CONSUMER CONFIDENCE? WHICH CONSUMERS? On Sustainability, Need-Based Lifestyles, and the Naturally Green Choices of a Cheap Fucking Bastard

The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multinational corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products.

- NAOMI KLEIN, from No Logo
(2000, Full e-Text Here)

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'm not what anybody in their right mind would consider to be a man driven by consumerism.

In fact, I'm quite the anti-consumer, especially when my infrequent forays into luxury spending are weighed against the downright gluttonous behavior of a good portion of my countrymen at the hog trough of reckless capitalism.

A few DVDs, books, the occasional magazine or candy bar.

Yup. That's about it.

Not that I'm bragging or talking shit - that's not my point. I've always been like this. I've never really seen the point in spending money on things - often junk - that contribute nothing to my well-being or to that of my neighbors.

I don't buy clothes for anything as silly and bourgeoisie as style; I consume my basic wardrobe of jeans and tee-shirts as thriftily (often second-hand or in the form of gifts) as possible, based on need, digest them slowly over years until the fabric's threadbare and the holes in the pockets can no longer be restitched.

That's right. I said restitched. I'm lousy with a needle and thread, but I know at least how to sew on a button of fix a tear. I see no sense in wasting that which I have so carefully digested.

Hell, my Baltimore Orioles baseball cap - the "lucky" one (not for the Os, obviously) my parents bought me at a game at the old Memorial Stadium - is roughly the same age as my last girlfriend. And, as ratty as the damned thing is, I'll probably keep wearing it until it rots into oblivion, or I do.

I'm a notoriously cheap fucking bastard. Emphasis on the fucking bastard.

And on top of that, I'm not to big a fan of wasting natural resources simply because some advertising agency generated market trend tells me I won't fit in if I don't conform.

My anti-consumerist behavior doesn't stop with my wardrobe, either. Roughly 90 percent of all of my apartment's furnishings were either found on the street, inherited from somebody, of acquired at yard sales. The rest? Bought on clearance or off the scratch-and-dent racks.

I own no video games or consoles. I don't have cable. My microwave was stolen from the curb and the dresser in my bedroom used to belong to a Super Bowl quarterback.

Hell, I'm writing these very words you're reading right now on an Ubuntu machine, using open-source software.

My electric bill - with electric heat in a region that experiences single-digit temperatures at night occasionally - hasn't topped 80 bucks in more than two years. Thermostat's set at 53 degrees in the winter - if you're cold, grab yourself one of the half-dozen second-hand sweaters that don't fit me anymore that I keep on hand for guests.

And I don't use air conditioning. Period.

Cheap. Fucking. Bastard. I say it loud, say it proud.

* * * *

Why?

For one thing, well, it's better for the environment, better for the planet. It fucks rampant unchecked corporate greed in the ass with a greener chainsaw and keeps extra cash in my pocket.

And it's become a comfortably sustainable lifestyle.

Yes, not the media buzzword version of sustainability, not the White House teleprompter versions touted in speeches in Copenhagen or Kyoto.

We're talking My Ecological Footprint is roughly one-third that of other 30+ single males living in North America sustainable lifestyle.

Sustainability requires one to be just about as conservative as possible in resource consumption, especially of that which the consumer has few controls over the means of production, to be minimalist and marketing-resistant, consciously frugal in both purchase and usage, to make compromise not over what one needs but over what one does not.

Why give more money to the same multinational corporations that already own our politician and media outlets, defecate in the very global market capitalist buffet they feed upon, and, hell, already take my money without my consent through government bailouts and state contracts?

Sure, they naturally get some of my paycheck. I have to, after all, buy foodstuff and toiletries somewhere, still have to have a provider of laundry detergent and of consumable goods. And in rural parts of the US, like here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, some of my consumables are either purchased in the local-employing Big Box Stores or small locally-owned businesses, since it'd be, well, a waste of about a half-tank of gas to shop in the nearby cities.

But, seriously, who pays full price for such things? Wait for the sales. If such businesses are to get chunks of my paycheck, why not simply wait until I can rob them blind by binding my time for clearance markdowns?

And like I said, I'm in no way bragging. It's just how I live my life, and its not a perfect model.

I forget to recycle. Often. I drive a late-model pickup like a Los Angeleno, hitting the road for any trip longer than to the mailbox, despite being a avid hiker, out of sheer laziness. I forget to wash out old plastic containers for reuse, forget that only a hypochondriac needs plastic produce bags for a few avocados or oranges.

It's a work in progress.

But at least I'm trying.

* * * *

Which is more than I can say for a lot of people, probably the majority of that undefined bulbous mass called the Average US Consumer.

You know. That mass that supposedly holds the fate of the global economy in its "consumer confidence" indexes and other measurements of the perceived movement of wealth?

Take a trip to any large in door shopping mall, into any major retailer, even into your neighborhood supermarket. Look around you. Look in every shopper's cart, at stuff you know they're buying that they don't need to actually improve their lives.

Listen to the squeals of fat kids begging for name-brand candy and proprietary-code video games, the sounds of obsessive sports fans drooling over hi-def televisions they'll only enjoy a handful of Sundays out of the year. Watch men and women stop by clothing racks adorned by celebrity endorsements yet still made for pennies in places like Bangladesh or, worse, in conflict areas.

Or maybe, if you're lucky, you'll catch a middle-aged woman adorned in the bling of African blood diamonds and gold, lugging a rat terrier in a purse, as she shops for the latest cosmetic product tested, probably, on animals just like her precious pet.

These shopping habits? All lifestyle choices.

You will see consumption of things, many glorious gluttonous things, that are not so much bought for need but for image, to maintain the fallacy of "Free" marketplaces that dictates freedom in terms of who can acquire the most junk.

And what you'll see is in no way sustainable. Eventually, natural limits are reached beyond the ability of one to purchase them, scarcity leads to higher prices, higher prices leads to panicky conservation and state intervention. So long as consumption of resources is tied to image or brand instead of actual human need, sustainability is but a wet dream in a capitalist society.

Yes, I'm really just a cheap fucking bastard.

And the scary thing?

No matter how bad the economy gets, how much the numbers are doctored and the shady accounting sold to reflect recovery in terms of bullshit measurements like "consumer confidence," my lifestyle will rarely be affected.

Me and, well, the Amish.

Some things in life are bigger than one's lifestyle. Sometimes, there's a conscience behind such choices.

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FORGOTTEN WARTIME BASEBALL: The St. Louis Browns, German Snipers, & The Healing Power of Time

CINCINNATI (ZP) -- He tells me that the pain isn't so bad, that a slow death surrounded by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren is nowhere near as bad as what he'd seen back in the Second World War.

He'd been shot in '44 - bullet tore a chunk of meat from his shoulder the size of a pork chop. Shot by a goddamn Kraut sniper at the end of the goddamn summer, smack dab in the middle of a goddamn war, a few weeks before the goddamn World Series back home.

And that Wehrmacht sonofabitch took out Tommy from Kansas City, Big Brooklyn Lou, and Injun Pete, all in one night. Injun's face had been split in half, right at the bridge of his half-Cherokee nose, one shot to the head from behind some grove of trees.

But, the old man explains, that skinny little sniper got what was coming to him. One burst from the ol' M1 Thompson tore the scrawny Deutschländer in half, opened him up from behind and dribbled forth German intestines and bile and blood. He remembers losing it, just a little bit, as his corporal had to pull him away from beating the rest of the corpse into a mashed lump of flesh.

"See, in wars you can't lose it, because then you go from bein' a soldier to a killer."

* * * *

The old man stares out onto the suburban Queen City landscape, out from the shopping mall and towards the Interstate off-ramp. He's waiting on his grandson's wife to pick him up, to drive him back to his daughter's house. The State of Ohio took his driver's license when his eyes failed him years ago. The kids sold his house when their mother died, sold all of the furniture and appliances and other evidence of one's physical existence.

But, even as the doctors lop off toe upon toe upon leg, as they fight back diabetes and decades of machinist's diet, he still has his memories. Just the smell of cigarette smoke sent him into a tale about Joe Nuxhall, the longtime Cincinnati Reds pitcher and broadcaster.

Nuxhall - a 15-year-old rookie in 1944 - died earlier in the week from cancer, partially attributed to his years as a heavy smoker. The old man reminded me, as I reached for a cigarette, that smoking killed "The Kid" at a youthful 79.

How the veteran loved talking baseball. Of the beauty of old Crosley Field, how he'd hated those four long-haired Liverpool lads for defiling such hallowed ground with their British rock and roll, how he knew - KNEW - I was a lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan, based solely on a question asked about Frank Robinson.

He remembered, too, that the Orioles, prior to 1954, were known as the St. Louis Browns. And shortly after that German sniper cleaved open Injun Pete's face, the Browns clinched their only trip to the World Series before they left a decade later for Baltimore.

* * * *

Back in that European Summer, a few weeks after Operation Overlord began, a group of American G.I.s went out on another routine patrol, one so routine that they'd gotten sloppy.

A friendly conversation had just turned into an all-out debate over whose team was better, which city's fans were more dedicated. Injun hailed from eastern Missouri, and, having always been a half-Cherokee underdog himself, had been a lifelong fan of the perpetually awful, almost-forgotten American League Browns.

Instead of watching the tree lines, they'd been talking about the Browns and their race against the Detroit Tigers, about the Reds being in third place in the National League, when the first crack of gunfire overpowered the dusk.

He never lived to learn about the Browns squeaker of a pennant against Detroit, to hear about the last World Series ever played completely in St. Louis. In October 1944, the dreaded National League Cardinals beat Injun's boys in a six-game series that hardly any baseball fan alive remembers.

* * * *

The old man paused, mid-sentence, as old men tend to do. When he started to once again speak, it was as if the whole of his existence had been charted through France and Germany, the ghosts of long-dead war buddies channeled through the medium of America's Pastime.

He'd tried to forget Injun Pete, all of those war buddies he'd lost. After the war ended, it took him years to recover, to accept what'd happened and why he quit going to Crosley to catch games after work, why he didn't care about baseball for a good 20 years...

But then Frank Robinson was traded to the Orioles in 1965, he explained. Read about in the paper, along with accounts of another war, Vietnam. All of Cincinnati was in shock - Robinson was supposed to be a Red, dammit, forever. Just as people, too...

The next season, Robinson led the former St. Louis Browns to the franchise's first championship - over the Los Angeles Dodgers, Big Brooklyn Lou's relocated home team.

Like baseball clubs sometimes change cities and players sometimes get traded to new teams, he changed his mind about how he thought about those buddies he'd lost back in 1944. It took the passage of time for him to be able to talk about what he'd seen, who he'd lost, and what he'd done as a young man. He told his Cincinnati machinist buddies, his wife, and even his own father.

He started listening to Reds games on the radio, started routing for the team again, started being a fan for the ghosts of dead men and the phantom former ballclubs they cheered for, back when the world was alive with war and baseball.

And something magical happened. The Reds started winning. With the departure of Robinson, up from the minors came the era of Pete Rose and Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion and Cesar Geronimo. Between 1965 and now, the Cincinnati Reds have played in five World Series, winning three.

They did, however, lose to Injun Pete's former St. Louis Browns, my Baltimore Orioles, in 1970, the same year ol' cozy Crosley Field was abandoned for the concrete doughnut aesthetic of Riverfront Stadium.

"I think those guys forgave me for losin' it back there in Germany, on that German kid..."

* * * *

Baseball, like all sports, really is played on fields of dreams, the illusion of something meaningful in a bat, a ball, that extra base hit. But war decided on fields of nightmares, the coldest athletic competition ever devised by humanity.

Joe Nuxhall, after all, pitched his first professional baseball game on June 10, 1944. Thousands of miles away, on the beaches of some unsporting place called Normandy, kids barely out of high school were already four days into a fight to liberate an entire continent.

The shores were already washed with the blood of British footballers and Canadian ice skaters, American quarterbacks and, yes, even aspiring pitchers by the time that 15-year-old rookie took the mound against the St. Louis Cardinals. And, as the Allies advanced into France, they left behind the corpses of hundreds of German alpine hikers and skiers, killed untold numbers of tennis players and hurdlers.

Once, long ago, I heard a noted sports historian claim that, in the scheme of things, 1944 was a bad year for baseball. He was right - all the best players were at war. The same holds true for all of the world's great sports.

A lot of great athletes never played anything, ever again.

At least, in the States, kids like Nuxhall, teams like the Browns and the Cardinals and the Reds, gave us a few innings' worth of illusion, kept us sane while the world went mad.

* * * *

The old man once again stopped, coughed, and apologized for wasting my time with a story about war and baseball. A young man like me, he said, should be out chasing women or causing trouble, not helping old men navigate their wheelchairs through shopping malls like some goddamn nurse.

I told him that, well, it was an honor to help out an old Reds fan. Like my Baltimore Orioles, the Reds haven't so much as broke wind near a World Series in more than a decade - sometimes it's just nice to commiserate together, to talk smack about the Boston Red Sox and, especially, the New York Yankees.

His children never understood why he loved baseball so much. His grandson had no clue why, every so often, he'd take his cashed Social Security money down to a sports memorabilia store and buy a new Reds home cap to mark the start of the off-season.

He added that he never talked to his kids, grandkids, or great-grandkids about the loss of his best pals back along the Rhine in 1944 - he never talked about why he liked to listen to ballgames alone, to turn on the radio, close his eyes, and act like that crazy old fart who bummed away summer afternoons.

"You know, I promised those guys I'd take 'em to see a ballgame in Cincinnati after the war..."

- # # # -

LONG NIGHTS WITH THE ZENFO PRO: Defying Librarian Stereotypes, One RenFest-Hating Shot at a Time

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- For the record, nobody I hang out with on a regular basis ever calls me The ZenFo Pro.

Hell, I'm lucky if anybody I know even bothers to call me Jason.

The night this photo (at left) was taken, months ago, the women who requested I join them for one of just about every damned shot at a certain Oxford bar simply referred to me as that guy.

According to my staff, colleagues, and friends, there are several others floating around Oxford Fucking Ohio.

Some of the nicknames are flattering; some are probably meant to somehow piss me off.

To many folks, I'm known simply as The Librarian. I'm also known as The Cowboy, Tex, Boots, Drunken Master, Brokeback Librarian, The Motherfucking Asshole Who Slept with My Girlfriend / Ex-girlfriend / Friend's Girlfriend, Professor Punker, Old School, Peaches (no clue on that one), the Hot Librarian, The Chach Hunter, and, of course, That Weird Guy from the Library with the Blog.

But there's one nickname that only friends are allowed to call me here in Oxford, particularly in bars, taverns, or, well, wherever fine libations are served.

Church Lady.

Does the picture above make anybody think of church?

* * * *

Yes, Church Lady.

As in The Church Lady, a recurring Saturday Night Live character from the 80s and 90s.

A buddy of mine gave me that unusual nickname a few months back.

Whenever he thinks of librarians, or people who work in libraries, he usually thinks of Dana Carvey's legendary Bible-thumping, uptight, crotchety prude.

I'm sure the fact that my buddy thinks of Dana Carvey's character as being symbolic of the physical appearance of librarians just pisses the hell out of a lot of folks.

C'mon people. Lighten the fuck up.

Have you ever seen that stupid Librarian Action Figure? The outfits, stiff movements, and glasses are virtually identical. Who the fuck do you think most people think of when they hear the word Librarian? Winston Churchill? Cameron Diaz? Roger Clemens? Betty Paige?

Please.

Give Mr. Carvey's character 700 cats (20 of which are named after Jane Austen characters), a stack of genre fiction on the night stand and an overworked vibrator in a drawer, and, well, you've created the Perfect Librarian Stereotype...

* * * *

This morning, I had one of those oh-so-awkward run-ins with a woman I briefly dated (i.e., a fling) at the grocery store. She was back in town, helping a friend move.

She told me she'd dated another librarian, in the city she currently calls home, a few months ago. It didn't last long, apparently.

Jason, I never thought of you as a librarian. You're more like going home with a cop or a construction worker or something...

...Oh my God. He took me to a RenFest. A RenFest! And he recommended that I dress like an elf or hobbit or some shit. The dude was fucking weird, like serial killer nerd weird...

...I mean, you're weird but not like scary homeless guy weird...

You know, I've only been to one Renaissance Festival, ever.

I ended up puking in a porta-john for 20 minutes. I was seventeen. The bellyful of Thunderbird, combined with an overabundance of guys who reminded me of more obnoxious, armored versions of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, drove me to purge away a perfectly good afternoon.

I'm not knocking real-life Comic Book Guys here. Comic book conventions? I can deal with Comic Cons, no problem. Get me into a good debate about the DC Universe, about how Ted Kord was a much better Blue Beetle than either Dan Garrett or the new kid, and I'm set for an afternoon.

Hell, there are more hot women working in comic book stores than in most strip clubs. I quit collecting comic books because, well, I tend to get into quite a bit of trouble when there's a fangirl involved.

But RenFests? Nope. It's psychosomatic.

Fake broadswords and Highlander wannabes? Well, even writing about them now makes my stomach churn.

* * * *

So Friday night, a couple of friends of mine, including the guy who named me Church Lady, turned their garage into a concert venue, a celebration of Oxford Fucking Ohio's biggest holiday - the annual Running (Away) of the Local U. Kiddies.

Two local punk bands, no cover. Enough booze and cheap beer to deliver Boris Yeltsin unto Russian Alcoholic Valhalla in working-class style.

It reminded me of, well, my high school days - a bit of soothing balm for the ol' Quarter-Life Crisis. I'm fairly certain that I was the oldest guy at the party, actually.

With age comes a lower alcohol tolerance and, well, by midnight I was already nursing a pending hangover from earlier in the evening, dulling the pain with a second round of intoxication.

Let's put it this way. I'm going to be 29 next year. I've been attending impromptu garage rock-outs in college towns since I was 13 years old. It is probably not the best idea to leave me alone for too long near the keg.

One of the nasty little reminders that I'm, well, approaching the beginning of my fourth decade on this planet is the fact that my poor ears are a bit sensitive to prolonged concert-volume music. I've already sustained some hearing loss, thanks to my own years playing in various punk and hardcore bands back in the day, so I'm extra careful about spending too much time in small, reverberating pits o' sound.

At one point, I stepped out of the garage to let my ears rest and to get some fresh air. The bands were breathtaking, but the large crowd was downright suffocating.

A pair of intoxicated women huddled together against the building, arguing about whether to continue drinking my friends' free beer or move on to the next party.

I lit a cigarette. One of the women, mid-sentence, turned to me and asked if I'd be willing to bum her a cancer stick. I obliged and, well, being a bit too tipsy to be better behaved, I butted into their conversation. The smoking girl, my tobacco thief, seemed to appreciate the male attention.

"So do you live here?"

"Nope. But I know the hosts. Name's Jason, by the way."

"I'm _______.So what do you do? Do you go here?"

"Nope. I'm a librarian."

"Nuh-uh."

"Yep."

"Nuh-uh. Where?"

"______ Library."

"Nuh-uh. You're too young."

"How old do you think I am?"

"Um... 23?"

Bless you, my child. Nice to know that I won't be mistaken for a stupid librarian action figure anytime in the near future.

* * * *

I was almost willing to forgive the fact that one of her friends ended up puking all over me and one of the party's hosts.

Definitely not the kind of women I'd ever allow to call me Church Lady, much less allow the chance to develop their own pet names in more, er, intimate settings.

Ugh. Regurgitated corn and rum. My jeans were covered in the stuff. I simply scraped the kernels off with a stick and kept on going.

The smell reminded me of that RenFest porta-john. And I haven't even seen the bottom of a bottle of Thunderbird in more than a decade.

* * * *

I managed to make my way home by four o'clock in the morning. I grabbed a quick slice of cold pita bread from the fridge, put some Magic Sam on the stereo, and tossed my vomit-covered jeans in the shower to further ripen.

I stretched out, butt-naked on the bed, reading the same line from Ginsberg's "Howl" over and over until I finally crashed:

...they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy...

No, I wasn't thinking about something literary or snobbishly intelligent.

I was thinking about the Orioles being in second place in the American League East, despite going winless against Oakland and Boston last week. I was hoping, somewhere in my half-sober superstitious state, that somehow reading the line over and over, here in Ohio, would jinx Cleveland for the weekend series.

* * * *

I think I passed out at five or five-thirty. I awoke at 9:30, fight as a fiddle, with only the smell of corn and rum soup to remind me of the previous night.

The compact disc changer had played through all five CDs in the stereo - the sounds of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, the Wu-Tang Clan, KMFDM, and, of course, Magic Sam drifting through the apartment.

Well now ...

Isn't that special?

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