When my new boss asked me what I thought about working for the Karnos, I said: "It was interesting."

"You should be a diplomat!" she chortled. "So far, you've given a non-answer answer to every controversial question I've asked you."

You never know who you're talking to in this town, I thought to myself.But I also thought of an accusation Sammy Karno had made on one of his bad days: "You're a damned politican, Rod!" he said. "You never say anything that somebody could get mad about. That makes you somebody who sits on the fence."

"No, I've simply learned that some battles are worth fighting and others are not."

Sammy's probably one of those who are pleased that I walked away when I did. I'll never know.

This quiet time provided the opportunity for me to review my goals. Escaping America is still the Main Chance. I was slightly diverted from that after relieving myself of the dysfunctional environment of Casa de Caca, but everything that I've had a chance to observe around me lately has only served to bring that lodestar back to the fore. I find it hard to stay among a people so oblivious to the physical and spiritual hopelessness throughout the world, let alone the death. America acts as if the entire world is its Sabine women.

These thoughts could lead to a discussion about the importance of ones emotional environment to peace-of-mind, the ability to focus on complex issues and one's creativity. That discussion would bore most of you, I suspect, so we'll move on.

My friends have proffered various theories about her stubbornness. I think the truth is more straightforward: it's either the memory chip or the motherboard.

She has been high-maintenance this year, after serving me so well during the first leg of my hejira.

(The temptation is there to blame this newest catastrophe on the gods and goddesses, but I dare not. I'm enjoying the luxury of having them look away from me this year.)

As I write this, I can only wonder when you will read it and what hoops I shall have to leapt through in order to get back to my "real" world. I've made most of my income via Memory Machines. Being without one is like hibernating.

Rent will be due soon. Lord knows when I'll have the money to reclaim My Darling...

Meanwhile, Back At the Ranch

It's always an open question when the house you live in goes up for sale whether the new owner will

1. raise the rent,
2. decide he/she wants different tenants, or
3. kick you out so that he/she can move into one of the units.

[SHOTGUN: A style of housing prevalent in New Orleans among a large number of older rental units. The dwelling is divided by a central wall into two elongated apartments. In most cases, these apartments were designed during the pre-air conditioner era. They are raised above the ground to produce air-flow below the floors. The ceilings are high and have ceiling fans to pull heat upwards in the summer and push it downwards in winter. The rooms in each unit run in a straight line to the back of the house such that if the front and back doors are open one would be capable of a shotgun blast through the unit without hitting any walls. Houses divided in this manner are called "double shotgun"s in New Orleans.]

21 April, 2002 - There has been at least one blessing this week: My landlord has decided not to sell this house after all. I shall not have to look for a new place to live for a while. You can imagine my relief.

The day before deciding this, she sent me an e-mail saying that she was proud to have me living here. I was touched, and a bit stunned. I couldn't resist gibing that I wouldn't be very proud of having a tenant who was unemployed, obviously hadn't decided who he was going to be when he grew up and couldn't even keep up with having his tools in good repair. (Or words to that affect.) She was gracious and suggested that I might be a "free thinker." That what I was doing here might confirm that she was less alone in her opinions about the world.

It's not often that your landlord even bothers to look at your work. I was flattered by that. So this evening I sit here wondering what I can do to warrant that kind of respect. It sure would be nice to hear from IREX about now. I discover that some distant relative had remembered his/her most eccentric kin in a will.

Drawing the Curtains on "My Glass House"

Firstly, I've been thinking about drawing the curtains on this glass house for a while, maybe permanently. I've been "confessing" to you for years now. Maybe it's time to make this space an editorial page once again. We'll see.

PLEASE NOTE: Until I'm back on the Mac, the G21 e-mail Newsletter and the Palm version of the magazine will not be updated.

I've also been thinking that this might be a good time to back off from weekly updates of the magazine. I'm thinking about going twice a month. There are reasons for this thinking:

1. I'm broke as a churchmouse and need to find new ways of making money.
2. I prefer producing this effort on my Mac and because of "#1", your guess is as good as mine as to when I'll be able to accomplish that again.
3. My classes for the Novi Sad School of Journalism commence on 14 May. I need some time to put up the pages on which the lectures will appear and craft those lectures into their final versions.
4. I'll need some time to adjust to the schedule of my new job, perhaps amend it around the workshop sessions for my journalism course which I have to perform in real time, online.
5. I'm feeling the urge to research and write more articles myself.

I'd appreciate your feedback on this thinking. You know where to write me.

I've also been considering doing a major re-design of this Web site. I believe I'm about due for one, before the winter. What prompted that thought, for reasons I'm not even certain about, was going to a site where Generator 21 is listed and clicking on the links to other Web publications in our category. Sadly, the first ones I clicked on (FEED, WORD) we just gone. TORNADO INSIDER, a publication many in Europe considered one of the best back in my days as a technology columnist, died and then was re-born like a phoenix this year. For some reason this little FM station at the end of your dial has remained on the ether. Some might even say we've thrived.

Strike that "For some reason..." The reason is really YOU. During this last year, we wouldn't have been able to re-up our domain name, publish when I was having computer problems, produce the Palm version of this site, or gain our independence from those cretins at Ugo.com without DIRECT DONATIONS from YOU. I didn't do any of that! (Lord knows I couldn't have afforded to.) You did!

(The people out there who were directly responsible for each of these feats know who they are.)

Public broadcasting claims it's a member-owned operation in most countries, but they take corporate largesse and government handouts. That's not so here at G21. You do "own" this channel, this site, this ephemeral labor of love. I'm too poor and capricious to support it, you seem to have figured that out, so you took over ownership. I think there's something miraculous and blessed about that.

Thanks for keeping me on, folks. You'll never know I much I appreciate being of service.

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THINGS I HATE 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 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.

This 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 designing Web sites for other people. And he's the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. In his spare time, he chases women.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. The new home of the magazine. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

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

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