Tuesday, February 24, 2009

SHORT TAKES AND SUCH:
Of Being a Thirtysomething Senior Citizen in a College Town, Amateur Boxing, & Sweet Hitchhikers


“You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens..."

- Angelina Jolie (1975- ),
Actress and Adopter of Orphans


* * * *

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution."

- Emma Goldman (1869-1940),
Anarchist and Feminist

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He's a regular Killer Diller, walking the streets towards sexual oblivion at three a.m., a cackling buffoon of a bottle blonde in six-inch heels leaning into him to avoid slipping on the High Street ice.

Killer and blonde were, as is often the norm for the local undergrad population, overdressed for a night out in a town where the "nightclub" hot spots tend to resemble the mail-order-bride filled discotheques in some former Soviet republics.

And, being a college town with not a whole hell of a lot to do after dark, well, they were beyond hammered. At that all-too-common, black-out-and-horny point, the benchmark where responsible, consensual sex becomes merely a quick couple of grinds, a squirt or two, and a convenient amnesiac hangover a few hours later.

Like I said.

The norm in this here college town when the undergrads are the only creatures of the night making anything but sweet music.

I myself have been struggling to get a female friend to my pick-up. Not, well, because either of us were drunk and horny.

No, we were simply done for the night. And she needed a ride home. Her car died a few months back, and her new puppy was eagerly awaiting his late night piss in the snow.

We were supposed to be heading to a party afterwards but...

As we pass Killer and his red meat, I can't help but laugh. The blonde's got what looks to be piss running down the back of her leg - homegirl's so drunk, she's just letting it rip and asking Killer if he really thinks she's the sexiest thing alive.

As one gets older, wiser, more mature, one learns when "one more drink" partying often leads to nothing but a head over a toilet, or a dick in the wrong vagina, or worse.

Like "pissing yourself in designer, cunt-cutting leggings and being dragged home by a Neanderthal looking motherfucker" worse.

- MORE -

With a devastatingly fast left hook, the 175 pounder's nose burst like an overripe tomato.

Headgear, even top-of-the-line amateur gear, offers little defense against a natural murderer, a butcher of cordoned battle.

Trust me. Had my eye split open, had geysers full of red life pour from my own nose in the bouts - headgear ain't nothing but putting a quilt over a steak and waiting for the meat tenderizer.

The other fighter, a kid from a Catholic university down in Cincy, pure raw glistening ebony, could barely find a neutral corner - even he seemed to be surprised by the blow.

Crimson drops beget purple dots on the canvas. The referee began the count. The bell rang the end to the first round not a moment too soon for the Ketchup Kid.

Saturday night was fight night on the Local U. campus. And the local amateur boxing club managed to pull in a half dozen other collegiate boxing clubs for a tournament.

Murderers. Tomato cans. Killers. Bleeders and white-knuckled gloves and Everlast mouth guards galore.

Glorious! Hosanna in the Highest!

"I can't believe you'd go watch boxing over going to the Charter Day Ball," she said in a text, "I mean, you can afford $50 for a ticket...I could've found you a date..."

There were a few hundred of us, spectators to the Higher Education carnage, willing to pay a donation of five whole dollars to watch a good dozen fights that night.

"Boxing is so stupid... how can you watch that shit?"

Yes, boxing isn't a sport of civilized men these days. No, Americans have no stomach for anything but corporate-owned mixed martial arts and television wrestling.

We are CIVILIZED these days, CULTURED, SOPHISTICATES! That's why we clamor over celebrity gossip, reality television, and let talk show hosts pick the president!

- MORE -

"So, tell me," the lovely Czech hitchhiker began, green eyes aglow in the natural dusk light of the apartment, "You are... really from Virginia? Originally?"

"Yeah," the other woman said, lighting a cigarette, "[The Italian Ex-Fling] said you grew up a cowboy or... is it... country bumpkin?"

Two young European women, the Czech included, and their Afro-French traveling companion were crashing with me for what was supposed to be a night and a day - my apartment ended up turning into a bit of a hostel for foreigners for almost two days and two nights, due to winter weather.

We sat around in a circle as freezing rain fell on top of the snow outside one Sunday evening, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It was six at night, a few days after getting over the flu, and I was doing my best to be a good host - giving tips on roads and cities to avoid, offering insight on the places to eat, things to see...

I'm not going to lie. It was lust at first sight, on my end, in terms of the Czech.

As annoying as it was to have a bunch of twenty-something European hippie-ish strangers squatting in the ol' Fortress of Motherfucking Solitude, I admit to being smitten with the ex-fling's flatmate - didn't help matters that she liked to shower with the bathroom door open and wasn't fond of bras in my nipply-cold apartment.

Hey, it's been a while, dammit - and ain't no crime in, ya know, looking. Alas, she brought her boyfriend with her on their North American walkabout.

"Yep. Grew up on a farm three hours south of Washington, DC."

"Really?" The Afro-Franc chimed in, "We haven't been there yet but we're hoping to see Monticello. It's in Charlottes...town?"

"CharlottesVILLE. Beautiful fucking place. Jefferson, for all his faults, was really a fucking badass-"

Suddenly, the Czech sat up in her sleeping bag and started laughing.

"________ warned me you had a toilet mouth. Very American."

"Bad American?" I was flirting. "Or good American?"

"No," she seemed to be flirting back. "Very, just, I'd say more fun than I expected. You talk like a teenager..."

We talked for a good six hours straight, she and I, long after her traveling companions fell asleep.

And I think, yes, I laid it on a bit thick. And she was flirting right back. Czech women, for the record, are some of the most dangerously fascinating women I've encountered to date.

Dammit.

Or do piče, to be more precise.

Why did couldn't she have left the boyfriend back in Europe?

- # # # -

Saturday, February 14, 2009

ZEN & THE TRANQUIL PHILOSOPHY OF AN OLD SCHOOL MOSH PIT:
The Importance of Space, Privacy, & Boundaries in the Batshit Information Age

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Sometimes the world spins, the floor rushes up from the bottom of the mosh pit, the ceiling blurs into fleshy hands and arms all around you, and you realize that, in that perfect quixotic moment, where you stand on every issue in the universe.

Such a liberating experience, the old school mosh pit.

I was more of a philosopher when I played in punk bands, when I was still physically able to take the auditory strain of pogoing amongst sweaty bodies up near the amplifiers and the P.A. speakers, able to cockfight and breathe within the stifling irradiated heat of The People.

But, alas, I ended up "growing up," like everyone else, blowing out my knee, tearing ligaments in my shoulder, and being forced closer towards the entropy of eventual maturity and decay.

To this day, I believe watching the Ramones live, one of the last concert-goers in the States to see the legendary punk act during their final tour in 1996, changed my worldview forever.

Blame Johnny's right-wing militarism and Joey's New Left, wallflower idealism. Blame all the other punk and hardcore shows I've been to, the mohawks and the spiked collars and the post-show malt liquor and the straight-edge militant Vegan lectures at four in the fucking morning.

Wouldn't trade it for the world, really.

Kids today get a lot of slick marketing and corporate manipulation from so many bands, even a few decent songs to sing along to in the shower. But they will never see anything as beautiful as the simple absolute of the Ramones.

Every human being is an individual. And sometimes individuals get along, agree with one another, form communes, political parties, ideologies, movements, even governments and revolutions. All men and women are equal in their independence, in thoughts and of separate bodies, detached except in moments of conjoined birth defects and copulation.

And when we disagree, ideologically or through different conclusions, we fight or we are conquered.

We are alone, even when amongst many. And without time alone, private time outside of the pit, the beast that is humanity swallows you whole and leaves a bloody carcass on the floor for the stage hands to clean up.

That, my friends, you learned in the pit.

C'est la vie.

* * * *

For the past few weeks, my normally solitary Fortress of Motherfucking Solitude had become a home-away-from-chaos for several local students, siblings of exes, polite yet boundary-challenged blog readers from four different universities, a couple of friends of the Italian Backpacker Fling needing a place to crash on their own American trek, even random drunk girls who mistakenly blacked out in my pickup on subzero nights.

Finally had to institute a new set of rules - no "dropping in because you're in the neighborhood" or sending mobile emails from PDAs saying that you're in Oxford, looking to find The Zenformation Professional and to have a couple of beers.

It sucks to be a dick about it, but, well, sometimes a dude just needs a bit of privacy. It's nice to have company at times, even for loners such as myself. But, well, I have my limits.

I'm good at playing the extrovert online. My solitary self, however, needs time to recharge and recover.

* * * *

Don't get me wrong: I appreciate the fact that so many folks think I'm a decent guy, that I write interesting tales and make a rather ho-hum podunk American college town sound like a higher education pulp novel.

And I find meeting the people who read this - people other than friends or subjects of some posts - fascinating. I'm grateful that folks still read my rather random bullshit.

But we're not buddies or pals simply because you may read this site, and my home and certain private details concerning relationships are not open to you. I'm probably not the best person to rely on to spill your guts to about relationship problems or roommate issues, not some sort of online/offline hybrid confession booth.

Sure, we can hang out, maybe grab a beer or a cup of coffee - when our schedules sync. I'd love to meet you. And maybe we'll hang out again after that.

I'm not, however, Oxford Fucking Ohio's all-seeing guru of knowledge and wisdom, I probably won't like your friend's band's demo, don't respond to "media release" emails asking for endorsement of groups or causes, and I'm generally annoyed when people I don't know off this web site try to play motherfucking matchmaker.

(Friend's cute, chica, but, yeah, kinda creepy.)

I'm just a 30-year-old librarian with a slightly skewed take on life. And I blog in my spare time, earn no income off of this, and, well, when things get hectic offline or I need some space, that's my No. 1 priority.

Sorry, again, if that makes me sound like an asshole.

We all need our personal space in order to survive, establish boundaries to keep ourselves sane, and generally like some privacy for ourselves.

Including me.

Okay? Okay.

- # # # -


Saturday, February 07, 2009

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
EX-OTHER PROGRESSIVE:
Of Bedridden Soul Searching, Emails from Sorority Militants, & Other Fuckings with the Man

Politics, the environmental crotch rot,
Whole forests destroyed while
the world's too hot to Live in...
Where the fuck do I begin?


A baby is dead from an overdose,
Mama tried suicide after suicide
But couldn't get close enough to meet
the Big Man in heaven,
The TV sliced and diced God down
to sweet meats sold in a goddamn 7-11.


- Spoken word performance notes,
"Unus Marx," Greeley, Colo., 1997

[Sick Week 2009 soundtrack by Demago]


OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- In a previous life, I reminded myself recently, I was more of a free spirit, an artist and a troublemaker.

I spent the better part of last week in bed, burning up with fever and shivering inside a cocoon of blankets, trying to remember what that was like - to be full of wanderlust, radicalism, passion.

To be free again, an artist, a rebel...I really used to believe...we'd build our children a better world...

And as I stared at my netbook screen, blankly trying to recall that part of my past in an attempt to write something coherent, I was forced to acknowledge one of the most terrifying aspects of "adulthood."

Somewhere along the line, I sold out.

Sorta.

Man, just like the goddamn Baby Boomers and my own generation and every generation before mine. Like the Socialists and Anarchists who took refuge in the Democratic Party in the wake of Joe McCarthy, like free-market libertarians sought shelter in the Big Government Republican Party.


I simply did what every adult does when the status quo autopilot takes over - I took the acceptance cookies the established, entrenched powers-that-be waved in front of me, hopped in their van of conformity, and let myself get skullfucked by the blood soaked clown suits of industry in the name of some bullshit American Dream I can't afford.

We all sell out.


As I lay in bed, sick with the flu, I couldn't figure out if it was a high body temperature making me shiver, or if the ideas running through my mind...

* * * *

At one time, in what sometimes feels like another life, I was a poet, a painter of abstract curios and refurbisher of curbside furniture, a fun guy to invite along on a trip to the local cooperative for green tea and social justice debates. I played guitar, dammit, in punk bands and around campfires and on porches surrounded by Mexican women!

Potlucks with farmworkers and attending lectures by former Black Panthers! Volunteering to pick herbs for holistic practitioners! Working with street kids to help keep them from getting raped or to escape abusive parents!

Man, I was a bit of a radical back then... damn fever... messing with my head...

Once upon a time, I shared a stage with gay men who wore the most beautiful flowing dresses and proud dyke wordsmiths, performing spoken word in front of small crowds in equally small college student housing. I'd attend protests and riots and create my own scene, wherever and whenever...

I wrote for 'zines, published a small campus satire, held court in hotel rooms along the Central Coast with self-described Art Fags and performance artists and free verse fratboys and surrealist painters who worshiped Captain Beefheart and Brian Eno...

... Jesus Christ, all those nights talking to hookers and drunken fishermen... going back to a cheap motel room with friends to change American literature forever... God, we were such dreamers...

And then, yes, I sold out.

Writing for 'zines under assumed names gave way to writing for the better paying mainstream media, my own poetry became a rambling shit stain across a thousand spiral-bound notepads, and then, yes, I became a librarian when the last vestiges of my militant independence drove me from a rather amusing career as a sports broadcaster.

I shivered and shuddered beneath the sheets, fever raging through my body, thinking such things.

Well, then there's the blog, right?

You sold out, Jason, but that sweet militant bastard is still in ya, somewhere....

* * * *

After the fever broke for good, days later, by the time I'd caught up with work enough to even look at Zenformation Professional shit, I came across an email from someone who I'm sure will read this sometime soon - an undergrad lurker, a sorority girl and, simultaneously, a newbie campus agitator spurred to action by those "stimulating" clusterfucks the Man keeps peddling down in Washington.

Apparently, my double-fisted "Fuck You!" to the Bailout Buddies during Authoritarian Presidential Erection 2008 earned me some serious campus street cred with beyond-mainstream college students, especially those who thought that I only write about drinking, women, and other fucktardish things.

Yeppers, my political views make it hard (sorry Dems) to distinguish between two sides of the same Benevolent Dictator coin. And my opinion hasn't changed a lick - and I don't give a flying ratfuck about Aretha's goddamn hat, either.

Anywho...

The longtime reader, who I'll call Miss Panhell, wanted to share with me her own double-fisting tales, thank me introducing her to both open-source operating systems and a couple of really great bands that helped her get through a nasty break-up...

There's a sorority girl who's reading Emma Goldman and Noam Chomsky these days, exploring a world she didn't even know she could explore on her own, as a person and not as an output widget in some Higher Education Degree Machine.

Haha wow you're not old! You give me hope because you never sold out, a line in her email read. Sometimes I feel like I've been selling out my whole haha baby life.

And, as I sat in a coffee shop responding to her email, I laughed and remembered my feverish fits of self-doubt and fluish self-assessment:

We all sold out. You, me, everybody. If you think otherwise, well, you're a fool.

But we can always steal that shit back...


And the visual of a sorority girl going to a frat mixer and bringing up things like the international banking industry's exploitation of Third World workers and the rights to breastfeed in public I've got running through my head right now?

The perfect camouflage in this increasingly batshit Kapitalist Kingdom.

You go, girl.

If you hadn't emailed, I probably wouldn't have had the balls to write this.

- # # # -

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

RUMORS OF MY DEMISE...
Illin' Like a Villain


OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I sure get the flu a lot.

At least once a year.

Goddammit.

Once I finish my "Virus Removal" regimen of elderberry tea, orange juice, and enough dried acai/edamame, flavonoid-rich trail mix to kill this motherfucker dead, I'll return to blogging.

Seriously, right now, approximately 40 percent of everyone I know in Oxford Fucking Ohio is recovering from either the flu, severe sinus infections, strep, or some other foul thing.

That's the lovely thing about living and working in a tiny college town - illness travels fast.

Back to bed for me.

- # # # -