THE OXFORD (FUCKING OHIO) DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS: Of One-legged Vampire Hunters, Sexless Restlessness, and "Vag Badger" Parents

So... Your New Year's resolution was to... swear off sex? Like all sex? Or just sex with crazy women? Oh my gosh...why?

- One very shocked blog reader,
Over coffee, in the ZenFo Pro Library's cafe.

Yup. There is nothing quite like a workplace conversation with a reader over my lack of, er, entertaining posts lately.

Actually, for the record, I've sworn off random, pointless sex - in Oxford, well, one often falls into the trap of simply hooking up to kill boredom. And no offense to certain local blog readers, but, well, I've sworn off going home with ya'll - and I swore off anything younger than 22 a long time ago.

Though I'm flattered by some of the rather forward offers...

Not very healthy and, well, there are better things I could be doing with my time. Do you know how much reading I've done since Jan. 1? How productive I've been without unnecessary drama in my life? Hell, even I've been awestruck by my surge in energy, thought, and creativity.

Sex? Pfft. I've been passed around like a Megachurch collection plate. I'd kinda like to, well, one day, remember what it's like to be able to care enough to remember a woman's last name or enjoy her scent on my pillow for more than a few days at a time...

Ya know. Like a normal guy.

* * * *

She's NOT a cougar. Cougars aren't WHORES! She's a Vag Badger. Cougars eat you; Vag Badgers take you home, molest you, and steal your fucking money!

Vag. [Points to crotch.] Badger. [Hands raised like claws.] Grrrr. Quote me on that, dude.

- Slightly intoxicated young woman,
Describing how she really feels about her stepmom

Your wish, madam, is my command. And, having been mauled by drunken Local U. moms and stepmoms myself on certain sorority mother weekends, yeah...

One should always be on the lookout for Vag Badgers. Worse than Cunt Kittens, Cock Knockers, or even, yes, regular old-fashioned Golddiggers.

This may be one of the wittiest things to come out of a nineteen-year-old Local U. student's mouth at two in the morning, ever. Proof, once again, that some of those stereotypical-looking sorority gals do indeed have more to them than meets the eye.

* * * *

"Why do dead men rise up to torment the living?" Captain Henry Baltimore asks the malevolent winged creature.

The vampire shakes its head. "It was you called us. All of you, with your war. The roar of your cannons shook us from our quiet graves . . . You killers. You berserkers . . . You will never be rid of us now."

- From Baltimore, or, The Steadfast
Tin Soldier and the Vampire,
Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden
(Spectra, August 2007, 304 p.)

Imagine a nightmarish reality where, towards the end of the First World War, a British captain accidentally awakens a silent, unknown enemy to both human sides of that conflict, an ancient evil that no longer preyed upon the virgin necks of chicks named Harker because, well, Mankind's mechanized warfare had turned battlefields into all-you-can-eat diners for vampires...

What if, in a steampunk gothic reality, our warfare's bloodshed actually fed into the deepest, shadowy caverns where our forgotten, mythological demons rest? What if, well, someone noticed those demons for the first time upon a trench-marred battlefield, angered one of those carrion monsters, inadvertently started a very different War on Terror?

I finished reading this masterpiece, quite possibly the best horror novel written yet in this new century, in just under two and a half days. And for three nights, I was afraid of the dark for the first time in ages...

* * * *

Hey, don't feel bad about the deaf girl, dude. The last thing I usually hear before sex is 'Do you ever just shut up and fuck?'

- Yours Truly, Feb. 28,
Business lunch conversation

* * * *

...I taste like Texas, with a twist of Boston...

- A very interesting message,
Feb. 22, via Facebook

I'm fairly certain that the Legend of the Librarian and the Kentucky-Tasting Hairdressers is once again making the rounds.

C'mon now. Lots of 29-year-olds tell stories about making out with middle-aged women with breast implants...

Err... yeah. Huh. Great.

I feel like an Oxford Fucking Ohio version of Ashton Kutcher.

* * * *

That is all I have to say tonight. Oh, also, would someone call a priest? I think this sweater is possessed. Okay. THAT is all I have to say tonight...

- Max Adams, "Damnable Laundry,"
Celluloid Blonde, March 7

* * * *

Don’t they have any curiosity about anything outside of their little Facebook circle? Aren’t they interested in . . . well, anything? I can’t imagine a life where I can’t look beyond Myspace. It’s almost enough to make me want to get out of teaching.

- Coyote Mike, "Students Give Me Gas,"
Drowning on the Prairie, March 4

Trust me. Every last single human being older than 25 who works in, lives around, or tries to wade through the Higher Education Underground understands this frustration. Like Mike, I've tried to be gentle, accepting of some of the cultural and intellectual decay social networking technologies have inadvertently caused in the 18-22 year-old academic demographic.

Just last week, I had a girl almost break down in tears outside of my office because, well, in order to look for a job, she needed my help locking down her Facebook account - literally torn, emotionally, between her inner-exhibitionist, her desire to maintain spectral Facebook Friendships, and her very real need to maintain some online privacy.

Yeah, there's a whole hell of a lot more to the world than social networking tools - things of beauty and artistic merit and scholarship, as well as things so horrendous that the soul chills at their very mention.

* * * *

Rachael Ray. Oh my God, that's so your type! I've never been able to put my finger on your type of girl, but the moment I saw pictures of who you've dated in the past, and when you mentioned that you had the hots for Rachael Ray at Christmas, I just knew. Just learn to date like a normal guy, will ya?

- The ZenFo Sister, 27, March 8,
Via Electronic Sibling Bitchfest

As much as I'd hate to admit it... and an older brother never, ever admits these sorts of things... I think my sister's right.

In the past two years, only 1.4 percent of the women I've been involved with physically or romantically were blondes, a whopping 91 percent were chipper morning people who, well, enjoyed cooking American and Mediterranean cuisine, and an astounding 84 percent bear at least some minor physical resemblance to the television Food Goddess...

Dammit. Stupid little sisters.

I knew there was a reason we don't fight as much as we used to - she's, ugh, maturing faster than I am.

Dammit. Stupid little sisters.

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