SHORT TAKES & SUCH: Chitlin' Cough Hits Oxford Fucking Ohio, "OMG! Like, I Totally Made Out With That Online Library Guy" Stalker Moments, Etc...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- After a week of rumors, half-truths, and downright stupid urban legends floating around Oxford Fucking Ohio, the Local U. finally released a statement confirming what many folks already knew.

The dreaded (over-hyped) H1N1 virus - the Chitlin' Cough, the ol' Bacon Lung, the Pork Rind Plague of Mass Paranoia - may have indeed hit the local community, with as many as 25 suspected cases of Influenza A reported on campus by Friday afternoon.

Wow. Twenty-five whole cases. In a city of around 20,000 or so.

At a university with a slight on-campus housing shortage - dozens of students, at week's end, were living in temporary barracks-style units created out of residence hall lounges and cubbyholes.

Huh.

Imagine that.

A contagious disease that, well, flies around a college town full of not-exactly-hygienic college kids.

Imagine that.

Never mind that other universities around the country are reporting similar numbers, that there are 10 Alabama football players quarantined because of test results, that there are cases being reported at Colorado-Boulder, at Xavier, at other colleges and secondary schools who start classes before Labor Day.

Twenty-five kids reported. Probably two- to three- times that number currently infected who just don't feel well enough - or who weren't turned into ranting hypochondriacs last year - to rush off to the doctor or campus clinic to take a test for a virus that, really, has no 100 percent treatment beyond a few OTC medications and bed rest.

You know, as several members of the African diaspora in this country have pointed out since this whole thing began, the U.S. leads the world in pointless fretting over a virus that will, well, kill you if it kills you.

Africans should know. Hell, their home communities are dealing with cholera, malaria, genocide, starvation, AIDS, basic sanitation, lack of clean water that the Most Industrialized Nations have only given mere humanitarian lip-service to for decades ... and now the Great Super Power's media-saturated masses sweat the flu.

Some might call it irony.

Huh.

Imagine that.

Go figure.

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UPTOWN OXFORD (ZP) -- I've decided to write off a recent occurrence as a blog lurker drinking game. Or as a really awkward momentary lapse in judgment caused by too many Red Bull and Vodka cocktails - and too much time online.

I've been dealing with Ohio's strangest stalker - a woman who hunts her prey by running up, grabbing a guy's ass while bumming a cigarette outside of a random bar, licking/kissing his neck mid-sentence, and then wandering off without so much as giving her real name.

Same very weird girl. Very cute but very, well, creepy.

At one point, we're talking three nights, consecutively. Three or four run-ins a night.

The only information she would give me was that she "knew my O-M-G, like, so not a secret," that she was an upperclassman who's "major wasn't important," and that '[Whispering] One night we're hooking up, right, like, here on the motherfucking street."

Same weird girl. At least a dozen separate run-ins in alleys, on patios, even, a week ago, at a soon-to-be demolished local watering hole during the local band Look Afraid's last set (Great show, guys!) in their favorite longtime, soon-to-be-demolished, college town venue.

Seriously, how fucking drunk and/or stoned does a junior or senior undergrad have to be to just walk up to a 31-year-old librarian leaning against a bar during a loud-ass rock concert, ask for a cigarette, then tell him she's "got a motherfucking mystery" she's planning on showing him at some future time, when he's drunk enough, and that I "can just call her Raylene" in whatever I write?

Um, yeah.

Just a little creepy.

In all honesty, it's probably my fault to some extent. I probably egged it on a bit at one point ... ah, um... well, okay... I was sorta tipsy enough to kinda...you know...

... Well, if a random 21-to-22 year-old licks your lips for you, while tipsy, most guys are going to lick back, okay? My bad. I was a bit tipsy myself.

But in all seriousness, I REALLY don't roll that way, Mystery Lady.

Ever try something like, "Hey, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I like your blog... My name's ______?"

You know.

Something less creepy?

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CINCINNATI (ZP) -- After years of being accused of ignoring folks in the Queen City - I rarely leave the comfy bubble of life in Oxford Fucking Ohio without some motivation, to cut down on my carbon footprint - I was finally talked into hanging out with probably the most fun group of college students in Ohio.

I'm talking, of course, about the Local U.'s longtime rival in football and in scholarship, the University of Cincinnati.

There's a whole houseful of absolutely gorgeous girls down there who, well, know how to make amazing vegan food, who picked my brain about all sorts of things, in terms of both my former community organizer and [admittedly vague/sketchy] "information analyst" consulting days, in person, over way too much wine and grilled tofu.

I forgot I promised those wonderful Bearcat ladies a shout-out.

So, well... here it is.

Here's the fascinating thing: one Local U. alum, upon hearing the PG-13 version of that tale from earlier this summer, accused me of "cheating on" Oxford.

Yep, local students, my Ex-Other Man nature does sometimes lead to stepping out on ol' Oxford and its residents. And, I guess I should be honest here, I've also "cheated on you" with kids in Muncie and Bloomington, Indiana, even up in Columbus and down in Lexington, Kentucky.

I'm such a bad monkey. I know. Please forgive my cheating ass.

But when you can grill organic farmer's market corn and discuss Post-Marxist theory, Global South debt to various Industrialized nations, and culture-jamming like those lovely ladies, well, call me. I may let you spank me...

QUICK BITS

• Welcome back, college students. Be glad you're still in school, else you'd be another degreed kid in the Unemployment Line.

• Don't drink the Kool-Aid. That's for corporate media news junkies. Put a little booze of truth in it.

• Why, yes, I have been too busy to blog a lot. Don't I get a summer vacation, too?

• Apologize for calling Democrats and Republicans terrorists? Um, why the fuck would I do that?
  

• When I see real "health care reform," I'll be sure to write about it. But until then, well, I'm content to watch the U.S. Congress and the owners of both parties' collective balls duke it out like bullies on a playground.

• I respect the Dead Kennedys, sure. Oh, you're not talking about the punk band, are you?

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SHORT TAKES & SUCH: Anti-Obammunist Tea-Bagging Patriots, Queen City Man Molesters, Rambling Attempts at Activism, & The Whammo Kid Strikes...

DAYTON, Ohio (ZP) -- Unashamed and unrepentant, the balding middle-aged gentleman announced that he was proud of his role in promoting tea-bagging as a form of protest against what he called "Obammunism."

Ya know, for some reason, when a strange old fucker tells me how much he likes tea-bagging, it always reminds me of similar conversations in The Castro...

I'd made the mistake of opening my mouth in an airport bar. I am, at times, a dumbass.

But, well, in all fairness, it's not often a "freedom-loving American businessman" gets a chance to discuss politics with a younger dude who thinks massive public debt designed to help select elite maintain a chokehold on a monstrously large government is a bad idea.

It was the piece I was reading at the time at the airport bar, a selection from Samuel (Dolgoff) Weiner's Ethics and American Unionism, that started it. Apparently lonely and looking for conversation, the guy'd asked me what I was reading. As soon as I said "...well, it's this essay written by this libertarian housepainter from New York...," the guy slithered up beside me, slurred a drink order to the server, a round on him.

For the record, there's no such thing as a free drink in this world...

He'd been at the so-called Tea Party protests in Chicago earlier in the year, a protest of what many on the Economic Far-Right associate with something akin to Socialism and financial nationalization...

... And yes, he even defined, for a young fella like myself, what he meant when he said libertarian: a libertarian, in this Age of Regression, refers to a fundamentalist born-again Christian, gay-hating, anti-reproductive-rights, flag-waving Patriot, the owner of a four-bedroom, three-bath home in the Columbus suburbs, owner of a chain of stores that sold Chinese-manufactured goods and provided minimal employee benefits, a downsizer of the Masses who was proud - PROUD - of the fact that he'd saved the economy (i.e. his own ass) by laying off about a dozen people...

Oh sure, buddy. And when the economy was lining your capitalist pockets, you jerked off to Reaganomics and Ayn Rand novels...

And, lord, the guy just wouldn't shut up about how much he loved tea-bagging, being a tea-bagger.

I didn't have the heart to explain that Samuel Dolgoff was actually a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the man who coined one of my favorite phrases to describe the Bush/Obama bailouts (i.e. "State Corporate Welfarism"), a bona fide Wobbly revolutionary who loved freedom and his fellow workingman, an anarcho-syndicalist Jew from the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

And that guy, trust me, wouldn't have taken a free drink from a such a libertarian without an argument about how how Rush Limbaugh is supposedly right.

Motherfucker, please.

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CINCINNATI (ZP) -- It was a clear case of mistaken identity. The woman thought I was someone else.

But, well, it's not often a middle-aged woman walks up behind me just outside of Paul Brown Stadium, grabs my ass, and bites my neck.

Well, not while sober, with nary a bar in sight, in the middle of a beautiful sunny day. I couldn't smell any booze on her breath but, well, hot chick in a low-cut blouse and whole lack-of-a-bra/ tid bit nipply there thing was sorta interfering with my perception.

"Oh, you're not Tommy's son, are you?"

"Um... no."

"You're sure? You're not _______?"

"No ma'am."

"Do you play football at [a smaller Ohio university]? I'll bet you play football...?"

I guess the question-and-answer session was her way of coping with embarrassment. Went on for about five minutes before I rather awkwardly excused myself from the discussion.

Okay, so maybe the woman was on something other than booze. But, well, from the looks of her, and given her rather obvious fondness for small college football players, well...

Whoever Tommy's son is, he's one lucky bastard if that Desperate Housewife has her way.

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RANDOM COLLEGE TOWN, Ind. (ZP) -- I'm a lousy educator. I'm usually the first to admit it.

But I guess I'm fairly decent at bluffing my way through situations where a real presenter or lecturer would feel more at ease.

It's a gift. Or a curse. Not sure which.

The free wine and pizza helped.

The gathering's hostwwwess stood up in front of her coffee table, tapped her glass, and introduced me as "one of Ohio's most controversial bloggers, a librarian and cultural critic..."

Jesus, everybody hates a critic, I thought, trying not to smirk.

I was invited, this time, not to talk about librarianship, or blogging, or, well, being critical.

Nope, I was here to talk about life, about social networking and privacy, about how nobody, in the 21st Century, really buys that ...And the Meek shall inherit the Earth shit of sermons and puritanical patriotism.

But yep, sometimes that all overlaps with the information sciences, blogging, and critical examination of the world's systems of power.

C'est la motherfucking vie.

"Well, thanks...um...that was a wonderful introduction. Let me start by thanking _____ for hosting this great party...

"...And I'll try not to bore you with, heh, batshit and rambling stories...

"...And who owns the content of our World Wide Web? This fucking company owns that site, owns that server... but who owns the Internet? The answer is simple - humanity... The Web is bigger than any company, andy government, any one group..."

I tried my damnedest not to ramble. Honest-to-God. But, well, wine... room full of college kids...

And yes, for some reason, there's a bunch of undergrads (mostly female) in the U.S. and Canada who think I'm some younger version of Noam Chomsky because of my political rantings as of late...

Though having the chance to say I'd rather not be compared to anybody but myself, in person during casual conversation over glasses of box wine, does wonders for the ol' ego...

The Literate, the Life Scholar, and the Free of Thought have no patience for inheritance, a relic of an increasingly transparent capitalistic world filled with product-driven media, church dogma, greed, systems of oppression and coercion, and political partisanship...

That was, well, the point I hope I conveyed in what ended up being a somewhat batshit, rambling discussion, full of questions and comments, head nods and darting eyes.

Lecturing's a lot tougher than blogging.

Especially when there's box wine involved.

- MORE -

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The Whammo Kid had me backed into a corner, two six-shooters aimed squarely at my chest.

I was a goner. I didn't even know my offense or crime. He made no demands whatsoever. His guns glistened in the sunlight.

And no one in Martin Luther King, Jr., Park offered any help. Nobody even gave my assault a second glance, in fact.

What a way to go...

The Kid's cowboy hat sat cocked to one side, his jeans dirty and shirt stained. A wicked grin cut a tight-lipped canyon in his otherwise smooth face.

"Gimme your money!" The Whammo Kid finally demanded.

"But... Kid... I don't have any money...that's why I'm going to the bank..."

Sweat was beginning to fill my own Stetson, the moisture soaking down into the brim beneath the summer sun.

"Why?" The gunslinger asked. "Gimme FIVE DOLLARS FOR ICE CREAM!"

I felt my assailant's eyes cutting through me like a thousand daggers.

"Kid, I don't have any," I said. "Is...is...eh...your mom or dad... somewhere?"

"NO! I AM A ROBBER!"

I was ready for the end. Having no money to give my preteen thief, nothing of value, I watched in horror as The Kid aimed his plastic water pistols, fired.

Squirt. Squirt Squirt.

Squirtsquirtsquirt.

It was all over in less than a second. Being nowhere near tall enough to get off a body shot, his two-foot frame had to settle for a crotch shot.

My pants were soaked.

And with his first victim a mere notch on his summertime belt, the Whammo Kid took off running, ran all the way to a blanket in the park. A young woman looked up from her book as the kid pointed my way, blushed, and mouthed a silent apology.

I laughed, waved as if it didn't matter, and kept walking towards the ATM.

Kid, be glad I don't have a Supersoaker handy.

Where I come from, we don't bushwhack another cowboy in front of the bank...

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