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NEW ORLEANS - 15 January, 2004: I was released from the hospital at three a.m. this morning after what was one of the roughest weeks, especially physically but also mentally. The largest concern of the doctors was not that the aggressive infection I am suffering was life threatening but rather that if it continued at its current rate it might get into my eye socket and leave me blinded in one eye. So I sat under an intravenous antibiotic drip of an hour and a half, after various CAT scans and having to give so much blood that I suspected the physicians might be medieval and believe they could bleed the "ill-humours" from my system.
But this infection, though devastating (it had spread into the layer between my skin and muscle rendering my image in the mirror that previous morning similar to the visage of Charles Laughton 's portrayal of the character Quasimoto in the film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"), became only an immediate concern. The more worrisome concern is now an unidentified growth in my throat that shall require a return visit for a small camera to be inserted down my throat.
I lost days of work this week because of the ravages of disease I was undergoing. I couldn't get out of bed last Saturday. The "Quasimoto Effect's" first symptoms appeared on Monday. By Tuesday, I was again unable to work. So Wednesday came the fourteen-hour hospital visit.
So, after giving rebuffs to the blandishments of my friends about my physical health, my body put me in a position I could not disregard. It said, this time: "You've got two speeds left now, pal, slow and stop. How you like me now?"
The one pleasing thing this bout of illness affords me, while depriving me of needed income, is the chance to be alone with Rod the Writer again. I have sorely missed that.
16 January, 2004: I have taken today off to simply recover more and run errands like filling the prescription the doctors have provided me. They say that it is a very powerful antibiotic and will eradicate the dogged fortresses of this infection remaining in my body. I do feel better today than I have in weeks, thanks to that I.V. drip. Much of the swelling had gone down. I now only look slightly disfigured, not like a full-on matinee monster.
But, in the midst of all this, I have committed another great faux pas. When I took ill on Monday, I moved the dinner date Superman arranged for me to Thursday. On Thursday I was exhausted and relieved and forgot about that dinner date until its time had passed. So now Superman's choice will believe I am a louse. I suppose I am.
18 January, 2004: THERE IS NO GOLDEN KEY.Scott and Tierney have decided to stay on in New Orleans until the summer, perhaps June. That tells me that it is easier to talk about leaving New Orleans or plan leaving New Orleans than it is to actually accomplish the escape. That is especially true if you live in or near the French Quarter. The Quarter seems to operate by way of some kind of centripetal force, pulling things back into its core. What is needed is a countervailing centrifugal engine to toss those of us who want to get away from it far enough from that core.
Scott brought me a curry dish he had made to deliver the news.
ROD on The First Week of the U.S. Presidential Election Campaign
Listening to some of the pundits and prognosticators over the weekend, I almost felt compelled to write an Open Letter reminding these folks that there was no need for a feeding frenzy yet. There was plenty of news out there to report, including the protests in Port au Prince, but they were caught up in the (usual) breathless game of treating the Presidential race like a damned horserace instead of what it is: serious political business involving millions of dollars - not to mention the future of this experiment in democracy and the nature of the "Free World" in the years to come.
We already know what the "Free World" will be like if George W. Bush remains at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: increasingly paranoid and belligerent. Under Bush, except when pressed, the march to imperium will continue..
In this hypothetical Open Letter, I meant to remind those other journalists who cover politics, inside and out of the Mouthpiece Media (MM), that the traditional purpose of the Iowa caucuses is to pick losers, not winners. Since the Iowa caucuses gained their overblown (for journalists and some political advisers, if not the populace at-large) importance at the beginning of the 1970s, it was because of who they eliminated from contention, not who actually won the caucuses. Here's the record: of the candidates who came first in the Iowa caucuses, roughly fifty percent have gone on to win their party's nomination. That makes Iowa as predictor of chances at the Presidency of t he United States about as reliable as flipping a coin.
Whoever wins in Iowa this week - and I hope the Iowa Democrats will recognize that Senator Kerry is probably the best timber the party has produced this season - the Real Story will be who comes in last. The candidates still standing after Iowa will have to face a very strong General Wesley Clark in New Hampshire and their first real primary test. Considering how truncated the Democrats have made their primary system, most of the show should be over by the beginning of February, shortly after South Carolina-Missouri-Arizona-New Mexico-North Dakota-Delaware do their throw-down. By then, I'll go out on a limb and predict, there will probably only be two or three (number three being a stubborn dreamer) of the nine candidates (as I write this segment) still standing.
The most interesting piece of news for the coming week (the week of 19 January) from my own perspective is the cynical way the Bush White House moved the State of Union address up a full week from its usual schedule in order to try to steal headlines back from the Democratic winners of the Iowa caucuses. You have to hand it to Karl Rove, he's Machiavellian to the hilt.
While we're on politics, His Fraudulency and Karl Rove, I find it ironic that on the same day as the Iowa caucuses, United States Prefect of Iraq, Paul Bremer, and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council will be in New York, hat-in-hand, asking Secretary General of the "irrelevant" (per Paul Wolfowitz) United Nations if they will help broker the dispute over the planned Iraqi election. The U.S. had planned to hold the election this June but, this junta - much like past Republican administrations - conveniently forgot that the majority of Iraqis are Shi'ite Muslims. Thus, the regime was aghast when tens of thousands of Shias took to the street, at the behest of their spiritual leader, to demand an honest-to-goodness democratic general election."Well, why --- I mean, ehm --- that was not exactly what we had in mind for this transition," said the befuddled Americans. "A real election? We don't think you're country's ready for that right now. What we had in mind was more picking a list of candidates from every ethnic and religious group by way of a caucus and ... and then maybe ... "
You know the drill.
So now the irrelevant United Nations is being asked to come in and pull America's fat from the fire. The United Nations, of course, shall want both security guarantees (they've already lost people during this occupation) AND a greater role in the overall rebuilding of Iraq. How irrelevant is that?
21 January, 2004: I FIRST HEARD ABOUT THE HOWARD DEAN GROWL in Iowa by word-of-mouth. (Thanks, Matt.) My initial reaction was that his performance sounded like a scene from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Matt wrote it off as firing up his troops after a surprise loss. I thought there was something vaguely creepy about it.This evening on National Public Radio (NPR's) "All Things Considered" I heard a commentary on the growl, a tape of Dean's actual performance, David Letterman's comments on CBS television's "Late Night" and some humorous and doctored loops of the war whoop that were said to be circulating here on the Internet.
I was not the only person who thought the Dean performance was a bit bizarre. The NPR commentator predicted that the war growl had damaged Dr. Dean politically and that he would have to live it down.
From experience, I know that political campaigns chew candidates up. They are a combination of exhaustion and adrenaline that turn otherwise thoughtful men into zombies. Robert Redford's portrayal of the babbling candidate in the back of his limo spewing mixed-up versions of The Message was an adroit one. The brain tends to roll out of the ears after repeating the same buzzwords and rushing from seeming identical event and photo op to identical event and photo op. Lack of sleep, raw hands from shakes you wish you didn't have to make and puffy lips from babies you wish you didn't have to kiss.
So Dean would be forgiven by any rational person for his over-the-top performance. But politics is not rational and neither is the process. The growl will hurt the doctor in New Hampshire.
23 January, 2004: EVEN KARL ROVE GETS CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS DOWN from time to time.Today, in his interview with NPR Senior Correspondent Juan Williams, when confronted with the question of the 2.3 million jobs lost during Mr. Bush's tenure, the best Karl could come up with as a response was along these lines:
Well, we can throw around all kinds of numbers and statistics about job losses. But that doesn't matter. The American people are incredibly resilient and look what we had to go through ---Yatta-yatta-yatta.
Karl wasn't expecting Juan to throw him a hardball question and when confronted with it gave a political Non-Answer Answer. So now we know that the Rove-meister has a problem thinking on his feet. I'm chuffed.
ROD on Web Design
23 January, 2004: I MADE A HUGE WEB DESIGN ERROR when developing this year's new GENERATOR 21 cover. What amazes me is that no one - not my usual critics, but most especially not the writers who depend on me to promote their articles - called me on it.The trick of having the cover photo of the current issue take you the Table of Contents worked to mitigate my mistake - if you figured that one out in the first issues of 2004(and the 2003 Holiday issue) - BUT the top of the page led you to back issues and you had to scroll down to find what was in the magazine for that given week. What a bonehead move!
Back in The Day when I wrote a Web Design column for Andover News Network (some of you here might remember that) I would have raked me across the coals for paragraphs! I would have talked about how counter-intuitive, on an intuitive medium, that kind of design looks. I would have told you to click away until I learned my lesson.
I learned my lesson. This edition I lead with the top stories of this edition.
You need to call me on these kinds of design errors, Kids.
PARTING SHOTS
24 January, 2004: THE JAPANESE DELEGATION SENT OVER LAST WEEK to to determine if they could lift the ban on American beef decided that the efforts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to contain the disease were not adequate. They went home recommending that the ban remain in place.Have another hamburger, Bunkie.
I'M GOING OVER TO SCOTT's this morning to visit. Perhaps he'll let me use in telephone line to up- and download my e-mails and do a bit of surfing. I'm also hoping we'll visit the grocery so that I can obtain victuals and supplies. I need to make my nest a bit more homey while I try to seek out a new job.My work on the house ended yesterday. Stephen says he may have a couple of days work for me at the rental property next week, but there are no guarantees and I need something full-time to keep this roof over my head. I don't want to lose another apartment. I had prayed those days were behind me. But the gods continue to have a sense of humor about my existence. Why does he continue to go on? Why can't he just throw in the damned towel?
LISTENING TO EDUARDO FALU tonight while cooking dinner, Future Love. My Brazilian thang again. He's a sweet guitarist that I hope to share with you when we are finally united. For now, I can only suggest to you that sweetness.
Back in my days as a Business Man, I used to keep a poster of Rio de Janeiro on my wall. It was meant to tell me that being there -- a house on a cliff, my final freedom -- was what I was working for. I've always been a dreamer.
I no longer dream of Rio or anywhere else. I have accepted death in New Orleans. Matt's curse. I'll never get out of this town alive because there is NO golden key.
It's interesting, after all these years of running hither and yon, to think that I have finally been caged. It is a gilded cage, I guess, but nonetheless a cage.
It's most ironic that a "bookish" man, as I've been called, should find his end in the most backward and illiterate state in all of the United States.
"New Orleans has its charms."
Yeah, they are sold like Mardi Gras beads in tourist clip shops for ten times what they are worth. The charms of New Orleans are made of plastic and rubber. They are shipped in from Red China at twenty dollars a bushel. If you had all of the charm of New Orleans and a dollar fifty you could get a cup of coffee and not be able to leave a tip.
My first Harper's magazine arrived today. I can now get dispatches from civilization.
Won't you come see about me?
I'll be alone
Dancing. You know it, Baby!
Tell me your troubles and doubts,
given everything inside and out --- "don't you forget about me"And then I put on Bonnie Raitt's version of "The Glow". KInd of an obscure song, I guess. But sometimes there is comfort in obscurity.
I have thought about writing, once again, about spiritual matters in this space -- as I waste away. "What I need is a friend tonight..." she sings, and I empathize. "What I need is someone...." That orphan feeling overcomes me and I wonder what this year will bring. It has to be better than the trials, tribulations and betrayals of 2003. I sent a plaintive e-mail to my sister-in-law, who I had believed loved me, and she sent me back a telling silence.
Now I am alone, as Will Shakespeare had Hamlet say.
You were always alone, Dufus! the Old Curmudgeon tells me. And you'll be alone in your coffin. Wake up and smell the coffee.
"What about Love?" I ask.
You said it yourself, Sherlock. Love is temporal. You can't love anyone you haven't invested time with. What you seem to be asking about is romance. Forget about it! You only get two shots, at best, and you've used yours up.
If I were you, I'd focus on a comfortable retirement, Gramps! You're not getting any younger as far as I can tell. You savvy?
"You hate me as much I do, don't you?"
Guess again! Nobody hates you as much as you do.
Things I Need This Week
1. A new job. One that fits my clothes.I don't think I could handle losing another apartment.
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 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.
Last 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. Our Resident Philosopher is looking for work yet again. 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.
Rod is "noodling" with idea of a Glass House book. (Are you listening, Timothy?)
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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