Sunday, January 15, 2006

Recent OxCon Post Epilogue...and Disclaimer

Please See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 before you read this, or else this post will sound a bit stupid.

- Jason






I guess I'd better act like a grown-up and put a bit of a disclaimer of the preceding posts.

Please, please don't ever hitchhike. Hitchhiking, even if one calls it backpacking, is very dangerous and very illegal in much of the U.S. Do not pick up hitchers, either. I did something very stupid and dangerous, and it could've cost me my life. It may seem tempting, but hey, is your life really worth it?

If you think hitching in and/or around sleepy Oxford, Ohio, somehow makes you safe, well, I highly recommend you read the news once and awhile:

Student abducted, left south of Liberty
19-year-old OK, says he doesn't know why his alleged abductors, a woman and a man, took him

LIBERTY, Ind. -- Police are searching for two people who allegedly abducted a Miami University freshman from his apartment in Oxford, Ohio, this morning, then left him at an intersection south of here.

A 19-year-old student was taken to McCullough-Hyde Hospital in the college town with non-life-threatening injuries after a person living near Nine Mile Road and U.S. 27 called 911, police said. The intersection is about 15 miles from the Miami University campus...

-READ THE REST HERE -

Last week, the Oxford/Miami community also saw its first rape and home invasion of the Spring Semester. If you've read through the last three posts, you're probably wondering why, smack dab in the middle, there's a description of an "All Americans are Idiots" argument I had last Monday.

Part of what sparked it was the fact that P., my houseguest/fling, had overheard two guys at a local shop discussing rumors they'd heard regarding the rape of a 21-year-old at gunpoint. That kind of confirmation, for a single foreign female who'd spent much of December footing it across a continent and taking rides from strangers, was obviously a very rude - but needed - wake-up call.

For the rest of her stay here, I had an Italian-made armband every time she wanted to leave the house. I gave her my spare can of mace to keep with her until she had to go through airport security. I've had one female visitor who was almost accosted by two drunk students while pumping gas, and since then I've insisted every woman who visits carries a can.

It would also be way to cavalier of me to sit here at my laptop editing a white paper on the plight of Sub-Saharan Africa, where two-thirds of the world's 40 million people infected with HIV/AIDS live, and not mention the importance of other forms of personal protection.

Yeah. I left out the part where two people are sitting in a house, digging through drawers, backpacks, and sleeping bags and the subsequent lagtime required to make a late-night run to a Wal-Mart. But hey, losing a few minutes of playtime is a whole hell of a lot more fun than dying.

One final thing...

Don't do school, drink your drugs, and stay in milk...er...something like that.

I'm up this early because I've got a sinus infection, my sleep pattern's way off-schedule, and I'm trying to catch up on some paperwork. My life, when normal, is pretty dull. I really hope no one has the impression that I spend my free time trolling the highways for cute backpackers to run off the road, because, well, that's not me.

Why this person? You know, for the first time in a long while I don't even have to figure out why. It popped into my head, just now:

1. I've always been attracted to women who fall somewhere between radical militant feminist and the old-school notion of the carefree tomboy.

2. I've always been attracted to people with an appreciation of poetry, music and other fine arts, but without the cultural snobbery.

3. A woman with a brain full of adventurous ideas is such a turn-on.

4. Independence is a virtue I very much appreciate.

5. I'm more attracted to women who are comfortable in their natural skin - no harmful fragrances, dyes, or silicone needed.

6. Someone who is no-nonsense aggressive and has a healthy amount of sportsmanship is just downright sexy. Period.


Look Mom! I can finally answer that question you've been asking me since I finished undergrad!

;)


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pardon the rambling musings, I'm only on my 1st cup of coffee :-)

When I was 19 I flew to London to work in a pub for the summer with nary a thought in my inexperienced little head for my personal safety, EXCEPT -- I refused to hitchhike when I was in Ireland, even though multiple people told me it was perfectly safe. Nope, I took a bus to Galway, thank you very much. With all my American anti-hitchhiker indoctrination, I wasn't willing to risk it. Even though I felt safer in London and Dublin than I did in Columbus, Ohio, I knew being alone in a car with a stranger was totally different from meeting and hanging out with a stranger on public transportation (where I met a lovely young man who showed me which train to get on from Dun Luoghaire to Dublin, then bought me tea and breakfast before going to stay with his auntie).

I guess the point of this is that back then I was 19 I had a strange mix of that I-am-young-and-therefore-immortal gumption, and a deep personal knowledge that people can do very terrible things, and that women, esp., are never truly safe.

I wonder if P., coming from a privledged family from a safe part of a (relatively) safe country (if she was from Naples she'd have been more street smart), didn't have that second bit. The one that kept me fom hitchhiking.

She sounds like a cool girl, though. I would have liked to have met her :-)

Anonymous said...

Um...I don't think you needed to give a disclaimer telling people what to do in their own bedrooms, thank you very much.

Cooper said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Cooper said...

ha ha,

Except for the part about Walmart, where I wouldn't shop even while desperately trying to protect my life while doing the dirty, it's all good Zenpro.

i do feel almost safer in the city here where wariness is routine, mace is a staple and lab work is....................the only acceptable foreplay.


opps sorry ..I misspelled foreplay....couldn't let that go.

The ZenFo Pro said...

MM:
No prob. I got the e-mail btw. Wow. As for the coffee, I'm now on my thousandth cup.

Actually, P. sort of reminds me of an African friend of mine. Once, while taking a walk around University Lake in Baton Rouge, we came across this tweeker-looking guy, barechested with a Confederate flag tat, taking target practice with his rifle. In the middle of a freaking city park, this idiot was getting ready to go duck hunting. Or take on the Black Helicopters. Not sure which.

Did my friend stay away? Oh no. She walks right up to this guy, who offers to teach her how to shoot. She's on a student-visa in a post-9/11 America about ready to unknowingly commit a felony. Her roommate is warning her in her native language, I'm trying to distract the guy from staring at her like meat. She thought we were just trying to be partypoopers; she kept saying, after we left, that he seemed like such a nice guy, just sad and a little crazy. Yeah. Read in the paper the next day that that some guy with a gun went batshit and shot at a cop car.

I think it's just a matter of not thinking first before acting. Who waits to get back to somebody's house before asking the all-important "are you a serial killer" question???

Anon:
Um...your welcome?!?

Alice:
Lol..you know, I hate Walmart. I try to avoid it like the plague under normal conditions. Sadly, unlike where you live, nothing here is 24-7 other than where ol' Wally World.

You are probably safer where you live. I know you are about a thousand times more responsible in protecting your personal safety than a lot of folks here are. When I first started experimenting with a blog, I had a local student stop by and post a comment. I visited her blog - she listed the names of every guy she had slept with during her years at Miami, where they lived, and where she and her roommate lived. She even had a post describing how she and her roomies decided to where to hide a spare key. Why don't ya just hang a flashing neon sign that says "Please Victimize Me" on your house, if you're going to be that open?

Lab work is acceptable foreplay where you are?!? I'd push for that here in Oxford, but I think I'd lose out to the majority of the males here, who seem to always cast their vote, from what I've observed, for the "Hey, I'm like so hot and your like so hot so why don't we get drunk, screw, black out, and vomit on each other" candidate ;)

Cooper said...

On the note of lab work...I think that it should be pushed for all but especially for women.

The sunmer after I graduated high school I dated a ...what I thought was totally hot, smart, guy ..he was a couple years older than me and went to W and M. I met him in the gallery at MICA and he was at a show. I decided at some time during that summer that he would be the lucky recipient of my...ummmmm well whatever. I suggested lab work to which the response was ..maybe borderline violent if not contemptuos... Needless to say...a couple of weeks later after taking a break from mr "I'm not a male ho I go to William and Mary...blah blah blah" I got a lab sheet in the mail and a phone call full of apologetic bull crappy....unfortunately for him and fortunately for me..it was like...WHAT WAS i THINKING...i WAS SO OFVER IT.

Always worth it.

The ZenFo Pro said...

Alice, you know I wasn't even thinking about that kind of lab work when I was responding earlier, but you bring up a valid point. Okay...you succeeded in making me blush.

That's actually a very cool idea, esp. when it comes to a woman giving up...ummmmmm well whatever. It forces both parties involved into a cooling off period and to stop and think.

I know that my...er..emergency trip forced both P. and myself to ask if this was a course of action we wanted to pursue. I know because we talked about it. Not as good as your method, though.

It's a good guage of character if someone can speak openly and honestly about sex. And it sounds like you made a wise move in regards to the William and Mary Man Whore.

The borderline violence should have been your first clue, though, that maybe he wasn't as hot or smart as you thought he was, chica. Sounds like you learned from it, though. That makes you much hotter and smarter than the Man Ho ;)

Anonymous said...

um hi :)



I just wanted you to know that this whole story makes me think that there are a least some really sweet guys at miami. My roommate and I both think that you are totally hot because of it.



The way you described that Casanovva kiss omg like so hot and it gave me goose bumps and i saw a commercial for that heather ledger movie and thought of you this morning. right now i'd do you over heath and my roommate can't believe i just said tha ;)

the last time i went on a date with a guy all's he wanted to do was hook up. i think um yeah i'd rather wait for somebody who can kiss well and not worry about sex



Oh and i'm not like ugly or anything so if you want to practice or anything ;)

Anonymous said...

Always a good think if you can get that question off their minds, J. ;-)

Good point RE the hitchhiking - it is a risk. Sometimes it can turn into a great adventure and an intriguing story (as in your case), and other times it can be far more tragic.

I have a friend who hitchhiked across the entire US, starting in Maine and working his way down to Cal. Did a photojournal of the entire trip - took pictures of everyone he rode with, wrote a bit about them each - it was fabulous. Some people he wondered about, but generally he was okay.

The disclaimer here is that people are less apt to take advantage of a guy who is 6'4 225, of course.

Later dude
G

Chuchey Dradey said...

Dude, you got some serious script material here.


One more thing,

Whoa.

Deb Sistrunk Nelson said...

I, too, say "Whoa!" This is pretty deep.