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SMOKE & MIRRORS - REVOLUTION # 9: ROD AMIS explains the frustrations of being editor here and talks about his holiday.
SMOKE
"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.
16 December 2006: The most popular article I wrote this year, according to Google Analytics (Come on, Kids! I'm a publisher. I use every tool at my disposal to try to suss out what rings your chimes, blows your dress up) was this one. I wrote that back in April. Since April, it's gotten as many page views as the newest columns of mine running. Now, considering what I've already said, last edition, about the ranking of "Smoke & Mirrors" at your World's Magazine, that says quite a lot. But these same applications, like Google Analytics, tell me something else about what's going on here that I don't like. I'll get to that.
What I, personally, don't get is why that particular column is apparently being passed around from person to person. I don't believe the same people are reading it over and over again. I wouldn't.
As far as I'm concerned, my column last edition was head-and-shoulders better than that one.
I can only conclude that the enduring popularity of that column, eight months on, has to do with the fact that I addressed the issue of racial attitudes in America head on. (Not that I have avoided the topic, in general, but I have seldom been so blunt. I leave that to Raheem to cover. I'm on Mount Olympus, after all, and am supposed to be covering the big themes we deal with here - last year the HIV/AIDS pandemic, this year potable water.)
The problem with being The Editor and Publisher, my dears, is that you are automatically put into a box. As I mentioned in my last entry, much as I go to Lewis Lapham's column when reading Harper's magazine, you come to mine. We all pretend that I have something erudite or insightful to impart whether you need it or not. It's a burden.
I envy the other writers here the freedom they have to talk about whatever they want; whatever floats their boats in a given week. Because I sit in the Big Chair, there are certain expectations. Such as: which articles I recommend you read this week, awards and accolades for the various columnists, my take on the media in general. It's formulaic, quite frankly. Other editors do the same damned thing.
In other words, I give you what you expect rather than what I would actually like to write, here in the "Smoke" section. In the "Mirrors" section - and the reason it exists at all - I get to play a little bit.
But then, at least between you and I, there is an established conceit. Before I went to this format, you had an expectation of me based on this column's predecessor, "My Glass House." Before anyone had heard the term "blog," that column gave you a sense of what (now) too many people would be doing on the Web. It linked you to articles and Web sites of interest and made you feel that you were sitting in my living room and sharing my life.
It was inevitable that when I retired that column I would not be able to cut that cord between us. Sure, I could become more editorial but you still would want your regular fix of what a shitty life I'm leading. Thus "Mirrors."
As Long-time Loyal Readers know, I wrote hundreds of "My Glass House" columns. I've only actually done a bit over thirty of these "Smoke & Mirrors" but, you know what? I'm tired of this box already.
There. I said it.
The problem I have with this column (yeah, I know, I created it myself) is the formula I mentioned. What articles should you give a chance? How does this magazine work exactly?
Why do I have the sense that you don't really give a shit?
Here's what got this burr under my saddle: Most people who I consider friends or loved ones tell me this is the ONLY column they read in this magazine, for the most part. Once in a while, they take my advice and read some others that I recommend but not often. Can you begin to imagine how that makes me feel?
You Are From Jupiter You are exuberantly curious - and you love to explore newness.
Enthusiastic and optimistic, you get a kick out of stimulating intellectual discussions.
Foreign cultures and languages fascinate you. You love the outdoors, animals, and freedom.
Chances are you tend to exaggerate, so try to keep a lid on that.
If you do, you'll continue to be known for your confidence, generosity, and sense of justice.Even worse, from my perspective, I've had writers here tell me: "Most of my friends, they read what I write and what you write. That's it."
Oh joy!
I use three separate tracking applications to see what goes on here and have for years now. Google Analytics is the latest one and I only deployed that one this year. The other two I've had for a while and they bear out this anecdotal evidence. Hundreds of people come to this column every day. Meanwhile, I'm lucky if I can get a few score to most of the others on a daily basis and that breaks my heart.
My motivation here for mentioning the columns that I enjoyed while editing and designing the pages they appear on has been to point you to commentary I value. What do you do? Come here and read about my personal angst and click away.
Here's one statistic: 30% of you who come to this column every edition read at least one other column in that edition. Thirty percent. The rest of you simply walk away without seeing what I and the other writers have labored over for a week or two.
Forgive me for kvetching, but writing is a lonely enough and thankless enough vocation without being treated with that kind of cavalier disrespect. I personally feel that the writers here deserve better.
So - as you must have gathered by now - I come to the end of our tenth year having a real crisis of conscience. What am I working so hard for? Why do I encourage other writers to even contribute to this effort?
While I am more than grateful for the awards and acknowledgement that many of them have gotten - as mentioned last edition - I am seriously beginning to wonder if they might not be better served by simply using me as a mentor and conduit for places they might get more appreciation.
I'm glad I said that, too.
So! This week, no "News to Rod," no "Inside the Magazine," no links to articles I've gleaned something from, no other expected and used-to items. I've had it. Go read someone else here for a change, all they've contributed over the last ten years.
You might learn something.
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Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in February
Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in May
Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in July
Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in August
Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in November
ENJOY WHAT ROD DOES!I have two entries for your delectation in this edition. Both are from our friends at Calabash Music:
- Romania's Skakur Collective
- The second Ekayani.
Enjoy!
22 December 2006: THE INTERNATIONAL PICTURE here also continues to puzzle me. While the percentage of our USA readership has increased over the last three years, now being equal to that from abroad, the leading countries for us is quizzical. We get visitors from every part of the globe but Germany, France, Canada and the Netherlands provide us more readership than the UK. I find that surprising.
Also, we get far more readers from Mexico, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Austria than we do from Australia. (The countries listed in this entry are in the order of number of readers who come to G21 as reported for December, thus far.) This surprises since this site's primary language is English, though we do offer translation on every page.
I ALSO FIND IT ENCOURAGING that your World's Magazine is having our worst December in seven years of online publication. We are getting approximately half the page views we get in an average month.
Not only that, but - for the first time in our history - nominations for our normally popular Bottom Ten List - were so low as to be cryable. Based on that statistic, I doubt we'll have a Person of the Year for 2006 on our cover next month.
MIRRORSHAS ANYONE EVER ASKED YOU THIS QUESTION: How do you think you will die? Check out these choices:
How do you think you will die?
- In a war or apocalypse
- At the hands of another human
- Freak accident
- Car or plane crash
- In your sleep
- Of a broken heart
- Of a contagious disease
- Of old age, surrounded by people you love
- Suicide
- Slowly, after being sick for a while
I didn't make this up. I found it on a Web site called BlogThings. I was floored. It was a question on a test to determine what my "famous last words" would be. The answer I got: "So, you're a cannibal."
17 December 2006: My pal Tom Parish, of TalkingPortraits.com, based here in Austin, dropped by this afternoon with his daughter Lily, who I had never met. They brought a Care package of gumbo, soups, Oddwalla bars, banana chips, crackers, etc. This has been my weekend of surprise visits and thoughtful ones.
Ric decided, after I asked him to please print me a hardcopy of Ngozi's story for the Caine Prize nomination, that I should own a printer. He popped by yesterday to bring me one, for which I have to get an adaptor for its SCSI connections since we Mac folk are USB, so that I would have a printer henceforth. I had to laugh, though, since I only find myself putting work on paper once a year - when I have to make another Caine nomination.
I guess the Christmas Spirit is rising around me and people are deciding to diminish my status as poorest of the poor.
Getting back to Tom, he came at what he didn't know was the right time. I was down to a can of tuna, a jar of peanut butter and half a loaf of bread. As per usual, my primary publisher's organization has not seen fit to honor my invoice from November yet, so I am looking at a rather bleak Christmas. IF I'm lucky, my secondary publisher, EnterpriseLeadership.org, will make up for that gloomy prospect. They are faster on their feet.
20 December 2006: Some things just click. You know what I mean?
I accidentally learned today (thanks, Technorati!) that my little Open Letter to Keith Olbermann from the last "Smoke & Mirrors" has spread all over the Blogosphere like a virus. Some dude on MySpace features it in its entirety with mega comments. A woman in California links to it on her Blog and, but of course, it's also running over at Atlantic Free Press. (I knew about AFP, the other folks didn't bother to tell me.)
I guess I say something that strikes a nerve now and again.
Keith, are you listening?
I got my check from OSTG on Monday. Yayy! I could go grocery shopping and pick up supplies like oven cleaner so I can bake again. I have food and cigarettes and beer. Woo - hoo! I can do my laundry!!! Yayy!
(I know, I know. It doesn't take much to make me happy.)
A good place to see how our brethren across the aisle, the conservatives, are thinking is a site called TownHall.com. Because I wrote earlier this year about the quiet construction plans for the NAFTA Superhighway linking Mexico, the United States and Canada, I recently trawled Google to find out who else had an opinion. Lo and Behold, there was Pat Buchanan. (I hate to admit it but Pat and I have focused on the same issues more than once. And some of you accuse me of being a "Liberal.")
I particularly enjoyed reading the comments section because it makes so clear what the folks across the aisle are all about.
And I have this to say about that: the Jeremiah in me has been talking to you about when your almighty buying and consuming spree will end. I suppose you've laughed and ignored my eccentric idea that MAYBE you should stop driving your cars and, thereby, stop actively supporting the destruction of the planet. I suppose you've laughed when I've suggested that you, here in America, should take responsibility for despoiling the world. I suppose I am crying in the wilderness or - less tactfully speaking - pissing in the wind.
After all, who cares about future generations?
("Yo, Dude! Isn't this EXACTLY the kind of item you said you WEREN'T gonnah do this week. Isn't it in the wrong section of your column?")
21 December 2006: IT'S EASY FOR WOMEN TO HURT ME. I think, sometimes, because that was because of the toxic relationship I had with my mother. My late mother went out of her way to hurt me, I have realized since she died. She made me the surrogate for my father. She took all the anger she had stored up for him out on me. She treated me with anger and disrespect until the day she died while still telling me how much she loved me.
I fell for her line. I was always her easiest victim. It has taken me a long time to be free of her manipulative influence and God knows I am glad she is dead and I am released from that suffering.
I think of this, as this year ends, because I - willingly - allowed another woman, also born in the month of August like my mother, to dominate my life and emotions for way too many years, decades. She, for reasons that always mystified me, cock-blocked me for years. Too many women told me that she stood between them and me and I would laugh it off. It took me a long time to learn that women know other women better than I, God's Own Fool, ever will.
Here's the sad part: I seem to have a tendency to replace the last woman who hurt me with another of equal or greater skills.
I know you think you know everything about me already, my lovelies. You don't quite have that right. So now I shall share something you never knew. I was once very much in love with a woman from the Azores. She was not like all the rest of my women - you know about them.
When I first saw her, I knew I had to have her. She was the most exciting person in the room. I bribed her friends to lie to her and tell her that I was a friend of theirs who had recently returned to the States. I bought their drinks all night and then I took her home.
Both of us having the island background worked. The sex was awesome. She had come to America as the wife of a sailor who had left her and her kids. She was looking for a new man and I, all of twenty-something and a college grad, was a good prospect.
But I was all of twenty-something and in my dawg years. She was great but I couldn't give up the chase. I didn't think one woman was enough.
She was everything I wanted in a woman. That, of course, did not stop me from being a playa. I kept chasing skirt, as was my wont in those days, and finally pissed her off.
Another sad story.
(And yeah, one day I'll share the story of my Cuban girlfriend. As my friend Lars Kefferstan put it wisely, I am a jaded dawg. I had to become celibate because of my major rutting years. My reference to St. Augustine was not entirely idle. As far as I'm concerned, he was a piker. That probably explains that when my heart was finally broken - Scratch that! Ripped out of my chest and torn to pieces! - I would become the damaged man I am today.)
Well, while I'm totally wallowing in the pain, why not bring up the woman who did it, the Old Wound, the woman who ended the Dawg Years, Peggy.
I was listening to Luther Vandross today and remembering how he was the master of our soundtrack. I was thinking about riding in my car - when I used to drive - up to and down from Sacramento, California, with Peggy next to me, her hand massaging my neck, listening to Luther and how much I believed we were in love.
I was remembering, too, one day, right outside of Petaluma, when we almost got into a fatal accident - only avoided because I had once been a cab driver and knew how to handle hazards on the road - when we might have died together because of some idyit crossing the lane barriers.
Peggy said, when she regained her breath, "Can you imagine the scandal if we had died together just then?"
I was still barreling down the highway at sixty miles an hour. I didn't know what to say.
"We almost died together," she said.
"But we didn't," I said. "So forget it. God loves me. That's all that matters."
"You aren't afraid of anything, are you?" she said.
"I'm afraid of you," I said.
Haunted by,
Haunted by,
Haunted by the ghost of the thing left to past
In fear of the presence, the power it has
Realizing there's always a calm before the storm
But there's no one left to keep [me] from harm
Because [I am] unable to distinguish one from another
All [I] knows is [I'm] not going to let it happen again
You should have left this one alone,
but I bet you won' t ever touch [me] again
Don't ever touch me again. - from Dionne Farris
21 December 2006: My pal Natalie Davis who runs the All Facts and Opinions blog and the Grateful Dread (Internet) Radio Web site sent me an actual dead tree Christmas card which I received in yesterday afternoon's post. I was moved to tears. I felt it was profoundly thoughtful of her to bother thinking of me at this time of year. Hers is the only card I've received, so that added to its impact.
24 December 2006: I ACTUALLY ASKED MYSELF if there were any good years, times when I was truly happy in my life, today. Luckily, I could answer yes.
When I first fell in love with Lynda. When I was in Cairo, and met people like the Adnoudis, Salah Jahin, Ez el Din Shawkat , Linette Balouney and Salwah Shandi. When I first was in love with Deb there were more happy than sad days in my life. When I was riding high, freelancing during the dot.com boom years and living in Manhattan and that first year in Baltimore. When I could finally visit my friends Dragan and Dragana in Serbia and go to Romuliana and Zajecar. The better days, when everything clicked, bartending at The Spotted Cat in New Orleans. Those were the best days ever.
It has not all been miserable and destitute - just the majority of my life has been, like most other people's on this planet.
25 December 2006: ONE THING I DO EVERY DAY AND WISH YOU WOULD, TOO is always go to the Hunger Site (see our cover page) and click the link where you can donate food to hungry people in this world. AND, thanks to their wonderful advertisers, you send food to hungry people for free. Please join me in this practice. Thank you!
As Bill from the pressroom, who appeared in the earliest version of this magazine, used to say, "That's it. Get back to work!"
LATE BREAKING NEWS - 12/25/06: James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul," "the hardest working man in show business," passed today. May he rest in peace as he much as he enjoyed his life and enriched ours.
Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.
Thanks for coming back this week.
ROD'S FOCUS THIS WEEK
1 - Developing a Plan to make his freelance writing income more stable in 2007.
2 - Finding a new lover.
3 - Getting the Trotter book out on the market.
"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 the (U.S.) Public Broadcasting System (PBS's) WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was 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 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 Internet 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, r eaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
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. When he's not busy here, he writes technology columns for EnterpriseLeadership.org, IT Manager's Journal and NewsForge. Rod's more leftist writings can be found at Atlantic Free Press. (Don't tell his potential employers.) He writes a weekly column on social media issues for Leverage Social Media. Rust never sleeps.
Our Resident Philosopher has decided to return to Austin, Texas, after over two decades away. Wish him luck..
In his spare time, Rod chases women in the many the way a fly chases a spider..
He continues to be committed to integrity,
chastityand a dose of humility.
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