Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 21 OCTOBER, 2003 : VICTORIA IS MORE UPSET WITH ME than I might have imagined. Immediately after I launched the previous edition of the magazine, she decided that she would not play in Mac OS X anymore. No way, no how. She refused to boot in OS X and until I booted from the Norton Utilities CD (this came to me after I'd returned from visiting Scott and Steve), she had nothing to say to me. That drove me crazy, of course. I called my pal Greg to see if he had any suggestions. He was not in town and needed to be near his own Memory Machine to kibitz on a solution. I couldn't bear being alone within these four walls without Victoria's company. She is my only and most constant companion.

I went to visit my friend and former roomie, Shawn, who used to be off on Mondays. He was at our old job. He had not heard the news about my mother but was immediately and openly sympathetic. He said I could hang at his place and use his telephone to try to contact friends in California. I had hoped to talk to my oldest and dearest friend there, who works from home, but she was out. I try another couple I know and love - ditto, the time difference between our locations on this continent was working against me. I finally did reach my pal, Terry, a.k.a. "Von Helsing" and he helped to cheer me up. Then I went back to the restaurant to talk to Shawn and let him know I needed to get out, be around people. (His shift doesn't end until 11 and I needed to get back home long before that as I meant to return to work today - I cannot afford not to. Entergy is on my case for this month's bill in two days and then rent comes up once again.)

I went to visit my pals Scott and Steve at El Nino. They made me eat. A good idea, considering the tailspin I've undergone these last few days.

My mother's memorial service was today. I was here following my usual routine: up at 6 in the morning, opening the house at seven, hand sand, dust, paint, rotary sand, dust, hand sand, dust, paint. When Homer's famous "rosy fingers of Dawn" gently brush the morning clouds, I begin my routine. I always come home covered in dust. Dust is my life.

EVERY SINGLE DAY some man or another comes to the door of the house and asks if we are looking for workers, painters, sheet rockers, anything. If I could send one question to the putative President of the United States it would be WHY are so many able-bodied people who are willing and able to work being forced onto the dole, Mr. Bush? You tell me and we'll both know.

There were other people working at the house today, but I didn't feel much like talking. I just wanted to bury myself in the routine until 3 o'clock rolled around and I could go home. My pal Shawn came over to keep me company. We drank a few beers before he had to go to work tonight, jabbered about our old boss and our former co-workers. He said that he has friends coming in town over the next few days leading up to Halloween, so we planned to get together when we can. I walked him part of the way to his job, thinking maybe to visit Kathleen at The Cat. She took a day off today, so I came back home to be with you.

I'll warm something for dinner later, I guess, and maybe play the "Civilization II" computer game to keep myself occupied, to keep my mind off things.

Vickie is letting me use OS 9.2, at least, for now. So I can't complain. I'll eventually figure out how to get her to boot from OS X again, I'm sure.

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22 October, 2003: I am feeling better today, my second day back at work, though Victoria continues to have a case of the ass.

Yesterday was visitor's day at Casa Rodrigo. Shawn, who I thought I'd see on Wednesday, came over yesterday afternoon and had beers and then, while I was burying myself in the Civilization game, Matt showed up with a bottle of Evans Williams bourbon. Thankfully, only a pint. "I thought you'd need this around now," he explained. So we had a quiet and personal wake/catch-up moment before he had to take off to retrieve his friend Mark (the roomie I was meant to replace two-plus years ago here in Nawlins) from B.J.'s bar down in the Bywater district. It was good to see him again. I was afraid he was estranged from me because I can't abide his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, he had girlfriend-advice of his own for me. He said that I'm too philosophical about love/sex (sound familiar?) and should jump back into the pool. Characteristically, I proceeded to make my long list of demurrals and rationalizations for my long celibacy.

Fact is, I have to find The Last Woman my own way. No amount of advice will make me change.

For now, it's just Vickie and I and our little spats about who is actually in charge here. Vickie's not an inexpensive date, of course, forcing me to go to various Wi-Fi bars and Ethernet coffee shops, and she talks too much sometimes ("It's not my fault! ... ") But, at the end of the day, I have to admit that she had brought me more pleasure, intellectually - though not physically - than most of the girlfriends I had during my still-active period after my divorce.

I am feeling better today. I was actually able to laugh at jokes made by the carpentry crew at work. I paid off Entergy, our local utility company, and bought the making of a new stew at the supermarket. My peasant food again. This time I am making a "country style" pork rib stew with potatoes, carrots, green beans. It should last me into next week.

My friend Drew came up for cocktails after I returned from my bill paying and shopping and we talked about films we like. We shared the neighborhood gossip. When he took off for work I began the weekly meal.

It seems that I have a lot of friends here in New Orleans. I have seen more people, at my own apartment, since things started to go south for me, than I ever did during my first two years here. As Drew also noted, astutely, my fellow members of the New Orleans bartender pantheon have also been especially gracious to be me since hearing of the death of my mother. On one occasion, during the tailspin, when he was with me, I had bought three drinks for him and two for myself when I decided to pay the bill. The bartender in question charged me $5. I had left a $20 bill on the bar. Drew, noting the change I got back, leaned over and said, "No way, Dude! She gave you back too much change."

When I questioned her on this, she commented: "I charged you what I think you should pay, today, Rod. As you always said, 'Never argue with your bartender.' " Then she grinned and winked.

I understood. I was still not myself and sometimes payback can be a blessing. I used to be her bartender.

So I sit at home tonight trying to make comfort food until my friend Greg - who I trained as a bartender for The Cat, but who left even before I did - drops by to help me with Victoria and my little spat.

Okay, okay! We've gone over this before: most of my friends here in New Orleans are other bartenders, some of whom I trained myself. Get over it!

I've never denied being a drinking man, let alone a great mixologist, and I don't intend to do so now.

But I shan't be a bartender again for a very long time, insha' Allah. When people ask me what I do now, I say I work construction. I do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. I can look back on what I have accomplished. Who would believe that I am a writer, honestly, my love?

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NEW ORLEANS IS A FUNEREAL CITY in much the way Egypt was a funereal country, in my view. Death permeates the very air we breathe here. As one co-worker told me last year, you can't live in any house in New Orleans where there is not a story of some kind of death, suicide, murder, etc. The Crescent City is famous for its Ghost Tours and its aboveground graves. The Big Easy, our other nickname, is famous for voodoo queen Marie Laveaux and her (supposed) prescience and communications with the dead. This is a city of drama, sex and death.

Matt once quoted some other writer as saying there are only three "story cities" in America: San Francisco, New York and New Orleans. I have lived in all three in exactly that progression, when not jumping on a jet plane to see some other part of our planet. That, too, is what some writers, the peripatetic ones, have to do.

A co-worker at the job site asked me the other day, knowing a little about me, "Have you decided what city is next for you, Rod?"

"I figure I'll die in New Orleans," I said. "Between the lawsuit and my continued poverty and don't see a chance for much else."

"Thanks for that depressing thought," he responded.

I wanted to have a good comeback, but I did not.

I still fantasize, even in e-mails to my dear Dragana, that I shall live in one more city before the adventure is over. Taxco, near Lowry's Cuernavaca, is still at the top of my list, as is Rio. I'd love to see Cairo, and my still living friends there, one last time. I'd like to go back to Rome and Florence, as well. As much as I know the life in Serbia is a misery for my closest friends, I'd love to have the financial resources to engineer a visit to Romuliana for us one more time. And the United States's New England will always have a special place in my heart.

Friends tell me I still have to do Amsterdam, Dublin, Rio, Bangkok, Calcutta, Bhagdad, Sydney, Hong Kong and Tokyo if I am to consider myself a World Citizen. But how many years of life do I have left?

There's nothing like Manhattan.

No, Darling, I haven't lost my wanderlust just yet.

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25 October, 2003: "YOU HAVE ENTERED A DIMENSION BEYOND SPACE AND TIME ... " That's a quote from the opening of that other Rod's television series. So let me give you a warning right now: if you are at all politically "middle-of-the-road" or conservative, don't read this next entry in the GH. You won't like it one bit.

Listen, people, here's what I'm starting to think in my heart-of-hearts. We are too-close-for-comfort toward entering the days of the "Do you want a cigarette and a blindfold?" for anyone who tests as having a knowledge of history and a sense of ethics as regards international relations. I'm not saying tomorrow, but I'm saying that we're already on that road here in the United States unless something changes very, very soon.

Mr. Padilla remains in a federal prison, without access to his own attorney, his relatives, anyone! in solitary confinement because of what federal authorities call "loose talk." (Man, I hope you read that Village Voice article, because otherwise you won't know how outrageous this case is!) He's a U.S. citizen, but because Mr. Bush and Mr. Ashcroft have effectively suspended habeas corpus rights ‚ EVEN FOR AMERICANS ‚ when they decide to identify you as an "enemy combatant" (-- CAN any attorney out there give me a truly legal definition of that trumped-up term?) Padilla is rotting in jail.

I have been in jail, though not a federal penitentiary yet, and I can tell you it's nothing close to a picnic. I got no reading material and couldn't get even a pencil to write with if I did five hundred push-ups. Imagine what this man is going through with the cameras watching him do everything including take a shit and having no human contact at all ‚ except with Corrections Officers, the créme de la créme of American society.

The words "gulag" and "political prisoner" definitely come to mind.

As one reader from California put it, "high dudgeon". Yes, bless it! I'm in high dudgeon about the travesty that is Padilla v. Rumsfeld and the way this country is being led into a quagmire.

I saw a bumper sticker down here in Nawlins the other day that said: "If you're not OUTRAGED, you're not paying attention." Amen!

I realize this has already become a rant. That was not my intention, but now I'm boiling mad and I can't hold back. Let me give you a few more items that make my blood boil when I forget about my own so-called life:

1. The United States Pentagon has three-star general Boykins going out and saying that Muslims should be considered terrorists because they are "idol worshippers" since they don't worship "a real god."

   Okay, I'll accept that someone could become a high-ranking member of the American military establishment without realizing that the Muslims worship the self-same God as the Christians and the Jews, they even recognize the same prophets, etc. What I don't get, and forgive my naivete here, is that this wingnut would be let loose in public to insult millions of people around the world who practice the Islamic faith.

   Meanwhile, Rummy (a very appropriate nickname for the American Secretary of Defense) backs the man up by touting his military record for over a week before announcing an internal investigation. Woo-hoo!

2. Let's see now ... His Fradulency left the country - a major event in of itself, since he's visited fewer countries than I have - and finds out that Karl Rove's version of what the rest of the world and its leaders, let alone its people, think about America is not quite right. Duh.

   Let me quote the New York Times of 24 October, 2003. In an article by David Sanger we read this 'graph:

   In his six-day dash from Tokyo to the Philippines to Singapore, Indonesia and Australia, rarely did the searing suspicions of America's intentions - and the intentions of Mr. Bush himself - pierce the president's fearsome security bubble. But when they did, they revealed a huge gulf between how the president views himself, and how Asians view George W. Bush's America.

   It would seem that Mr. Bush expected to be received as a world hero and discovered that most people think of him as a world pariah. We're not surprised in these quarters, but - try as they might and are expected to - his aides could not shield him from often extended and "searing" criticism from world leaders and the world's people. He was actually heckled in the Australia parliament. Act like you are surprised, please.

   To quote the conservative Financial Review of Australia, "Bush Came, Hu Conquered". The latter reference is to Chinese President Hu Jintao, who appeared the day after Mr. Bush and to whom the Australian parliament was deferential. Hu took the customary state visits and tours expected of world leaders and met with Australian businessmen. Bush came quickly and under high security. He refused to mingle.

3. This weekend, Mr. Bush came home to thousands marching in the streets of our nation's capital condemning the debacle in Iraq. I'm not going to go deeper into this phenomenon because I believe the American people are acquiescent and spoiled, at best. I commend the protestors but wish they would become true political dissidents, as that might be the only redemption for this experiment in human rights and democracy.

   But I don't see the courage out there for the abandonment of security and consumerism that true dissidence requires.

   And one last thing on this item: As usual, we've gotten the protestors' estimates of how many people were in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, and then the (unofficial) police estimate. I have to ask: WHAT DOES IT MATTER ANYMORE?

   The cops count down; the protest organizers count up. If you have a bit of intelligence, you don't believe either side. And with good reason. What is important is that we know tens of thousands of Americans were willing to take to the streets today to say that something is horribly wrong with our occupation of Iraq and young Americans dying every day.

   Let's go for brass tacks here, my love. Mr.Bush has now seen that the world and its leaders don't agree and maybe, just maybe, he'll see that we, his own people, are furious and don't agree. That would be a good start.

   A good conclusion would be that he take the Lyndon Johnson decision but I believe he's too ... well, he won't do that.

   So it's up to us.

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CHANNELING MARK TWAIN: "Well, there you go again ... " Former President and Republican saint Ronald Reagan made that phrase famous, Back in the Day. I'm sure we have many readers here at The World's Magazine who won't remember or relate to the phrase or the sentiment.

I bring it up for two reasons:

1. There i go again with my hell raising. That's to be expected, especially on this page.
2. I'm thinking of syndicated columnist Robert Novak, that smarmy, little bastard, who outed Mrs. Wilson. I don't think that Novak should be required to reveal his sources, as I should not be required to reveal mine, for reasons of both access and journalistic ethics.

   BUT let's gets real here! Novak has had access to every conservative Republican White House since Day One! This is a man who has become expert at Insider character assassination. He's the conservative Republicans' chief apologist and means of punishing anyone, left or right, they haven't liked over the last thirty years. That only because George Will would rather talk about baseball now and again and think of himself as an aristocratic writer. (Don't get me going on that sham.) He knows it and everyone else knows it, as well.

   That Quisling! (Novak, not Will.) I'd like to meet him in a dark alley just one night. But it would be unfair because I'm sure he doesn't have the intestinal fortitude for a fair fight, man-to-man.

Geez! Where did that come from? Rod, who are you channeling P.J. O'Rourke? You don't even smoke cigars!

Okay, okay. I'm sure Mr. Novak would stand up to a fair challenge of fisticuffs. (Dream on, pal!) Or maybe he'd write something close to the truth on occasion. (I¼m waiting. Aren't you?) So I shouldn't write anything casting aspersions on a fellow journalist. (Rod, calling what Novak does journalism is like calling a sow's ear --- Well, you know!)

END RANT

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I THINK I SHOULD STICK TO NAVEL-GAZING, my Love. Whenever I wax political, I get a bit brutal. I still believe in a " ... a great horse, the open steppe, a falcon at your breast and the wind in your hair." But get me political and it becomes, " Crush your enemies. See them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women."

I have to work on that.

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25 October, 2003: HEY, HEY! This is a photograph of my lifelong pal, Sal d'Alessandro. We used to be roomies back at the end of my college days. He and his ex-wife met at a Halloween party I threw, complete with dry-ice fogging cauldrons of Tequila Sunrises (what was I thinking?) Back in The Day. Notice what he is doing and how he is smiling. It is because of Sal that I coined the phrase, I shall always be envious of musicians because what they do is called "play."

I used to be known as a phrase-maker, you might recall.

Sal drops me an e-mail once every five years, bless his Gypsy heart, but his wife Mardi e-mails me jokes at least every couple weeks, kisses and hugs and keeps me apprised of the goings-on back in Connecticut. I'd be clueless without her ...

You might remember one anecdote I shared with you about them: I used to joke that when "Uncle Rod" returned to Connecticut their sons Tino and Dmirti would probably be old enough to mix my martinis and light my cigars. When I finally did return, to repay a debt and see one of Sal's shows, I arrived at there place in the country to find the boys sitting on the stairway with cigars waiting and martini glasses in their hands. They were asleep on each other's shoulders, of course, as it was late. I laughed my ass off.

I lay awake this morning watching Victoria send a pulsating shaft of pale green light on the far wall of this room. I had awakened from what seemed a premonitory dream, a bit of advice from my subconscious, and just lay staring at that comforting green beam cutting through the darkness with the regular cadence of a heartbeat. (Remember when I would fall asleep peacefully on your breast, comforted by your heartbeat?)

It reminded me, too, of the green pinprick from my transistor radio (remember those?) when I was in puberty. After finishing my homework from school, I would sit in the dark ("Darkness, Darkness, be my pillow ... ") and just stare at that green bit of light while being enchanted by the music from that radio. I would dream of a better life and places in the world I wanted to see one day when I was grown up.

I was also thinking this morning ‚ well, it's not dawn yet, but shall be in an hour or so ‚ that I can no longer remember most of the issues of this magazine I have labored upon. Something or other brought the memory of the "Cool Hand Luke" edition of this past year into my mind. That made me think that I couldn't actually list, edition by edition, what the GENERATOR 21 has wrought. There's no way I can remember every single article from its former incarnations as The Bounty Times and Not The Bounty Times. But, more importantly, after renaming this effort GENERATOR 21 when I moved to San Francisco, after publishing hundreds of editions over a decade-plus, after taking it electronic, I'd be hard pressed, Darling, to even name all the writers who've appeared on these pages, let alone what they said. (!!!) That's a cause for concern when you consider that I brought the issue of a successor up to our Mailing List members this month. I'm gratified by what they had to say, published in this edition, but I'm not sure I fully agree with their assessment.

On the one hand, as Mailing List Members emphasize in their responses, this magazine has been a creative effort shaped by my own "unique" sensibility and the fact that I've been a globetrotter. On the other, every parent wants to see his child live beyond him. How can I be any different? It's impossible for me not to have the impulse to see the G21 become an institution, something it can only do if someone succeeds me as Editor and Publisher. Procreation is a primary human impulse and this magazine is my only offspring.

Only one person suggested a possible successor and she does films, not Webslinging.

Over the years, I've had two offers from people willing to take this job, both unsuitable. In one case, because, dear as the young man is to me, he doesn't have the discipline and focus and in the latter case because the volunteer is the laziest man I know. If I gave The World's Magazine to him it would probably come out once a year with about three articles. I'd be doing pinwheels in my grave.

So, for the moment, I'm stuck. It seems I have to privately recruit someone to take the effort over before either my liver or the rest of my body deteriorates, whichever comes first.

Whoever told you founding and publishing a magazine would be easy was lying.

IN THE DREAM I mentioned above, I was visiting an attorney's office somewhere in New England, I supposed, because of all the snow I saw on the drive to the place. She was someone I had worked with in the past, quite attractive, and I seemed to know she and all of her staff very well.

We all chatted and then went out for cocktails. That's when things got strange. It seems that I had been involved with a couple of women on the staff at one time or another and things had ended badly. When the attorney and I returned to her office, we were greeted by her assistant who was supposed to have gotten a tattoo on her hand after leaving our festivities. She readily admitted that she had dropped acid before going to the tattoo parlor and didn't seem to have noted that it was not only her hand which had been tattooed but her entire body. I was thinking that I'd explain that to her later when I took her home and to bed. (She was a Carolyn Jones look-a-like. Go figure.)

But, at that point, the attorney left the assistant alone and the assistant proceeded to remind me of the many times I had called upon her to give solace to certain friends of mine. She made it a point of telling me about one particular guy who had hurt and outraged her by describing in great detail his girlfriend's travail with cervical cancer. I didn't know this part, not having been privy to their conversation, so I was a bit nonplussed. I was also upset that she blamed me for his behavior and felt that I had burdened her with him.

This part of the conversation we had carried on in the open office, with her co-workers listening in. The final part of the conversation she asked me to have with her over the telephone, as she was upset.

I walked to the outer office and picked up the phone. She said into it, "What you have to decide is where to say, 'I leave.' "

"Where should I say that?" I asked.

No response came.

I waited. And waited. I awakened hearing myself saying aloud, "Where should I say that?"

---

ARE THESE "GLASS HOUSES" GETTING LONGER? Could be. Maybe I'm gearing up for the "My Glass House" book that certain people insist I should be writing. Maybe that's why my subconscious mind suggested that Successor thang.

Just as this magazine going to the Web nearly eight years ago was a radical shift in focus and direction for me, because I felt we'd outgrown both print and BBSs if we meant to reach a world audience, perhaps I have outgrown being just a weekly three-dot columnist. We'll see.

The running joke, while I was a journalist, was that I would produce one Big Story per year. I usually do manage to pull that off. So maybe it's about time for one big last gasp.

Ahh! Here comes the sun. Time to publish a magazine ...

Things I Want This Week

1. To Make Rent.

2. A new lover. Perhaps even a future wife ...

3. For events in my life to slow to a manageable crawl.

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Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Last year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Our Resident Philosopher is back to working construction again for a boss he likes. It's tough on an old man, but bills need to get paid. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

Rod is "noodling" with idea of a Glass House book. (Are you listening, Timothy?)

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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