Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 25 August, 2004: The above title is how the Christian Bible declares the manner in which Jesus will return to the world of men and women. I have always found it quizzical that humankind's purported savior would have to return under stealthy and unheralded circumstances. What I'm saying is: Aren't we supposed to be glad to have him back? What's he afraid of this time?

The Book of Revelations, in the same text, takes an entirely different tack and suggests that the Christian God-become-Man will return in a golden chariot, drawn by white chargers, after the sky cracks open like tin-foil. Now that's more like it. This is supposed to be a triumphal return, isn't it?

Either way you slice it, the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.A., says he believes wholeheartedly in this apocalyptic vision. He says he fully believes there will be an eschaton, an "end of days," and the he himself has been chosen as an instrument to bring said eschaton about. I think we have a problem here.

Let us assume for a moment, in an entirely wild flight of fancy, that most of the 5-plus billion people on planet Earth are not Christians. Let us further assume, again stretching credulity, that even among the Christians there are many, many people who are not of the evangelical and fundamentalist bent, poor souls. Would it be surprising in the least if this majority of the planet's people, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Taoist, animist, pagan, Confucian, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, New Age or uncategorizible, American and foreign, might just wonder why a nation that had spent two centuries touting tolerance and freedom would do a complete about-face and proclaim such a man who espoused quasi-mystical, exlcusivist thinking as the "Leader of the Free World?"

Well? Would it?

Just asking.

You already know how I would respond to that question. But let's not take my own response into consideration right now. I'm more interested in your own.

As one commentator for the Washington Post has observed, a veritable cottage industry has grown up among the punditry around the post-September 11th question, "Why do they hate us?" It seems that even among the apologists for George W. Bush and his neo-conservative (neo-con) junta, like Charles Krauthammer and Ann Coulter, there is a frenzy to provide some pseudo-psychological answer to this question. "The American people deserve an answer," the dim-bulb reasoning appears to go.

Let's step back from being supposed "innocent" victims -- something this imperium is far from, in fact the contrary obtains more often -- and take a candid, "fair and balanced," look at recent American behavior on the world stage. We have made it a standard practice of our foreign policy actions to assume the right-of-empire to punish, invade and occupy other sovereign nations on flimsy justifications. Do you need a list?

• Kosovo
• Libya
• Sudan
• Afghanistan
• Haiti
• Iraq

That list is only partial and only covers the last fifteen years. This behavior has been going on now for decades. Iraq is merely the most current and egregious example of our arrogance. We have proclaimed ourselves above international law and even Conventions we signed and ratified. What the hell happened to our professed belief in the Rule of Law?

The United States of America has looked out over the world and -- to paraphrase lines from a fabulous Dr. Dre song -- responded to the question, "Why are you f---king with me?" with the rejoinder: "Because I can!"

Any thinking person would not be asking the question "Why do they hate us?" Under the circumstances, the appropriate question is: "When are they coming after us next?"

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26 August, 2004: "Like a thief in the night ..."

The phrase could also be employed in a description of sleight-of-hand or the manner in which an escape artist plies his trade. I have always believed that the best writers practice a form of such magic, producing a revelation for us without showing us the mirrors and pulleys they use to provide the final result.

email address:

I recall a Japanese Webmaster who I admired, years ago, suggesting that the best way to produce an admirable Web publication would be to design it as "kabuki theatre of the mind." That lovely image has always intrigued and inspired me...

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Today is the day I leave New Orleans for good. (Emphasis on the final two words of that sentence.) "Like a thief in the night ..." would certainly describe how many people will view this departure, though I am leaving in broad daylight. Again, like a snake shedding its skin, I am leaving most of my worldly possessions behind. Only my music and a couple of treasured books from Serbia have been kept to join me in Arizona later. I packed my prized boxes from Barbara, those clothes that would not weigh down my journey, a dark suit, two ties, two pairs of shoes. Other than those few possessions, I am only bringing my laptop, Victoria, along and the manuscript to the first Glass House (GH) book.

Accumulated furniture, microwave oven, dishes, utensils, cookware, older clothing, novels, glassware, shelves; the inventory of my three and a half years in New Orleans: all gone.

I sold my television set to Shawn and gave Matt my beloved glass-topped coffee table.

When I arrive in Arizona I shall wash the dust of this city off me ...

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SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, USA - 29 August, 2004: I have been here for two and a half days, but feel as though it has been a week.

"What is it like?" you might ask. I'll quote myself from a recent letter:

... I am now ensconced in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, surrounded by the sprawl of faux-adobe buildings acting as the punctuation for strip malls, highways, four-lane thoroughfares chock-a-block with every brand name you can imagine. America! This is nothing like New Orleans, Toto.

It is the desert. The sun comes up every day and beats down on the stretches of tarmac and asphalt and our brain pans and does not let up until it sinks behind the horizon. The full moon is big and pregnant and bathes every square inch in silver for as far as the eye can see. There is a ring of mountains around the place, red rock and brown. There are lots of Bush bumper-stickers on the cars and SUVs that whizz past on the roads and highways. The names that race by on large signs that all seem to be red are those of Osco Drugs, Wendy's, Radio Shack, Home Depot, smoke shops, nail shops (as in the feminine fingernail,) there seems to be a new CVS Pharmacy being built everywhere, Target, Costco, Arby's, Walgreen's, automated car washes, Frye's, Starbuck's, Sam's Club and WalMart cheek-by-jowl, TGI Fridays, Chili's, various flavors of fitness center, Baskin Robbins, Schlotzsky's, Safeway, Hollywood Video and I look behind to see if I have a brand name on my own ass yet. O Land of the Free to Shop!

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. Sustaining Patrons CHERYL HILL NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA TIMOTHY MEADOWS, Anaheim, CA, USA Supporting Patrons BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA BECKY ALTEMUS, Houston, TX, USA DOUGLAS MC DANIEL, Phoenix, AZ, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA STEVE VIVIAN, New York, NY, USA STUART ALTMAN, ESQ., 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 4901 E. Kelton Lane, #1271 Scottsdale, AZ, 85254 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. RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE ARCHIVES. 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! What are the Staff Favorites at Powell's Online Bookstore? Take a Look!

The women seem bigger out here somehow. You wannah think to yourself "corn fed" for some reason but you realize that it's more likely Ponderosa Steak House fed. The only walking you see is from the car to the chain store and then, laden, back to the car.

I recede into Piers Paul Read's The Templars for a day to allow myself to acclimate slowly, to try to handle the culture shock. From that I jump to Dan Brown's Angels & Demons hoping against hope that this will help me begin to lose some of the anxiety (about landing a job quickly) and disorientation (about moving from the southern Haiti to the southwestern version of Los Angeles). In a conversation I hear that there are more women with augmented breasts in Scottsdale than real ones, so much so that the interlocutor wonders while at her gym whether there will not be an entire generation of men who have never known a real woman's breast. I leaf through the Employment pages of the Arizona Republic trawling for my next entrance into the tunnel of consumerist visions. I am vaguely aware that the Republicans are occupying New York City, but I have no time to focus on those matters. This is personal survival we are talking about; I have not a second to lose or waste.

ROD IN THE FIRE

1 September, 2004: IF I WERE NOT SO HORRIFIED by my circumstances, I suppose I would be angry.

Nothing upsets me more than having every single thing I'm told being dubious, suspect or just plain wrong. That is the circumstance I find myself in today, I have learned, and I can do nothing except keep silent and try to get this magazine out as quickly as I can before I lose access to the Internet altogether.

It's a long story, too long to tell even here -- and the pain of telling it right now would be more than I can bear.

NOTHING that I have been told about coming here has proven true. Not the job information, not the information about getting access to the 'Net and not even the food and shelter story. As I write, I still have a (tenuous) roof over my head. The phone, and thus the 'Net access, dies this weekend, Monday latest -- one week to the day I was told broadband access would obtain. I found out on the day that the broadband was supposed to be installed that it wouldn't be. This is reminiscent of being told an hour before my first interview for the newspaper job that the person who was supposed to interview me (my interlocutor) had been fired.

The food story is perhaps the most cruelly bizarre. You see, it was pointed out to me upon my arrival that the place had been stocked with beans and rice (my favorite meal, right?), lots of canned food and a couple kielbasas. Here's the rub:

• I quickly discovered that there was no pot in which to cook the beans or rice and
• no can opener to open the rest.

So, like Tantalus, I am made to look longingly at food that I never eat. It is always just out of reach.

Noting that there were some flour tortillas in the fridge, a bag of peanuts and the remnant of a bag of chips in the cupboard , I have been mostly living off those. (I wish I had known the full story before ordering two pizzas with the coupons Cheryl mailed me. I would still have money left over.)

As they might say in New Orleans, "Baby, it's jes' a dam' shame what one human bean will do to another!"

I think so tonight.

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2 SEPTEMBER, 2004: There is a can opener now.

When I groused about the food situation to Doug, he said, "Man! That's really cruel, huh? You must have thought I invited you out to look at a Food Museum"

I muttered something unintelligible.

"But I thought you were staying with him? What has he been eating?" Search me. We had the pizzas when I first arrived here. His inamorata, Jaimie, came over and cooked us a sumptuous meal one night. Other than that, he snacks on peanuts and chips like me. He spends a lot of time out and about and at Jaimie's. I figure he eats then.

Today, after we'd sorted things out, he said: "So you actually haven't been eating a lot up until now, huh?"

I have come to the conclusion that God wants me to stay thin. I lose five more pounds and I'll weigh the same thing I did when I was twenty-five ...

I have rushed to put this edition of the magazine out rather than allow myself to be frustrated at my core. That is simply not an option under the circumstances. As to options, I have the sense that it is taken for granted that I don't and won't have any other than those that obtain today. Those of you who have known me for a while know that nothing rankles more than having someone believe that. As usual, I work quietly and below water-level. Most of my iceberg remains unseen, as it should be ...

But enough about that. We have bigger fish to fry here, don't we, my love?

FROM OVER THE TRANSOM

My Unca Eddie, up in Michigan, forwarded me a copy of an e-mail recommending an editorial that appeared in the Boston Globe on 25 August by Robert Kuttner. Here's a snippet:

IF YOU LIKE the Karl Rove-inspired attack on John Kerry's Swift Boat service, you're going to love the US Chamber of Commerce's coming assault on John Edwards. Like the right-wing vets smearing Kerry's Vietnam record, the anti-Edwards group is nominally an independent committee. But as The New York Times reports, the cochairmen of the new "November Fund" are a former Republican National Committee charman, Bill Brock, and a former chief of staff to Bush Sr., Craig Fuller. The core of their attack will be that Edwards is (gasp) a trial lawyer. For decades, "trial lawyer" has been used in Republican speeches as an epithet. Business executives applaud in appreciation -- and everyone else scratches his head. What's so terrible about trial lawyers? Are they worse than, say, corporate lawyers?

The attack on trial lawyers as ambulance chasers and cost inflators invites exploration. The corporate elite and the GOP have three grudges against "trial lawyers." First, damage awards cost business money when they uncover corporate practices that swindle, maim, or kill ordinary citizens. And as champions of the little guy, trial lawyers are among the few well-heeled professionals who donate more money to Democrats than Republicans. Break their rice bowl and there will be one less source of money for the opposition party ... [End Snip]

Those of us who have been around since the days of Dick Nixon, who seemingly so inspired California's governor Schwartzenegger, know that Dirty Tricks are stock and trade in a Republican election campaign. These guys know that they can't depend on a fair fight in their bid to bilk the American people, so they have to use chicanery. It works for them.

It doesn't have to work for us. Trial lawyers are our last line of defense against the corporate robber barons, now that our elected officials are little more than tarts in f--k me pumps for them, so don't let this latest smear campaign give you more than a moment's thought, says I.

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I END MY NIGHT with you, my love, listening to Dubya's acceptance speech in New York tonight, as filtered through the humorous and snide commentary of Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder over at Air America Radio, my favorite Webcaster. Sam's saying, "George Bush will use 'we will,' 'we will,' 'we will,' over and over tonight because he can't say 'we did,' 'we did,' 'we did.'"

Janeane and Sam are out-doing themselves tonight, parsing every paragraph of Mr. Bush's speech as he delivers it -- and delivering scathing commentary.

Missing from the Republican "Triumph of the Will" this week, I and a few others have noticed, was the Man Who Must Remain Nameless, Osama bin Laden. He who Mr. Bush swore he would bring back "... Dead or Alive." Dick Cheney wouldn't mention that name. I'm not surprised that Mr. Bush wouldn't mention him.

Even as I type, female protestors break into Mr. Bush's speech chanting "Bush Lies: people die." There's a moment of confusion on the Ego Platform (what rock stars call the kind of in-the-round podium the Repubicans used.) Dubya blinked, then stayed with the words on the teleprompter. You gottah love it, don't ya'?

Reports have it that this week's protests in Manhattan were the largest EVER held during a political convention in the history of the country. I am certain, I am absolutely convinced, that the Bush regime knows how much they are reviled in this country. I am equally convinced that they will do everything in their power to steal another election. They can't win one, after devastating the country at home and diminishing its prestige and squandering its wealth in an unjustified war abroad -- so the only a lternative for them to continue to grasp at power is the venal, under-handed one.

Thanks for coming back this week.

THINGS I NEED THIS WEEK

1. Closure on the move: a new job I like, cashflow, a Plan for the future.

2. To get back to the second "Glass House" book at long last.

3. A reliable social network. (That may take more than a week, of course.)

"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. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. 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 now looking for creative ways of re-inventing himself in the Valley of the Sun. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod plans publication of the first Glass House book before the end of the year and is already working on the second, sequel, manuscript.

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

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