COVER -> MY GLASS HOUSE
So you take that long walk down the corridore toward the exit. You get to the door and push it open.
Suddenly you feel a hand on your shoulder.
"But. Michael, wait! You are the Don. You have an obligation to The Family."
"Elvis has left the building," you repeat.
They take your hand. They kiss it. "You are asking us to play 'Bitches Brew' without Miles. How can we do this, Godfather?"
You are so angry you tremble.
"Godfather?" the voice comes plaintively. "You can turn your back to the audience if you like. But do not force us to play alone..."
This is what you did not want to hear. You could smell your freedom, taste it.
And you let the door close in your face.
Tiredly, you turn around. You trudge back into the auditorium and you open your trumpet case.
You count it down, "One, two..." You put your trumpet to your lips again and blow!
I try to get out, and they keep pulling me back in!
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.
| The World's Magazine: g21.net
Event # 208: HOUR OF THE WOLF This Pull-down Menu will hyperjump you to all our great features. Try it! JOIN THE G21 MAILING LIST. Get updates on new features. Take part in our Readership polls, shape the future of The World's Magazine. It's easy! E-mail The World's Magazine with the "Subject" line: SUBSCRIBE. Want to know more about our community? The Info is here. LAST WEEK's EDITION For Deep Background visit the G21-Barnes & Noble Shop OR get great books at the G21 BARNES & NOBLE SEARCH ENGINE Discover the MOIA Discussion List |
I'm still doing the page lay-outs and design. I'm still uploading the site to the server. As we're on deadline as I write this, and Wolf hasn't sent me the newsletter, as promised, I guess I'm still doing that, too.
I'm still here. WHAT WENT WRONG?!?
My Birthday
24 March - I can remember being a kid and wondering if I would be around in the year 2000. Immediately, like most kids, I began calculating how old I would be by now. And today here I am, forty-eight (48) years old and surprisingly --- as my first girlfriend Lynda noted when we spoke on the telephone after years of silence last year --- still alive.
That's probably the one thing Lynda and I agree on these days. Neither of us expected me to still be around this long. I guess I'm tougher than we both imagined, though I wouldn't say so on my bad days.
I'm hoping today will not be one of those bad days. I fired off an e-mail to our new Editor, Wolf, describing what type of day I thought I would have. I was supposed to have a telephone meeting with my boss at Andover.net which didn't materialize. He wasn't in the office at the appointed time, so I left a VoiceMail. I promised my friend Barbara that I would buy ice cream today, and I shall after my nap.
Yes, *my nap.* I got up especially early for my meeting with my boss. I'm not a morning person, so I'm planning on taking an afternoon nap before getting into the part of the day with which I am most comfortable.
Kevin and Elizabeth mentioned something about having me over for dinner, but they know better by now than to count on my actually showing up. I'm notorious among my friends for not accepting invitations.
The fact is, I guess I don't actually like most people very much. Once I get to know people, I can be comfortable around them, but I'm not inclined to being around strangers at all. I've devolved back to the way I was when I was a child. When my parents would have people over, I used to hide in a closet. That is until they dragged me out to "perform." It was the accent.
My parents and their friends used to love to have me come out and tell them the stories I made up. They used to laugh and laugh about my Bermudian accent. What a "proper" little boy I was and how I had such a wild imagination, always making up stories! Nobody figured that these stories were my life, more real for me than the horrid life I found myself forced to live in this strange new country.
As soon as they would let me free, I went back to my closet to hide until the house was quiet again.
DECADES
Maybe it's because I've been going through so much lately, but last year seemed like it lasted a very long time. That is unusual...I was thinking just the other day that a decade is not actually that long a time. I look back at what I was doing ten years ago and it seems recent. I have to reach back at least twenty years to feel any sense of true distance at all... But the last year seemed to go on and on... I kept thinking that I would be forty-eight at any moment, but it didn't come true until today.
Part of that probably has to do with how disappointed I was with this New Year's Eve. Over the years I developed so many great plans for what I would be doing and who I would be with. At one time, I thought the most appropriate place would Denver, the Mile High City, with old college buddies of mine, planning to be a mile high. Didn't materialize. Then there was this date I made with a woman friend of mine to be in New York, Manhattan, which I kindly let her get out of when I realized she didn't want to see the New Year in with me.
So I spent it alone in Mexico, and I was miserable.
I'm not the vacation type, you see... Though *everyone else* thought taking a vacation would lift my spirits, it served to do absolutely the opposite. It only pointed out how truly alone I am in this world. It served to remind me what a failure my personal life has become...
This makes it difficult to listen to exhortations of (some of) my friends and co-workers. They believe I should celebrate the fact that my net worth (on paper) is the highest it's ever been. Two years from now I could feasibly "retire" and devote myself exclusively to my writing, they advise, if the stock market and the valuation of the company I work for hold up. Everybody these days in the "dot.com" world believes that there is no end to the boom in sight.
Meanwhile, I know that since I received those precious stock options I've already lost thousands of dollars (on paper,) and by the time I might be ready to retire my stock options could be worth about the same as Confederate money.
So it goes.
Oh man! I guess you were expecting me to have something more uplifting to say to you this week. Gosh, sorry.
I keep looking around for something to be happy about today and I can't find one damned thing.
Things That Bother Me This Week
- Trying to decide if I made the right decision in appointing a new Editor.
- Feeling like Michael Corleone.
- My shabby wardrobe.
- Needing a concept for the play I promised Rastislav.
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
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.
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote on web design and development issues every Thursday. He is principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviews technology issues weekly. His opinions on the Info Age began appearing on MethodFive's HYPER technology newsletter in March. 1999. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000.
Our Editor does listen!