1. It's nice not to lose my whole weekend to putting up nine - to - twelve new features all at once.
   
   
2. A couple of the G-Crew are definitely bummed about having their articles announced retroactively to our Mailing List.
   
   
3. It is so weird having this column appear on Saturday rather than Monday!
   
   
4. I'm still trying to suss out what the best day for the MOIA Digest is now and I am spacing about the nature of the Mailing List's newsletter.
   
   
5. I would certainly appreciate reader feedback on this experiment.

For instance, I don't know if people were simply freaked out by my last Glass House or they didn't read it at all. I have a couple of pals who usually send along "Attaboy"s or "You were way off this week, Rod"'s. The last one: Cone of Silence.

AND now that I'm the Saturday feature, along with RDR, I have to wait to see how that effects our daily numbers. One week is not enough time to make a trend. I suspect I'll know in April if this was worth it.

One thing it does do is focus me on writing my own column sans hype for the new features of the magazine. So unless you're already on our Mailing List, you won't learn much about the contents of the magazine here.

This is all now the publisher's "Me-me-me!" as in singing for my supper.

SILVER THUNDERBIRD

Don't you give me no Buick!
Son, you must take my word,
If there's a God in Heaven
He's got a silver Thunderbird.
You can keep your El Dorados
And a foreign car's absurd!
Me a wannah go down
In a silver Thunderbird....

Quick Question: Am I the only person out here getting spammed with offers for some kind of "herbal" Viagra? I'm just wondering, feeling paranoid tonight, if somebody has put me on this mailing list because of my on-going celibacy or if you people are getting this crap, too?

Okay, okay! I'll stop beating around the bush, Voyeurs: Here's Life of Rod this week:

My net worth today is $1.42 (USD,) eighty-four cents of which is the balance of my bank account.

Well, not really. I have a check from my London publisher for £540 (approx. $790 USD) that my little bank here in Baltimore won't accept. So, effectively, that money doesn't exist, now does it? I'd laugh if I didn't feel more like crying.

And my spindly little legs hurt from walking all over downtown B'more discovering that if I banked with someone larger they'd take it, but only if I had an account with them, which I don't.

RUMOR HAS IT that based on the abject state of my penury over the last few weeks (VoiceMails from my landlord and other creditors threatening me. E-mails to my publishers, my new consulting clients, asking them about payment. Envision a bread and water diet, old Rod rummaging through his garbage for cigarette butts that might still have a few tokes left in them --- well, no, don't. That's too degrading a picture. That's not the "Swinging Lifestyle" I'm supposed to be having, is it?) my new client in California is Fed-Exing a payment and more work that I'll receive tomorrow and Terry, my best man from the ancient wedding, thinks I should have at least enough for a pack of smokes and some spaghetti. At this stage, I'm hopeful.

Henry Miller in Paris has nothing on The Kid.

ON THE OTHER HAND, considering such a scenario, it would make Total Sense that I would opt to publish The World's Magazine daily, while still filing my various stories for my publishers daily, JUST TO HOLD ONTO MY SANITY BY KEEPING BUSY. The alternative is not an option. There are few good bridges in Baltimore and, besides, I'm afraid of heights.

Everything they tell you about cigarettes is true, though, Kids. I could go months without a drink; I love a well-prepared meal, but --- as you know --- I can go for days without food as long as water is available; but I can't live more than eight hours without a cigarette. The cancer sticks are much, much worse than heroin.

I could have mixed my beverages up this last week. Instead of just guzzling water, I could have put on a pot of coffee --- no food, but I still had coffee left --- but coffee only would have made me crave a cigarette. ARRGH!!!

And days went by when I actually had three dollars.... One more dollar would have afforded me a pack of smokes. It wouldn't be that hard to find a friend to lend you a buck, right? But I don't know anyone in Baltimore who didn't work for me back in my flush days...

Heigh-ho, Silver!

Web Publisher as Stand-up Comic

As I look back over the Glass House entries I've done here, the ones that have seemed to resonate most for you have been about my past (often failed) relationships. I would get TONS of mail about those, and very little about other parts of my confessional here. I remember getting pressed about the details of my marriage after telling about the pre- and post-Rod-as-Married-Man stories.

It struck me one day that I was being Web Publisher as Stand-up ala Lenny Bruce. As Lynda said, I was often way masculine and abrasive, but also a black walnut --- hard to get at, but soft and liquid inside.

I myself have asserted more than once that everything there is worth knowing about me is found on this Web site. I'm an open book.

I've been dancing around another story I want to tell you. "Another story," of course, translates into "my life with another woman..."

My hesitation to go back to that route has to do with the fact that I am NOT that man any longer. I'm totally isolated, physically. I know who the last person I actually hugged was, and it was a filial hug. NO ONE in their right mind expects me get "involved" with another person ever again --- and that includes me.

My pal "Van Helsing" wrote me that my mistress won't let me go, referring to this Memory Machine on which I write to you now, darlings. He is half right. I won't let her go, either. We are locked, ankles and wrists, into a world-spanning dance that I do not see the end of yet. Even as I say, "That's it! Enough!" She responds:

"Is there ever enough? Your publishers are waiting, aren't they? And your readers, what about them? I have given you that... If not for them, or for me, then for you."

I listened to a tape I had made on the recorder where I keep my interviews. At the beginning, there was a brief message that I recorded during some sleepless night at this time last year. It was a message from me to me: "...So I reined in the horse for a moment. And it looked up and said, 'Hey, I know you're busy saving the world, but what about me? You're not doing anything for me..."

GO PLAY!

THINGS I NEED THIS WEEK

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 appears 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. In January, 2001, Rod became the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers.

Rod lives in dreams and visions, edits the writing of people from six continents for The World's Magazine, and wonders if New Orleans is actually the next stop on the hejira.

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

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