SHORT TAKES AND SUCH: Of Being a Thirtysomething Senior Citizen in a College Town, Amateur Boxing, & Sweet Hitchhikers

“You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens..."

- Angelina Jolie (1975- ),
Actress and Adopter of Orphans

* * * *

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution."

- Emma Goldman (1869-1940),
Anarchist and Feminist

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He's a regular Killer Diller, walking the streets towards sexual oblivion at three a.m., a cackling buffoon of a bottle blonde in six-inch heels leaning into him to avoid slipping on the High Street ice.

Killer and blonde were, as is often the norm for the local undergrad population, overdressed for a night out in a town where the "nightclub" hot spots tend to resemble the mail-order-bride filled discotheques in some former Soviet republics.

And, being a college town with not a whole hell of a lot to do after dark, well, they were beyond hammered. At that all-too-common, black-out-and-horny point, the benchmark where responsible, consensual sex becomes merely a quick couple of grinds, a squirt or two, and a convenient amnesiac hangover a few hours later.

Like I said.

The norm in this here college town when the undergrads are the only creatures of the night making anything but sweet music.

I myself have been struggling to get a female friend to my pick-up. Not, well, because either of us were drunk and horny.

No, we were simply done for the night. And she needed a ride home. Her car died a few months back, and her new puppy was eagerly awaiting his late night piss in the snow.

We were supposed to be heading to a party afterwards but...

As we pass Killer and his red meat, I can't help but laugh. The blonde's got what looks to be piss running down the back of her leg - homegirl's so drunk, she's just letting it rip and asking Killer if he really thinks she's the sexiest thing alive.

As one gets older, wiser, more mature, one learns when "one more drink" partying often leads to nothing but a head over a toilet, or a dick in the wrong vagina, or worse.

Like "pissing yourself in designer, cunt-cutting leggings and being dragged home by a Neanderthal looking motherfucker" worse.

- MORE -

With a devastatingly fast left hook, the 175 pounder's nose burst like an overripe tomato.

Headgear, even top-of-the-line amateur gear, offers little defense against a natural murderer, a butcher of cordoned battle.

Trust me. Had my eye split open, had geysers full of red life pour from my own nose in the bouts - headgear ain't nothing but putting a quilt over a steak and waiting for the meat tenderizer.

The other fighter, a kid from a Catholic university down in Cincy, pure raw glistening ebony, could barely find a neutral corner - even he seemed to be surprised by the blow.

Crimson drops beget purple dots on the canvas. The referee began the count. The bell rang the end to the first round not a moment too soon for the Ketchup Kid.

Saturday night was fight night on the Local U. campus. And the local amateur boxing club managed to pull in a half dozen other collegiate boxing clubs for a tournament.

Murderers. Tomato cans. Killers. Bleeders and white-knuckled gloves and Everlast mouth guards galore.

Glorious! Hosanna in the Highest!

"I can't believe you'd go watch boxing over going to the Charter Day Ball," she said in a text, "I mean, you can afford $50 for a ticket...I could've found you a date..."

There were a few hundred of us, spectators to the Higher Education carnage, willing to pay a donation of five whole dollars to watch a good dozen fights that night.

"Boxing is so stupid... how can you watch that shit?"

Yes, boxing isn't a sport of civilized men these days. No, Americans have no stomach for anything but corporate-owned mixed martial arts and television wrestling.

We are CIVILIZED these days, CULTURED, SOPHISTICATES! That's why we clamor over celebrity gossip, reality television, and let talk show hosts pick the president!

- MORE -

"So, tell me," the lovely Czech hitchhiker began, green eyes aglow in the natural dusk light of the apartment, "You are... really from Virginia? Originally?"

"Yeah," the other woman said, lighting a cigarette, "[The Italian Ex-Fling] said you grew up a cowboy or... is it... country bumpkin?"

Two young European women, the Czech included, and their Afro-French traveling companion were crashing with me for what was supposed to be a night and a day - my apartment ended up turning into a bit of a hostel for foreigners for almost two days and two nights, due to winter weather.

We sat around in a circle as freezing rain fell on top of the snow outside one Sunday evening, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It was six at night, a few days after getting over the flu, and I was doing my best to be a good host - giving tips on roads and cities to avoid, offering insight on the places to eat, things to see...

I'm not going to lie. It was lust at first sight, on my end, in terms of the Czech.

As annoying as it was to have a bunch of twenty-something European hippie-ish strangers squatting in the ol' Fortress of Motherfucking Solitude, I admit to being smitten with the ex-fling's flatmate - didn't help matters that she liked to shower with the bathroom door open and wasn't fond of bras in my nipply-cold apartment.

Hey, it's been a while, dammit - and ain't no crime in, ya know, looking. Alas, she brought her boyfriend with her on their North American walkabout.

"Yep. Grew up on a farm three hours south of Washington, DC."

"Really?" The Afro-Franc chimed in, "We haven't been there yet but we're hoping to see Monticello. It's in Charlottes...town?"

"CharlottesVILLE. Beautiful fucking place. Jefferson, for all his faults, was really a fucking badass-"

Suddenly, the Czech sat up in her sleeping bag and started laughing.

"________ warned me you had a toilet mouth. Very American."

"Bad American?" I was flirting. "Or good American?"

"No," she seemed to be flirting back. "Very, just, I'd say more fun than I expected. You talk like a teenager..."

We talked for a good six hours straight, she and I, long after her traveling companions fell asleep.

And I think, yes, I laid it on a bit thick. And she was flirting right back. Czech women, for the record, are some of the most dangerously fascinating women I've encountered to date.

Dammit.

Or do piče, to be more precise.

Why did couldn't she have left the boyfriend back in Europe?

- # # # -

HOODLUM EMERITUS LECTURES AT THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: Hustlers, Youth, Politically Incorrect Humor, and other Vulgar Desplays of Wisdom

CINCINNATI (ZP) -- Brother Lexus pushes up from his lounge chair, two sable-colored, tattooed arms raising him from the most comfortable seating in his tiny two-room apartment.

I've been talking shit for a good five minutes straight at this point, trying to get a rise out of the supposed born-again pacifist and sometime adherent to the Five Percent Doctrine.

"Man, how your Old Negro ass pray to Mecca when you can't even get out a motherfucking chair? What you gonna do? Throw a TV Guide at me, Uncle Remus?"

It's been ten years since I last had a chance to jive on the great Brother, once one of my home state's hustler of hustlers, grand teacher to many young juvenile delinquents of all things good, hard, and motherfucking hood - including certain former punkass white kids from rural Southside.

I've heard stories - still have a few nightmares, in fact - about what can happen when some college - educated, cracker-ass jester makes the mistake of calling him a racial epithet outside of the proper circumstance. It's not pretty and, well, it's true what they say about hydrogen peroxide being the cure-all for bloodstains.

And now he's pushing 40, an old man too young, living in one of Cincinnati's worst neighborhoods, working shitty day jobs and waiting for the day when his healthcare professional girlfriend finally says I Do! and they head off into the West as man and wife.

Okay. So I was just hoping I hadn't read the man's face wrong and wasn't about to end up a missing person. Not gonna lie.

We're a long way from Virginia these days, in more ways than either of us would care to remember.

* * * *

He's not smiling as his tree-sized legs straighten. I hear the leather of his Timberland boots squeal as he makes it to his feet. His bootblack Under Armour tee strains in agony as his ebony chest and shoulders expand to almost twice the width of mine.

He's almost a foot taller than my five-nine ass. In fact, he's always been taller, bigger, stronger, older, and, well, much more of an O.G. than I could ever be, thanks in part to a series of state-sponsored vacations. For a brief moment, I feel like a child about to have his ass handed to him by the neighborhood bully.

After all, Brother Lexus was the man who taught me which end of a crub (slang - a modified short crowbar, easily concealed, painted black and covered with grip tape) brings the pain all up on a motherfucker and which end is best used to bodyshop up on a ride, taught me how to fight dirty, hard, and quick, yet also encouraged me save that money, not to flash or flap gums, to go to college and to not sully my adult record.

We're both men of peace these days, well-read, and long past of fighting primes. But, well, we both still know how to take a pound of flesh off a cat if push comes to shove. I may still respect the man, even more so for changing, I tell myself, but I will step to his ass and represent Southside.

Three giant's steps and there's a large fist pushed into my chest, a meaty black digit driven into my sternum like a railroad spike. His biceps, honed by thousands of hours logged benchpressing away years of confinement, each are roughly as big around as my neck.

Oh well, so maybe representing Southside won't last long.

* * * *

Without smiling, he explains that, well, before I come all up into his castle and disrespect, I'd better be grateful that he journeys now, mostly (he does still drink beer, after all, but doth not dine on the swine), along the path of a peaceful and learned disciple of the principles of put forth by the teacher Allah the Father, Clarence 13X. And 13X, you see, was a man born and raised upon the same Virginia red clay that had once fed and nurtured in the pair of us the idea that all men were equals and brothers.

Yes, he says, he can overlook the fact that last century's prophets of Gods and Earths were mostly wrong about the nature of white folk and their supposed devilishness. In the 21st century, it has become imperative that we move past race and embrace Africa as the Original Home of all men. But in HIS house, he says, no one of the Caucasian Persuasion is allowed to forget that it was Europeans and their pale North American and Oceanic descendants who brought the world two hot wars and one cold war, exploited the Motherland and South America and Asia almost to the point of complete destruction...

"Well, amen Reverend. Now you gonna preach it or bring it?"

He stopped and looked suddenly lost in his own mental notes, like a physics professor at a dinner party who suddenly remembers that he's lecturing over the wine and cheese. I wasn't sure where he'd picked up his Poor Righteous Teacher act, but, well, personally, I appreciated it more than what I'd expected to be a much more painful hook to the jaw.

"Sheeeeeeit,* we been through too much for me to hate up on you. And I know that deep in that big white head of yours, mos def, you meant no disrespect."

"Dude, I am so sorry. I just, you know, like just we were kids, man, No offe-"

He pushed that finger harder into my chest. I suddenly felt ashamed, self-conscious of my ethnicity and familial history, embarrassed over the fact that I've spent much of the last decade living as a free, middle-class white man.

"Hold on now. I know you think your academic shit don't stink, but you better listen when I'm schooling your peckerwood librarian ass..."

* * * *

I stared up at him with the same wonder and humility I'd felt when I first met him, back in the day, back when this monster of a man interrupted a rather boring night at a fast-food joint in my hometown.

I'd been studying an opponentless chess board - my regular partner was tied up with woman problems. I was hung over, melancholy but appreciative of the time alone, on a Friday night. Five minutes prior, everybody in the joint had run out to the parking lot. A fight, I'd heard, and some cat had put a piece to some other cat's head.

Hey, none of my fucking business. I had my Mc-Fucking-Nuggets, a shake, and no chess partner. I only hoped they finished their beef elsewhere. I was, however, quite annoyed at the fact that somebody couldn't get that screaming sow of a woman outside to shut the fuck up before the Po-Po rolled by...

He was a suave motherfucker back then, in his Karl Khani jeans and silk shirt and black leather duster, with his gold chain and matching tie clip. He sat down and calmly asked if I was looking for a game - he'd learned to play in a housing project in Jackson Ward, never imagined that us country folk knew how to play.

We talked for a bit, about all sorts of things but mainly about why I hadn't moved from that booth, how I was able to focus surrounded by shoutin' niggas and fools. He liked my answer, appreciated my strategic non-involvement, ability to observe my surroundings, how I could give him the names, describe the faces of every last single person in the dining room without looking up...

After he'd wiped the board with me, was up a good few games, he made me an offer - to play a different sort of game of skill. He said he sometimes had cash-money work for smart white boys who understood things like chess, the strategy of sacrifice of pawns to gain rooks and Bishops, the need for discretion and stealth.

A lot of people, where I grew up, heard the stories. About that midnight - colored sedan with the tinted windows, cruising the countryside between Richmond and Southside. There were sightings everywhere, rumors about all sorts of things, inner-city occupants, hustlers, yes, ballers even. Maybe some of those stories were true.

Maybe the one-time owner of that sedan was always more of a Scientist, a Teacher, than a simple hustler. He taught many young bucks, of all colors, how to defend what was theirs, how to put up the appropriate fronts while not losing one's soul. And he was one fucking hell of a ghetto-trained chess master.

And maybe, yes, that same Teacher was about to renounce his peaceful ways and lay me out like a cheap suit. I knew that if he did, well, there'd be a lesson involved, somewhere.

* * * *

He suddenly smiles wide, ivory white teeth contrasting perfect and bright against his black chin.

"The Negro Community fuckin' frowns upon your shenanigans, son. Now quit acting a fool an' trying to get a rise outta me."

He shakes a smoldering Newport and two fingers disapprovingly, forces his face into a frown, just like the central figure in that highly controversial Internet image.

The lesson, this time, was that wise men, regardless of ethnicity, knows when to behave as serious, educated adults and when to take rather childish, patently offensive race jokes in stride.

Why be angry? Life's too short.

I'd pushed it. And now the war was on.

* * * *

He was down to his last resort - the short white dude jokes. A whole plethora of material, everything from When you stand up like a man... Oh shit! You are standing! one-liners to Man, look at you... I didn't know they made an Albino Smurf jabs.

"Sheeeeeeit, big man." I continue to shit talk, still prodding like a cattleman. "Motherfucker, you saying I didn't get you all worked up? Lookin' like Uncle Ben jumpin' off the rice box, shufflin' up at me like a zombie."

"Sheeeeeeit."

"C'mon... that all you can say? Disgracing the Race, homes. I may have to have a talk with your mama once she's off my dick."

"Maaaan, your dick so small..."

Believe it or not, but this is just how most Southerners handle race relations amongst themselves, as friends, behind closed doors. Snapping on a friend, playing the dozens, even jokes about how your dick is so small, you could fuck a Cheerio and not feel it, tends to be a lot more enjoyable than a goddamn sensitivity-training workshop.

Great desensitization exercise, playing the dozens. Helps people down on their luck, broke, or, just, well, tired of dwelling on all the shitty things they've experienced, times when nobody else gives a shit where they've been, what they've done.

* * * *

"Wigger, I let you stay breathin', and you still can't shut that monkey-looking mouth. And listen to you! A master's degree, a motherfucking scholar, and you talking like you got game? Sheeeeeeeeit!"

And then, time catches up and there's a momentary burst of intellectual, adult conversation. We talk about what Over-The-Rhine's black residents really think of Oxford Fucking Ohio, along with the Local U. - i.e., the state's largest "Color-Free Zone." He fills me in on the recent "urban renewal projects" in OTR, which many working-class residents - including Brother Lexus - see as nothing more than white liberals taking advantage of cheap real estate, pushing out everybody too broke to fight gentrification.

"Fuck it, man. Let's go grab another sixer an' finish this."

He points to the chess board set up on his coffee table. Our first chess game in more than a decade. This was why I was here - he remembered that last game, when he was at his most-dirt covered, sitting in a Section 8 lot and lording over his kingdom, getting his ass handed to him by one of his Boys from down U.S. 360/460, getting beat by that country-fried Fa'mville Cracker.

I have just enough beer in me to suggest that, well, he's just getting old and that we should, possibly, hit a bar and introduce my single ass to some of OTR's legendary Around The Way Girls...

"Man, you ain't changed at all, has you? STILL looking at my people's women like you stand a chance. Please."

In all honesty, I've always looked at all people's women. I mean, who really wants to drink white milk, when one could just add some chocolate or a little caramel syrup, maybe some plum flavoring from Beijing or honey from Cairo?

* * * *

We played two more games before I hit the road. He had me in checkmate within twelve moves each game. And, at thirty bucks a game, well, I left with an empty wallet. It's hard for me to overlook the irony, given the fact that years ago, back in that McDonald's, he actually paid me - a nice, crisp Ben Franklin - just to talk, to hear out his indecent proposal, and to (ha!) let him win a few games.

Brother was once one of Virginia's hustlers of hustlers. Even pushing 40, legit, and out of the game, well, he's still able to make paper off a sucker.

Glad we didn't go for dominoes. He'd have taken me for rent.

Sheeeeeeeeeit! One more lesson, I guess.

- # # #-

* NOTE - The obscenity "SHIT" is pronounced "SHEEIT," "SHEEEEEIT," or "SHEEEEEEEIIIIT!," depending on use, throughout the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, from Philadelphia to Charlotte, North Carolina, but most predominately in Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Maryland.

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL - BLACKOUT 2008 EDITION: Of Protest Stupidity, Libraries as Community Relief, & Other Electricity-Free Tales

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He fidgets with the brim of his ball cap. He's already readjusted his oversize basketball shorts four times in just over five minutes.

Homeboy finally settles into his carefully maintained slovenly student image after staring at his reflection in the storefront, adjusting his shirt one final time.

It's Thursday night, after all, and he's just explained that this is his regular Young Honey night - a weekly occurrence where he and his friends prowl the Uptown Oxford bars in search of something underage and naive, some poor, dumb, first- or second-year girl to buy drinks for and go home with.

Only after he looks perfect does he continue his drunken explanation of the Great Local U. Blackout Riot of 2008, quite possibly one of the dumbest student protests to ever grace a college campus.

"Fuck the police! They weren't gonna use fucking tear gas. This is ____ University we're talking about. It's not like we were blocking an interstate or anything."

Well, actually, the protesters managed to block off U.S. 27, the only major highway into or out of Oxford, smack dab in the middle of cleanup and relief efforts for a storm-ravaged area. And those cops homeboy's so adamant about fucking? Six agencies responded, all from areas equally impacted by a blackout that encompassed, at one point, more than one million people in Ohio alone.

All because anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 Local U. students decided Monday night to protest the university's decision to reopen campus after it became apparent that Duke Energy would be able to restore power to most buildings by early Tuesday morning.

The protest was held in front of the university president's house. Funny thing. The president wasn't home at the time. The protesters spent more than five hours chanting in front of an empty house.

And according to various sources, at one point, those police officers had canisters out and ready to go. Thankfully, things were mostly controllable, and only a few folks had to be maced or arrested.

"So what do you think the protest accomplished? Obviously, the university still held classes. Do you think this was something meaningful, or just what the local media's been calling it - spoiled rich kids whining while others are suffering in the Gulf?"

He tugs at his crumpled shirt once more and nods his chin towards a very pretty, yet not-too-intelligent looking blonde girl in a black cocktail dress. He changes the subject for a moment. The blonde, he says, gives amazing blowjobs. And she likes being fucked without a condom.

"Look, man, I've gotta go. Pussy calls. But, yeah, it was fucking stupid. We were bored. I just went because I wanted classes canceled so we could have another Blackout party..."

And with that, Homeboy wanders off into the night. I click my recorder off. It's been a while since I've tried to write as a reporter. Forgot how hard good quotes are to get. This is the umpteeth We were bored excuse for attending Monday night's protest I've heard in four days.

Yep. Some college students stage protests over things like war, poverty, and other human woes. Here? Off-campus students protest having to go to class. Because they're bored.

It's only nine o'clock at night, and, suddenly, I need a drink. It's been a while, too, since I've been so ashamed to have wasted a perfectly good interview on a completely worthless human being.

* * * *

Last weekend, the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through the Miami Valley like the wake of an atomic bomb, with wind gusts nearing 75 miles per hour shredding trees, ripping apart roofs, and turning the Tri-State's power grid into an electric version of Swiss cheese.

It's taken the better part of the week to get power back to most of the region. As I write, there are still several thousand homes still without electricity. The grocery stores and restaurants are still restocking, still reeling from having to pitch millions in spoiled food. At one point, too, the major outlets had employees stand guard over dumpsters full of rotten meat to prevent the panicked from diving for a nauseating, bacteria-ridden dinner.

The Cincinnati metro area, Hamilton and Butler counties, were hit the hardest. Fortunately for most folks, the various municipal water supplies remained mostly intact and unpolluted. The ability to shit, shower, and shave, even in pitch black darkness, was still available to most.

* * * *

My power went out Sunday afternoon, at just past two o'clock. The lights flickered back to life sometime late Thursday afternoon. My only storm damage was to a window in my living room - a gust literally pushed in a 20-pound sliding section, right over the flashing. Luckily, it didn't break when it collapsed - a pile of laundry broke the fall.

In all, I ended up pitching approximately $200 in food from my fridge. I was fortunate, as a bachelor. I know families, poor families, that had to pitch thousands in deep-freezer stock, people who are having to figure out how to suddenly feed children with what's left of increasingly devalued paychecks.

While it wasn't what I'd call luxurious to spend five days without electricity, without the ability to cook my own food or take a hot bath on demand, it wasn't all that bad. With natural disasters, well, basic things, matters of survival, tend to trump one's often petty desires for life's creature comforts.

Hell, I was just grateful for the ability to take a shit and to still have the toilet flush. And the fact that I'd, for some reason, happened to restring the ol' acoustic guitar last month. Amazing the things one appreciates at trying times.

Sure, I'll probably not want to eat another handful of trail mix or cold can of beans for a while, but, well, I was able (actually, required, as per my job function) to make it into work, to help keep my library's physical plant running with minimal resources and, at times, minimal staffing.

At one point, we were the only facility within 30 miles with working Internet access, live electrical outlets, and enough generator-heated water in the tanks to allow for thousands of hot shaves and sink-basin baths. We had thousands of community members spread out over four very packed levels. With only a handful of staff able to help them all out.

Hell, I managed to stop a major structural fire in my system's main library (a faulty emergency generator burned up), inspect all other facilities for storm damage, and, yes, even answer in excess of 250 reference questions over the course of one twelve-hour shift.

Fun week. I managed to rack up 60 hours on the job. If I were hourly, wow, that's be enough overtime to pay off a couple of credit cards...

* * * *

Actually, now that I think about it, I worked my way through that nasty-ass blackout. Most people in this town did. Including, yes, those fucking cops who worked right through that stupid protest in front of an empty university president's house.

A couple of those officers were the first on the scene of my generator fire and are currently on my I'm So Fucking Picking Up This Round list.

And that university president, too. He was doing his job during the storm's aftermath. I've seen that guy around town at more random hours of the day than I think I've ever seen any university administrator, ever. He's been talking to students and faculty, meeting with officials, shaking hands and patting shoulders and listening to complaints.

Right now, as people in Texas clean up from Ike, as other communities clean up from their hurricanes and natural disasters this summer, there's literally hundreds of thousands of folks who've been taking cold showers in the morning, dressing in last week's dirty laundry, and praying to all that is holy that they have enough gas to get to work and to provide needed services in an emergency.

But I guess that was too hard for some people. You know. Guys like Homeboy. While others are rebuilding, recovering, and getting by, he's still upset that he couldn't get in one more Blackout Party in an attempt to get his pecker wet.

And the gall of Homeboy's university, HIS future alma mater, asking someone of his obvious importance to actually do his job, to cowboy the fuck up and roll with the challenges life and Mother Nature sometimes throw our way.

In all fairness, there really weren't thousands of rioters blocking traffic and causing mayhem in this town Monday night, during the largest blackout in Ohio history. There were a few hundred actual, mostly intoxicated, agitators.

The rest were just observers, with nothing else to do. They stopped by to watch the freaks make idiots of themselves. There have only been a handful of such large protests in the university's two-hundred year history. Protesting anything is as foreign to Oxford Fucking Ohio as a burning candle at the bottom of the ocean.

Hell, I stopped by after work for a few moments myself, just to watch the shitshow.

I would've stuck around longer, but, well, I'd been actually helping to get this town back on its feet again and was fucking exhausted.

Forgive me for being to fucking tired to stick around, kids.

* * * *

So it's 9:30 Thursday night. I've just killed off two shots of Jack Daniels in a bar I normally avoid like the Plague.

It's been of fucking horrendous week, my friends, if I'm drinking straight Jack. By that point, I'd made up my mind that I was going to attend a local open mic night later in the evening and attempt to black myself out, for a change.

Rather than go home to finish disinfecting the old freezer and add another layer of caulk to my contractor-perfect window repair, I decide to walk off the sudden rush of booze, prep myself psychologically for the sweet relief that is to come when I return home to take my first near-scalding hot shower in five days.

I'm half an hour removed from trying my hand as an actual serious, topical writer. It's been years since I've whipped out the ol' Sony recorder, shoved it into random people's faces, gone hunting for soundbites and insights. I toss the damned thing into the cab of my truck, pissed that, well, I've only managed to document every negative stereotype of Local U. students, in their own words.

Trust me. There are thousands of stories like Homeboy's in this town.

Tales of spoiled girls who flooded the town's hotel rooms the moment their power was restored because, ugh, they couldn't do their hair in the dark and, OMG, who threw tantrums that the cable, yes, was still out in suites paid for with Daddy's credit card. Stories of undergrads in expensive cocktail dresses walking down the middle of black streets, drunk and blocking traffic.

One kid told me he was looking into filing lawsuits because he was unable to watch the Bengals game on TV Sunday night; another guy shared a supposedly heartbreaking experience - he had to forfeit money on an online gambling site because the power went out in the middle of a poker hand.

Tragic, isn't it?

* * * *

So I walked the streets and avenues of this town, the undergrad neighborhoods, trying to forget the whole thing. Why beat a dead, preppy, spoiled horse?

And then, at one house, a group of young women - library regulars - waved and hollered my way. I'd seen the trio numerous times over the course of the week, probably logged more than a few hours helping them individually answer reference questions.

They'd logged almost as many hours in my library as I had, charging laptops and cell phones and iPods, surfing the web for outage updates and news headlines. From the looks of it, the porch lights and all, their power had just been restored, too.

The group sat in folding chairs, a case of beer between them. An acoustic guitar rested against the porch railing. Each had a can of beer tucked in her crotch and a book - library books - laid across her knees.

I walk up to the porch just as one of the girls blurted out something like

"Bet you're gonna write about how FUCKED UP this week's been, huh?"

All three grinned. One girl handed me a beer. Natty Light. Shittiest beer known to man. But, well, it was cold.

Blog readers. Not once, all week, had a single one of them mentioned why they'd actually sought me out for my help with various projects. Hell, I'm not a reference librarian. It never occured to me that, well...

Sneaky devils, sometimes, these sorority girls.

I asked the group, as nonchalantly as I could, as if, yeah, I'm really some blogebrity or something, if they had any ideas on where to start documenting the Great Blackout of 2008.

We chatted for a bit and, well, they readily admitted that they had no idea where to start.

But they did, however, know how whatever I wrote should end.

* * * *

"Look, we're not all as stupid and bratty as those rioters. Fuck those bitches. A lot of people work really hard to make college what it is for all of us...."

"I mean, we're still here, right? And we're still sexy, smart, and sure look good for surviving a hurricane in Ohio...I mean, c'mon, we're hot and we survived the blackout, right...?"

"... And make sure you put in something about how all these whiny babies, like, need to grow the fuck up..."

"...And, oooh! Make sure you say how lucky we are to, like, still have places to live, you know? And, like, feel blessed because we're still alive to actually drink beer and still have a school to go to..."

Reminded me of my reporter days, actually. Back in the newspaper business. Fuck voice recorders. Always ended up with better source material writing things out, using things like cardboard from cases of beer...

- # # # -