Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 21 July, 2004: This edition of The World's Magazine is scheduled to appear on Monday, but I might launch it sooner in the fear that I'll lose my electricity. That's scheduled to happen this month over the weekend. With that in mind, after finishing work on my new Web design assignment, I'm rushing to get this edition out.

I realized today that all of the columns except my own are in. I've been focusing on the second part of the trilogy (Glass House Book 2: "Heart & Stone") and begging for enough money to make it to the proffered interview in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

My skin, especially on my hands, reflects my mental state: blisters, rashes, I look like I'm coming out with some strange and unknowable disease. Longtime Readers know this happened when I was a child. My skin reflects my mental state. It breaks out in unknowable rashes, gets sensitive, makes me worry even more than I already was ...

Monday! Why did I choose to put this edition out on a freakin' Monday?!? I HATE MONDAYS!!!

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AS YOU HAVE READ, almost all the news I regularly watch comes from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. (For example, I know that as I write this in my sweltering apartment, it's as hot in Madrid and Zagreb as it is here in New Orleans today. OR you might not have heard the Canada's Molson and the USA's Coors beers are contemplating becoming the world's largest beer distributor, via merger. )

I don't trust USA news organizations any longer. My view is supported by the people over at OutFoxed.org the site promoting the film "Out Fox". This new documentary film asserts that Fox News Network is little more than the propaganda wing of the US Republican Party and features former staffers and internal memos to drive home the point. It's damned good journalism of the sort that garnered your World's Magazine its first Press Club award. (We used to make it a habit of publishing internal corporate memos, too, but have since outgrown that impulse. Now we report from "on the ground".)

The result of all this, as a thoughtful person would infer, is to drive a deeper and deeper wedge between myself and the normal dinner table or water cooler talk in my own country.

Depending on who you are, the accusation that I "think like a European" is either an accolade or pejorative.

I would prefer to think of it as an accolade whenever I am confronted with the fact that most of my fellow countrymen don't know even the most cursory of the names of leaders of other nations. That they can't locate these nations on a world map leaves me appalled. Appalled and saddened.

The Great Divide, as I noted in our last edition, between our domestic readership and our readership outside of the USA, was that:

1. American readers thought we should do less foreign news and focus on the Presidential race in this country, while
   
   
2. Readers abroad wanted coverage on the US election that explained how it would impact the rest of the world but lamented that our foreign coverage still had great gaps.

I know even a magazine like this one can't please all of the people all of the time. It seems, try as hard as I can as a World Magazine publisher, I can't please any of them.

DID YOU KNOW, my love, that the Bolshoi is in London for the next few weeks? London has a burgeoning Russian community now, including a new Russian business and arts community. So this is an event, of sorts. Dare I say NEWS? Look at see if you can find this item elsewhere.

Let me go further: If London has a growing Russian community, it follows that it will also have a new contingent of Russian criminals preying on that community, as happened when this country had its grave wave of Russian immigration. I reported on that while living in San Francisco, which has a substantial Russian immigrant community. The neighbors upstairs in the house where I lived last in the Richmond district of that city were Russian immigrants. The majority of the people in my neighborhood were Chinese, Russian or Greek, immigrants or first generation at best. I kno w of what I speak.

A Big Story in San Francisco after the wave of Russian immigration was about Russian criminal elements preying on senior citizens from their own country, in some cases killing these seniors after taking all their money and other valuables. Could this happen in the UK? Undoubtedly. Is this a story worth following if you're an informed journalist? Certainly.

Have you read any analysis even this cursory, elsewhere?

FINALLY: Beginning this week, YOUR World's Magazine appears in two new languages: Dutch and Greek. We are one of the few magazines on the Web that appears in 12 languages. Tell a friend abroad!

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22 JULY, 2004: I AM PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE, in case you missed the news, that under international pressure from people like you and I, my lovely, Dr. Jiang Yanyong was released by the Chinese government this week. (See Item One of the previous "Glass House"). See? Good things can happen when we all take notice and work together.

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24 JULY, 2004: WHEN I CAME TO NEW ORLEANS in 2001, I told you that this was definitely not the end of the hejira I am on. I now understand that, like Persephone, I simply had to visit the underworld. It's been fascinating in an horrific sort of way. I've learned a lot about people in the process, some of whom I knew in other incarnations, in other storied cities. It has been an object lesson in human frailty and my own, not to mention a reminder about my own mortality.

Beyond that, I can say -- with only scant reluctance -- that this city deserves itself. Its redeeming qualities are basically architectural. It could evaporate tomorrow and the world would not be deprived of anything except ennui. Well, we might lose a bit of racism and decadence but I believe the planet has an ample supply of both.

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26 JULY, 2004: I had a lot more I wanted to say this week, but I've been under a great deal of stress.

I'm about to go through another change, as butterflies are wont to do. More on that as things evolve. My closest friends have heard about this privately, but I'm not ready to discuss every single piece of my life in this Glass House yet.

Besides, I don't want to jinx my chances for freedom from this miasma.

According to Democracy Now! (thanks Amy Goodman) our gulag here in America has risen to 6.2 million people, most of them Black, according to Justice Department reports released today.

What's interesting about this is that most (estimates go from 60% to 75%) are non-violent drug offenders (Remember that successful War on Drugs we've been waging for 40 years?) serving mandatory minimum sentences. This is certainly the way to make this a better country, no?

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YOU HAVE WATCHED me go from being totally involved in politics, if you've been here over a time. From being a ghost-writer for politicians, a former fundraiser, a political consultant who appeared on KCBS in San Francisco.

Then I, I, advocated the meaningless of the vote because corporate culture had totally taken over.

What do I believe now? EVERY VOTE IN AMERICA COUNTS.

WHY do I think that? Am I flip-flopping? Perhaps.

All I know today, before attempting to rejoin this country, is that His Fraudulency's junta is not working in the interest of common working people. I'm talking about YOU.

All I know is that if the vote didn't matter the Bush junta wouldn't be so concerned with taking it away from YOU.

THE DEMOCRATS ARE IN BOSTON. I've been taking a look while finishing this magazine before jetting out to Phoenix and revisiting America.

Well, I have to admit it: Bill Clinton might just be the best public speaker in America. As David Letterman said, he's still THE President.

Smart, incisive, emotive, moving.

A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor. BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA BECKY ALTEMUS, Houston, TX, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, USA CHERYL HILL-NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA STEVE VIVIAN, New York, NY, USA TERRY TERRIAN, Sebastopol, CA, USA We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance. To support G21, please send checks or money orders to: G21: The World's Magazine Attn: Rod Amis 1844 1/2 Burgundy New Orleans, LA 70116-1923 To donate by credit or debit card, please go to the Western Union website by following the highlighted link. Should you donate via Western Union, please notify us via e-mail. Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks. Like GOOD MUSIC? So do we! We encourage you to visit our BASIN STREET RECORDS page to find out when the best New Orleans artists will be in your area. You'll be glad you did!

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FINALLY, A WORD OF HEARTFELT THANKS to all those people who have offered their money, time and prayers to help me leave New Orleans, re-engage myself as a journalist and get back "in The Game." Let's hope that my luck is as good as your faith.

Thanks for coming back this week. Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.

THINGS I NEED THIS WEEK

1. A new love.

2. Tons of GOOD Luck and Blessings.

3. To complete the second book of my Glass House trilogy.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "

Love,
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.

In 2002, 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 attempting to secure enough part-time work to perhaps equal the income of a single good full-time position. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod barely survives 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" away at the Glass House book.

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

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