THE OXFORD (FUCKING OHIO) DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS: Fucking Insane Library Funding Cuts, Rattled Chains, Fashion Mishaps, & Other Nonsense

"Governor Strickland, in proposing to cut almost a quarter-billion in public library funding, has essentially declared war on intellectual freedom and the public's access to information. Should this budget pass, whole generations of Ohioans will suffer in terms of quality of life, community, and public welfare."

- THE ZENFO PRO,
"Official" library blogger response
To the Ohio Democrat's budget.

Because cutting support to libraries during a recession is akin to cutting police officer salaries during a riot.

* * * *

"What the fuck?!? So is he trying to intentionally make sure Ohio's full of fucking dumb people?"

- AN OXFORD RESIDENT
& PUBLIC LIBRARY PATRON,
Upon hearing about the governor's planned cuts

One of probably a thousand such comments I've heard from folks around the state.

* * * *

Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly
They go down to the lake of fire and fry
Won't see them again till the fourth of July...

- THE MEAT PUPPETS, "Lake of Fire,"
Music and lyrics by C. Kirkwood, 1984

For the record, yes, the United states used to be known for producing great rock music NOT prepackaged by some reality television exec.

* * * *

"Do you hear...chains? I can't stand the sound of chains."

"Dude, that's just your half-black heritage reacting to four hundred years of oppression and slavery."

- BARROOM CONVERSATION,
June 23, Oxford Fucking Ohio

* * * *

"... Goddamn, I used to get an erection flying over Vietnam..."

- MASTER WANE-FU, U.S. Army (Ret.),

June 19, Local watering Hole

I'd tell his Thai hookers in Saigon story, but the man is rumored to be able to kill at fifty yards with only a plastic spoon and a rubber band...

* * * *

"We have a center-right party and a crazy party. And over the last thirty-odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital."

- BILL MAHER, opening monologue, June 19,
"Real Time with Bill Maher,"
HBO television series

Couldn't have said it better myself.

* * * *

"California's broke as a motherfucker. In fact, it's so broke it can't afford a mother to fuck, dude."

- ANONYMOUS, May 22,
On life in the Golden State

* * * *

"Well, guys don't seem to get that painting and writing, for me, is the ultimate aphrodisiac. I think art is that way for a lot of women - hey, you stand a better chance with me in a museum or library than a fucking bar."

- LOCAL U. ALUM, Class of 2005
Uptown Oxford, Reunion Weekend

Well, with the threat of even further cuts to Ohio's libraries and museums, guess a lot of guys won't ever get that chance...

* * * *

"You're nowhere near fashionable. You're like the Antichrist of Fashion or something. Do you own anything BUT black tee shirts and jeans?"

- AN UNDERGRAD FASHION CRITIC,
On my wardrobe choices

Black tees and jeans never go out of style. But another undergrad blog lurker's critique of my "denim shorts with Dr. Martens and blue socks" ensemble at work was, well, dead-on...

- # # # -

THE BLANK [CHECK] GENERATION: In the Age of Self-Important Microcontent Conformity, Hipster Couture Wallows in a Sea of Dull Wit

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Four young women and three young men, all upperclassman hipsters at the threshold of college graduation, huddled together in a dismal corner of a dark bar.

The bar is foreign territory for me, outside of my normal comfort zone. But, well, every once and a while a guy just needs a little change of scenery, away from bars filled with diverse mixtures of college undergrads and Townies, miscreants and stoners and saints, former high school football heroes and occasionally starving artists (tattoo or otherwise.)

I'd already finished my business in the place, my party long gone, as younger folks tend to do here, on towards the next bar on their pub crawl. I'd noticed the rather strange group because, well, they generally appeared more interesting - and out of place - than my 30-year-old ass.

In between boisterous laughter over strange inside jokes, choreographed awkwardness, and savage critiques of the "cattle" that supposedly makes up the remainder of the student body, each hovered over iPhones and mobile Wunderspielzeug, texting and emailing digital snapshots and Googling and checking e-mail.

One would Tweet along an update to Twitter, another would upload shots directly into Facebook, Tumblring and Digging and downloading annoying indie rock ringtones. And then, as puppies do when they realize they can roll in their own shit, the group would check each others' electronic communications, crack jokes about their supposedly hip and witty microcontent.

I joined them for a moment and attempted conversation, but, well, they were just too wound up in their own self-contained bubble to be even remotely interesting. They'd been discussing their various artistic and literary endeavors, which, at first had sounded intriguing. Instead, it turned out to be merely a self-important microcontented circle-jerk.

* * * *

Jesus Fucking Christ, I thought, If there's one thing worst than scenesters, it's a technosnob scenesters...

Such is life, alas, amongst the Millennials, particularly within a subgroup of that generation I've come to think of as a Black Check Generation - a group of American and European kids who exist as if one can buy the spirit of art and literature, cultural dominance and sophistication, by playing the role of the misunderstood genius, as if the Muse sings through electronic toys or college degrees or IQ tests.

Everything in their conversation revolved around cultural superiority through their sarcastic deployment of SMS data into the World Wide Web, their superior musical prowess thanks to this torrent site or that piracy site, how they couldn't live without RSS feeds or TMZ or any media, well, that pretty much supported their very restricted worldview.

Technology, the arts, media, and a steady stream of condescending dull wit directed at the Fratboys, the Sorority Sluts, the Preppy Kids, the Rednecks, the Trailer Trash, the Townies...

I mean, I can be an arrogant bastard at times and sometimes, yeah, I fall into my own limited perception of couture du monde, but I try to at least maintain some connexion to the rest of humanity... ... Try at least to understand the organic wholeness of things, the egalitarian nature of life, maintain a sense of awe at the differences and my own cultural limitations...

... I fucking hope...

One even mentioned my blog and how, yes, in an unsolicited literary critique, I should all-out condemn the supposed stupidity of supposedly 90 percent of the uncultured "sheeple" that attend the Local U.

Sheeple? I said to myself, Did this kid just say fucking sheeple?? Well, pour me a Frappuccino, slap a Wes Anderson flick into the Blu-Ray, and color me Espresso Bar and Sushi Bourgeois ...

* * * *

Another kid - an aspiring performance artist who, well, hasn't ever really performed anything before anyone outside of the group - asks about my favorite writers. When I answer that, well, literature-wise, I have too many to name, he INSISTS that every serious writer or poet MUST have a Top Five that includes Jack Kerouac and Chuck Palahniuk.

"Look, I don't rank authors, and right now, I'm sorta on a political science and early 20th century history kick..."

Besides not being even remotely interesting, the group, I've noticed, has been tying up a table in this crowded bar for four hours. They weren't really really drinking - and from what the bartender said while I'd ordered my beer earlier, they weren't tipping shit, either.

I can understand the cheap beer - when I was a student myself, I was fond of a libation called Lucky Lager, the sweetest elixir then available to Pacific dwellers with a hankering for suds and no money.

But in bars, even when broke, I tipped. I had friends, raging alcoholics, who would tip out before buying that blackout drink, starving writers who'd order only a cup of coffee at all-night diners just because, as well, they just wanted to make sure the cute waitress ended up with their last dollar...

No sense, I figured, in pointing out to the table of hipsters that, well, not tipping is the ultimate sign that they are not writers, not artists, not even remotely talented beyond maybe a job at a bookstore...

...Or as shushing librarians, maybe small, empty art gallery owners, as curators of shitty metropolitan museums, perhaps?

That, certainly, made me chuckle. The kid who'd inquired about my favorite authors thought I was laughing at some crack about a kid from the local trailer park's neck tats.

Well-read, dressed in prefab distressed, faded clothing, beards strategically unkempt, but their attempts at looking like starving artists served as nothing more than a reinforcement of their packaged suburban rebellion.

* * * *

I found an excuse to make my exit. The bartender "who'd been rude" was waving me over - he had a question about library hours and printing policies. Discussing work at two in the morning on a Saturday. Beat the hell outta dealing with culture snobs.

And I seriously considered letting Mister Neck Tat know that there was this scrawny, mop-topped literary critic, in that dark corner over there, homes, who'd just called him an Eminem wannabe who probably couldn't read anyway...

And, actually, Mister Neck Tat enjoys Edgar Allan Poe and reading about the U.S. Civil War. And he fucking loves the film version of Fight Club, too.

- # # # -

INTIMATE EVENINGS ALONE WITH THE ZENFO PRO: Some of Ohio's Most Fashionable College Women Think I'm the Cat's Meow. What the Fuck?!?

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I waited patiently for some sort of explanation, part of me insulted and the rest in awe of the strangeness of the compliment.

I was, in her assessment, hip and with a style all my own, classy and sophisticated and, well, cool as shit to hang out with. And she laughed, yes, laughed when I asked for an apology, when I asked if she was deranged or insane or had spent her college years living in some other college town...

If I'm the heppest of the hepcats here in trendy Oxford Fucking Ohio, well, for fuck's sakes, some Scenester version of the Apocalypse must indeed be upon us.

Her roommate, this quiet little thing with a pixie cut, clad in skinny jeans and those ballerina shoes that tend to make women's feet look enormously long and narrow, a self-described fashionista, concurred.

The evidence, Miss Pixie claimed, was the originality of my rather talentless paintings, my collection of strange and curious DVDs and books, and, well, the fact that my apartment is apparently decorated in a postindustrial minimalist fashion...

Part of me was insulted and, yes, part of me was dreadfully awestruck. To be talked about like some sort of online sex symbol in one's own apartment, by two very fashionable women, is abso-fucking-lutely disturbing.

Me.

Now that fucking creeps me out.

* * * *

I sat on my living room floor late Tuesday night, dealt out the cards, and listened as two college seniors, two women who were in the know about the latest Panic! at the Disco albums and the latest Rufus Wainwright tracks, called me, quite possibly, the hippest, suavest motherfucker in all of Ohio.

After dealing out the last card, a King of Coins that followed The Devil, I grunted something about the girls both being full of shit, that I needed to concentrate to do the reading.

I proceeded to explain to my lovely young reader that she may want to indeed reevaluate her current relationship with the cat from Dayton - the cards revealed an unhealthy, codependent pattern and a lust more about maintaining image than actual love.

Little Miss Pixie grabbed her arm as I spoke, gasped about how, yes, that guy was indeed a cocky jock chump, and that, yes, the cards were indeed tapping into some esoteric medium...

* * * *

"This is so weird. I feel like I know you, but I don't. So you let random people who IM you...?"

"Naw. Figured ya'll were safe. Hell, we've spent two years IMing back and forth about all sorts of shit - this town's small enough that I figure you'd have stabbed me by now if you were one of the crazy ones..."

"So you've really had blog stalkers?"

"Let's put it this way - I'm getting fucking tired of cleaning lipstick off of my fucking truck and replacing the fucking mirrors..."

The reader seemed shocked. I explained that, well, there are prices to pay when one writes about things that involve somebody else's potential scandal or excuse for histrionic melodrama.

Writing, after all, ain't easy - or necessarily hip, suave, or sexy. Actually, writing online nonfiction is probably one of the most dangerous hobbies in all of Oxford Fucking Ohio.

* * * *

Miss Pixie was staring me down for some reason, eyebrows scrunched up, forehead crinkled like a tossed-off dress shirt.

"Are you sure we haven't met before?"

"Pretty sure. You've prob'ly seen me at work."

"Wait. Didn't I interview you once...?"

"Maybe. If it dealt with library renovation or some event or -"

The reader interrupted the exchange, hushed the roommate with a friendly Shut the fuck up! He's reading my cards!

The two women, the savvy, hip chicks who'd shown up late and were disappointed in the fact that the hardest booze I keep in my apartment is herbal tea, listened contently as I finished reading the spread.

I'd have made a fairly decent fortuneteller in another life, believe it or not...

* * * *

Through tiny desktop speakers, the Mp3 player let loose a fierce, full-bend acoustic guitar riff - French songstress SoKo's "I'll Kill Her."

Both women seemed fascinated by the worldliness of the songs on my playlist - everything from South American baile funk to French pop, from Palestinian hip-hop to Ratatat's latest remixes, from, yes, American bands like the Meat Puppets and the Melvins to Australian and European downbeat music...

Hey, who is this? seemed to be a common refrain voiced over nearly every song. In Oxford Fucking Ohio and in many American college towns, popular music is often defined by what's played in iTunes commercials, what's peddled by television execs on network dramas and comedies.

Even the highly fashionable, I explained, even young women who think they're pushing boundaries in terms of art and music, are usually just regurgitating somebody else's marketing. If one's sense of style can be boiled down into a bumper sticker or some quirky image on a retro teeshirt, well, one's style is nothing more than hollow capitalistic vanity masked as a creative, independent statement.

The fact that being true to one's artistic tastes and pleasures, true to oneself, has become nothing more than selective corporate branding supports the theory that, yes, we are at the end of that era that held 20th Century Western Pop Culture up as one of history's great creative benchmarks.

There will never be, ladies, I stated, another Great American Novel, another Great British Romantic Comedy, another French Literary Renaissance ... The Developing World has been out-imagining us whilst we play Guitar Fucking Hero and fiddle with our DVRs...

... Being sexy or fashionable is about giving meaning to insignificance and irrelevance ...

As I finished reading Miss Pixie's cards, continued intermingling my cartomantic interpretations with my pop culture rantings, I felt like my words were being interpreted as some sort of stupid Hipster version of the Sermon on the Mount. To say it was an awkward, downright uncomfortable feeling would be an understatement.

At least, well, SoKo now has two new fans here in Oxford Fucking Ohio. Baile funk? Not so much.

The American Millennials Rising Generation, that fantastic illusion of a perfect generation that's been pitched by academic hucksters and public radio poseurs for almost a decade now, just isn't ready for Brazilian women singing songs in Portuguese about fucking random guys on the dance floor.

One day, maybe. But only after those same young liberated Americans realize that nobody gives a shit about our reality television, our celebutante cuntflashing, or our steroid-filled athletes anymore...

Until that shit's well behind us all, ain't nobody bringing sexy back to this continent.

* * * *

Miss Pixie suddenly remembered how she knew me. The sounds of music so, well, foreign, freed up a bit of memory.

"Hey, this is kinda weird, but did you have an Italian girl living with you, like, two years ago? Like Italian Italian? Like not American? Like my age?"

"Um... yeah.... for 'bout a week..."

"Oh shit! You're that guy! I guess I have read your blog before. For a class, dude! Yeah, we were supposed to do a blog and...yeah... that was fucking hot!"

"Well shit, chica..."

You know, everybody still asks where I got the Liverpool jersey...

- EPILOGUE -

The agreement at the end of Tuesday night was, well, that I was to write something about spending yet another pleasant evening alone with two very attractive young Local U. women, reading tarot cards, discussing pop culture, and drinking herbal tea.

I told them that, yes, as always, no names would be used and that, yes, I would include something, somewhere, about how both women have boyfriends and that it was - in case anybody asks or it turns out we know some of the same people - completely platonic and innocent.

And, for the record, this has been one of the hardest posts I've felt obligated to write in a long fucking time. Obligated, because, well, I was asked to document something that's really quite a normal evening alone for me - save for the sexy/suave/cool talk.

I'm not hip, nowhere near being suave or as sophisticated, and, well, the sexy ship left my port a long time ago. I am, however, comfortable enough with who I am not to give a flying monkeyfuck about any of it.

To write about certain normal things, it turns out, is sometimes a lot harder than simply making a promise. By Saturday afternoon, I'd cranked out four very different drafts, the ZenFo Pro / Real World Jason personae painfully clipped and chopped down to tepid puddings full of random fragments thoughts.

I just don't handle being called a sex symbol well. If I've become a sex symbol because of a stupid blog, some fashionable demigod of Ohioana Web lore, then I can't help but think the whole world's gone fucking insane.

Saturday night, frustrated, I hit up my favorite watering hole to help cure me of my tragically un-hip writer's block. A good, peaceful night surrounded by the drunken chest-beating chatter of fratboy cliches and shallow College Girl stereotypes was just what the doctor ordered...

I knew that, yes, the mental blockage was about melt away like dirty snow the moment I ran into a cheerily intoxicated, newly mustachioed Mr. Chops.

Discussions about exes and anal sex and bawdy texts in the middle of the night were amongst the first signs that, yes, there may still be some writing left in me after all, that I'm just a normal, rather boring dude pushing 30 who writes as a fucking hobby.

Look... I have no fucking desire to bring sexy back. Hell, I think it's high time mainstream culture took that puppy out back and shot it, point-blank, in its pampered, Let Them Eat Tabloids face...

And I'm certainly no sex symbol. I'm a librarian.

* * * *

It was at the downstairs bar, huddled in a corner and after my first Long Island and my second pint of beer, that my Fuck that Shit! confidence was restored.

An aspiring novelist buddy and I sparked up a very manly, borderline shitshow conversation about the trueness of writing about truth and beauty, that wondrously sexy ideal pitched by the poet John Keats...

... You know, one of those I would so fuck the shit outta that... conversations that drunk writers have at times, those sophisticated I dunno, something about the way her shirt just clings... sorts of oh-so-sexy, intellectual debates only fucking writers and sex symbols have in crowded college bars...

Both of us, well, had hit some serious roadblocks in our extracurricular creative endeavors - and we were both trying to drink and think our way back into that groove, that splendid amalgam of imagination and invention. We both tried, in vain, to maintain some level of academic critique, to commiserate, but, well, too many cute girls kept flowing through the door, kept pushing their breasts together and out of their too-tight tops...

And for some reason, over the course of way-too-many drinks, over a night's worth of intoxicated promises of dinner-and-a-movie dates with a sorta shy, Girl Next Door bartender, after being briefly molested by a marvelously intoxicated gay man who just loves him some Britney and Xtina...

... My writer's block, thank the gods, cured itself! Go figure.

A normal, boring Saturday night out on the town was all it took!

Now that's fucking sexy and suave and cool as shit.

- # # # -