Newtopia | Issue #3 - September 2002

The world's a small place these days, and I'm getting pretty tired of it. It used to be that an American could go abroad and leave behind the obnoxious boors that populate the workplaces, media organizations, and government buildings of the United States. But with the increase of English language skills around the globe, the infamous "Ugly American" is getting more intrepid.

Do you remember a time when the word Enron didn't cause your hackles to rise? Do you remember a time when Sun stock was worth buying? Do you remember Cell-Loc? Did you get the joke about NorTel stock versus refundable beer bottles? Does the fact that your company's got their web site sitting on a WorldCom server make you whimper? Welcome to the new world order, where we're finally finding out for sure what we've all known forever but were afraid to say: Capitalism doesn't work either.

A year and a half later, I was back home in Ukraine, crushed by the revelation that regardless of my views on feminism, Islam, ethnic and other minorities, freedom of the press and just about anything else, I was doomed to a career of an English tutor. December 1998, I had four students and an income of approximately $200 a month. I wasn't starving; moreover, I was beginning to notice those tiny little things that I couldn't exactly control but was sort of able to keep from slipping away.

Now they are talking about the restoration of the Towers and of Afghanistan, but who will restore the dreams that are lost in the eternal dark valley of death? Taja was also one of these thousands of victims. He lived in the slum area of a remote town in Pakistan. He was a sweeper of the small area of that town, where I have been living for these last many years. I think his name was Taj Maseeh, but everybody called him Taja. Poor people have never complete names, like their incomplete existence.

Can films help someone to capture state power? That was what precisely happened in two Southern states of India, Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. The legendary M.G. Ramachandran, popularly called MGR, used the cine-medium effectively and enjoyed tremendous popular appeal for himself and for his political party, eventually becoming the Chief minister of the state. In the neighboring state of Andhrapradesh, the same thing happened, though in a different way.

With nothing more than $80.00 in my pocket, chicken wings packed in a shoebox and the hope that someone would help me. I decided that I would become president of a university by 31. And so I began climbing the ever-popular ladder of success. And I was on my way. I had overcome my past and I was charting a new course. But then the unthinkable happened.

In all actuality, I probably didn't need to explain this to you. You are reading this particular essay in this particular online journal so you are probably a scorch yourself. You can deny it, but what's the use? Everyone around you, standing there with crisp handbags and glaring eyes knows you will ruin their cheery outlook on life with some obscure fact or revelation . you can't help yourself.

When the 'Tropics' were at last made generally available in Britain and America in the Sixties, they were praised as works of sexual liberation. Since then they have sometimes been attacked as works of sexual misogyny, verbal extravagance, and lack of art. It is no accident that nobody is ever indifferent concerning Henry Miller. There are those who love him and there are those who hate him. His work does not allow of the mild alternatives of liking or disliking.

CinemaShrink Says, "It's true. Blue Crush offers awesome waves and girls in bikinis. It takes us down under crushing surf and lets us take a ride inside the pipe. But that's not all. We see another rare sight. In Blue Crush, a teen-age girl doesn't just do the usual and come of age. She becomes a woman.

Since September 11, 2001, Americans have come together as never before in our generation. We have banded together to overcome tremendous adversity. We have weathered direct attacks on our own soil, wars overseas, corporate scandal, layoffs, unemployment, stock price plunges, droughts, fires, and a myriad of economic and physical disasters both great and small. But now, we must come together once again to overcome our greatest challenge yet.

You're screaming I love you and I'm screaming come with me and the driver's turning and frantically adjusting the mirrors and careening down the freeway. I scream back that I love you too, and you scream back that you're coming too, and then we're flying through the air and every sensation lasts forever in an exquisite roller coaster crash and burn.

It was 1993 in the American Northeast. The World Trade Center had been bombed, people in Japan had been gassed on the subway, and then, of course, there was Waco and one hell of an economic recession. The economy was so bad people with Doctorates couldn't get jobs waiting tables. People like me.well, let's put it this way: In an economic climate where people were grateful for minimum wage pay, I was fired from eight consecutive jobs in a row.

Editor-in-Chief Charles Shaw tries to make sense of a senseless world and provide a blueprint for tomorrow.

6. The Creative Class and the Ambivalent Society
7. Big Brother is Watching

An alternative to the life you've been dreaming, the ideas you've been drinking, and the rhetoric you've been eating.

6. Remember
7. The Joys of Balancing on a Bicycle

The current state of affairs in sex, relationships, and sexuality from a global, political and cultural perspective. All things cold, detached, multi-partnered and hedonistic.

Newtopia associate editor Greg Everett's unfiltered column. It's a little dirty and doesn't always taste too good, but it's real and it keeps you alive.