STUPID POLITICIAN TRICKS:Local State Legislator Makes No. 1 for Political Stupidity

All politics is local .

- Thomas "Tip" O'Neill

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Last night, Ohio state Rep. Tom Brinkman, Jr., came to Miami University's campus to hold a question-and-answer session regarding his lawsuit against the university's domestic partner benefits program.

On campus with the aid of College Republicans, the Ohio politician made his case to a Miami audience. For an in-depth editorial, read Blogbuefi's first-hand account.

The Cincinnati Republican filed the lawsuit in November 2005, citing the the state's recent ban on civil unions as the reason for the suit against the university.

Miami, located just a hour's drive from the Congressman's district, is the only university named in Brinkman's suit, despite the fact that Ohio University, Youngstown State, Ohio State and Cleveland State also offer domestic partner benefits.

The justification used to bring the suit against Maimi? The politician has touted the fact that he's doing this for "the children" - most notably, his two children currently attending Miami University. The legal basis for his suit? Ohio's Marriage Amendment, passed in 2004. The amendment reads "only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions."

Sure. If anybody actually believes that motive, I'll eat my own ass.

Brinkman's lawsuit may have less to do with his personal beliefs than his desire to play stupid politician. In a Cincinnati Enquirer piece last week, Brinkman revealed that he's considering a run against fellow Republican/Murtha basher U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt (Ohio-2nd) this year.

It must be mere coincidence that the man chose to file his lawsuit against the largest university within the Cincinnati media market to offer domestic benefits, the same media market Miami shares with the 2nd Ohio Congressional District.

Did I mention that Miami also has a sizable percentage of students from the 2nd Congressional District, who probably haven't heard of this guy until he brought his lawsuit against their university?

I'm smelling a publicity stunt here. And it smells like stupidity.

The fact that the man keeps making a stink about how he's doing it for his children turns my stomach. Oxford is a tiny community; by bringing a lawsuit against the same university they attend makes their lives difficult, puts them in a spotlight that they may or may not want.I hope he at least had the balls to discuss it with them prior to the filing.

The problem with his legal argument is clear. Are giving health and dental benefits - which require an individual to fork over a share of the cost - really a violation of the law, or simply political trickery being used to bolster an image?

Gotta love politicos. Brinkman proves the longheld ZenFo Pro theory that that species known as politician will, indeed, eat its own children to bolster its chances for publicity.

This isn't the state legislator's first foray into playing politics with equal rights. In 2003, Brinkman was the lone General Assembly member to vote against Ohio's long-delayed ratification of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This lawsuit isn't really about protecting Ohioans from the tax burden of providing domestic partner benefits to the hordes of gays and lesbian Miamians (only 30 of the university's more than 3,000 employees receive such benefits.) This isn't about protecting the rights of Miami parents' tuition dollars or the students at the university.

This is about getting votes in the 2006 Republican Party primaries and a chance at sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.

No more, no less.

______________________________________________
NOTE - REVISED 1/31/06 9:10 PM

ENDING INFORMATION POVERTY:MIT's Green Machine Earns Props from the ZenFo Pro

UN supports project aimed at providing cheap laptops to students in poor countries

United Nations News Centre

28 January 2006 – A pioneering $100 laptop programme, designed to give children in poor countries access to knowledge and educational tools, came a step closer to realization today with the signing of a partnership agreement in Davos, witzerland, between the main United Nations development agency and the organization responsible for the initiative...

- READ THE REST HERE -

If you thought iPods were the best invention since sliced bread, well, get over it.

Until Americans start buying those nifty little things, stripping the crappy pop music off of them, and turning them into something that actually supports something other than the Apple shareholders, they are just overpriced Mp3 players.

The rest of the world needs real solutions to ending information poverty, not more trinkets. Ghana needs more telecentres, Ethiopia needs more Internet Cafes, and there are hundreds of millions of children on this planet who are lucky if they ever learn to read.

Entertainment technologies may make life for the Industrialized World more comfortable, but bringing information technologies to the world is a pressing need that will help end poverty, halt the spread of disease, and make the planet a nicer place to live.

The ZenFo Pro gives mad props to MIT Media Lab's $100 Laptop Project. The product was formally unveiled at last year's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis.

RED BLOG DIARIES:ZenFo Pro Rides the Fence on RILF Tag, Reveals Deep Dark Secret as Punishment

You know...I really want to make myself answer the RILF tag...really do...

I just can't make myself choose. Dammit. So I'll choose all my readers as readers I'd like to...

Dammit.

I figure this will have to serve as my sexual purgatory for refusing to choose which readers I'd like to fuck. (I'm just stoked I made it onto somebody's list.)

Why do I get the feeling I'm going to regret posting this? Oh well...life's too short to care about such stuff.

I haven't even told my four former roomates of mine/best friends yet (all of whom, BTW, have blogs listed in my Blog Roll), one of whom I talked to online tonight.

RED BLOG DIARIES:
A Sordid Tale from the Secret Life of the Zenformation Professional

For two years after I lost my virginity, I couldn't remember the girl's name. I was extremely drunk when it happened, at that sort of brown out level of intoxication. I could remember bits and pieces, the date (Dec. 31, 1995), the location (party in an abandoned farm house in Buckingham County, Virginia), sleeping bag (Rainbow Brite) and the fact that she was about my height. But for some reason, I couldn't remember much else.

When I finally was able to remember the event, as a sophomore in college, I felt humiliated. My roommates and I were discussing monumental "firsts" and I couldn't remember that damned name to save my life. What started out as a fun night of drinking ended up being a rather pathetic version of Man Oprah. By the end of the night, I finally remembered her name. Score.

In 2004, I ran into this girl, X, in a bar in my hometown. Recently engaged, X and her fiancee were having a few drinks with her teenage best friend, Y. After about five drinks, while X's fiancee was in the john, I brought up the whole "didn't we have sex once" conversation.

She laughed. While X had intended to have sex when she'd crawled into my sleeping bag that cold December night, she couldn't do anything to get me in the mood. She'd planned on giving it the old private school try in the morning, but I was gone before she woke up.

I was completely embarrassed. Not only had I gone through roommate intervention to remember this woman's name, but it turns out nothing had happened. Worse, my first shot at a physical relationship had been ruined by the dreaded "whiskey dick" syndrome.

I took a descreet trip to the john myself after that. Her fiancee asked me why I was banging my head against the towel despenser.

I went back out and hit the pool tables with Y, a girl I thought was way out of my league when we were teenagers.

The more we drank and shot pool, the more we dug up memories from down Amnesia Lane. After my imaginary cherry picker and her beau left, Y and I started talking about the parties my friends and I used to throw - still legendary, or so I've been told.

Then, out of fucking nowhere, Y punched me hard in the chest and called me a stupid bastard.

Whoops. Turns out I didn't have whiskey dick after all. Wrong name. Wrong girl. I was Y's first, too.

Apparently, Y'd had a rather major crush on me and made her move when I kissed her on a dare. Afterards, she'd gotten up to pee but returned to find X on top of me under the sleeping bag.

While I'd spent years trying to remember the wrong girl's name, the right girl had spent quite a bit of time in therapy over one single, stupid event, thinking she'd given up her virginity to a complete and utter asshole, an event that made her afraid to trust "nice guys" all through college.

Well, that explains why we hadn't spoken in nine fucking years and why she'd quit hanging out, for the most part, with Ms. X. I figure that may also explain the rabid Southern Baptist conversion I'd heard rumors about for years.

I never brought up the fact that I didn't remember any of it. She and I ended the night making out in her parents' basement until her dad nearly caught us. The moment she started nibbling on my left ear, I remembered about 90% of what had happened December 31, 1995.

That's how I should've spent my senior year in high school. I even made it to third base this time - completely conscious.

If Y hadn't had a fiancee of her own, things might have gone a bit farther. I did get a wedding invitation, but Y and I lost touch after that, which is probably for the best.

This is only the second time I've ever spoken of this event, the whole story, since it came up a few weeks ago in a conversation here in Oxford.

Zenformation Politician... Preface

I've been debating for the last few days how to best approach revealing a side to the ol' ZenFo Pro that has only peaked out here up to this point. When I was in high school, I wasn't just a drunken idiot who played in a punk band and ditched more classes than I attended during my last two years, a guy from a lower middle-class background who made it out alive. That was just the fun stuff, but it's only half of the story.

I may have been a drunken teenage rebel, but I was a hyperactive drunken teenage rebel. And I count my blessings every damned day that I was fortunate enough to grow up with two very hard-working parents on a farm in the middle of nowhere Virginia. I worked my way through college, working sometimes upward of 50 hours a week while taking a full course load.

I had an IM conversation with a girl (who I guess, has never visited this site before and had found my blog while searching for information on fair-trade technology and just wanted somebody to listen) who was told she should drop out of school because she doesn't fit in. She attends a very affluent institution, similar to Miami, and has to work two jobs to get through school, has a kid living with her folks, and still maintains a Dean's List level GPA.

Her boyfriend apparently dumped her when he found out about the kid. He was afraid dating a girl from a working-class background would crimp his future law school and political ambitions.

This girl's sitting in some university thousands of miles away from me and just needed to vent. I have no clue why she chose to hit the Yahoo IM button. Of course, I have no clue why people read this site anyway.

If you're a 22-year old tool who'd dump your girlfriend because she has a kid, then turn around and tell her to drop out because you're embarrassed people might find out you had been dating her, well, don't ever run for public office. Seriously.

And please don't ever, ever let me catch you in my town. I might just have to beat your ignorant monkey ass. I say might only because I don't think it would really be worth it.

If you're some random reader and you have to even ask whether or not the guy I'm talking about here might be you, it probably isn't. I don't even have a first name. But if you suspect it might be you, well, you might need to reevaluate your priorities.

I wasn't planning on posting anything tonight, but just in case the IMer comes back, I wanted to dedicate something to her.

- Jason

The Zenformation Politician?!?Fuck That, I'd Rather Be a Free Thinker

Growing up, there was one thing I often heard from friends, family, and teachers that used to drive me nuts, namely because of the sinister undertones associated with it:

You have such potential. One day, you should go into politics.

Let's just say...uhhh...yeah. Not likely to happen. Politics, to me, is the root of all evil. I'm a much better agitator.

There's no way in hell I'd ever pull a Bill Clinton and use the “but I didn't inhale” line, nor would I just play the “party boy turned Born Again” card Bush played. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I once smoked, snorted, and ingested just about anything I could get – and I've been clean for 8 + years, thank you very much.

Who would vote for a guy who almost married a stripper? Somebody who once got caught by a former roommate (Love ya, K.!) in the middle of an “youthful indiscretion” involving handcuffs, an actual Catholic schoolgirl, and a sink that never worked well ever again? What about the slew of undocumented residents (read illegal aliens)?

How about this for political ammunition: the majority of women I've been involved with (58% by recent calculation, on decline since 1999) have had ties to or been directly involved in some form of street gang. It took me years to stop thinking of teardrop tats, gothic lettering, and prison ink as a turn-on.

That's just my personal history. Then there's the matter of hot-button issues, such as abortion.

With abortion, I'm not “pro” anything. Personally, I have moral reservations about abortion as a practice, but I also refuse to take the right of another human being away simply because of those moral reservations. My belief in the right of every person to determine the own course of their lives requires that I be willing to accept the choices of others, regardless of my personal beliefs. Roe v. Wade should be the end-all, be-all.

But then there's the fact that I'd give up on Roe v. Wade in a heartbeat if it meant ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. If you're reading this and you somehow want to jump the gun and accuse me of trying to take rights away from people, I need to point out that this “compromise” position scares the living shit out of most abortion opponents, too.

I'm no legal scholar, but here's the ZenFo logic on this one...

While Roe and subsequent rulings have relied on judicial opinion to address a single civil liberties issue, passage of ERA could possibly lead to the abolishment of laws targeted specifically against women's reproductive rights, a constitutional guarantee of equality for women, and could possibly lead to a new constitutional argument against the denial of equal rights to gays and lesbians. Part of the problem with the Roe decision is the fact that it has always been reliant on the make-up of the Supreme Court. Why not make it independent again, giving more breathing room to a divisive issue, forcing the legal system to stop being issue-based and to refocus on the arguments behind the Roe decision – namely, that pesky concept of individual civil liberties.

With ERA in place, the whole “states should determine abortion's legality” argument becomes a moot point. What if people just let anti-abortion activists simply keep screaming into megaphones and trying to overturn one law, while human rights groups unified behind ERA, launched the biggest campaign for equal rights protection in American history, without ever needing to use the phrase “a woman's right to choose?”

Pull back from the controversial single-issue politicking, and there's nothing left but the pursuit of civil rights. Why keep fighting the same battle when it's so much easier to win the war?

And that's just abortion. Imagine the backlash, then, if I were to talk about real problems, like stopping famine, fighting AIDS and Malaria, and ending the reign of every brutal dictator on the planet, regardless of the barrels of oil a country could produce.

I told a College Republican yesterday that I'd gladly support the continued occupation of Iraq, in exchange for some kind of plan for disengagement beyond the rhetoric, a less hostile approach to international cooperation and the United Nations, and an a master plan for ending the restriction of unalienable human rights using diplomacy and, if need be, military force, throughout the world.

I refuse to tow some simplistic interpretation of a particular issue just to create an easily digestible soundbite.

Donuts have more political value than I do. My problem is that I think way too damned much to ge elected or appointed to anything. Add that to the fact that I readily admit my flaws, and that's one barrel of monkeys big enough to sink any Establishment.

A friend involved politics recently asked if was ever going to do the politician thing. I laughed and told him I'm not interested. I'd hate to say it, but it's a hell of a lot more fun telling the Man to fuck off than the idea of possibly becoming the Man.

Can you imagine what would happen in the U.S. if we quit electing those who speak in talking points and started electing leaders again based on the rationale behind their beliefs? Imagine the chaos that would ensue if politicos actually decided what they believed for themselves, decided to act like freethinking leaders of the free world?

That's all I want. Fuck politicians on both sides of the aisle, and their refusal to do anything productive while in office. The last thing the world needs is another politician.

Besides, I like how the agitator suit is a much better fit. And it matches my eyes ;)

ZENFORMATION PLAYLIST 1/25/06: Playlists Return for the New Year

Getting my ass kicked from both sides this week, so deep, meaningful posts had to end up on the chopping block. Will return to regular posting sometime Friday. Until then, here's a sampling of the tunes that have been sustaining the ZenFo Pro Sanity during one hell of a week.

1. Girl from Oklahoma - Junior Brown, Guit With It, (Curb, 1993)
Junior Brown, master and inventor of the guit-steel, is perhaps one of the most underrated country musicians of the last few decades. An Austin staple, the guy channels Jimmie Rodgers and borrows a bit of the old Muleskinner Blues progression on this track.

2. Dear Ivan - Jimmy Dean, Greatest Hits, (Columbia/Legacy re-issue)
You know, for some reason this song always reminds me of eating pork brains and eggs, biscuits and sausage gravy, and fried scrapple in Willis Family Resturant in Meherrin, Virginia after nearly drinking myself into a coma when I was 16. I guess I must've first heard this song on their old juke box while eating and trying to convince a friend of mine that this white waitress with the Confederate Flag tattoo was, yeah, probably not interested in his "sexual chocolate."

One of the greatest Cold War protest songs ever recorded, and, well, I can't even think of anything but eating a 30,000-calorie breakfast while trying to purge my system of about a half-gallon of hard liquor.

3. Everywhere - Billy Bragg, Don't Try This at Home, 1991
One of the most elegant ballads ever written about the true cost of war. I spent a part of my evening talking to a Defense contractor just back from Iraq, a woman who risked her life simply to make money and to provide for her 17-year old daughter. Regardless of my political views on the war in Iraq, and for that matter the nature of war itself, this song is a simple reminder that no issue is ever as simple when it comes to warfare. It is as complex and as diverse as the societies behind conflicts.

4. Seneca Falls - The Distillers, Sing Sing Death House
There aren't enough punk songs dedicated to the 1848 Women's Rights Convention. Note to Emo girl who told me this week that she only wanted to graduate from college, get married and make babies, and not worry about a career...I have no objection to women choosing to be homemakers, but if that's your only ambition, well, no wonder you're listening to crappy music and the guys you want to date don't take you seriously. Dressing like a punker doesn't cut it - you'll just end up a soccermom version of Sid and Nancy, a slave to the Establishment who trades independence for comfort.

5. Tired Out - Buck 65, Bootleg version
Dedicated to Canadians who had to endure perhaps the most annoyingly worthless government change in that country's history. The drum loop Buck (right) uses behind this track may offer some return to chill while yet another minority government primps and preens like a drunken rooster.

6. Black and Brown - P-Love
You know, there's nothing like a well-orchestrated electronica peice over a cup of coffee to get the day started properly.

7. Roses from my Friends - Ben Harper
This is dedicated to a friend who just ended a rather long and painful six-year relationship to her partner. Strength is measured, always, in the ability to make the tough decisions when they need to be made.

8. Love in Fear - The Constantines
For some reason, this band reminds me of a lo-fi version of the Police.

9. Born to Kill - The Damned (Live bootleg)
Now this gets the blood flowing. Who says there's anything wrong with stage diving off your couch in your underwear? Baby-boomers often complain that they're getting to old to do such things; Gen-Y often displays all the energy and excitement of C-SPAN at concerts, moping rather than moshing the night away.

Stagedive from your couch every once and a while. In your underwear. Trust me. You'll feel better.

A Very Special Zenformation Mail: Time To Vent a Bit

Yeah...better just get this out of the way now before I really write something harsh.

Thanks to several of my fellow bloggers and colleagues for actually e-mailing constructive observations and comments.

- JASON

NOTE TO RECENT E-MAILERS
RE: INQUIRIES FOR DETAILS ON MY INTIMATE LIFE

If you thought these posts were really about bragging about my getting laid, well, you missed the whole point. I'd hate to sound arrogant here, but unless you can quote Whitman with an accent, enjoy reading poetry in the tub, can appreciate both the Ramones and Johnny Cash, list Shaun of the Dead as one of your favorite movies, and understand that foreplay is something meant to last hours not minutes, please don't send me another goddamned e-mail asking me to show you what a Cassanova kiss is.

I appreciate the offers, but Lord, I really am quite picky. And while this might sound totally chauvinistic to some, I prefer lovers who don't break easily and who understand that a good conversation, a deeper appreciation of beauty, intelligence, and mutual respect is what defines great sex.

Simply put, don't ask for any ZenFo Pro lovin' unless you're smarter and more compassionate than the average bear. Welcome to the Information Age. Smart IS the new sexy. Yes, I am single. Yes, I had a fling. No, it's not a regular thing.

I've also received several e-mails in the last few weeks from Oxford/Cincinnati/Dayton males wishing to share stories of their sexual exploits with the World Wide Web, please feel free to start your own blog or leave it on FaceBook. If you really think I've got time to go through stories about how you "did" this girl in your dorm, or you once pulled a train on your frat brother's girl, well, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

If you're the guy who felt the need to call me a "pussy," for actually documenting the doubts, self-reflection, and emotions that some people actually put into these sorts of things, well, have it your way. No skin off my back. I honestly could give a rat's ass what you think, because it was immediately obvious to me by the oversexed content of your e-mail that you have no frigging clue about what any woman wants. At least I asked, dude. What's your excuse?

The Value of Division is Measured Against the Unity of Failure

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power."
- Benjamin Franklin

I can't help but think of that quotation these days. What would good ol' Doc Franklin, perhaps the greatest of the great Americans, think of the same United States he helped create?

A country torn by ideologies, where one plus one equals all or none under a two-party system, a government cashing plenty of partisan checks but providing anything but balanced rule.

How the hell could one of the world's beacons of hope, a country of vast intellectual capital and abundant in natural gifts, have fallen so far in so few decades?

I can't even imagine what it must've felt like, centuries ago, to be filled with the passion Franklin obviously felt for such ideas. I turn on the television, and ideas are nothing more than idle talking points. I turn on the radio and hear nothing but infomercials for musical product. And I have to read about a dozen newspapers simply to get to the truth in anything.

There's nothing like information overload on a Saturday night to make a person stop and breath in the wisdom of ancient thinkers.

Freedom, that great esoteric phantom that we all supposedly cherish more than life itself, is no longer measured against concepts like virtue and liberty. Instead, freedom is now a beast controlled only by the powerful elite, a class fattened by the pursuit of gluttonous wealth.

Freedom, in America these days, is weighed not in a man or woman's personal virtue but in terms of the market value at which that virtue can be bought and sold by political ideologues, pundits, pollsters, politicians, and talking heads.

Liberty seems to no longer be an unalienable human right. It is a right reserved only for those with the most powerful sponsors. Freedom is measured on great scales, designed to weigh elephants against jackasses, black against white, gay against straight, man against woman, rich against poor. Instead of a society determined to fight for a more powerful expression of holistic liberty, we simply divide our collective liberation between the powerful seeking to silence dissent and the powerless seeking to simply yell into a megaphone.

Freedom, at its most naked and raw, is a pragmatic thing. Perhaps that's why there's never been a been a better example of this than a man like Franklin - quite possibly the last American pragmatic enough to to touch freedom's face with the hands of an artist, the mind of a scientist, and the heart of a philosopher.

The same face Franklin touched, or so I've noticed, seems to be a vision taken too lightly anymore.

But, perhaps, somewhere in the individual understanding of freedom, there still lies the ultimate human definition of what it means to be free.

Rather than try to define freedom, I think I've come to the conclusion that it's probably better to simply let freedom define me.


What does it mean to you?

SO THIS IS A PARTY SCHOOL?!? Trying to Find Depth in Shallow People is a Lost Cause

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- So, having had a wonderful meal courtesy of a student and her roommate, I decided to take them up on their offer to attend a few parties Thursday night.

Why not? Miami has been rated, in the past, as one of the biggest party schools in the country by several publications. I forgot that I don't usually believe what I read in trendy men's magazines, the ones full of more overpriced cologne samples than anything remotely intelligent.

Overall Analysis:
Based on the three parties I visited, I'm convinced that the majority of students who attend these things believe that students at universities party just like they do. Even if I'd never lived in another college town, I think I'd have to disagree with the trendy men's magazines. Based on my field observations, I'd have to give the scene a D, as in Damn, I wish I Could Learn to Pretend I'm Having Fun.

Party Numero Uno:
If there is one thing I mastered in my nearly eight years' as a professional student, it was the ability to party hard and at full force. Somehow, I made it through two full years at the University of Northern Colorado, where I decided to skip the whole "college rebellion" phase and went full-on badass.

While some guys satisfied themselves with this silly female-to-male ratio of 2.2:1 offered by Colorado's party school, I went for the women with teardrop tattoos, unstable strippers with personality disorders, and girls more interested in leading me down to the local drug dealer's apartment.

I've survived parties at University of California-Santa Barbara's notorious Isla Vista neighborhood, where whole genres of porn have been invented. At my supposedly mild alma mater, I learned that the tired, old method of taking shots out of a sorority girl's bellybutton was nowhere near as fun as simply dowsing an overworked computer science major in tequila and...well...you get the idea.

I must say, however, that watching a bunch of undergrads, packed into an overpriced tenament, wrecklessly drinking from a communal liquored punchbowl, playing some game called "Beer Pong," is a unique experience.

Um...yeah. A girl asked me if I was in her microbiology class and told me she had just serviced some guy in closet. Why? Because he said she looked like Natalie Portman (she looked nothing like Natalie Portman.)

Please call me when you move the beer pong to a beach bonfire, where at least I can get drunk and skinnydip in Pacific to re-prove my theory that brief hypothermia makes boredom less damned tedious.

Party No. 2 - The Wrath of Pong:
Another party. Same packed slum of a house. Same game of beer pong with different players. Like I said, back in the days when Dinosaur Jr. still roamed the earth and it was still cool to get drunk and have a little fun at a party, we had games like this. But they tended to get boring after the first...hour.

So...um...what's the deal with college females wearing pants with word Juicy written across the ass? I'd never noticed before, until a colleague pointed it out to me earlier that day. I assume it's meant to convey some message that your ass is somehow like a can of V8. But for some reason, my mind translates the word into Ask Me about Effective Chlamydia Treatments.

I made the mistake of striking up a conversation with a woman on a porch while having a cigarette. She was wearing a Ramones tee-shirt; I thought it was pretty bad ass for a girl to wear a plaid skirt and such a shirt in a community known for its Reaganomics-efficient sense of conformity.

I spent twenty minutes listening as she explained she had just broken up with her boyfriend back home and she wasn't looking to meet someone and how it was too soon for her to start seeing anyone and how he was the first boy she kissed and she didn't think she'd ever fall in love again and how she thought I seemed like a nice guy and she'd seen me around town but she wasn't ready for a commitment because she just got out of a two-week relationship and...

Twenty minutes of my life. Gone.

I will never compliment a girl for wearing a Ramones tee shirt again.

Party No. 3 - Abandonment Issues

My escorts abandoned me at about midnight, apparently, I was less of a party guy than they imagined.

Either that, or they figured this extremely intoxicated blonde "grad student" who insisted on showing me a Kentucky driver's lisense that looked nothing like her had somehow cast a spell over me.

Oh yeah. Nothing like a gal who stinks of Coors Light, vomit, and perfume, in a room full of spoiled WASPs who think they'd survive an hour in East St. Louis because they can butcher a Ludacris tune, to get the ol' ZenFo Pro in the mood.

Somehow, she talked me into going into her room. Actually, she simply hung on me until I gave in. It wasn't the weight that pushed me up a flight of stairs; it was the threat of accidental impalement on the protruding pelvic bone of a woman intent, apparently, on earning a "master's degree" in severe eating disorders and early death.

I escaped only because she recognized some girl from her dorm and simply staggered off. (Yeah, um, better work on the Kentucky grad student impersonation before using that ID to get into a bar.)

# # #

Time of Lab Test:
2 hrs 20 minutes
In bed by 1:30 a.m.

Alcohol consumed:
O mg. (Not counting inhaled fumes.)

Number of Times Kansas' Carry On My Wayward Son Heard:
4

Number of Times the variations of the phrase "She needs to lose weight" was overheard applied of students weighing under 110lbs:
8

Yeah, welcome to lovely Oxford Fucking Ohio.

Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No, Yahoo Said Yes, MSN May Have Said Yes

Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No, Yahoo Said Yes, MSN May Have Said Yes

Danny Sullivan,
Search Engine Watch

Via John Battelle and Google Morning Silicon Valley, Feds want Google search records from the San Jose Mercury News covers the Bush administration demanding last year that Google and other search engines turn over aggregate search information to help revive a child protection law. Google has refused to comply with the subpoena. A motion has been filed this week by US Department Of Justice to force Google to hand over the data.

In particular, the Bush administration wanted one million random web addresses and records of all Google searches for a one week period. The government apparently wants to estimate how much pornography shows up in the searches that children do...

- READ THE REST HERE -

How Not to Use Your Blog as an Instruction Tool

Um...yeah.

Let me apologize to those who may have been logged on this afternoon (12pm-2pm EDT, roughly).

If you noticed my profile pic replaced with a picture of a girl, weird comments popping in and out, and noticed the "News and Commentary..." line read "Loves Luscious Ladies," do not be alarmed.

A local "anonymous" poster e-mailed me a few days ago and asked if I would show her how to set up a blog.

During a bit of one-on-one Blogger instruction, I was demonstrating some things on what I thought was a template test page I'd set up a while back. I forgot that changes to a Blogger profile affect every blog under an administrator's profile.

I also forgot the Golden Rule of Blogger Instruction, i.e. log off thy own account before showing another person how to post, else ye look like a dumbass. And the second Golden Rule? Thou shalt not leave account logged in while visiting the john.

Yeah. Probably not the best blog instructor in the world. . She didn't know. Who can blame anybody learning something new for making mistakes?

She decided, in the end, to wait a bit on the blog idea. She asked me about some of my experiences locally. I think, in explaining the security risks one takes everytime they log onto a website, that scared her a bit.

If that didn't, I'm sure the 280 bits of Gator the Spybot I installed scrubbed off her notebook must've been downright terrifying.

So, again, sorry if anybody noticed anything strange throughout the day. I think I've fixed most of the changes. No harm, no foul.

"Anon" and her roommates are making me dinner to make up for it; I'm actually writing this in their living room right now. How many bloggers get an opportunity for free grub?

This opportunity did allow me to start building a framework of the ZenFo Pro local non-blogger demographic:

1. Apparently, there are a lot more Miami students that have visited my site than I'd been thinking.

2. My post on driving a drunk girl home rather than risk leaving her to be date-raped went around campus, apparently, like wildfire via e-mail and even came up in at least one class.

3. I have been romantically linked to three different female bartenders at a local bar I frequent, none of whom, in my way of thinking, would actually go on a date with me.

4. ZenFo Pro readers are very intelligent people. And people read the comments.

5. I have been romantically linked to at least four different colleagues, two Miami TAs, and a grad student who works in my library. All of whom are, trust me here, way too smart to go out with me. Or are married. Or inother relationships.

6. Nobody local knows what the hell I do at my library. When I explain it, they can't believe anybody would trust somebody so young with those kinds of responsibilities. (Hence the reason I never talk about what I actually do.)

Anyway, I think that will do for now. I need to go eat.

Cheney for President in 2006?Why "Impeach Bush" is Just Plain Silly

You know, I've noticed a lot of those "Impeach Bush" banners popping up on blogs, bumperstickers, and backpacks lately.

Every time I see one of these things, I laugh. Who came up with this brilliant strategy?

I imagine these well-meaning advocates on the Left, caught up in the heat of the moment, have simply forgotten some of the events of the last decade.

Do you know why I laugh when I see "Impeach Bush" emblazoned across a car or web site? It's because I see the ghosts of Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde.

This month marks the seventh anniversary of the start the Senate impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton, one of perhaps the most embarrassing displays of political skullduggery in American history.

I find it ironic that so many of, presumably, Clinton's then-supporters are now choosing to utilize the same rhetoric employed by the NeoCons back in the 1990s. Rather than tackle an administration's policies head on and formulate any meaningful policy, some elements of the GOP resorted to calling the President's wife names, cooking up some vague Contract With America, and, well, turning swampland and a blowjob into a media circus.

That kind of supreme failure forced the GOP bosses to reorganize, turn to its Karl Roves and Tom DeLays, and to pretty much abandon the notion of leadership in favor of slick marketing tricks.

Sure, there is a need for investigations by Congress into the conduct and actions of the President. That is one job that is the responsibility of that body - be it investigating things such as domestic spying or investigating other abuses of power.

But how could so many people forget how this whole impeachment business works, anyway? First, say, somehow, there is enough evidence for the House bring charges against Republican George W. Bush. Say, then, there are enough votes in that Republican-controlled body for a charge of impeachment to pass.

Nope. Bush isn't gone yet. The Constitution calls for a trial, which occurs in the Senate. Call me crazy, but I believe the Senate is controlled by, yep, you guessed it, the Republican Party. For a conviction, 67 votes are required. That would require a yea vote from all 44 Democrats, one independent, and from a minimum of 22 Republicans.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Say, then, George Walker Bush is removed from office.

I'm sure many of those folks out there screaming for yet another impeachment will all be celebrating, then, when Republican Dick Cheney becomes the President of the United States of America.

Say both Cheney and Bush run the same gambit and are both removed. Tune your pipes, because now it's time to sing "Hail to the Chief" for Republican President Dennis Hastert (the Speaker of the House is the No. 3 in line for the White House.)

Say the job goes to the No. 4 guy. The Senate's President pro tempore, that cute-and-cuddly Alaskan, Sen. Ted Stevens. You remember that guy, don't you? The guy who essentially fleeced the American people out of billions to build a road to nowhere in his home state?

I may disagree with the president's policies. I find the idea of domestic spying atrocious and the burden of evidence supporting its supposed need falls squarely on Bush's shoulders. I may not think he's the best man for the job, downright ignorant.

But I remember the fiasco that was the Clinton Impeachment, the worldwide joke initiated by the Radical Right and payed for by the American taxpayer. If you can honestly say that you believe Bush should be removed through the Constitutional mechanism, then you need to think about the ramifications of such advocacy.

I'm not going to play the "Impeach Bush" game, because, well, it's just plain stupid. That rhetoric is simply comfort food for the pundits, a fundraising tool for PACs, and perhaps the surest means by which the the political opposition can shoot itself in the foot.

America - the world, for that matter - is screaming for real solutions out of Washington, not a liberal version of the same old neoconservative insanity. Want to really strip the Bush Administration of its power? Then demand that the Democratic leadership develop policies that work for rebuilding the Gulf, domestic spending, campaign finance reform, and bringing troops home from Iraq.

Impeach Bush? Why the hell would anybody want to cast a mob-rule vote for Cheney presidency in 2006 anyway?


TECHNORATI TAGS:
George W. Bush, Impeachment, Bill Clinton, Jingoism, history, politics, United States, Democrats, Republicans

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
Richmond (Ind.) Palladium-Item

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!

;)

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: HOUSEMATE TROUBLESAll Good Things...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Okay, it's Friday. Thank God. Rough week. Many people may not be aware of this fact, but I do have a day job. And my little tryst was not scheduled into my day planner.

No, I didn't do anything immature, like take days off from work just to spend more time with my house guest. So I had to find a balance. I made a decision to sacrifice sleep instead - more on that later.

The bizarre post title? A combination of an obscure indie hip-hop song title (Housemate Troubles, MC Paul Barman) and the title of the final episode of Star Trek - The Next Generation.

Yeah. I'm a complete and total dork.

I can't stop making fun of myself lately. Stupid things. Of course, realizing that you can finally let go of a Holiday Inn's worth of cheap baggage leaves a lot of spare room for humor.

This is the final post on the subject. I don't want to leave another open-ended storyline in my life, because the whole fling thing didn't end that way.



BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 9:
Never Second-Guess Your Decision-Making Until After the decision's Been Made...

Monday night. About 3 a.m. We finally got to bed at two. Went for a really cold walk through Uptown Oxford.

I'm completely exhausted and yet I can't sleep. My alarm clock is going to go off in less than three hours, and I'm staring at the ceiling.

We finally got to bed at two. That sounds so bizarre. Too bizarre.

That's why I'm still awake, staring at the ceiling.

In less than three hours, I'm going to reach across another human being, probably kiss her on the cheek, and fight the urge to just stay in bed, despite having a shitload of work waiting on two separate desks in my office.

What the hell am I doing? Thinking such silly things? You know this is a fling. Why are you so damned uncomfortable? Are you uncomfortable because, well, you're just too damned comfortable?

With nothing to fill my brain, I make up a silly checklist to go through, to make sure all my bases have been covered.

You're not in love. Check. You're not even close to falling for your guest. Despite feeling like an ass for admitting it, check. Have you been honest and open and are you enjoying yourself? Definite check.

Are you using this girl for something...?

Long pause.

Fuck. That's not good.

I don't know. I don't think so. Am I? Am I too comfortable because I'm using somebody to somehow make me feel better? To build up some bullshit image of myself, like I did way back in the late 1990s? Was this all some part of subconscious, sinister plan? Did I make up my mind to pursue this when I was bandaging up her shin, wrapping her ankle when I knew it wasn't sprained?

Was I doing something that is completely and utterly against who I'm trying to one day become?

I had no clue I was actually verbalizing my thoughts until I rolled over and found somebody staring at me.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Shit.

"Do I look stupid?" She was not happy, didn't bother to whisper.

"Do I look like a doll or a toy?"

This was not the sort of outburst I was expecting.

"Why do you not just ask me what you want to ask?"

Without even thinking, I just blurted out something I've wanted to ask every woman who I've ever been involved with since I was 17.

What could anybody see...in me?

UI guess that was really what I wanted to ask. Now I'm really embarrassed. I look like a complete chickenshit.

Her answer?

Why not you?

She told me she liked how I made her feel. She told me she had had a boyfriend back in Florence and she didn't feel the least bit guilty because she was a woman and she was no man's property.

She said she made up her mind about what was going to happen while we were having dinner after I'd picked her up.

And if I was too selfish to think that she was here because she wasn't getting anything in return, then maybe I was using her. She said she could care less and said something about me sounding like a kid.

What the flying fuck? How dare you come into my house, climb into my goddamned bed, and call me selfish!

How the fuck can a woman be...so infuriatingly...right.

I guess she thought I was in awe or something, because P. stuck out her tongue, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Out like a light in under a minute. How are some people able to do that, anyway?

What she said, in its own jolting way, made me realize for the first time that I understood the how,what, where, when, and who that had gone into every single fling, romance, etc.

But I'd never bothered to ask the right why questions.

Why the fuck have you always treated these kinds of things like its one-sided, good or bad? Like you're the only one involved? That maybe the bullshit you build up is just that and if you just asked why more often, you might have some tangible answers.

Why have I never, ever been willing to look at myself as an attractive, decent guy, or admit the possibility that maybe every woman in the world sees me different and no two see me as the same and that I'm not always the only one with the answers to why?

I'd like to think I did what any rational man would do upon such a realization.

I rolled over and I fucking cried.

And then I fell asleep. And I felt just peachy after that.


BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 10:
There's Always a Place to Find Some Shelter ...

Monday...

Late for work. Had to run out and buy more Sanka and some baquette. (I've never seen a woman eat a whole loaf in one sitting).

Get to work. Have someone point out that I have a strange bruise on my wrist. Realize, instantly, that it looks like a hicky. Yes, a hicky. Roll sleeves down and hope nobody notices.

What am doing? Reverting back to middle school?

Go home for lunch. Don't actually eat anything. Too busy with other things. Two people ask me why I'm wearing a different shirt when I return. Explain that I had a wardrobe malfunction.

Tuesday...

Again, another day with only three hours of sleep. Had been forced, the night before, to play chess and defend my countrymen and women from accusations that everyone in the U.S. is simply exploiting the Developing World, that we're all evil and the bane of Italians.

My defense reminds me that I promised a guy a post. Bed by 2, back up by 5 a.m. Write post. Go back to bed. Rediscover, to my dismay, that I'm still ticklish.

Completely caffeinate myself to continue work. Dump a large coffee all over the carpet in the middle of a rather serious meeting.

Wednesday...

Early to work. 6:30 early. No major SNAFUs, so I'm able to leave on time to make the two-hour drive up to the Indy airport.

Find out another connecting flight has been cancelled. P. can either fly as far as JFK or spend the night in Indianapolis.

Go out to a late dinner with her friend, to whom she proceeds to explain every detail of our little whatever you want to call it. Forgot how open some cultures are with these kinds of things.

P. and I get a hotel roommate the suggestion of her friend. You figure it out. Sometimes, wealthy flings come in handy, especially at hotels that do take traveler's cheques.

I come within one simple "send" button click of e-mailing in my letter of resignation, leaving everything, and going to fucking Italy (passport was in my glove box.) Realize that's probably the most insane thing I've ever come close to doing.

Say goodbye. Not good at goodbyes, especially ones where I know its permanent.

She and I discuss a distance thing. Not an option. Probably best if its a permanent goodbye. If things were different...ages, places in life, etc. If we cross paths again, maybe in a few years, things could be different or, then again, maybe not.

So I made things simple.

I made damned sure that she didn't have to wait for me to kiss her back. In fact, I'm pretty sure that had to be the hottest kiss an Italian woman has received from a librarian since goddamned Cassanova walked the earth.

It was that good. I know, because time stopped. It's pretty easy to tell when one hits that special moment when a kiss is not just a kiss, the room spins a bit, and you'd be completely oblivious if the world ended that very moment.

I know it was that good because she completely forgot how to speak English. Italian for that matter. I'm not sure she was even thinking, just making sounds come out of her mouth.

I'd almost forgotten that I could do that. And that's the completely pathetic part.

Why?

Why not me?

And if you think I'm being arrogant or simply a braggart, you're probably right. If this somehow makes people look down on me, so be it.

Reading people's comments on the last few posts has really been a bit of an eye-opener for me; there's no way to express my gratitude (even to the poster who I had to delete.) It'll probably be a while before I post something this...er..lengthy, but I just had to get this off my chest. Lord, I guess I had to get a lot off my chest.

LOL...I'm so sleep-deprived, I'm rambling. Hope this comes out coherent.

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: More Broken Rules[Why I Don't Take in Strays...CON'T]

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Its been a while since I've felt the need to get hammered before I post to the Zenformation Professional.

Six pints of Labatt Blue, two shots of something called a Razmatazz, courtesy of some sorority girl who I guess thought I was cute or something.

I realized a long time ago, back when I was a broadcaster, that once one reveals a tad too much information on a public medium, such as a blog, one must anticipate and accept the ramifications of such a disclosure.

But I'm going to finish my last post, nonetheless. If there are librarians who think I'm being too unprofessional, fine. If there are local readers waiting for me to disclose the intimate details of my sex life, well, you're going to be disappointed - read between the lines, and you might figure something out. And if you're somebody who thinks this blog is somehow representative of my colleagues, the official position of my employer, or the like, you are a complete and utter dumbass.

This is, above all, a place to document my thoughts. If you think this was somehow intended to be a "Aren't Librarians Swell?" blog, well, you're in the wrong place.

I appreciate every reader. If I link to your blog, I can honestly say you are probably a thousand times the blogger I am. I encourage all readers to check out the so-much-more-badass blogs listed in the left-hand sidebar.

A special thanks to Beth (nonblogger ex who not only posted but had the balls to remind me of who I once was), Chris (Ms. Monkeythong, who continues to amaze with her nonlibrary librarian wisdom) and Liz (Library Tavern, thank you so much for being honest and calling me on some of my own bullshit.)

Now that I'm liquored up, I think I can continue ...



BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 6:
Never Have a Fling with Someone You Have Nothing in Common With...

Ever have one of those moments where you realize that you're so full of shit that you can't contain it any longer?

Worse still, have you ever had one of those moments when somebody refuses to put up with your shit and time almost stops? One of those moments when you have to choose betweeen completely letting go of your inhabitions and continuing on along the same dismal path?

Okay...maybe it's just me.

It hasn't been that long since I've kissed someone. It has, however, been a long time (eight months) since I kissed someone back without worrying about what the neighbors might think, work issues, or anything else, for that matter.

No self-conscious garbage. No time.

I had spent the last three years of my life trying to buy into the theory that being a professional information cowboy required me to draw a line in the sand dividing personal and professional life, separating work from play like a cataloger carves up a book into Library of Congress subject headings.

My professional life (I spend an average of 50-60 hours a week at work) had been sucking my personal life dry. A place like Oxford, a tiny town where having a personal life can sometimes spark rumors, simply amplifies things internally to near hysteria.

I can't blame everything on my career choice; personal baggage as contributed more than its share to my forgetting what it's like to get caught up in a moment. While I've had several healthy romantic relationships in my life, I've packed away tons of luggage carrying all sorts of things - I am proud to say I'm a survivor of domestic violence, in which I came this close to being murdered, I've been involved with women I had no business dating in the first place, etc.

I've also carried around a lot of guilt, for years, about some of the violence and using of women I've done in the past. While I've tried to take the high road and get over it, I've always ended up building my own freeway to guilt-ridden martyrdom.

Combine it all, and you get one hell of a messed-up stew.

Did I care about any of that while I'm kissing someone back?

No. For the first time in a long while, the answer was a blunt no.

The only thing that was going through my mind at the time? Well, passion sometimes needs to bitchslap the living shit out of the human mind...at least in my case.

I will only share these few observations...

Remember to breathe, but it is incredibly sexy when two people fall on the floor out of breath. (Bruising optional.)

Remember to giggle occassionally.

Don't ever worry about having to buy new shower curtains or glue a leg back onto a coffee table. If it's broke, fix it later.

This sort of stuff is supposed to be enjoyable.


BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 7:
Always Remember that Freedom Has a Price...

Johnny Cash had it all wrong.

Watching a Sunday Morning coming down is absolutely wonderful, but why go to sleep on a Saturday night?

It's amazing how a guy can go from complete bachelorhood to being a completely domesticated bastard in under 48 hours.

I had to make two trips to the grocery store. One to buy pasta, which I don't normally eat, but, hell, somebody's dad was picking up the tab for some really nice wholegrain angel hair and scallops.

Living on my own for as long as I have, one learns to appreciate someone else who's willing to cook.

One thing that sucks...drinking Sanka. One would think someone from Europe would have a better taste in coffee.

I won't even try to spell what my Florentine guest prepared. No clue. But it was really tasty.

Saturday, post-um-kiss, ended up blurring into Sunday. I may have slept three hours. Sunday, we drove out to Hueston Woods State Park and went hiking...in a cold rain. And it was fun.

I did laundry while she stayed at my place, attempting to clean my house (hint - if you're someone who grew up with a housekeeper cleaning everything, yeah, there's no faking it.)

While folding underwear at the laundrymat, the Dick Cheney chest pains came back. PTSD is a bitch sometimes, but other times it serves as a reminder that nothing lasts forever.

My Italian houseguest was heading back home in 28 hours and I probably wouldn't see or hear from her again after she got picked up by her friend from Indy.

Stupid fucking Conscience.

Dude, you don't really believe that guy's picture in that locket she keeps playing with is really her brother, do you? How many women have you known that keep a picture of their brother around their neck? Most reliable red flag in the book. Don't you dare fall into the trap of believing that your acceptance of a fling excludes somebody else from thinking this is a quick fling, too. Grow some balls and trust your gut again.

I kept folding laundry. Not dodging the thought process, I allowed myself to breathe a bit, to let my hormones and neurons duke it out.

I don't think I've done that...ever...as an adult.


BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 8:
When Being a Gentleman Fails, There's Always the Asshole Option

I used to think I was the master at hiding what I was really feeling. I have always been a go-to guy when someone needed a level head or a calm-sounding voice.

Professionally, at least. I've always worked best under pressure and I try to never let anything get in the way with getting the job done or having fun in the process. I took that approach as a journalist, a librarian, and just about every other job I've worked since I was 14 years old.

A colleague once warned me that, in librarianship, it's best to not burn bridges. My philosophy has always been old bridges are meant to be blown up and rebuilt with something stronger.

I'm not Melvil Dewey or Marian the Librarian. I'm William Fucking Holden from the Wild Bunch.

That used to be my philosophy in my personal life as well. But somewhere along the way, I was burned. Correction - I got hit with napalm.

One of my firebombings was a very public affair, and an editor (maybe editors) went to bat for me to keep my being a victim of domestic violence and the fact that my then-fiancee was sitting in a county jail for aggrevated battery from being included in a daily news budget. One firebombing involved a very public break-up while in graduate school from a fellow student - who was engaged to someone else at the time. That required eight weeks of therapy just to keep getting up and going to class and to not worry about whether or not other students or faculty were judging me.

I've been run through the ringer, and my little personal worldview has been completely broken ever since. Did I ever stop and fix it? No. Of course not. That would require having some guts; anybody who's been a survivor of domestic violence will tell you that that is the hardest thing to recover.

I've never been willing to accept the fact that in order for me to have a personal life, to express passion freely, I can't have fun and be in control all of the time.

(By the way, if you're local, reading this, and need shelter from an abusive relationship, I don't care if the governor is sitting in my office; if you need help, stop by, and we'll see what resources we can find to help.)

So...to continue my little adventure...

I'm driving back to my house and I stop off for some coffee on a Sunday afternoon. My chickenshit instinct is to simply wait until my houseguest is gone; avoid the thought that she's probably got some kickass boyfriend back in Florence, a guy who's probably some European playboy, a guy who looks a bit like Colin Ferrell.

I call up one friend and ask for advice. Notice I have 12 unchecked voicemails on my cell. Ignore all of them (sorry to anybody who's called in the last two weeks.) This friend gets pissed; no solace. She tells me to quit being a goddamned chickenshit, to quit taking on somebody else's baggage, and to quit being so Don Quixote.

Have I really been chasing windmills?

Fuck.

Do I really give a flying rat's ass if she has a boyfriend back home? We're not talking lifelong commitment here. Does it really bother me that she comes from a wealthy family, or that she's 19? Does any of it matter, or am I just making up reasons to feel guilty, to put myself back in some box, to punish myself for something that's really not my business?

I drive back to my house. She's sprawled out on the floor, wrapped up in the Mexican throw, watching my new Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0 DVDs (with the English subtitles on). She tells me I'm such a nerd but that's completely okay. One of her Monday red-eyes was cancelled. She bit my ear and asked if she could stay through Tuesday.

It finally occurs to me that, for one brief period in my personal life, I'm William Fucking Holden again. I have by far the hottest woman in Oxford Fucking Ohio laying on my floor, hair in pigtails, fresh and sweaty from an afternoon jog, who smells, tastes, and definitely feels like a woman.

Fuck you, Colin Ferrell lookalike! If you are her boyfriend, you're probably not very good at it, else your girlfriend would not be wearing my lucky tee shirt, crashing in my house, and pulling stray hairs out of my back. So some people might not approve. So her Race Car Daddy would probably have me killed if he ever found out. So she's way too young and there's no way this will last past when she leaves.

What's the point of living life if you can't do something stupid every once and a while. That's the point of a mindless, completely insane fling.

While we're laying on the floor, trying to figure out the shapes in my textured ceiling, she tells me a few Miami students cat-called her way while she was jogging by what I'm assuming was a frat house.

In a very fake tone, she asked me why American boys were so stupid.

Fuck if I know. I can't figure out why I'm so stupid half the time. Thank goodness for the post-graduate education...and the ability to cut through one's own bullshit.

---

NOTE - I held off on posting this until Friday morning to give myself time to edit a bit.

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL:This is Why I Don't Take In Strays...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Okay, I should be old enough to know better. I may be even breaking my own rules posting this. I know I have local readers of this blog who may want to start some kind of rumor.

Oh well. Fuck it.

I should be wiser and better at decision-making, but, sadly, I'm not as bright as I should be when it comes to taking in strays.



BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 1:
Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers...

I ran into a female hitchhiker over the weekend just outside of Cincinnati. Scratch that - I almost ran over a cross-country backpacker this weekend.

First, I normally don't pick up hitchhikers. For one, being a guy and picking up a hitchhiker opens the door for a lot of trouble beyond simply getting robbed or killed. But, well, this Italian woman was very, very lost (she was headed the wrong way, away from Indianapolis and towards Kentucky), very cold, and she had jumped for the ditch and scuffed up her leg dodging my pick-up.

Yeah...I know. Very stupid. But am I supposed to leave an 19 year-old European on the side of the road at 10 at night after almost putting her in the hospital? In the frigging rain? On a stretch of U.S. 27 about as welcoming as a redneck episode of the Twilight Zone? Besides, Indianapolis is only two hours away from where I live, and I live in the right direction...

What is it, by the way, that leads European tourists to believe that it's somehow safe to backpack alone across the Midwest? Don't they have B-Horror/serial killer flicks in Italy?!? There are cities where I won't go out alone.

When she offered to buy dinner and top off my gas tank, I figured I was safe from at least getting carjacked. I agreed to take her as far as Oxford. Once there, the plan was to drop her off at a hotel and she'd get a friend in Indianapolis to drive down and give her a ride to the airport.

Well, that was the plan, at least. We had a little too much fun at this Applebees. Even the wait staff's flair was annoyed. We talked for three hours. This woman had hitchhiked...er...backpacked all through Florida, up the Appalachians, through West Virginia, and had developed a Florentine/Hillbilly accent.

We swapped stories about rattlesnakes (we both had the critters narrowly miss our ankles and dig into the same boot heel), I explained that venison meat does not come from a cow, and she described her "let-them-think-you-have-crabs" trick for keeping unwanted hands off her body.

By the time we go back to Oxford, we couldn't find a single hotel that would take her traveler's checks. Or at least one that was open that would take her traveler's check - Miami students were still on break, thus negating any need for overpriced parent/alumni suites.




BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 2:
If You Do Pick Up Hitchers, Don't Take Them Home

She said it would be okay for me to just leave her on a street corner by a closed filling station. It was about three in the morning. Without even thinking, I offered her a place to crash.

Great idea, dumbass. You already opened up the door to all kinds of possible criminal accusations. Why not be a little more stupid and open yourself up to robbery in the same night?

She took me up on the offer and promised she wouldn't be any trouble. And then she said I was the first American friend she'd made during her month-long holiday.

Then, I had to stop mid-sentence while explaining that she'd be welcome to stay as long as she liked. I was starting to experience shortness of breath, Dick Cheney style.

Nope. Not a heart attack. I was starting to panic. There was this little voice in the back of my head starting to question my reasoning for making that offer. Was I being a nice guy? Or...was I making a pass at her?

My conscience can be a complete bastard sometimes.

Dude, you're making yourself look like Hannibal fucking Lector. Yeah, she noticed how you were admiring her legs while bandaging up her shin. Stevie Wonder would've noticed. She also noticed how you kept making eye contact while your eyes were supposed to be on the road. Stupid typical guy. Did you forget she's like a DECADE younger than you are and HITCHHIKING back to an airport to fly back to ITALY to get ready for UNIVERSITY?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I am too much of an idiot. The fact that I have a penis makes me more of an dumbass sometimes.

She noticed I was drifting in and out of our conversation. She thought I was too tired and she was boring me. I pulled myself out of Lala Land long enough to make noises that sounded like "I'll have to clean up before you come in. House is a wreck."

She thought that was funny. I was sure I was ready for a defibrillator.




BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 3:
If Rule Nos. 1 and 2 Fail...You're Probably in Deep Shit

So she spent the night at my house, this strange foreign woman who I'd literally picked up on the side of the road.

For about 30 seconds I debated whether or not to take the 20-inch hunting knife off my living room wall. I debated whether or not to hide the silver Ethiopian Orthodox cross a friend had given me, or the wooden idol from Nigeria, or the Japanese vases...

While I'm debating what to hide to prevent theft or, well, a slit throat in the middle of the night, she lets me know that there are indeed low-budget psychokiller movies in Florence.

"You're not a serial killer or something?"

Fuck. Damn you, Conscience. Damn you to fucking hell. One part of me was relieved that she thought enough about her personal safety, the other completely shattered because, well...

Then she laughed and asked if I was dangerous.

Long...awkward...silence.

Then she laughed again.

Before I could say anything, she asked if she could use my shower. While she was in the bath, I finished revising the ol' ZenFo Pro template.

Too tired to fall asleep, I popped in a DVD, pulled the cushions off the couch, and crashed on the floor. My "roommate" hollered from the bathroom something about borrowing a dirty work shirt she'd found on the bathroom floor. I was too far past the "almost dozing" stage to comprehend much - I'd been awake for 27 hours straight (9 hours at work) by the time the sun was peeking through the blinds...


BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 4:
Think Before You Act

I'm going to tread carefully here, so please forgive me if this sounds a bit cryptic...

Waking up next to a stranger is an artform. It becomes postmodern art when one has to figure out why, exactly, one is waking up next to a stranger in the first place.

My guest had unbundled and unzipped her sleeping bag. I guess she thought I looked cold, so she covered me with it. She then climbed under the sleeping bag.

The shirt she was wearing? A small polo. She's my height - roughly 5'8, 5'9. That's it. I would've lent her some boxers.

This is really awkward. My hand is in a really awkward place. Her hand is in a very sensitive spot, especially first thing in the morning. She's breathing in my ear and probably has no clue the amount of control I'm having to exhibit.

What happened here?

Did I miss something?

My chest starts doing that Dick Cheney impersonation again. Like some old Warner Brothers cartoon, I feel as though I'm debating with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.

I look on the walls. Knife still there. Antiques still on the shelves. The only things out of place are the two people on the floor.

I think that's vague enough so I'm not breaking my own rules here.




BROKEN ZENFO PRO RULE NO. 5:
Ignore the Tourists

I haven't seen anybody sleep that long in a very long time. I can't sleep in past noon anymore, so I got up, took a quick shower, and got out of the house.

I went grocery shopping and hung out at a local coffee shop checking e-mail and testing the new template. I'm pretty sure I looked like something similar to a crazed homeless man; one part of me was still trying to figure out whether or not this woman was playing me for something, one part was in that mode of trying to figure exactly what signals I'd missed, and another part was worried that I'd return home to a robbed apartment.

Fucking A. This is why I gave up on dating or any kind of romantic stuff. I make lousy choices and I don't like having to deal with being a dumbass because of bad choices.

I get back to my house expecting for all my valuables to be gone. I find a girl on the floor looking at my high school yearbooks, laughing hysterially at the profanity-laced comments. She tells me that her gee-whiz neato satellite phone her dad bought her for the trip (race car drivers apparently know how to get their children useful ICT) needs to charge, so she needed to borrow my cell to call her friend in Indianapolis.

I don't have a gift for languages, so whatever she was saying on the phone was just noise to me. But she did ask me, in English, if she'd be able to stay until Monday morning and offered to provide me with some rent money. I declined the money but agreed to let her stay for a few more days.

I did recognize the tone of an argument. With the Italian language, it's difficult to figure out when, exactly, an argument is really an argument. I didn't think the argument could possibly be about me until she smiled at me and winked.

When she got off the phone, she kissed me. Yeah, I can't read signals to save my life.

My Conscience finally gave up on me.

You're a grown-up. She's a grown-up. How stupid do you have to be to not realize that this gal is, for some strange reason, probably attracted to you? And you know that for some reason you're attracted to her. It's a fling - get the fuck off your high horse, will ya? How many excuses are you going to make? You know, somewhere deep down, that you are not the paranoid guy afraid of ANY intimacy? Fuck the bullshit, dude.

Holy hell, I think she's trying to steal something. At least she doesn't think I'm a serial killer.

I'll write more later...looks like I've written a novel since five this morning and I've got to get ready for work.

LIVE FREE OR DIE: America Is an Idea, Not a Product

I bum a light off this guy in San Luis Obispo one day; in return, he bums a cigarette. The guy - a kid who returned from combat duty in Iraq a few months ago - used to be somebody I knew in a former life.

We grab a cup of coffee and split a pack of Marlboro No. 27s. This guy just wants somebody - anybody - to listen to what he has to say. The America he left years ago, to fight some vague conflict called the War on Terror, looks a lot different to him now. The scenery hasn't changed much, but how he views his country has changed drastically.

And the view from Baghdad ain't pretty.

This former enlisted soldier has had to listen to people who want to let them know just what they think about Abu Gharib and Gitmo. He's had to deal with people who think they know what life in Iraq is like because they watched a documentary on it, those who assume he's been a photo-op pawn of some dude named Rumsfeld. There are those who've grilled him about his political views before they ask how he's doing, complete morons who have called him a terrorist for wearing a uniform.

There have also been folks who've bought him drinks and wanted to know how many Iraqis he killed, wanted to wrap themselves in the same flag that has covered the coffins of so many of his former comrades. There have been friends who've assumed his tour of duty somehow resembled Halo 2 or Doom III, assumed he somehow advanced video game levels while trying to stay alive in places like Basra and Tikrit.

Over coffee and cigarettes, he tells me about how he's sick and tired of whiny Liberals whining about how they have too much to whine about and batshit Conservatives spreading enough guano to choke the life out of anybody’s patriotism.

He tells me how he just wants to get on with his life and to be an American again. He wants to hit a club or two, try to get laid, one day settle down, maybe have a few kids. He wants the Oakland Athletics to win a World Series. He wants to go to college, become a school teacher or work in law enforcement. He wants to be free to do, think, and believe whatever the fuck he wants without having to worry about politics.

He tells me of how Michael Moore's rhetoric turned him overnight from a registered Democrat into an independent, how sickened he was when politicians lined up like vultures to dig the political meat out of Terry Schiavo to get a few votes. He tells me about how he decided voting for the lesser of two evils was something they’d been hoping to prevent in Iraq even though it remains an accepted practice in the U.S.

The guy just needed to vent. Regardless of my stance on the Iraq occupation, it has always been my belief that what veterans have to say about a war matters more than the words of a war's civilian supporters or detractors.

The job of America's military is perhaps one of the most difficult in the world. For little pay, they volunteer to give up certain rights and, if need be, give up their lives for an employer that asks them to kill or to die, without the luxury of personal opinion.

The employer of the U.S. military machine can be a real brute at times, failing to provide a living wage or adequate equipment. The employer is a master of manipulation, twisting the truth to fit agendas, playing hundreds of thousands of employees for fools to get a few extra points in the polls.

But that mysterious employer isn't Donald Rumsfeld. It's not George Bush, either. It's not Congress, the Pentagon brass, MoveOn.Org, or the Christian Coalition for that matter. An American has to look no further than the goddamned mirror to see who’s in charge here.

That great employer, the People, has chosen to settle for playing American Idol with the fate of the world's most powerful nation, electing middle managers and entertainers instead of electing anybody resembling a real leader. We support the political equivalents of that Bill Lumburgh guy from Office Space, people more worried about getting the reports in on time and looking competent than about actually doing anything productive.

This guy asked what I thought about America, being a civilian. I couldn't think of anything, so I threw an old idea out on the table…

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The Idea of America.

This idea, of course, revolves around the notion that being an American means more than just the moving of widgets, the selling and consuming of some product called America. The Idea of America is as old as the United States itself, yet has been painted over by politicians, repackaged by media outlets and lobbyists, conscripted and twisted by every political action committee and lobbyist group since the birth of the country.

Evidence of the American Idea is everywhere, despite the best efforts of American Product advocates, who have no use for the metaphysical ideas of liberty, freedom, and justice. It exists in everything, despite the best efforts of politicians on both sides of the political spectrum advocating different versions of the same old idea of censorship.

The American Idea is a diverse collection of underlying thoughts that reflects our diversity, not some random exercise in group-think but a truly marvelous combination of moral, ethical, and legal intangibles. It is through this filter of differences that we find the heartbeat of an entire nation. Every single American has an obligation to work towards translating those intangibles into something real and something beautiful, to interpret and to evaluate and to reevaluate, to cherish and debate and to work towards a better understanding of the what constitutes this thing called the United States.

Similar to the plot of the film National Treasure (one of the vet's favorite movies), the secret to the Idea of America lies buried beneath centuries of political bullshit, hidden in ancient language, like the phrase E. Pluribus Unum - the national motto many politicos would rather see driven from the face of the earth in favor of the catchy, vote-grabbing In God We Trust.

The Idea of America is hidden in phrases like Sic Semper Tyrannis (Thus Always to Tyrants), the Virginia state motto adopted at the insistence of Founding Father George Mason. Sic Semper Tyrannis reflects the moral and ethical principle that defines tyranny as unacceptable. It is such a powerful, simple invocation.

New Hampshire's motto reflects part of the American Idea. Live Free or Die, attributed to a toast written by Revolutionary War hero Gen. John Stark, conveys, in four simple words, the dedication all lovers of independence must accept in order to maintain freedom. Living free requires sacrifice, and sometimes that sacrifice is paid in human blood.

Aside from the idea that freedom is something that requires, at times, human sacrifice, there is the idea of rule by the people hidden somewhere in the Idea of America - Missouri's Ciceroan salus populi suprema lex esto (roughly translated as "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law"), Wyoming's simple-yet-complex Equal Rights, and Hawaii's Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono (translates from the Hawaiian as "The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.")

These ideas weren't meant to be hidden. But they are no longer taught in classrooms because the fighting man or woman's Employer would rather bicker over whether or not evolution is a valid theory, or whether putting condoms in school restrooms will damn us all to hell.

The Idea of America wasn't designed to hang from a $1.99 ribbon decal on the back of a car or on some silly silicone bracelet. The Idea of America was meant to be shared, over pints of beer and cups of coffee. The United States of America is not some phrase on a dollar bill or some elected manager; it is as grand as Los Angeles and New York City and as small as Ault, Colo., and Meherrin, Virginia.

To me, America has always represented something esoteric, something magical. It is not represented by its widgets or other junk but by the substance of its thought - and the sarifices required of its men, women, and children. The language of the States is but one reflection of the hidden face of this country, the part that hasn’t been twisted into political knots, sacrificed to the American ME.

There are folks working constantly to strip everything down into Liberal and Conservative, into Red States and Blue States, us and them. This is the mentality of those who see the American Idea as a product, a registered trademark to market, repackage, and manipulate to produce some measurable profit.

The American Idea is not meant to be earned; it is meant to be shared and harvested like Nebraskan corn, North Carolina tobacco, and Louisiana peppers. It is not all-or-nothing; it exists in the metaphysical mathematics of "all-as-something."

Regardless of my personal views or my political ideology regarding Iraq, I owe it to the men and women who eat, breathe, and sleep in lands where they could die tomorrow to vote for the best person possible, to advocate the best possible course of action, even if that means compromise.

My job, as part of the body of the American Employer, is to select leadership that will make sure that ideas likes Live Free or Die don't become jingoistic catchphrases. My duty, as a citizen of Oxford, Butler County, Ohio, and the United States, is to insure that I never promote a vision of America that leaves a veteran feeling alone in the world or as a pawn in political chess games.

My job is to insure that those we send out to bring death to tyranny are doing so not to fix the price of oil or to cover up mistakes made by the middle management or to protect those who don't have the guts to fight for what they hold dear. My responsibility to those fighting in Iraq and elsewhere is to insure that their service represents a diverse set of ideas, to ensure their sacrifice is required only when necessary and that anything called the PATRIOT ACT sure as hell better reflect true patriotism. My duty is to make sure that We, The People never becomes We, the Party, We, The Police State, or We, the Regime.

---

The duty of all Americans is to make sure that the middle managers we've put into place are representing the best of the Idea of America and not their own version of the Product of America. Every American owes that to those they employ to fight their wars, to house and care for their sick and poor, to police their neighborhoods, to educate their children. And if you're unwilling to pay that debt, then get the hell out of the kitchen so others may continue to cook up new ways to contribute to the American Idea.

If you owe your allegiances to something as silly as that Impeach Bush or that Proud to Be a Republican bumper sticker, well...don't go crying to those who've fought for you to have that right. They probably could care less about what you think anyway.

I'm guessing this is along the lines of what the Iraq War vet wanted me to write. This was basically what he and I talked about, in between our gazing at the beautiful feminine scenery native to Southern California. I hope this is adequate representation of that conversation.