AND IN HEALTH NEWS TONIGHT: A 29-Year-Old and His Spleen...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- So they finally figured out why my left nut was swollen, why I've felt downright icky for three weeks, why I've been sleeping 14-18 hours a day, and why my lymph nodes were swollen to twice their normal size.

And it only took hundreds of dollars in insurance copays, about a pint's worth of blood and gallons of urine, one trip to the ER, one trip to the urologist, and three trips to the ol' ZenFo Pro physician.

Mono.

As in mononucleosis, known as glandular fever to the rest of the world, the so-called Kissing Disease.

Er...

Yup.

* * * *

My first reaction was, of course, thank God its not what I thought it was.

When the ol' spleen swells like a balloon and the under-skin bumpy things start bulging, so many nasty, nasty things come to mind. I come from a family with a rather nasty history involving prostate cancer and leukemia. And then, well, there's a certain three-letter abbreviation that, when followed by a plus sign, scares the living shit out of sexually active young adults... not even going to go there.

My second reaction?

Jeebus. I'm 29 years old. How the hell does a 29-year-old librarian get Mono?!?

And what the hell do you mean I need to get more bed rest? Holy hell! I've got a career. And it's summer, which means I can date locally without having to worry about asking for I.D....

I can't do that, either? Holy shit.

* * * *

And then I thought back to where I could've caught it.

Actually, I searched the ol' blog. When the memory fails, there's always the written record. One of my archival science professors used to preach that constantly in grad school...

And I found what I was looking for. Yup, in one of the Quotations posts.

Fairly certain that any woman who could leave me with Hamilton Hash Marks could also be the one who unknowingly delivered unto me my plague.

There was, from what I remember, eight hours' worth of making out involved (I'm not known for being a quick foreplay guy) - plenty of time for contagions to infiltrate the ol' immune system...

In all fairness, it could also possibly be from the woman who puked all over me at my friends' party a while back, briefly mentioned in another April post.

A lot of saliva floating around in the corn and cheap booze she projected...

Dude, when the hell did you become Mr. CSI? You're a fucking librarian, dude. Don't do that. It's unhealthy.

There's no sense in trying to figure it out, Matlock. Look, it's like the Doc told you - it's going around Oxford like wildfire. Could be from anywhere, and anyone.

* * * *

And do you know what the most embarrassing thing is?

I've been asked out three times this week. THREE TIMES!

Once by a woman who was sunbathing in the park this afternoon. Bummed her a cigarette, made her laugh a couple of times, and, she asked me if I'd be interested in going out sometime. She sees me in my library all the time, and figured, well, since I was outside of work and we were both single...

A very attractive blonde. In a bikini. Reading H.G. Wells - for fun.

A woman who indicated that her roommates had left her alone in their big ol' apartment for the summer...

Aw, dammit.

* * * *

Anyway. Quick health update.

While I didn't bother to ask the doctor about it, I'm fairly certain you, dear reader, cannot catch mono from reading this blog post.

- # # # -

FIVE COMPLETELY BATSHIT THINGS FROM THE ZENFORMATION WORLD: Trips to the ER, Student Abandonment Issues, Etc.

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's been more than three weeks since the Woeful Librarian @ The Library hit me up with a meme.

And for two weeks now, I've been trying to come up with something original, going through my usual routine of figuring out what's appropriate for an online audience, what I still need to keep private and what I'm comfortable discussing.

The problem?

I've already done this meme once in 2007. Jessica, The Cool Librarian, hit me up back in January.

The first time was way back in 2006, when I was inspired by Mizzy B's post (she didn't tag me, did it on my own). She, in her own Bohemian way, took the thing one step further, with six things.

So where do we go from here?

Oh well. Fuck it. Let's see what I've got...

5.

There's an abandoned beer pong table right outside my apartment door. It's been there for four days now, abandoned by my student neighbors. The unfinished plywood top reeks of flat Natty Light. One of its two-by-four legs, in true unskilled but educated fashion, bows inward and the table wobbles like nobody's business.

Rotten furniture lines the streets. There's busted futons clogging the curbs, busted plastic lounge chairs crumbling to dust in the gutters. Dumpsters around Oxford Fucking Ohio are packed with box springs and mattresses, busted plasma screens and junk MP3 players.

Walking about town this weekend, I found a perfectly good leather armchair left in an alley. There was one slight problem, however. The chair had been run through with what appeared to be a machete, the blade sticking out of the back. "Fuck FIJI" was carved into the upholstery by some very angry, artistic vandal.

And this is how the Academic Year ends - not with a bang but with a whimper.

4.

I spent part of Sunday night in the local emergency room.

It started last week sometime - I noticed that, well, I was having trouble taking a piss, pain and swelling in my testicles.

I called my physician Thursday to set up an appointment - the earliest available time was for a week from the time I called.

I figured I could wait. It's time for my annual physical anyway. I couldn't.

And nor should I have even considered waiting.

Testicular pain, shouldn't be ignored - ever. Men lose a ball or two all the time, as a result of trauma, infection, and illness. I've known two people in my life who've suffered from testicular torsions - one nut was saved, the other amputated as a result of a coach telling a kid to "just walk it off."

By Saturday, I was beginning to regret every "It burns when you pee..." or "I'd give my left nut..." joke I've made in the last, oh, ten years.

Fortunately, no trace of gonorrhea, chlamydia, or any other bacterial infection - the most common causes. Two separate urinalysis and culture tests were clean as a whistle. Unfortunately, neither the ER doctor nor the urologist seems to know what's causing it. No immediate evidence of hernia, either, but to be safe, again, it was recommended that I abstain from heavy lifting for a while.

To be safe, just in case, the urologist put me on antibiotics, and the ER guy slapped me with enough Motrin to make a gunshot wound feel like a pin prick.

3.

I had a confrontation with a local Radical Left blog reader a few weeks ago, over my silence on the issue of immediate troop withdrawal of "Imperialist" American forces from Iraq, why I don't use my blogging powers (ha!) for something constructive, like "raising awareness."

This young woman wanted to know - no, demanded to know - why I quit posting about politics and other things related to foreign policy. She felt the need to critique my blog's content based on my lack of "awareness raising" efforts to just about every progressive cause known to Man, only about half of which I support as, yes, an independent.

Completely batshit conversation. Nothing like an angry drunk activist.

Why oh why don't I blog about hot button political issues anymore? And what about "raising awareness" over this "immediate withdrawal" stuff?

Hmmm...

Well, it's simple, really.

First, I quit blogging about politics because, well, political blogging to "raise awareness" or to "advocate change" is a pointless exercise, a pseudointellectual circle-jerk of like-minded people reading only what they want to read, consuming opinions to merely justify their own opinions, or gloating with ideological glee at the slightest misstep of the opposition.

What's the point of blogging, really, if one just wants to scream from some bully pulpit? A personal blog should be, well, personal. And this is my personal blog. And I don't like it when people feel the need to tell me what I'm to put into this silly thing, based on their political agendas.

For the record, I don't support any of this current "immediate withdrawal" rhetoric pushed by pundits, activists, or, especially, politicians. To me, it's nothing more than the Democratic version of bread and circuses, thrown around to pacify and condition the masses, no better than the Republican posturing of the past four years. And lately, as a whole, the Democratic-controlled Congress hasn't been acting much different than the Contract with America era GOP-controlled Congress, spending more time attacking the new minority government Executive than actually moving anything past respite and petty bickering.

Ultimately, a hastily assembled retreat is nothing more than a momentary escape from ultimate responsibility. We, all Americans, bear some level of responsibility and accountability towards securing Iraq's future - there is no easy way out, no pointing fingers at the President or screaming that the opposition didn't try hard enough to stop it. We fix it, and then we can go. One does not enter another's house, burn it down, and then leave without paying for the damages done.

Most of the plans put forth seem to forget the legacy of the U.S. Civil War Reconstruction era, a time when hastily assembled, mob-rule ideas during a different sort of occupation played out as tragic comedy. While Reconstruction, in the end, did reunite the South with the Union, the far-reaching side effects still haunt this continent.

Reconstruction politicians and activists spent more time trying to figure out new and creative ways to expedite national healing with words and knee-jerk reactions than actually worrying about, well, the long-lasting ramifications. It is not mere coincidence that the bloodiest acts of genocide committed against this continent's indigenous tribes occurred during this period, that liberated former slaves earned physical freedom only to be faced with a century's worth Jim Crow terrorism and oppression, that political corruption and corporate influence blended industrialized, capitalistic expansion and influence to the concept of democracy.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Mark Twain called that period in U.S. history the Gilded Age. Lasted almost 40 years, and included the assassinations of three sitting presidents, an almost total restructuring of American diversity through waves of immigration and subsequent backlash, two economic depressions, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, massive government corruption, labor revolts, and a Centennial presidential election mess that made the 2000 election look legit.

Welcome to the Second Gilded Age. By my estimate, we entered into this era of American History sometime in the last decade, sometime before this clemency petition was released.

Getting out of Iraq by the end of the year? Not happening. Nor should it, without some sort of practical, actual solution that leaves Iraq a better place than when we invaded against international law in the first place. Immediate withdrawal by this Imperialist America? Even during the Manifest Destiny era, immediacy was measured in dead bodies and decades.

The Iraqi insurgents there, just like Al-Qaeda, are much harder to kill than those pesky Dakota or Sioux, and smallpox tainted blankets are, like, so 1872. We've modernized to suit or Nuclear Super-powered status - we just torture people in secrecy, lock them away in Cuba, and have secret military tribunals in charge of separating terrorist from patriot.

And, besides, now that the Dems are in power, they'll need at least a year's worth of preening and gleaning to give all of those defense contractors, corporate lobbyists, and little old ladies from Kansas enough time to fill the ol' campaign war chests for the 2008 Freak Show...er... Election...

See. Like I said. Simple.

2.

Last night, I dreamt that I was having sex with one of my sister's childhood best friends, a woman I haven't seen or thought about in more than a decade.

Sex at my senior prom. And it was snowing.

It wasn't as good as I remembered, at least compared to the dreams I used to have about this woman when we were both in Mr. D's fourth period journalism class.

Hell, it's been 12 years. I wonder if she's still single?

Trust me. Much more interesting than waking up and thinking about Iraq.

1.

Favorite quote of the week:

I had a cat once, but every time I tried to give him a bath, the fur stuck to my tongue.

- Howlin' Mad Murdoch (actor Dwight Schultz), The A-Team.

- # # # -

ILL COMMUNICATION DEPT.: Madame Influenza Makes Me Her Bitch

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I can't remember last Wednesday.

Or much of Thursday, for that matter.

Friday? Kinda fuzzy - and not in a good way.

* * * *

It began last Monday. I was sitting in a local coffee shop, and I started to feel funny.

It started with a strange, sudden sensation, a burning sensation, just inside my left nostril. I'd noticed the dry cough earlier in the afternoon; I'd written that off as nothing more than dust from cleaning my desk at work. I was tired, downright physically exhausted.

At first, I thought I was just getting another cold. I can handle colds.

And then I remembered what the sensation meant.

For fuck's sake. I think I'm getting the goddamned flu.

I never get the goddamned flu...

* * * *

I spent most of last week bedridden, feverish, coughing and shivering, courtesy of Madame Influenza.

It's been years since I've been so ill that I couldn't get out of bed, more than 10 years since I last ran a fever above 103 F, 15 years since I last ran a temperature that high for more than a day.

I was teetering between hallucination and slight incoherence for 72 hours straight, with nothing more than acetaminophen / ibuprofen cocktails, cranberry juice, and ice cold yogurt to keep me sane.

At some point my brain went completely haywire - unable to focus or concentrate on anything. For three days, phantoms of long-forgotten memories blended with bits of movies and fragments of books.

My second grade teacher appeared out of the haze, then morphed into that creepy rabbit from Donnie Darko. I flashed back to being 15 and shooting myself in the foot with a nail gun, only in this fevered version I'd shot off my entire foot and flesh-eating zombies, a la George Romero, gnawed on the stump.

I felt seasick and dizzy as passages from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" played over and over again inside my head. Trust me. There is no worse poem for one to have stuck in a fevered brain than the Rime of the goddamned Ancient Mariner. (HTML version courtesy of the Samuel Taylor Coleridge Archive, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia.)

At one point, my poor sick brain chose to obsess over the mathematical perfection of the Fibonacci Sequence, for some reason...

And I'd swear that Johnny Ramone rose from the grave just long enough to accuse me of being a communist-- and to make out with the mirage of a psycho ex that I haven't seen in years...

That's all I remember. Three days' worth of life gone, never to return.

I'm not even sure which day was which, actually.

* * * *

Thank goodness I have a decent enough immune system and that I'm in relatively good health most of the time.

The obscure math and literature I can handle. The obscure bits of film imagery melding with memories I can handle. But I don't think I could stomach watching one of my dead guitar heroes making out with T___ again.

Watching it in Fevervision, in vivid widescreen Technicolor, almost made me vomit.

She really did kiss like a bulldog sucks on a porkchop.

* * * *

By the time the fever and the visions had subsided, I started to realize that, well, you know, the whole thing could've (possibly) been avoided with just one trip to the doctor for a flu shot.

Not that I'd actually get one, but I could've gotten one.

Saturday, I celebrated St. Patrick's Day by shaving for the first time in a week, getting dressed, and leaving my apartment for the first time in four days.

The sun was shining, the air crisp and untainted by Madame Influenza. I went grocery shopping, replenished my supply of over-the-counter meds, and bought cigarettes.

And then I returned to my tiny apartment, crawled back into bed, and went to sleep.

In bed by six on a Saturday night. The sun was still shining as I let the nighttime flu medicine carry me away to Sleepyland.

* * * *

It's been one whole week since Madame Influenza decided that she wanted to dance.

We're still dancin', but I'm the one filling out the dance card. I should be back to full strength in the next few days.

I guess I was due for a good reminder that, well, it's the smallest of things in the world, things like viruses and bacteria, protons and neutrons, that truly control the universe.

And those small things, those microscopic titans, can make all of Mankind their bitch whenever they want.

- # # # -

DOGS PLAYING CARDS ON A SICK DAY: Conversations with Ghosts of Myself

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I did something very stupid Tuesday.

I took a prescription medication on an empty stomach, didn't read those pesky do not drink alcoholic beverages instructions, and ended up puking my guts out for seven hours straight.

As punishment for my very, very stupid mistake, I was sentenced to two days sick leave, in order to recover from dehydration, extremely low blood sugar, and overall ickiness. I'd already been recovering from an upper respiratory infection, so the added stress on my system pretty much guaranteed that I'd be forced to take time off for - gasp - health issues.

I don't do sick days very well. I'm a lousy patient. I'd rather just work through it, keep chugging away until something breaks beyond repair. I'll rest when I'm off the clock or when I'm dead.

* * * *

By the time I could finally hold down anything solid, I was too jittery to sit through any DVD, too annoyed to listen to music.

I wrote long-winded emails, responses to comments on the ol' blog, and caught up on just about every open access journal in my research area.

Well, that killed a whopping five hours of my life.

Boredom is my enemy. And nothing screams boredom like five hours' worth of LIS literature.

* * * *

I crawled out of bed Thursday at around 10 (I normally get up between five and six), had one Lean Pocket and a cup of coffee for brunch, took a shower.

I started to get dressed. Couldn't do it. I crawled back into bed, defeated. I felt like the main character in Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, a helpless cripple damned to an eternity of dreary solitude, waiting - begging - for sweet death.

As I stared at the ceiling, my bedroom too bright to sleep, I decided to do what I used to do as a kid when I'd get sick, those lonely days when I'd be left bedridden back on the family farm, 20 miles from civilization and with only three snowy network television stations to keep me company.

I'll play a game.

Hmmm... what sort of game?

For shit's sake, dude! Got it. Let's play Interview!

Interview was one of my favorite sick day games as a child. Actually, Interview was more of an an exercise in imagination than a game.

I'd pretend to be a reporter, a regular Walter Cronkite, interviewing an older, famous version of myself. The television studio was completely within my mind, laid out like those old network news desks, clocks from a hundred time zones covering the walls. I could see clearly the cameras, the Teleprompter, the shining lights.

When I had chickenpox, I'd interviewed Jason, the famous scientist who'd cured cancer. Once, when I was in middle school, I'd interviewed retired Rear Admiral Jason, the hero of the Cold War who'd single-handedly destroyed the Soviet Empire.

In junior high, I even interviewed Jason, winner of three Academy Awards... and husband of Cindy Crawford (we had 12 children, I believe.)

I laughed out loud with what was left of my stomach-acid stripped vocal chords.

Dude, this is gonna be fun.

But I think we'd better mix this shit up a bit...

* * * *

Instead of interviewing my mythological older self, I decided, for shits and giggles, to interview my younger self.

Honestly, the idea of interviewing the 48, 54, or 68 year-old versions of me didn't seem appealing.

I mean, for chrissakes...

Did I really want to think about the divorce back in 2014, the sex scandals of 2043, or that dead hooker in that Vegas hotel room in 2051?

Or what about the possibility of that love child, the one living down in Mexico in 2032, the one I never knew I had, from that very real one night with that daughter of migrant laborers, back in in a very real 1997?

Dude, you'll have nightmares for a week if you interview Future Jason.

You're too damned pessimistic and paranoid to have an imaginary bright future...

* * * *

So, as I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I let my mind wander into that dusty, long-forgotten newsroom one more time. I put on the ol' anchor's blazer, tested the microphone, cleared my mental throat.

I thought I'd share summaries of my first round of Interview in more than 15 years:

* * * *

The Motherfucker was 17, a passionate kid with a huge chip on his shoulder. The Motherfucker liked to fight, smoked way too much weed, played in a punk band, and had a taste for MD 20/20.

"Man, I remember once, at this party, I was so fucked up I couldn't see. We was all outside, all jus' chillin' around this bonfire. Me an' ______ snuck off with this one chick, 'cause she had this dusted bud she'd picked up in Charlottesville. She got so fucked up, she like pissed on herself an' shit. Fucking hippy rich chicks, man. She offered blowjobs if we'd give her a ride home, but I was all, like, shit, white girls from private schools carry all kinds of diseases."

The Motherfucker was known to most adults as a bookish, level-headed kid. He excelled in scholarly activities, as a member of the track team, in academic competitions. But he had a dark side, a lust to be accepted, to be the badass, the instrument of God's Wrath. He hung out with some good kids, but mostly ones destined for lives of trouble.

According to legend, the Motherfucker once broke a guy's knuckles with a ball-peen hammer, gangster-style, because the poor college first-year couldn't pay his illicit pharmaceutical bill. He once took a baseball bat to some poor kid's stomach at a house party, retaliation for the merciless beating a friend of his had received on a school bus.

"That cocksucking redneck had it coming. If we hadn't fucked his shit up, he jus' would've called some brother a coon or somethin' and ended up gettin' capped. I prob'ly saved his sorry ass. Eye for a mothafuckin' eye, homes. You wanna trip some shit, I'll trip shit like a fuckin' electric chair."

The first girl the Motherfucker ever French-kissed ended up killing herself - after doing time in a women's prison for her role in her parents' murder. His childhood best friend was relocated to an undisclosed location as part of a plea agreement, in exchange for testifying against a narcotics kingpin. He knows that several of his friends from those years are now probably dead or in correctional facilities for the rest of their natural lives.

Through some act of God, however, the Motherfucker made it out of his hometown, outgrew his rage, cleaned up his act. He'd been saved only by the unconditional love his family had provided him and by the faith his teachers had in his intellectual gifts.

* * * *

Dog Juan loved playing savior to just about every troubled young woman who showed him even the slightest attention.

In high school, he'd been a late-bloomer, losing his virginity at 17 accidentally to a woman whose exact identity he'd been too drunk to recall. By the time he'd reached 20, he'd overcome enough of his awkwardness around women to be at least somewhat romantically inclined.

Unfortunately for Dog Juan, he learned too late that there were some women he just shouldn't be involved with romantically. As an undergrad, he mastered the art of the one-night stand while simultaneously mastering the art of dating women who were completely nucking futs.

"Once, I was like seeing this girl, T_____. I'd met her through one of my roommates. T____ had her problems, sure...I mean, she'd survived being a prostitute in Colorado Springs, had managed to get into college. So what if she was still stripping to pay the bills? And its not like I'd never done coke before.

"C'mon. The sex was fucking awesome. Wild shit. And she was older than me, old enough to buy beer.

"Fuck, we drank a lot. Actually, she drank a lot. And the fucking suicide threats. Yeah, those sucked.

"But dude! Wait. The fucking sex, dude. One time, I went down on her in an Italian restaurant. We did it at three o'clock in the morning, butt-ass naked on the hood of my truck, smack dab in the middle of an intersection. We're talking three to five times a day, seven days a week. Nothing wrong with that.

"I mean, I've faked it a couple of times, when she gets pushy - the fucking coke messes my shit up sometimes, but she gets it free and won't do it alone, so what am I s'posed to do?

"I mean, yeah, she gets violent an' shit. Lots of women do. And so what if my female friends hate her - they're just fucking jealous because I'm fucking happy.

"C'mon...you never had a chick pull a knife on you before, homes?"

By his 21st birthday, Dog Juan had accomplished two things that few men can claim:

He'd won his first award as a sportswriter, and he'd managed to become a certified victim of domestic violence, complete with restraining order against his one-time fiance.

Researchers have long sought interviews with Dog Juan. The mystery of how such an intelligent young man with such charm and passion could be so goddamned dense sometimes has puzzled numerous people for more than a decade.

* * * *

Talk Radio Guy knew he was in trouble the first day he'd gone into work after the Corporate Radio Juggernaut had finally cleared their FCC hurdles and had taken control of day-to-day operations of his station.

He knew he was a fairly popular sports anchor in his market, but he also knew, somewhere deep inside, that the Corporate Radio Juggernaut had no use for silly little things like women's sports coverage, Major League Baseball broadcasting rights, and colorful sports commentary.

The future, he'd been told, was in nationally syndicated talk radio - conservative talk radio. What use did the Juggernaut have, anyway, for unbiased coverage when its advertising gurus had research to show that America had no use for such things.

Talk Radio Guy knew, somewhere deep down, that some idiot would one day get the idea for liberal talk radio, the same nationally syndicated bullshit, only spun a different way, to sell more worthless airtime to gullible sponsors.

He felt sorry for his listeners. He knew they were smarter than the Juggernaut's advertising gurus.

He sat in his new Program Director's office and listened to the new management's pitch for his talent, a lecture about the fame that would come with moving to FM, to an afternoon drive slot on an Urban Contemporary station that had been faltering for years in the ratings.

"We all called this pile of goatshit P.D. Mr. Backstreet Boy. Homeboy was pushing 40, single, living off tanning salons and expensive hair gel. He used words like "bro" and "hella" in a vain attempt to stay hip.

"From the first day I met the motherfucker, I knew by all of his flattering comments that, for all of his talk about me being a valuable member of the C________ Family, I was nothing more than a local personality that they were slowly trying to push out of the business. He talked about how valuable I' was, but there was no talk of a pay raise.

"I knew my days were numbered the moment I told Mr. Backstreet Boy that I had no interest in spinning bad hip-hop for imaginary listeners, waiting for Big Fucking Brother to finally install the new receivers for the syndicated shit out of New York."

As Talk Radio Guy sat in Mr. Backstreet Boy's office, he looked over at a picture on the new program director's desk - a beautiful portrait of the P.D. and his girlfriend of two years, a former cheerleader with a certain professional sports team.

He grinned from ear to ear, interrupting the P.D. to ask him a question about the woman in the photograph.

You see, Talk Radio Guy had met the Cheerleader, a sweet woman - not very bright, but sweet - at a dance club three days prior to what was to be his last face-to-face meeting with Mr. Backstreet Boy.

She'd told Talk Radio Guy all about how she loved his funny sportscasts, how he made her laugh while she was in the shower. Talk Radio Guy had pretended to be shocked when the former cheerleader claimed that she was in her late 30s; he'd told her that there was no way in hell such gorgeous woman could be a day older than his 22-year-old self.

The Cheerleader thought Talk Radio Guy was cute in person, that he reminded her of a short, cuddly teddy bear. She kept saying how her boyfriend had never once held a door for her, or bought her a drink, or even asked her what she wanted out of life. She told Talk Radio Guy that she was sure Mr. Backstreet Boy was cheating on her with a younger woman, a college student at Talk Radio Guy's Alma mater.

In fact, she apologized several times over several hours' worth of conversation for telling Talk Radio Guy so much - she claimed that the few Fuzzy Navels had made her tipsy, and that she couldn't believe how connected she felt to Talk Radio Guy, and how she wasn't sure why she felt the way she felt, the attraction...

"I think that's probably the downright meanest thing I've ever done to another man. And I don't regret it one bit.

"Feel bad about using her - I mean, she was cute, but wow, was she dumb. And pro cheerleaders are rarely dumb - I've known several over the years.

Besides, I think she was using me a bit, too - she was a new girl in town with a cheating boyfriend, and I was a voice on the radio, the guy who made her laugh, somebody who listened. Lord, I'm naive but not stupid.

"You know, that's always been the power of local talk radio. It's not about the guy behind the mike, the guy ranting and raving. It's about the listening. That's the seduction, my man.

"You should've seen the look on his face when I asked him about that tattoo on her ass.

He knew, knew instantly. I don't know if it bothered him more that, well, I'd screwed something that meant something to him in retaliation for screwing something I cared about, or that he just never thought a fat guy could ever pull one over on his overgrown Boy Band routine.

"God, California really made me an evil bastard, didn't it?"

Years later, Talk Radio Guy would find irony in the fact that he actually slept around a lot more as a fat guy than he does now, 85 pounds lighter than he was when he was at the end of his broadcasting career.

He also finds it fucking hilarious that people sometimes wonder why he just can't find anything attractive about dumb women. Dumb women are easy to manipulate; they don't make him feel the least bit self-conscious. All he's ever had to do was to just listen - there's no challenge in just listening.

Smart women, on the other hand...

Well, he's still just as dense as a lead brick.

* * * *

For some reason, after finishing my first-ever adult game of Interview, I started to feel better.

I took a rather long nap, downloaded some new MP3s, and even started to clean the wreck I'd left the bathroom.

Hell, maybe taking some time off from work is a good thing, taking time to just let old wounds heal up the way their meant to heal.

After all, time is supposed to heal all wounds, right?

# # #

THANKS AND...STUFF: I Will Not Be Held Down by The Man or His Canned Meat God...

Okay, so I'm now officially sick of my long-winded blog posts.

But thanks everybody for bearing with me. I've been wanting to get that off my chest for some time. And, well, almost means almost. Still here. Not going anywhere.

And thanks so much for the emails and IMs, too. I must say that I now have to eat a bit of crow. I guess my assumptions about who reads this thing, but chooses not to comment, have now been proven 98.9 percent WRONG, and, yeah, I guess I tend to get a bit Old Fart ish when I discuss the plights of those on the receiving end of the sociocultural batshit that is Higher Education.

I received enough communiques this weekend to keep me chained to a laptop for seven hours, reponding to each one.

Thanks to the folks who read from the likes of local U., UC, O. State, OU, Bowling Green, Case Western, UK, Northern Kent., Ball St., UCLA, USC, San. Fran. St., IU, Ill., Mich. St., U. of Mont., UNLV, Tulane, Ga. Tech, and other places of learning who took time out of their summer to drop me a line. I figured ya'll needed some acknowledgement.

And, well, thanks Joanna and other lurkers for the comments. They were all amazing and, well, it's nice to get at least some affirmation every once and a while.

Blog-wise, thanks so much to Pia Savage for, well, simply being herself (her post reaffirming herself as the mistress of her Cyberspace Queendom and other recent posts finally gave me the courage needed to clear the air a bit.) And, well, Sar may be totally unaware of this, but offering me the chance to Brawl with the my favorite home state Belle actually helped remind me of why I blog in the first place - I don't list people in my Blogroll because they have neat web sites, but because they're all good people behind the banners, Technorati rankings, and code.

And Shayna? Join up to support the My Music Highway Project. Not only is she a sweetheart, she's also a reminder that the World Wide Web belongs to humanity and that, sometimes, those hot-moms-who-blog-from-small-towns can make the Intimate Web a much better place.

Yeah, I've over-analyzed this to death. But thanks for being an understanding bunch.

Lord, this is starting to sound like some self-absorbed Oscar speech...

* * * *

For those worried about my personal safety or other stuff because, yeah, somebody found out where I lived, no worries.

I have since relocated to a new, much more "me" place - a neat lil Bohemian loft that would make another Bohemian homesick for good ol' San Francisco. I finally accepted that I don't need to be wasting $200-300 a month during the winter heating a place I barely occupied. My new loft is in one of the oldest, most historic buildings in Oxford - and I have hardwood floors.

I'll post more later, but trust me, I now live in the LAST place most folks would expect to find a working professional. Sometimes, the safest place is in plain sight.

* * * *

And, finally... Wombat tagged me last week. Since this blog has been way to introspective and, well, serious lately, I decided to show a brother some love (and who doesn't love an insomniac wombat?) :

Rapper Name:
Um...still DJ BallKap, Cold Archives Experiment. (I swear I used to be a decent emcee before Library School made me as hip as Betamax.)

Alternative Rock Band Name:
A Gringo Ate My Baby

Name your pain:
Whatever it's been in my life, traditionally pain has involved the "she" pronoun used frequently and some type of controlled substance.

1 true word that symbolizes God:
Spam.

1 True Love or 1 million dollars?:
True love. Money is easer to steal than another person's heart.

Live Free or Die Stupid?:
I'll plead the Fifth. My attorneys have advised me that anything I say may be held against me in a court of public opinion.

Purest, Happiest Moment Ever (8 words or less):
Watching the Ramones rock out my hometown.

Most Influential Life Lesson:
Never, ever, consider marrying a stripper with a coke habit and a serious mental illness. Bad idea, homes.

Most Successful Person You Least Admire:
Joseph Stalin

Where do we go when we die? (one word):
Wal-Mart (Yeah, they own that, too.)

Worst TV show of the past decade:
Anything with American or Idol in the title.

Best TV show of the past decade:
Probably a tie between Battlestar Galactica and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Still with me, yes or no?:
Nah. You lost me, smartass.

Burning Building- baby or dog:
Baby

Who runs the world? (two words or less):
The Man, an individual reported to live in some Northern Virginia suburb, who watches his investment portfolio grow fatter and fatter on Saudi blood money, inner-city drug trafficking and arms sales to Least Developed Nations, who does it all so his children can have TiVo and Bluetooth-enabled devices, his wife can live like a desperate, collagen-filled housewife, and his girlfriend can afford a flat in Manhattan.

Fuck that two words or less shit. The Man invented that bag to suppress free speech.

Worst Idea You Ever Had:
A mixed drink called The Bitch: equal parts MD 20/20, Thunderbird, Boone's Farm, cheap gin, and Mountain Dew. I think there may have been some vodka in there as well.

God, that was awful.

Shittiest Job You Ever Had:
Cleaning up construction sites as a kid.

Best Job You Ever Had:
Information Analyst wasn't a bad gig. Don't ask, because I can't really explain any farther without the risk of being sued into three generations of poverty. That's the best part, actually.

NOTE - Consider this an "Open-Source" tag.

Scholarship is Seriously Screwed Now...The ZenFo Pro is Now a Published Scholar

My research partner left me a series of rather disturbing voicemails over the last few days.

"Jason, please call me as soon as you can. It's about our article..."

"We really need to talk about our article..."

The first thought that went through my mind was that we're going to need to do more revisions. Our nearly 30-page, 600-pound gorilla of a white paper is probably the most complex scholarly project I've ever helped complete. More than a year's worth of research and investigation.

We spent three days huddled in front of her fiance's laptop last year, arguing, writing, arguing about writing, and beating the hell out of a complex topic in a St. Louis coffee shop to get the preliminary draft completed. Then two months of internal revision, editing, and local peer reviews.

We finally submitted the article to an information science journal last September. The editor was on sabbatical and somehow our e-submission was lost. We finally heard back earlier this year. We were asked to formally resubmit with only four changes.

After turning down an offer to - sigh - entertain the idea of being the first librarian to cross into that "scholarly" erotic cinema in December, my collaborator and I finally sat down for 16 hours over the MLK holiday - right after my fling. Working through my illness/post-fling high and her grief over a recent death, we revised the entire article using via IM software.

I'm pretty sure our article is one of the first in the U.S. that advocates adopting open-source, non-proprietary ICT in Least Developed Nations that was composed almost entirely in OpenOffice, delivered toin-boxess via Mozilla Thunderbird, and utilizing public WiFi and FireFox to access the web during the research process.

Maybe its just me, but I think my collaborator and I need to gloat about the fact that we wrote an entire scholarly piece practicing what we're preaching.

We finished and resubmitted. My partner heard back last week.

After completely scaring the shit out of me yesterday (she had left the intentionally misleading voicemails to trick me into believing we were going to suffer through another round of revisions), I almost had a heart attack when she finally informed me that our gorilla is now formally accepted and will be published shortly.

Hot damn. I'm gonna be a published scholar.

To my lovely friend and fellow researcher - who, I might add, is the sexiest information science scholar in the world, will one day be the spouse of one of the smartest Habesha men in the world, and will one day produce the most beautiful, intelligent children the world has ever known... thanks for putting up with my bullshit and pushing me to push myself.

You bring the injera. I'll bring the wine. It's time to celebrate!

I really wish I could republish the article, but, well, then I'd be opening myself up to a whole world's worth of trouble in terms of privacy, first-use copyright, and several scholarly faux-pas. But here's an excerpt from an early draft (left in its unedited format):

...There must be a push towards integrating [Sub-Saharan Africa's poorest nations] into the Information Age, as opposed to simply adapting Western technologies for the developing world'’s needs. The possibility of Western dominance over information infrastructure and local culture and custom provides numerous opportunities for [information and communication technologies] access and availability, but also raises concerns about the possibility of creating a colonial environment driven by [information and communication technologies] ...

And yes, that was written by an Ethiopian and an American, sitting in a coffee shop in downtown St. Louis on July 4, 2005.

TECHNORATI TAGS:
Digital Divide, ICT, Information Poverty, Information Science, Least Developed Nations, Sub-Saharan Africa, Teledensity

The American "Me" and the African AIDS Pandemic

"UN charity Unicef says 18 million children in sub-Saharan Africa could be orphaned by Aids by the end of 2010."

"Nearly 90 million Africans could be infected by HIV in the next 20 years if more is not done to combat the epidemic, the UN has warned. Some 25 million Africans have HIV, which causes Aids, at present."

- BBC News

---

I'm sure there's a lot of folks out there new to the ol' Zenfo Pro site who wonder why I often post about the plight of the people of Sub-Saharan Africa.

It has very little to do with wanting to do some kind of community service or simply trying to make the world a better place. Its more personal than that.

Two of my very good friends, Mesi and Asti, are from Ethiopia. Mesi's fiancee, Mike, hails from Eritrea. My dad was grew up in Egypt. One of the nicest, most compassionate people I met in grad school grew up in Kenya - and never turned a fellow student away when they needed someone to talk to or a hot meal.

Call me selfish, but the idea that the continent that gave rise to human civilization, provided the ancient basis for much of the world's culture, art, and religion, is in such dire straits while the West frets over who stole Britney Spears's baby photos just pisses the hell out of me.

90 million people. Not simply random television footage shot in some remote corner of the world. Men and women, and children. All expected to be infected with HIV in the next two decades, and with the poor state of available health care and medicines on the continent, there's a chance we'll be burying 90 million bodies en masse in 25-30 years.

90 million. That's nearly three times the population of Canada, about one-third of the population of the United States. This is roughly the equivalent of the UN announcing that the entire populations of Belgium, Sweden, Italy, and the Czech Republic are expected to be HIV-positive by 2025.

And 18 million orphans? Angelina Jolie's going to need a bigger house. Every resident of Los Angeles County, Calif., would have to adopt two or more kids to give these children a fighting chance.

What pisses me off even more is the fact that as I write, there's some shoegazing emo kid in Denver overly obsessed with how to be more like Conor Oberst or Chris Carrabas. There's probably some supermodel throwing up her three-carrot dinner in some pub restroom in London. On N. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, some half-retarded trustfunder's buying a new Gucci manpurse to match his $50 Dolce & Gabbana v-neck tee shirt, that he'll wear underneath a $1,200 Zegna sportscoat to a movie premiere. And none of them give a shit about anything other than preserving their own precious bubble of American self-absorption.

Must be nice to be that full of shit sometimes. Wish I didn't have the luxury of not caring, wish I could just turn off the news and not see the dark bronze faces of people that look like people I know and that I care about.

I'm sure that same self-absorption will do a lot of comfort to the teenage mother in Ghana who just found out that her son's illness was spread to him - and her - by the child's father. Or the old women destined to wail over the bodies of their village's Generation X and Y in places like Chad and Niger.