UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
We can ill afford another Klendathu  feed it up!
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You are just a number to me! And that number is: PAGES UD MADE: My Books Page My Reviews Page My Reference Page My Music Page My Pictures My Store UD-RELATED PAGES: My LiveJournal My MySpace music page My Flickr page My del.icio.us page My Last.fm page My Amazon Wishlist HEAVY ROTATION TV on the Radio: Dear Science Walkmen: You & Me Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes Ratatat: LP3 Beach House: Devotion BLOGS ETC claude le monde nuncstans rock 'em stock 'em tomato nation postmodern drunkard tuckova 22 ghastly mess constintina total virility fuzzysquid drunken bee stacey nightmare elyse from ANTM stereolabrat dark side points jf_franklin 123 i love you READ NOW brotherhood 2.0 NOT BLOGS ETC qwantz (dinosaur comix) go fug yourself the burg cat and girl book of ratings married to the sea icanhascheezburger fire joe morgan fivethirtyeight.com READ NOW hospitality on parade WEIRD LOVE dead amusement pks craters! all content © 2002-2008 Jeremy Broomfield 
Hosted by: HostRocket.Com Comments by: YACCS PRAISE & REVIEWS "[UD] is a genius." --Christian Oates "[Claudia] is fucking awesome, and [UD] is a genius. And vice versa. You should all buy Fear Not." --Tricia Howey MOTTO egeo huic vigorum MY WRESTLING NAME Titan Gently MY PUNK NAME Razor Ection 
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Tuesday, November 25, 2003
The geniuses at RJR Tobacco have come up with a stupendously awesome product: a "new cigarette" called the Eclipse. Take a moment to look at it, because it is a superfuturistic robot smoke, and I can't wait to wrap my lips around it. One end has a "hollow filter" (which can't really be a filter, as such, now can it?) and the other end contains a miniature jet engine that superheats to 5000ºF in 10picoseconds, instantaneously vaporizing the cigarette's gooey mixture of tobacco, dimethyltryptamine, and Mexican brown heroin and forcing it into your lungs at 800mph.
Holy desperate measures, RJ! Is this the best you can do? This seems to be a classic example of fixing something that isn't broken, in the tradition of clear cola, pushbutton transmissions, and perforated condoms ("like fucking a rubber cheese grater!"). Normal cigarettes aren't badly engineered, they're just deadly. Not only are those of us who smoke them aware of this fact, we have constructed complex delusions around our addictions to support the idea that we like them deadly. We don't want safer cigarettes anymore than we want a frothy mug of O'Douls. You ever see the cool kids in the playground looking tough, talking about sex, and chewing Nicorette? Nuh-uh. Well but then again, everybody loves tech, and a weird-looking stick of hot chemical machinery is spiritually only a hiccup away from the banking chip in my brain that automatically pays tolls and taxes, and reports my book purchases to Ashcroft's secret tribunal for the purging of perverted Jew intellectuals. I can't wait for that fucking chip. I'm gonna be the raddest incarcerated postmodern cyborg torture victim ever. In fact, I think I will impress the high school reuniters this weekend with my preliminary cyborg upgrade I self-installed two minutes ago: I carefully smashed my cell phone into pieces and duct-taped the speaker part to my ear and stapled the microphone to my gums. Handsfree, bitch! Read 'em and beep, muhfuckah!! Oops, hold on -- I've got a call coming in from your mother. Hmm. She claims that she and I had sex last night, and that it was pleasing to her. I don't remember it, because when I started smoking them new jet cigarettes, I had the short-term memory part of my brain replaced with an emergency Halon system. After all, you can't hug your children with an aluminum esophagus. Ha ha! Do as I say, child, not as I do! Monday, November 24, 2003
The lady on the phone just said "happy holidays!" to me, which gives me the willies already without the added twist: why the non-denominational holiday wish for Thanksgiving? Like maybe I celebrate some alternate Jewish version where we thank God for saving us from the ignominy of foreskins? Customer service people have gotten hypersensitive to the point of non sequitur. When I sneezed the lady said "may your higher power bless you, or do whatever your higher power (or powers) do in the event of a sneeze, unless you are an atheist, in which case I sincerely hope you aren't getting a cold." I was so scared that I smashed the receiver through the front of my monitor and sprayed the sparking mess with Lysol until the can ran out.
Still, the empty phrase puts me in the mind of hideously awkward gatherings of people, and oh god the stupid fucking ten-year high school reunion is this weekend, and Jackie is pouring the guilt on like hot razor juice, begging me to go with her, because otherwise "it won't be any fun." Whaaa? The fuck? We see each other every wiggidy week. WHY WOULD YOU GO IF IT WOULDN'T BE FUN WITHOUT ME? But she managed to soak her parents for the $70, so her logic goes: if you have ten drinks it's a fair deal. I'm like: dood, I don't drink, and since I don't want to see most of these people anyway, I definitely don't want to see them in a compressed 4-hour marathon to drink the ticket price in cheap hooch at what looks to be the tackiest restaurant in New York. Oh god. Or do I? It could be fun, especially because I'm pretty sure I won't see them again for ten years, and I could do or say just about anything. I could grope people, vomit on the dance floor, or fill my pockets with silverware. No. I think I shall play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in my underpants all weekend. Look! I have a sword! I'm a magical, acrobatic prince! I may muse further on the reunion tomorrow, but after that I will not post until next Monday. I should have something frothy for you by then. Happy Thanksfortakingmyforeskin! Thursday, November 20, 2003
Claudia is supposedly out on the road somewhere, and still she updates more often than I do. I'd say she put me to shame, but I actually think the road trip is just a stunt, a made-up fairy tale that her doctors are willing to tolerate because it might help her get released from the looney clinic earlier if she "takes a trip" from her psychosis, represented here either by Chicago, her "job," or both.
When I sent her an email wishing her a swift recovery, she claimed to be having head pains, which usually means she's hung over. I wonder if, in some phildickian warping of her perceptions, her "hangovers" are actually moments of clarity between shots of thorazine -- moments when she can actually perceive the padded walls around her -- but once she gets her meds she immediately represses the true vision and replaces it with a memory of drinking the night before? Whatever. The last time I had a hangover was something like four years ago, on a bizarre trip back to my college to watch some younger friends graduate. I took a nostalgic stroll to my old house (which my housemates christened "Dollywood," though I wanted to name it "Doogie House, MD") to find a friend I'll call J.Crew, who gave me a hug and a bottle of Belvedere. He introduced me to his girlfriend Zoots, and together they gave me ego-boosting compliments on my album, which I later realized was meant to misdirect my attention from the fact that my tumbler never ran out of liquor. And damn, that Belvedere went down as smooth as a buttered tadpole. I vaguely remember a party later, but I vividly remember the bathroom in the party's house. I think I spent three hours in there, hugging all three of its porcelain residents, with the kind of hangover you get when you forget to pass out first. After a while, people stopped trying to get me to move from the bathroom and just treated me like a moaning, sweating piece of furniture. Some people would chat with me as they peed, some would ask me to hold their Solo cups, which had the same result as sticking their fingers down my throat. Oh man. Hard times on expensive vodka. Later, after I had finally fallen asleep in the bed of some nice girl who lived at the house (she stayed at her boyfriend's place that night), I detected movement in the bed, somewhere behind my clammy back. Seems J.Crew and Zoots were feeling amorous but didn't have the energy to walk the two blocks back home. They unapologetically fucked their drunken faces off. Well, I couldn't really complain. It wasn't my bed, after all. Plus I literally couldn't complain, because by that point I was intellectually and functionally indistinguishable from a cup of primordial mud. Can you dig it, kids? Booze sucks. Drink up! Wednesday, November 19, 2003
So I went to the slowest doctor in the world again today. My appointment was for 2pm, so I brought two volumes of Ŕ la recherche du temps perdu and settled into the waiting room. After forty minutes of dozing in the chair, I asked a receptionoid to put me in an exam room so that I could lie down and have a little napper. She looked at me funny, but I pointed to the wiggly comic book pain lines emanating from my spine, and she agreed.
I took a nap, and it was quite peaceful until the doctor came in to harsh my fucking mellow... at 3:15pm (or 1515 hrs, for those of you who are AWOL after a home leave from sunny Tikrit). I tell ya folks, my doctor is so slow... [how slow, etc?] Well, see I brought my son in for his Dip/Tet? And by the time she showed up he had grown up and become a discipline problem and I had sent him to military school! Damn that's a long wait! Thanks, folks. Tip your waitress, she works hard. No but so what. Thing is: I heard these to jocktards talking in the elevator, speaking confidentially at a volume that could only be called a "whisper" in a crowded football stadium. JT1: Dude. She stuck a needle in it? JT2: Uh-huh. JT1: Dude! Wow. You OK? JT2: Uh. I'm a little dizzy, ackshly. JT1: Yeah, you look... um... d'it hurt? JT2: Uh. Burned a little. JT1: No! No, man! Whoa! Fuck! JT2: ... JT1: In your nutsack? Dude! JT2: Gabba burble. (almost falls down as elevator doors open.) So I suppose things would be worse. I walked away with a referral for more Physical Therapy, and Jocky McSweatpants got a Hot Nut Injection (HNI). Um, a HotShot to the NutSack (HSNS)? I can't imagine what kind of ailment would require a shot in the balls, and it is my devout hope that some doctor was just having a little fun. Getting a hot smidgen of revenge on the jocks of the world for all the wedgies and titty twisters in the playground. Ha! Zap! Tuesday, November 18, 2003
It's not that I don't love you, folks, it's just that my back hurts so much that I can barely reach the keyboard without wracking spasms playing tug-o-war with my spine. This may not be as repulsive as Gregor's gushing facial pus-jets, but I will go toe-to-toe with him on the level of pain. Well, make that heel-to-heel, in light of all the gushing.
How many muscle relaxers must I take before I will feel some whisper of relief? Should I chase each pill with a shot of vodka? I can't sit down, I can't lay flat on my back, I can't stand still. Which leaves walking and sprinting. Until some special MD fixes me forever, I will be walking, walking, while sleeping or whatever OUCH. Also, why the hell did Robitussin remove the alcohol from their products? Are they stupid? Were they worried about bronchitic hobos getting sloshed on their sauce? How fucking sissified has this country become that we are scared of the slightest drop of booze in our meds? The only Robitussin formula that still has hooch in it is Super Deadly Maximum Relief which looks so scary that even those kids from Gummo would think twice before huffing it. Thursday, November 13, 2003
I don't want to wash my hair, but I don't want my hair to smell like smoky boy-head, either. Girls, are you not repulsed by the smell of boy? I am constantly revolted by the boysmell of my apartment, which smacks me in the face like a duellist's glove every time I walk in the door -- and my nose doesn't really work anymore (because I smoke too much, and because I donated the mucus membranes in my nasal passages to Paris Hilton, who burned her own away long ago), so it must be exponentially more revolting to normal people. The new roommate, who is awesome but still has no moniker, is not the type of girl who uses flowery soaps or pectin-scented shampoos, so I predict that soon we will have to acknowledge our fourth roommate: the Odious Fetor (aka "da O.F."). Except that sounds kinda nancified, so let's just call it The Stank and leave it at that.
I don't want to wash my hair because I look like one of the Monkees when I do, all poofy and clean and ready for primetime. Yuck. Plus I love having zits on my forehead. Gah. I believe that unwashed hair will regulate its oil content, probably because some hippie told me so. Hate the messenger, love the message -- I can embrace my enemies' philosophies if they're convenient. I'm flexible. But now I'm thinking that this belief is rather like the republican theory that unregulated oil companies will regulate themselves, which is obviously a stupid fairy tale that no one with a spoonful of brains believes, and especially not the people who say it the loudest. The truth is that I am pitiably susceptible to vogueish hipster memes, and dirty hair is everywhere. How do they do it, these greasy rockers? Do their pillowcases, like mine, look like they've been used to serve bacon? Can one whiff of their wooly hats paralyze a hobo? Nah, those poseurs probably use product, which is a word that makes me gag like a force-fed foster child on the day before the lady from the agency comes to call. Unbuckle me from this rollercoaster of fashion, please, while it's at the top of its arc. Why won't God strike me bald, so I won't have to worry about it? Monday, November 10, 2003
I spent the weekend catsitting for my parents at their loft in SoHo, and I realized some things about myself. The heat wasn't working properly, so to keep warm I started organizing some of the giant piles of books and assorted crap that cover every surface of the place. Realization one: I am the kind of person who organizes stuff when he's bored. This is handy characteristic if you work in a library, but if you want to have any kind of life at all you are going to have to learn to go out and do stuff with other people. But as I shoved prosciutto, cheese, and smoked whitefish into my mouth by the handful (my mom is on the Atkins, otherwise known as the Magic Diet of Bacon and Butter) and tried to decide whether the four books of ghost stories deserved their own distinct position on the shelf or whether they should be inserted alphabetically by editor into the short story section of the bookcase, I felt at peace.
This has something to do with being a control freak, you'll say, and my desire to impose order on chaos, which is also part of the more universal fear of disorder/ decay/ death. But I also did a lot of dusting, which seems to be the opposite of order-imposition: you take a bunch of stationary dust and slap it willy-nilly into the atmosphere like unfestive confetti. What do you say to that, Dr Pat Assessment? Both my parents are unrepentant pack rats. My dad has legitimized it by becoming a "book collector," but my mom has no such organizing principle. On Saturday, I needed a shoebox to hold a bunch of crap I found on a shelf (which crap could obviously not be discarded), so I looked in the "box department," a closet-sized shrine to containment. I found a perfect box, but it wasn't empty. I opened it, only to find: smaller boxes! Oh God. It's sick, but it made total sense to me... BECAUSE I HAVE A BOX JUST LIKE IT AT MY HOUSE. So realization two is that I am my parents' child, for despite all the mailman jokes, I am undeniably the heir to their hoarding gene. I have labored to fight this tendency like an alcoholic CEO fighting to put off his first, delicious glass of scotch until 10am. When cleaning my room, I always ask "do I really need this beat-up fake gold and enamel cigarette case that's too small to hold cigarettes? Or this photocopy of a drawing of five types of sailor's knots? Or this rusted pulley? Or this scrap of paper with a drawing of a clown? Or this bag of hair? Jesus god, do I really need a bag of hair?!?" The answer is often "yes, definitely," but at least I asked. I am not foolish enough to think I can escape my fate. It would be like thinking you could stop a zombie from eating your brain with gentle pleading. From now on, everyone who comes to my house must take away one piece of crap, and leave behind a naked Polaroid of themselves. Together, we can make a difference. Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Yesterday I awoke feeling like a hot bag of crap, so I went back to sleep. Eventually, I called in to work and told them that I felt like hot crap in a bag, and they told me to stay home until I felt less fetid and sack-like. I had spent the early hours of Tuesday in a feverish hot/cold cycle of sweats and shivers, which may have been caused by an actual fever but may also have been caused by poor radiator calibration. My building, when it cranks up the heat, is committed to recreating the tropical island homelands of my neighbors, temperature-wise. Unlike the dewy torpor of the Caribbean, the heat in mi edificio is so fucking dry that I wake up with a mouth like a salt flat, as if I spent the night chewing on those "do not eat" desiccant silica packs you find in shoeboxes or vitamin bottles. This is not quality slumber! Fuck you, building!
At home, I did nothing, and I did it all day. I avoided the poison of daytime television, I didn't look at the internet, I didn't get any exercise or do any work. When was the last time I did nothing? It seems like forever ago, but probably it was during my "employment hiatus" of 2001. It's a strange thing to get out of bed, walk into the living room, and fall directly onto the couch. What's the difference between these states? Sleeping, reading, lying down -- as far as I can tell, the difference has to do with eyelids. I didn't want to talk to anybody, I could barely imagine going to work ever again, and I just wanted to go back to sleep ALL DAY LONG. But I still don't have mono, despite being around at least three people in the last couple months who carry the virus around like a bad attitude. And anyway, I didn't kiss any of them, so unless they backwashed in my Orangina or surreptitiously licked my Chupa Chups before I did, I think I'm in the clizzear. I mustered the energy to vote, which was a treat because I got to shake hands with both of my City Council candidates, who were hovering outside my polling place like hobos looking for a hatful of pie. And also of course it allows me to feel smug and superior to all of you non-participant fuckwads who were too lazy, busy, or spaced-out to gather your skirts and shamble over to the broken-down house of worship in your 'hood. May their broken-down deity bless these diabetic grannies staffing my 3rd E.D. table, who are required by law to eat a cookie every five minutes on a rotating schedule (so there are always gonna be "Dutch" butter cookie crumbs in my democratic face) and goddamn you'd think they would have mastered the ALPHABET by now, because, wow, lady, you are looking at a page with Baldacci on it so why the fuck are you heading back towards the letter A? IT'S BRRRROOOOMMMMM-FIELD ALREADY. Ok, yes, thank you for the obligatory remark about my comical signature and its attention-craving proliferation of loop-de-loops. Why don't you try writing "Mrs. Agnes (or whatever) Broomfield" all over your binder and see how long it takes to devolve into a rejected Spirograph project. Gabble. Chunk, flit flit flit flit flit flit flit flit flit flit flitttttlte, flit, chunk. That's the sound of voting in NYC, baby. I asked Agnes for a cookie on my way out, because I felt that post-vote blood-sugar drop. She almost bit my hand. So I shot her, jumped from the balcony onto the stage, and shouted "sic semper tyrannis!" Then I went home to sleep the sweaty sleep of the righteous. |
OTHER REVIEWS: John from Cincinnati Menomena LATEST BOOK REVIEWS: The Game Moneyball One-Upsmanship Siddhartha You need the Fear Not Guide to Life. Buy it already. ($4) Now available! The Broomfield Variations CD ($10) or go to The UD Store 
MY IMAGINARY GIRLFRIENDS Chan Marshall Rotem of the IDF Eleanor Friedberger Amy Goodman Bernardine Dohrn ('69) Maya Rudolph Joanna Newsom Imogen Heap Caroline Dhavernas Shana Rae Ray DISALLOWED FOREVER "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!" - "from whence" - "...the exception that proves the rule" - any use of the question "spit or swallow?" - the phrase "drop trou" - fake-o reviewer verbs: "penned" for wrote "helmed" for directed "lensed" for whatever - "expat" - the euphemism "passed away" - pronouncing merci beaucoup as "mercy buckets!" (see also: "grassy-ass!") PET PEEVES "confinscated" - trying children "as adults" - "drownded" |