Rod Amis - Unbound

PHOENIX, AZ, USA - 18 October, 2004: Imposition is the word that first comes to mind when one thinks of a characterization of the American way of living. A cliche for the tendency for imposing on others is the automobile arriving at the traffic sign that booms music from its owner's hyper-capable bass speakers that sets off car alarms in the neighborhood. In the American way of living, people assume that they practically have a right to impose their musical tastes on you. I experience this right to impose almost every day.

This is merely another example, of course, of what I have so frequently heard people in and from other countries describe as prototypical American rudeness.

That rudeness, in all of its forms, leads one to wonder if somehow the Americans, as a people, have fallen under the mistaken impression that "rugged individualism" and, perhaps, freedom itself require boorish behavior. In short, have Americans taken the notion that one cannot be free without being oblivious to the comfort of others.

The irony of this pattern of behavior is that it occurs in a country where -- if you listen to what is commonly said -- "disrespecting" someone is the highest of social faux pas. On the face of it, while believing they understand what disrespect constitutes, Americans seriously lack a sense of what respect requires.

The point of view I am attempting to take places a high premium on civilization. In this view, two requirements of civilization are graciousness and politeness. (Note that the words polite and politic spring from the same root.) Is it an accident that there are no knowing nods when one uses the former words, "graciousness," "politeness," in reference to the American?

By this measure, it would be difficult to place the Americans one encounters every day among the civilized peoples of the world, would it not?

A stubborn obliviousness to these facts and factors appears, rather, to be the defining trait of the culture.

I'll offer one final inapplicable word that is often associated with civilized society: genteel.

Consider this yardstick upon your own next interaction ...

This behavioral tendency toward imposition, one could argue, apparently falls over into areas as disparate as foreign policy and our notion of acceptable ways to treat others on the planet.

While we focus on the carnage and chaos that is Iraq, because it is "our" war, we ignore the genocide and suffering on the Sudan/Chad border. Our "managed" response in the face of the death of women and children, the eradication of a people, is as oblivious and callous as our will to impose in Iraq. All the rest of the world can do, since under this Administration we refuse to listen to opinions other than our own, is look on in horror ...

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19 October, 2004: I sent this e-mail to a friend today:

My Boss called me into his office after coming in and getting settled (I always arrive before he does; you know me.)

He said he had "bad news" for me. As I braced myself, he explained that he wouldn't be able to pay me this week because of cash-flow problems. He didn't want me to quit, but wondered if I could handle taking the week off.

I immediately countered that, if it was just a matter of temporary cashflow, which I know happens in the real estate business, I didn't *need* to get get paid every week. My concern was making the rent, I said. So, I'd be willing to work this week and get paid for it along with next week.

He was pleased but then told me there was more. "Because things are slow right now, I was going to ask you if when you came back to work it would only be Monday, Wednesday & Friday until things pick-up."

So I countered that I'd begin the Mon-Wed-Fri. thang this week and a week from Friday he could just pay me for the six days.

So-o-o, I'm at home. I took a 25% cut in pay only a month into the job. I have to look more diligently than ever now, my friend. Craig's List is even languishing right now and there's a lot of pavement to pound here in Phoenix, so today I'm focusing on strategizing and I pour down my tankards of coffee.

If you have any ideas for my search, please feel free to share them.

NEWS TO ROD

Is being such a well-known news hound a blessing or a curse? I often wonder. I haven't cut any of my subscriptions ("unsubscribed," in 'Netspeak) to those mailing lists that I find informative, but I sometimes weary of all the things that crowd my e-mail box. It has reached the point that if I fail to check my e-mail for even a day I bequeathe myself literal hours of work.

I get the unusual jokes and small-talk that most of you do in your e-mail boxes, and about 60% of what I receive is out-and-out spam (a good ratio I believe, indicating that my filters are working.) But I also receive articles from the writers, news about their lives, questions about how to get a larger readership, requests for reassurance and hand-holding and EVERY SINGLE BIT OF NEWS that you loyal readers believe I might have missed or might enjoy. Some days, it seems a bit much.

It's only Wednesday as I type this and already I've received these items:

ITEM ONE: [From "Complaints Build Across Nation on Flu Vaccine Supplies" by Gardiner Harris, Tuesday, 19 October, 2004, New York Times]

As the flu crisis stretched into its third week, complaints are building across the country that health officials are failing to distribute the remaining vaccine supply quickly or equitably.

At Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on Monday, any student who wanted to be vaccinated could obtain a shot, no questions asked. The university Web site, www.lsu.edu, did not mention any restrictions, and a staff member at the clinic, when asked whether anyone could receive a shot, said, "Yeah, you can just walk in."

From what I hear, other than at LSU, people are lining up and getting turned away. All over the country, at-risk seniors are being told, "No."

ITEM TWO: [From "Climate change 'to reverse human progress'" by the Press Association, The Guardian (UK,) Wednesday 20 October, 2004

Global warming threatens to reverse human progress and make international targets on halving world poverty by 2015 unattainable, a study published today said.

The claim comes from charities including Greenpeace, Oxfam and Action Aid who have joined forces, under the banner of the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, to release the report, called Up In Smoke, in London today.

The group's warning follows a summer in which hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan wreaked havoc across the Caribbean and Bangladesh saw its worst flooding for years.

In a world in which global warming is a reality, it says, such severe weather events are likely to become more frequent and extreme - and the poor will be hardest hit.

ITEM THREE: I'm not going to quote a word of Hunter S. Thompson's Rolling Stone magazine piece on this election. It would be an injustice to tempt you away from a word of his gonzo screed. He's highly partisan and damned funny. You can read it by following the link.

ITEM FOUR: [From the International Herald Tribune, Saturday, 23 October, 2004"Expat Voters Face Range of Snags" by Jennifer Joan Lee] :

PARIS With the U.S. presidential election only days away, overseas voters are facing a number of problems that are unusual and, in some cases, highly irregular, according to Americans abroad and election monitors in the United States.

. These incidents have left absentees puzzling over how to vote. What to do, for example, if you get a ballot with Al Gore on the ticket instead of John Kerry, as one voter registered in Ohio did? What if you receive two ballots? And if you get a sample ballot instead of an official one, do you fill it out as if it is the real thing?

ITEM FIVE: ECHO BOOMER BUZZ DEPARTMENT. Okay, conservative talking head Anne Coulter came down here to Arizona at the end of the week and was giving a speech at Arizona State University in Tempe, an exurb of Your World's Magazine, Phoenix. A couple of kids decided that she deserved a cream pie in the face. But they missed. She ran from the lectern in time to duck the pies.

As they commented over at iFilm.com, "Is that all you got, Arizona?" You can watch the "viralvideo" by following this link

ITEM SIX: [From FIND LAW, Friday 22 October, 2004, "The Coming Post-Election Chaos: A Storm Warning of Things to Come If the Vote Is as Close as Expected" by former Presidential Counsel, John W. Dean]:

... It may be days or weeks, if not months, before we know the final results of this presidential election. And given the Republican control of the government, if Karl Rove is on the losing side, it could be years: He will take every issue (if he is losing) to its ultimate appeal in every state he can.

The cost of such litigation will be great - with the capital of citizens' trust in their government, and its election processes, sinking along with the nation's (if not the world's) financial markets, which loathe uncertainty. After Bush v. Gore, is there any doubt how the high Court would resolve another round? This time, though, the Court, too, will pay more dearly. With persuasive power as its only source of authority, the Court's power will diminish as the American people's cynicism skyrockets.

It does not seem to trouble either Rove or Bush that they are moving us toward a Twenty-first Century civil war -- and that, once again, Southern conservatism is at its core. ...

You can read the complete text by following this link.

That's the news to me this week, Darling.

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23 October, 2004: EVERY WRITER IN ENGLISH, likely from Will Shakespeare forward, has been berated for an unnatural affinity for puns. Wilde had the tendency, as well, upon his many others. Sadly, playing with words day-in and day-out can lead easily to this problem as the tired mind gets overtaxed by the soundings of one group of words or another strung together.

I woke up this morning with my mind playing that the title of this essay was "Eagles Stare" -- and indeed they do. Of all the other birds with the exception of the owl, one cannot but feel, when being observed by the eagle, that one is confronted with a stare.

Eagles and owls seem not merely to look at you but also to look in you. Perhaps that is why both are so prominent in our iconography, across cultures.

This is a digression, Luv, but indulge my whim to play it out.

The natural question, when faced with this title, I know, is "What do eagles dare?"

The second playful stream that I crossed this morning, while composing this column, was the question. "So, Rod, what is the eagle's dare?" Hmmn. I suppose it's whatever one chooses to say, since the eagle cannot speak for himself. Or, more psychologically precise: Since the dare is merely our reaction to the stare, it is whatever answer we've been caring in abeyance, waiting for that right catalyst to prick us finally into action.

Then we do what eagles dare.

G21 EDTIORIAL: The Stalker

During the second U.S. Presidential debate, you will recall, Gwen Ifill, the moderator and a Black woman, pointed out to the candidates that this country's public health community reported this year that the incidence of contracting the HIV virus was now most prominent among Black women between the ages of 20 and 45 years of age. Her question to the candidates was what actions they have or would take to deal with this health crisis.

Mr. Bush had to admit that he was not aware of the problem. This admission was not surprising to anyone familiar with the Bush Administration's record on civil rights. His own Civil Rights Commission had been exiled from the inner sanctum since reporting two years ago that the Florida election had indeed been inordinately discriminatory toward Black voters. In the pages of this magazine, HARRISON CHASTANG, News Director for KPOO Radio in San Francisco, reported about the Bush Administration's pattern of consistently giving the cold shoulder to interview requests from journalists from Black newspapers and broadcast organs. [Mr. Chastang's radio station is one of the few minority-owned stations in the nation. His report here was based on a complaint from the National Association of Black Journalists.] As recently as last week, Mr. Bush's spokespeople announced that he would not accept the offer to do a special for BET television.

After making his admission, the President of the United States fobbed off the fact that it was Black women who were facing the prospect of dying of AIDS and segued into his usual self-congratulatory stump material about the recently passed Medicare bill and how it would improve healthcare in the nation -- for those seniors who availed themselves of his amazing prescription drug discount.

Mr. Kerry, in our view, did little better. He didn't directly address the plight of the Black women at the heart of the question, either. He rather used the question to launch into his stump material about his health plan being superior to that of the President and suggested that we should all draw the conclusion that once his plan was in place these women would have the health coverage they required.

With the exception of the selective appearances by Senator Kerry at Black churches with the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson, the general consensus of this campaign appears to have been "Well, let's just not talk about those Blacks."

Or Black concerns.

It is consistent with Mr. Bush's record for him to simply write off the Black vote, no matter what he might mouth to the contrary. We are not part of his base. If anything, the behavior of his cabal in Florida, during the last Presidential election and the lead-up to this one, would evidence an hostility to the very notion of Black's remaining enfranchised.

Senator Kerry, for reasons not entirely altruistic, has indicated that he will do everything in his power to ensure that every vote cast in this election will be counted. The Democratic Party has fielded an army of lawyers in a multitude of states to enforce the franchise in the courts, state by state. (It certainly bears mentioning at this juncture that the Bush Administration is the first in the history of the United States to have officially refused election monitoring by the United Nations.)

But let's not dodge the central question here. Let's talk about the rising incidence of HIV infection among young Black women. There has been altogether too much silence on the topic. The churches don't want to bring it up often enough, if at all. The culture swings between those who advocate abstinence and denial and those who say that "healthy" people who don't use intravenous drugs and aren't homosexual simply won't contract the disease. Both of these are garbage approaches. They are tantamount to insisting that if a woman uses the rhythm method she won't get pregnant.

The condom, known in street parlance as "the jimmy," is more often the object of jokes than the thing found in the man's wallet. And most brothers fall back on the lame excuse that it just don't feel right using one.

Meanwhile, more and more sisters are getting the disease that America claims it has gotten under control. Meanwhile, even the Bush Administration will brag about fighting AIDS in Africa or throwing money toward the fight, and admit ignorance to the problem right here on our doorstep. What kind of lame ass national leadership is that?

The Stalker of the human race, death, is not just upon us in Africa; if you are a Black woman in America, the Stalker is a familiar face. Making love can kill you.

More importantly, if you don't take care, it can kill your children, too.

So This Editorialist says "Thanks, Gwen, for asking the question." It needed to asked, especially of the Presidential candidates.

It also needs to be asked in the churches and on the street corner. It needs to be asked of Black men.

When we talk about domestic issues, it needs to be one of them. Mr. Shieffer should have brought it up again at the third debate. Reverends Sharpton and Jackson should bring it up every chance they get.

One of the jobs, if you will, of those of us in the new silent majority, should Mr. Kerry prevail in this election, must be to remind him who it was that brought him to the dance. That is an especially important task that faces the Black community if Mr. Kerry prevails. He takes it for granted, as Democrats do, that we shall solidly back his election. So he must be called to account on this issue and other issues of concern to us once he is in the White House.

Should Mr. Bush prevail, though, the task will face the usual barriers of the last three plus years, it must not be neglected. Lives are a stake. As Frederick Douglass pointed out, our demands will not be met if we plea about the issue but only if we force the issue.

LIFE OF ROD

24 October, 2004: As the late Rodney Dangerfield's line went, "It's not easy being me."

There was the little "surprise" at my Day Job, mentioned earlier. Then, I entrusted to the U.S. Postal Service in order to make my obligations at the end of the month have falllen into a black hole. I sit on needles and pins waiting to see how that will all shake out.

My living situation, as you've read, is always challenging. I never quite know what new surprise will surface in that quarter. An incident occurred this week, for example, that completely blind-sided me. I went to bed so angry I could have punched through concrete. I thought about how long I'd be able to maintain my politic silence and whether it would be that bad to simply decamp to the YMCA in November.

I hate moments like that but now suspect that I must better learn to endure them.

ANOTHER NOT E ABOUT PHOENIX: I learned early on that, being as close as we are to Utah, there is a significant population of Mormons [members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints] here in Phoenix. I've run into very anti-Mormon people in my travels before and there is a contingent of those here, as well.

What I found telling, last evening while watching the local news broadcast on television, was the fact that today's scheduled announced from Provo, Utah, of the cast of an upcoming film on Mormon founder Joseph Smith was considered a news-worthy item here in Phoenix. I couldn't think of another city I'd visited outside of Utah where such would be true ...

This edition ate my weekend. Because there were seven other columns on my plate rather than the usual four or five, I needed to devote over thirteen hours simply to reach this point, the end of the process. I forgot how early you must begin anew when on a weekly schedule.

I did visit another church today, what with All Saints' Day being only a week away. This one proved to be one of those non-denominational, marathon-service places where they have a great love for keeping the congregation on their feet. In fact, they have a preamble to the actual sermon that lasted over forty minutes. They're very music into their music at this place.

I chose it because it was within walking distance of my apartment here in the barrio. It was good to go there because the majority of the congregation was Black, making me feel a bit more at ease. While I see scads of Latinos, a goodly sprinkling of Native Americans and the ocassional Asian here in Phoenix, it is a very White city. It's been years since I lived anywhere so White. The downside was that -- even with the more modern musical fare, the activist activities like a sponsored carnival scheduled for next Sunday to encourage the youthful parishioners, the men's basketball league -- there was the tang of the Old School Black church to much of the message. These were fundamentalists and demonstrative ones. Lots of "Hallelujahs" and "Amens" and the sermon being tied to parsing passage after Biblical passage.

So, again, I was confronted with the same gaping divide that I had experienced at the more staid St. Francis Xavier: the distance between their certainty and my questioning.

What I find most unsettling about these Christian meetings is the implicit assumption that everyone sitting in the room believes exactly the same thing. If you come to the party, as I do, attempting to find out why it's being held, you are S.O.L. No chance you'll ever actually find out, either. After they have your money, they're good to go and "See you next week!" for the next bloodletting. There's something spiritually flawed about that, I think.

Like an ancient Roman who believes that piety is a good thing but is amused when others take the gods too seriously, I'm afraid that a distanced paganism is more to my nature.

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 better paying job.

2. Knowing that I shall end the week able to pay bills as well as rent.

3. Yeah, a new girlfriend.

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

Love,
Rod

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. He works during the day in a real estate office in downtown Phoenix and spends his nights dreaming of a better life. 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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© 2004, GENERATOR 21.

E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.