EVENT # 286: Smells Like Team Spirit

MESSAGE To Those Committed to Death: You are a wave, but WE are the ocean...

NEXT UPDATE SCHEDULED MONDAY, 22 OCTOBER, 2001

Today's Pick . Another page will be displayed tomorrow.

'B' Movie Actress
Joi Lansing

In fact, we're getting that "Looking Backwards" feeling of moving into an era of the endless conflict Orwell predicted, where history is selectively re-written based on the current target the populace MUST believe has ALWAYS been The Enemy and, therefore, the embodiment of all that is EVIL. Blood on our hands.

Another way of looking at it is: "If there isn't a Cold War, we'll invent one... as long as we can keep the American people afraid enough to accept any atrocity."

With the lights out it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My Libido
Yay, a denial -- Kurt Cobain

ANTHRAX - Media Disease

Usually, you report the news. This time you're part of the story.

You make a living writing articles for newspapers and magazines. Since you reside in Boca Raton, you do a lot of work for the supermarket tabloids because they're right in town and they pay well.

One day, you walk into their state-of-the-art building and reach the Star newsroom just in time to see the second plane slam into the World Trade Center.

On another day, you find out that a photo retoucher for the Sun has been stricken with anthrax and will probably die.

Infectious disease experts from New York and Miami are brought in to talk about anthrax and calm nerves. Everyone meets in the National Enquirer newsroom. The experts assure you and the rest of the American Media Incorporated employees that the Boca facility is safe.

"If we weren't so certain," one says smugly, "we wouldn't be here ourselves.".. More

Play it again, Sam

G21 Essayist KEVIN CAREY has been with the magazine for three years now. He has provided some of the most erudite reflections I've had the pleasure to edit and present. Over the course of those years, some readers have complained (much as they do with some of my own writing) about the need to consult their dictionaries. When I told Kevin about those complaints, he took them as compliments.

I laughed.

That is why, with this edition, I sadly introduce the last of his 10-part Valedictory "Essays on Culture." I have considered it a privilege and an honor to have worked with Kevin Carey over these years and I shall miss his insights, his love of our common language, and his (often) contrarian take on Popular Culture as we present it at the dawn of the 21st Century.

At university, I once had a sign on my dorm room door which read: "Herein Time is measured by the beat of horses' hooves rather than the pulsing of engines..." I believe that this is a sentiment that Kevin Carey would have understood. He will be missed. --- Rod Amis

AMENDS

Never have we been able to communicate more freely, quickly and inclusively, yet we are losing our ability to conduct public discourse and we are apt to resort to blame.

Although we profoundly believe in individualism we tend to conform to an alarming degree in spite of the growth of university education.

We are safe, sophisticated but frightened. We have lost cultural confidence as we descend into the silence of night and we are in need of quietness, collaboration and belief. This is the point I have reached after nine weeks of travelling.

I immediately own that the journey has largely been through unfavourable territory, that I might easily be charged with the sin of unbalanced negativity with which I frequently charge others but it has not all been gloom and I hereby make amends... More


MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE:

DNA BANKING: Who Owns YOUR DNA?

Over the last year or so the information overload occasioned by the media's obsession with all things genetic must, one would think, have caused many people to turn off, tune out and drop into something more easily understandable. We're constantly bombarded with expert opinions from both sides of the Genetic Engineering (GE) modified crops argument, which leave the lay person confused as to whether or not it's a good thing.

It wasn't too long ago that we heard that the Human Genome Project (HGP) would soon be completed. This suddenly spawned a plethora of speculative TV and newspaper articles dealing with everything from cloning to the creation of cyborgs and much in between. The floodgates were then opened to interviews with would be gene therapists who would, in time, be able to cure or prevent just about any condition, disease or malady that flesh is heir to. Mortal coils, some said, would in future be shuffled off by appointment only... More



G21 STUFF: We know. You want to let people know that you KNOW.

One way of doing that is buying our "stuff." Wear it, drink from it, click over it.

This Pull-down Menu will hyperjump you to all our great features. Try it!

Nothing Rhymes with 'Volvo'

I'm trying to set up a support group called VOLLOCS; with a V.(Acronym will be explained anon) You see I owned a Morris Minor in the seventies --- Which reminds me. Have you ever noticed, apart from the social possibilities afforded, the literary merit of the MM.? Fair play to Christy Moore, Richie Kavanagh and Micky McConnell they saw the rhyming potential of the Morris Minor; Dine 'er, Wine 'er Baldy Miner, Recline 'er.

Try working Peugeot, Chrysler, Citron or Hyundai into a villanelle or a sonnet.

Have you ever heard anyone stand up at a Fleadh to sing; "The Toyota Camry Car"? And an ode to an Isuzu or a Renault would be utter Philistinism. I suppose you could rhyme something with KA, but who'd want to?... More

THE NEXT EVENT

THE NOW EVENT

Tell me you've NEVER done something you're ashamed of or -- even worse -- that if we all knew you had done would not think of you as a total cretin?

Okay, that's not murdering 5,000-plus "innocent" people. (Strange how we all become "innocent" once we're dead, but are bastards and bitches while we're in the next cubicle. Forgive my Ambrose Bierce moment, or don't.) My point is, whether you destroy one or one thousand YOU ARE EQUALLY WORTHY OF GOING TO THE PROVERBIAL HELL ... "War & Hell" ROD AMIS More

RDR 10.08.01: THOMAS HART laughs about the Dubya's notion of "Spending Out of Debt?"

RDR 10.01.01: RADIO RAHEEM signs on to the Peace campaign of The World's Magazine and lauds the American Friends Service "Give Peace a Chance"

RDR 09.24.01: Our Publisher, ROD AMIS, has absolutely no sense of humor. We know that. So why does he sound like a stand-up comic this week? "On My Way to the Job Site"



MY GLASS HOUSE: : NEW ORLEANS - 13 October, 2001: My friend in Belgrade, Dragan Vicanovic, told me that when he would go on the road for his magazine one of his fondest moments of returning home was coming over the hillside and seeing the Belgrade television tower in the distance. That, for him, was his way of knowing that he would be home soon, in minutes, and back with his wife.

I said that that was the way I would feel upon seeing the hills in Petaluma, on my way back up into northern California. And that's the way many of us who lived in Manhattan felt about the towers of the World Trade Center.

My towers of Manhattan are gone, thanks to the terrorists. But Dragan's television tower is gone, too --- thanks to US. Which one of us has the more right to cry?.. "Dragon's Teeth" ROD AMIS More


VOX POPULI: : From Artcamp, MEXICO:

SUBJECT: Dear American People

Estamos terriblemente impresionados y tristes por los eventos trágicos que han ocurrido en su país y queremos que sepan que compartimos su pena y preocupacion. Estos incidentes terribles son signos de que algo esta terriblemente mal en el mundo. Por favor, comprendan que estaremos con ustedes en la búsqueda de justicia y el final de atrocidades como las ocurridas el 11 de Septiembre del 2001.

We are deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events that have taken place in your country and want you to know that we share your grief and concern. These terrible incidents are signs that something is gravely wrong in the world. Please understand that we stand beside you in seeking justice and an end to atrocities such as those that occurred on 11 of September of 2001... More


This week's Easter Egg shows a little nepotism on the part of our Publisher. But can you blame him for being proud of his nephew? Your NEW G21 Easter Egg

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