SOME THINGS YOU JUST SHOULDN'T READ (WHILE ON COLD MEDICATION): Nuclear Winter, Buck Rogers, and the Not So Purple Haze All in My Brain...

NyQuil, NyQuil, NyQuil, we love you, you giant fucking Q!

- Denis Leary,
Actor and Comedian, c. 1992

* * * *

Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships.

- Andrei Sakharov,
Soviet Nuclear Physicist & Human Rights Activist, c. 1968

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The walls explode into a billion points of light, white flame melting away the paint and the drywall and the studs, an entire apartment building gone in an instant.

Everything for miles is illuminated, irradiated, decimated.

The attack could've come from anywhere - from the former Soviet Union, from China or Israel, from Iran or North Korea. Or maybe it wasn't an attack, merely a friendly mistake, an accidental discharge of warheads, an error by NATO or the Air Force or NORAD.

I heard the air raid sirens, the old Civil Defense horns that almost everyone had forgotten, wail moments before detonation. I was still in my bed, no time to react, the alarm clock chirping along to the sounds of a Cold War death knell.

In the infinite nanoseconds between the time the searing radiation melts my flesh and the time my nerve endings register momentary pain, I remember making fun of the old Duck and Cover drills my parents were forced to endure during their childhood.

I think about all of those 1950s post-apocalyptic science fiction movies, the ones where giant cockroaches and one-eyed mutants inherit a scorched, glowing Earth. I wonder, in my final moments, what those mutants and cockroaches will do with their new kingdom -

Suddenly, I'm nothing more than a disembodied wraith, ripped apart atom by atom, radioactive snowfall in one hell of a Nuclear Winter...

Regardless, this the way the world ends.

T.S. Eliot, that old Benedict Arnold of an American poet, had it all wrong. The world does, indeed, end with a bang. Hiroshima and Nagasaki made going out with a whimper an impossibility decades ago.

* * * *

"It's the NyQuil. Goddamn shit always makes me hallucinate."

NyQuil, the Green Death in a Bottle illness killer, one of the great pharmaceutical marvels of the 20th century.

While it certainly helps relieve the symptoms of the flu, it does so at the expense of one's sense of reality.

A copy of Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, Andrei Sakharov's 1968 treatise on the dangers of the nuclear arms race, rests underneath my left hand, on top of the bedspread.

"Way to go, genius! Pass out reading about the goddamn threat of nuclear war!"

I awake to a world that has yet to be annihilated in a nuclear war. My flesh is still attached to my bones, my atoms still in place, the giant cockroaches and mutants nowhere to be found.

NyQuil and Sakharov's writings fueled my catatonic nightmare, danced together in my brain as I lay unconscious, fed lies into a thousand neurons and fragmented thoughts...

One should never read about the insanity of a world filled Mutual Assured Destruction and anti-ballistic defense systems while on cold medication.

Trust me.

* * * *

I stare up at the ceiling, trying to focus on something other than my nuclear holocaust of a nightmare. The mucus starts to wake from its drug-induced slumber, too, starts to creep back into my nostrils and sinus cavities as I regain consciousness.

Ten whole hours of uninterrupted rest.

An over-the-counter, drug-induced coma of a slumber.

And all I can think about is the end of the world.

"Well," I tell myself, "At least the fever's gone...

"Maybe you can get through a whole day at the office today..."

Jesus fucking Christ.

What a hell of a way to start the day.

* * * *

I, of course, couldn't make it through a solid workday.

I went home at lunchtime, on a Tuesday, and sprawled out on the living room floor. Another vial of magical Green Death melted away the mucus and body aches, melted away reality once more.

I flipped on the television, popped in a DVD copy of an old television series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

I haphazardly watch as a fictional 20th century astronaut adjusts to life on a fictional 25th century Earth - a post-apocalyptic future where talking robots dance to futuristic disco and all of the women wear skintight jumpsuits.

Science fact doesn't mix well reality-altering cold medications.

But science fiction, on the other hand...

* * * *

Erin Gray in the Famous Blue Catsuit, waiting on the other side of a fictional Nuclear War?

Or Sakharov-inspired visions of one-eyed mutants and killer cockroaches?

C'mon, now.

Not a hard choice.

- # # # -

SHORT TAKES AND SUCH: On Being Mean and Green, Dinners with Cougars, and Other Pointless Things

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Saving the planet isn't rocket science.

It's not something that other people need to do, not something any activist is going to accomplish with anything even remotely resembling a protest. Activism requires action, actual measurable movement.

Quite a few folks understand that concept. Every day, more and more Americans - the single group that wastes more of the world's resources than it actually produces - are switching to alternative energy sources to heat their homes, to run their vehicles, and to, well, try to save the world.

So why aren't more people, well, taking the next step, simply changing how they actually live on a day-to-day basis? Really changing how they live, redefining their levels of comfort and lifestyle?

It's called Global Climate Change, people. And if we all don't really change how we live, we're all gonna be in some seriously deep shit. It's time to just, well, cowboy the fuck up.

Last year, I decided to quit being one of those stereotypical, organic-food eating, tofu loving hypocrites and to turn myself into a bit of an environmental science project.

And the result? After one whole year?

According to my calculations, I cut my annual energy costs by almost 70 percent.

That's right. Seventy fucking percent.

And it wasn't rocket science. It wasn't even information science. Sadly, no hippies were killed in the process.

I gave up a three-bedroom, two-bath townhouse and moved into a more bachelor-friendly loft apartment near work. I sacrificed the peace and tranquility offered by a more family-friendly neighborhood to live in the belly of the Local U. Beast.

And I intentionally moved into a place with no central air. The cost of running five old-fashioned box fans, year-round, has proven to be the equivalent of running the AC in my old place for two weeks.

During the winter, my new apartment is heated by a communal radiated steam system, fed by a primary boiler that also heats the building's water supply - still one of the most efficient means of warming a home. The result? My winter heating expenses were cut in half.

I leave my truck parked at work, only operating the rather fuel-efficient Ford Ranger approx. three to four times a week, an average of about 50 miles monthly usage. I hump 12 blocks a day to work, round trip, at my normal brisk pace, rain or shine.

And back in 1999, during California's rolling blackouts, my immediate family started to adopt compact fluorescent bulbs to help conserve energy. I completed the switch first. I light my entire apartment with the roughly the same amount of juice used by one 100-watt incandescent bulb.

Hmmm.

I wonder how I managed to put a dent into my student debt last year? Or how I was able to up my charitable donations?

I mean, where did that extra money come from? It's not like I'm rolling in the dough here...

Could it be... ?

Pfft. Nah. It couldn't be that simple.

Saving the environment couldn't really be tied to saving money, could it?

- MORE -

CINCINNATI (ZP) -- I sat in the hotel lobby, staring like an idiot, just like every other guy with a pulse, as a lone woman crossed the floor towards me.

Her cowboy boots clicked against the tile as she walked. Her jeans were just about as tight as humanly possible, every inch of Texas Chicana protruding from beneath the dark denim, in all the right places.

I almost laughed out loud as two guys admired her ass, staring at the damned-near-perfect thing with glares that could cut through steel.

Well, there are worse women to spend an evening with, I guess.

Her death-black hair hung over her shoulders and down over her breasts, her western blouse unbuttoned below her bra line, well outside the bounds of what's considered proper Sunday dress in the Queen City.

I stood so she'd recognize me. The last time she'd seen me in person, I was sporting a shaved head, a long goatee, and nine earrings, not to mention the additional 75 pounds of flesh. I'd sent her a photo to help her pick me out, but, well, part of the reason she wanted to have dinner in the first place was she was worried I wasn't eating right, like a man, and that she was afraid that I'd become unrecognizable.

Still babying me, treating me like a stupid 19-year-old. But as we embraced, I could've cared less; I put my hands on her hips, kissed her right on the mouth, suggested we just go right back up to her room and make love like animals.

She giggled like a high school kid, winked, and slapped me (gently) for still being so fresh, so downright wetto vulgar in public. She reminded me that if her husband had been there, he would've beaten me to a pulp for even touching her hips.

Ten years, I said to myself. In ten fucking years, I've aged more than she has.

One of the most sensual women in the world got off a 757 at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport last week, instantly improving the scenery for at least a thousand miles.

Texican women from the Rio Grande Badlands tend to do that.

You are simply ravishing, lady. Muy, muy, caliente. I just couldn't control myself.

You know, I still can't think of a better compliment to give a 64-year-old grandmother of five, a woman for whom the biological clock seems to have stopped somewhere in the 1970s.

And my advances? Dear lord, I was only half-joking. They just don't build women like that east of the Mississippi or north of Tennessee. Here in Ohio, I think women like her are actually banned by some ancient and antiquated state law.

In the sea of Germanic-looking sameness, her flawless, ageless Mestizo features simply fractured reality in that pricey hotel lobby. It reminded me of a theory of mine, that there are American women who secretly want to lock down the Mexican border not to save jobs but to keep women like her, women born somewhere between Texas and Chihuahua, from ever being allowed to become sex symbols.

M____, at one time, was a candidate to be my mother-in-law. Her daughter, an ex of mine, has the same blessed genetics, that damned curse of the women from northern Old Mexico. I call it a curse, of course, because to look that good from cradle to grave must hurt like hell.

Over dinner, in between her virtually demanding that I give up on this silly librarian foolishness and discussing my seemingly perpetual ability to make some women laugh, when she wasn't nagging me about my still being single (she tried to set me up with our waitress) or trying to get me to take her out dancing, I realized why I quit taking relationships seriously.

Holy hell, this woman has me pegged. She knows every damned stupid thing I'm doing with my life, every mistake I've made in ten years. And she's just so damned chill about it.

Fucking creepy. Like ... oh God ... like my mother.

At one point she asked me about this slang term she'd heard recently, somewhere along her multi-state business trip.

"Honey, I keep hearing people talk about these cougars running around, eating up men. You know slang - is this something new? J____ [the woman's 40ish second hubby] won't tell me, and the kids all think its just funny."

It was three in the afternoon.

I flagged down the waiter, ordered a second bottle of wine. M_____, still treating me like one of hers, didn't want me to pay for anything, so I slipped the woman a pair of 20s to bring the second bottle out as quickly as possible.

And a double of whatever Scotch she could find, no water or ice.

Something, anything, to kill the pain.

- MORE -

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The words just came out. From where, I'm not sure, just random unsolicited commentary offered to a complete stranger on a balmy afternoon.

Yup. There's not much to do in this town besides drink and fuck. Only college town I've ever lived in where the two have become the only sports anybody seems to wanna play.

Standing on the concrete stairs outside of a watering hole, just smoking away in the heat, I felt as if my sense of basic decency had suddenly flown out of the window.

I don't know what inspired the phrasing. I wasn't trying to shock the woman I was talking to, wasn't even trying to suggest that there was anything wrong with that sort of thing.

The words just came out. And it caught the poor woman, who'd been scratching at her probation-mandated anklet contently, by complete surprise.

The sad part is the fact that there's too much truth in that statement about everyday life in Oxford Fucking Ohio, the unspoken horror that goes along with being lost between 20 and 30, without the excuse that you're just here to earn a damned degree, here instead to live like an adult and find adult things to do.

Drink and fuck. Go camping, read a book, attend a Bible Study, watch a movie, or... drink and fuck. That, well, just about sums up Oxford Fucking Ohio nightlife.

Could be worse. I've heard stories about places like Casper Fucking Wyoming, seen the reckless tedium that is Green River Fucking Utah. In places out west, like Green River, some towns have only a Watermelon Festival and a prayer to keep their single 20-somethings from screwing and boozing away a summer.

At least Keysville, Virginia, had its annual Dixie Days festival, and in Plaquemine, Lousiana, they hop the ferry to cross the Mississippi, bound for Baton Rouge or Gonzales or New Orleans, or stand out in front of the Dollar General and drink cheap wine.

Oxford? We get tons of artsy-fartsy shit, but nothing, nothing, that would appeal to anyone who thinks classical music boring or folk art shows repetitive. There's only so many times one can stare at the same faces at the farmer's market, or listen to jam bands in the city parks.

The blonde, instead of being shocked and dismayed by my vulgarity, simply shrugged.

Yup. This town sucks. Fucking, drinking... fuck it, dude. I'm getting the fuck outta here as soon as I can.

What the hell am I still doing here, anyway?

- # # # -