associates, while you capitalists can find art gifts at Ikon, the lair of Kay. The art scene becomes multi-layered magic at the studio of Sergio Zenteno, the blog of Keith Boadwee, or in the brain of Pilar Albarracín. I've also been blessed to know many other passionate purveyors of fine art, like Erlea Maneros Zabala and Scarlett Rouge, Jason Rhoades, Dawn Kasper and my dear Lucy Indiana Dodd. I've also enjoyed Tricia Watts' contribution to the survival of the human species through art, ecoartspace.
Bring on the rock and roll! My friend Geri Soriano-Lightwood will provide the musical entertainment; unfortunately no pictures of her sexy mommy self, but you can peruse clips of her band, the Supreme Beings of Leisure, or maybe you're clamoring to see the Flash music videos created by her husband Miles Lightwood at Pixelwurld? I have a thing for talented couples as well; in gay Paris you'll find mes amis, musician Julie Bonnie of Cornu and her husband, author Nicolas Richard...catch more of Nic's talent on my writer's page. I met this talented couple through my equally talented friends Beth Chance and Bill Weigel; these superheros form part of the Absinthe Glow and operate a real-life Incredibles operation deep in the mountains of Santa Cruz. Finally, that charming home in the redwoods would be reduced to cinders by the ministrations of rock twosome Chris D'Angelo and Roberta Hoffmann, of Strange World Carnival; afterwards you'll need the less-destructive tuneage of cool cucumber Mike Watt to calm down.
But that ain't all; I'd like to introduce you to my other contemporaries, such as mon cher Hillary Bays, investigating the mysteries of the Internet, who made a cookie just for you. The photographer Trisha Cluck will take a snap of you munching on the cookie, and chase it with a bottle of Absolut! See you on the floor of the Reno Room! You can sleep it off at the San Francisco Model Home of Kathy Kennedy, who'll then sell you one of your very own! Those enamored of more exotic places will enjoy the crumbling conspiracy planet of the late David Jove, via the Wayback Machine. You may also enjoy a visit to Humberto and Claire's sexy Internet radio show Con Sin. Finally, enjoy the ravings of my dear Demitria Monde Thraam (yeah, that's DMT) through her demon lover Choronzon. You meet the nicest goddamn people in California.
I owe much happiness to some of the women in my life, but none of them has posted any hot photos to the Internet, at least not like Kate Winslet! Yeah, show us your wedding band! Well, Crissy is chasing a tot and performing with husband Carlos in Snakes in Eden, and Laura made the news at the International Documentary Association. My sweets, they almost make me regret my quirky bachelorhood...almost.
You might think the way I do, if your parents looked like this!
...is not myself, contrary to the opinion of some, or even a member of my dreaded species. No, if I'm going to suffer through another incarnation on this tiny rock, I wouldn't mind basking in the sun as a bristlecone pine, the oldest trees on Earth (in a tight race with the famous baobab tree.) I also admire the oldest and largest living objects on Earth, such as the 12000 year-old King Clone in the local Mojave Desert, a creosote bush, the slightly older Palmer's oak, the amazing 400-century-old King's Holly in Tasmania (so old that parts of the living plant have fossilized), and most amazing of all, the Pando grove of quaking aspen that may be over 90000 years old. Leonard Miller's page on the bristlecone is informative, and to visit some of these trees here in California, check out information on the Inyo National Forest. We'll slowly grow and wait for you pesky humans to finish up your business. Isn't that damn pyramid of yours eroded away yet? When's that bomb going off? There are a host of other plants that kick ass.
The most remarkable animal on the planet Earth, I think, might be the Cyprinodon diabolis, a species of desert pupfish who live only in the top few metres of one small desert oases, the Devil's Hole near Death Valley. They've been stuck there, hundreds of miles from any other body of water, nibbling algae for over 20,000 years. WOW!
I am also oddly fond of three types of insects, darning needles, ladybirds, and roly-polies. For you damn Yankees, those are dragonflies, ladybugs, and pillbugs. Sorry, entomologists. I know the roly-poly is actually a crustacean. Just don't argue the point with a second-grade teacher who's had a long day.
However, I'm not so attached to any bug that I wouldn't feed them to one of my other pets! My companions in this eternal whirl around the sun have included hungry carnivorous plants, placid cacti, a yard full of California native plants, a friendly orange chromide and a hilarious spotted puffer. To say nothing of the most common top-end predator in California, our friend the black widow! I am also a fan of those illusory fossil celebrities from another world.
You could smoke a bowl, tune into "I Love the 80s" and revel in your own Xness. You could start a new life. Or perhaps you could peruse the verse that I think makes life worth living.
You could Skype me (hit the button below), visit my Catty Librarian page at myspace.com, find me on Facebook below, or even meet me in Second Life as the avatar Rane Lubitsch!
