Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 25 December, 2002: For Christmas, I cleaned my monitor screen and the box itself, thinking about how well My Darling has served me this last two years. It was time to show her some love. When my friend Matt noticed that I still used the label "Macintosh Hard Drive" on my desktop, he said: "Now there's your problem right there! You don't show your computer enough love. You haven't even given her a name."

I'd never thought about naming my computer. I don't name my pens, after all, even though I'm known to have a fetish for nice pens. Bending to peer pressure, I named the drive "Enemy Crusher". I've always put that Quicktime clip from the film, "Conan the Barbarian" on every computer I've owned, including this one, so it seemed fitting at the time. But while cleaning My Darling, and thinking about the adventures we've had, in Bermuda, in London and Belgrade, Manhattan and now New Orleans, I decided that she needed a better name. I decided to call her Victoria. Veteran Mac users know that our computers talk to us when there is an alert. It's almost a joke among us that she often starts out: "It's not my fault ... " I long ago decided that the voice I preferred was Victoria. So now My Darling has a name to match her voice.

In a couple hours, I must be off to do the Christmas version of The Rod Show at The Spotted Cat. I'm not sure I'm prepared for that, really, as I am worried about my health. I spent the evening sweating out a fever that came on quickly after dinner. I knew then that I would not be honoring either of the invitations I'd received, from Beth and Fergus and Tom and Carol, respectively, to attend holiday parties. By 7:30 p.m. I was lying down wrapped up in a blanket with both space heaters going full blast. I felt like crap. I slept and sweated until about three in the morning, when the fever seemed to have broken. Then I slept sporadically until about seven this morning.

I had gotten up at seven yesterday because it was my only day off until next year and I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish.

1. I needed to answer all of my queued e-mail, finally.
2. I needed to do laundry, since I won't have a chance again for over a week.
3. I needed to pay my pal, D.R., for some "special" Christmas CDs I mean to play during my shift today.
4. I wanted to talk to Tres Monaghan about encouraging his sister to write an article for the mag.

When I left home yesterday morning, it was shirt-sleeve weather, warm and sunny. I dashed to Checkpoint Charlie's to do my laundry, then back here to drop it off, pick up Victoria, and head back out on the remainder of my rounds. By the time I'd completed those rounds it was cold and overcast. It was so cold I opted to take a taxi back to the hovel because I knew I was too weak and tired to handle the walk back in the chill winds.

I didn't feel overly bad, though I'd dreaded sitting in a draught while uploading my e-mail at Coop's Place.

I cooked a package of Curtis's antelope burgers and re-heated some leftover greens. That's when it hit me. Hard. It was not only the fever, though, but also the coughing. It seems that I've not fully recovered from the "cold" I caught while staying with Ian. I've never completely lost the cough. Sometimes it's quite bad. Last night it was bad enough again that my ribs hurt today. I'm hoping all those hours of sleep helped me sweat out most of the bug and that a quick kick-in-the-pants, in the form of a hot buttered rum before my shift, will help me pull The Rod Show off today.

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27 December, 2002: Christmas Day was not spectacular, as I didn't see most of my regulars, but it was fun, when not zany. I made a little more, but not what I'd hoped for. Thursday "swing" I didn't bartend at all, which means I didn't make any tips. I helped stock, took out some trash, and sat around drinking coffee and then a cocktail, chatted with the others bartenders for a few hours, waiting for it to get busy enough to warrant a second person behind the bar. It never did. So I took a taxi home around 10:30 because of the cold weather. That ate into my meagre shift pay, of course. I was a bit disconsolate and went immediately to bed. I'll have to pray that tonight is better.

Saturday, I open at noon for the first time on that day. Saturday is usually a money day for me, so I'm hoping it will make up for my losses on the projected budget for this week.

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ELUSIVE RE-ENTERED MY LIFE ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT. She bought me drinks after my shift, encouraging me to stay out later than I'd otherwise planned. She suggested that I go out with she and her friends on Sunday evening, which is her birthday. I walked her home. I was quite happy at the time that she was taking up an interest in me again, though I'm a bit nervous about it now. I like her a lot, but there's also something about her which frightens me. I can't put my finger on it yet.

She is one greater talker! She can go on for an hour without missing a beat and all I'm required to do is smile and nod. She tells me all the details of her day, all the things that made her laugh, every bit of every conversation. It's an amazing performance. She says that I'm a nice man and fun to be around. She says she enjoys my company and that I should not be so concerned about being seven years her senior. At our ages, she says, a few years don't make that much difference.

I think I know part of what frightens me: she seems to "on" all the time. I find it difficult to be on every day and I do it to make a living. I can't imagine what it's like to be on all the time everyday. I would find that exhausting. Besides, no one is really like that, are they?

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Something lives in the crawlspace above my apartment where the hot water heaters are kept. Matt heard it the afternoon he helped me move Curtis's desk up here. I hear it often at night, particularly if it's cold outside. Sometimes it sounds like its burrowing through the walls, other times it takes off toward the front of the building at a full gallop. Whether it's rat, squirrel, weasel or opossum, I have no idea. I've been meaning to talk to the landlord about it. Perhaps when I pay rent this month.

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A NEW YEAR FOR THE CALENDAR means I approach another year of serving under this masthead. We shall begin building our eighth year of publishing GENERATOR 21 on the Web for you in a couple months. That will mean that I've been producing this effort for a total of thirteen. That's longer than I was married!

Eight years is a long time for an endeavor to remain vital on the WWW. It makes us practically venerable among Web enterprises. Only organizations like Netscape, Yahoo and the New York Times online are among our peers in longevity here, and they became so by expending far greater resources than we've ever had available. The list of those who have come and gone during our time reads like a Who's Who of once "hot", "sticky" and "bleeding edge" Web enterprises. We have always been prosaic. But we have kept coming.

Various of my friends, over the years, have endeavored to convince me that I should stop publishing G21 in favor of something they considered more valuable to my existence. Most of them missed the point that G21 is my existence. This cathedral of words has always represented my reason to live. With each passing week, over the past seven years, I have been placing another brick onto the edifice I have tried to build. With the help of other foolish writers in Africa, in Australia, in Europe and here in the Americas, I have been endeavoring to produce the people's history of the world as that history transpires. In the process, I have managed to help, encourage and further the careers of not a few writers. G21 writers have testified before Congress, won prestigious international awards and gone on to become editors at other publications themselves. I am very proud of our record of achievement in those arenas thus far.

But there's never been much laurel-resting around here. We have had to come out with a new edition nearly every week of these seven plus years on the Web. I'm always looking for new talents to develop. I'm not convinced that we have produced our best work yet.

There's a simple reason that I've never attempted to produce a complete archive of this Web site. The task is too daunting. BOB POWERS alone has written over 154 weeks, averaging three CDs per week, of music reviews. That's a catalog that would cover approximately 500 titles. I don't even remember the names of all the writers who have written for this publication since we came to the Web, let alone all the topics that we've covered. Suffice it to say that there is an encyclopedic volume of material here. Thus, it's not unreasonable to assume that I could spend the next few years simply working on an intelligent archive of what we've already published. That's not going to happen. I'm far too busy cultivating new material. (I joked recently with Bob Powers that we'd just wait around until they made "G21: The Movie" and hired he and I as technical advisors. Then we'd just collect our Big Bucks fees and take off for the Bahamas. Heh!)

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IT'S DIFFICULT TRYING TO PREPARE AND PRODUCE A MAGAZINE when you're working every single day. I miss my time away from the world. I miss silence. I don't like bartending enough to want to do it every single day. It's disrupting my real life. I'll make rent, though. It's just my personal sanity that will be impaired.

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2 January, 2003: I'm feeling puny and beaten up today. It's been a lon-n-ng stretch of bartending, longer than I'm either used to or care for, and I've not had enough time for my writing. Trish and Ed want me to design their calendar for this month and (potentially) take over the Web site for The Spotted Cat. For the latter, there's information they need to provide me. For the former, I need to get access to a scanner. I had hoped to do so with Scott, but it looks like I'll have to make the trek out to the nearest Kinko's. They had wanted me to deliver the calendar today, but that's simply not in the cards. Perhaps by Friday evening or Saturday.

I go back behind the bar tonight, Friday night, Saturday for noon, ditto Sunday, 2 on Monday. Perhaps my schedule will get more "normal" soon. I pray that it will.

Dmitri is trying to convince me to leave New Orleans. He says he even has work for me. I miss the East Coast from time to time. If I moved back I'd be near a great research facility. I'd be closer to Manhattan, again, my favorite place on Earth. But Dmitri has injected a number of strange ideas into my head lately. He's even led to my having a Russian pen-pal named Tatyana. I wonder if it's snowing in New England right now. I will talk to D about his schemes this weekend.

I'd like to ask Elusive out sometime soon, but it seems I'm always working at the bar these days. I need to focus on changing that.

ABOUT ELUSIVE: I had almost decided to give her the nickname "Clea". I decided against it because that's too premonitory and freighted. But I've started warming up to her as I haven't with anyone in years. I didn't see her on her birthday, but she came around the next night. We went around to a pub called The John because it's only two blocks from The Cat and it doesn't have live music, so we'd be able to talk. My friend Matt wanted to see me, too, so he came with. That was okay. The John was also my choice because it's only a few doors down from Elusive's house.

She has reinvigorated my sense of touch. As she touches me, I've become comfortable with allowing another person into my personal space. AND I've done something that I haven't in years: I have embraced her, I have put my arm around her. It's been so long since I've been physically close with another person that I'd forgotten how isolated, physically, I have become. It feels good to feel comfortable touching another person.

So, yes, I am warming up to Elusive, despite my fears... I simply need to find a way to see more of her.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH: I've offered you a new masthead with this edition AND I'm polling the members of the G21 Mailing List and the writers as part of re-instating our "Bottom Ten List". This was something we used to do each year when the magazine was still a deadtree 'zine. Each January we would list the people we thought were the dregs of the Earth from the previous year. I've been very chuffed by the nominees that our Mailing List members have sent in thus far. I have a few ideas of my own, of course, too. In our next edition, on 13 January, I'll share some of the List members' responses and our final picks with you.

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I DON'T HAVE ANY PARTICULARLY TRENCHANT INSIGHTS for you this week, my dear. It's all I can do to make it through these days like weeks, of late, and back to my Hobbit Hole to sleep. I need to patch my inflatable bed as the two cushions from Scott I sleep on now are tough on my back. I need to get more order established in this apartment -- but I'm seldom here to do so right now. When I am here there are e-mail in need of response, stories to edit, queries demanding answers, sleep sorely needed. I am still not well, but my health seems to be improving a bit. I need to eat more often.

I have started the novel.

Things I Need This Week

1. Enough in tips to replace the malfunctioning battery and power adaptor Victoria needs.

2. LOTS more time alone to read and write.

3. A girlfriend.

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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.

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 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. Right now our Resident Philosopher has joined the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. 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.

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

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