UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
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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 
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Friday, February 27, 2004
On the train the middle-aged white lady spots an ambiguously ethnic twentysomething girl reading The House of Mirth and almost shits her skirt. She reaches forward to tap the cute girl, whose coat is all shaggy and whose awesome shoes look like wrestling shoes, and she's like "Oh my, isn't that book exquisite?" The girl takes her iBuds out of her ears and is like "Huh wha?" so the lady has to repeat the "exquisite" line. Well, my girl is game, and she tries conversing with this lady, but it's not gonna be easy. First, the Lady tells the girl how the book will end. Nice one, bhortch. Then the Lady just wants to show off how proud she is of the nation's youth, and I think this conversation qualifies as the most "adventure" this lady has had since she let some boy touch her pearls back at Wellesley twenty years ago. Plus she is loudly showing off that only knows one adjective, and she pronounces it like it's got four syllables: "Exquisite. Exquisite. Ex-quiz-it-tuh. EXQUISITE."
Shut up, Lady! Everything you've ever read is exquisite? Because now see she has taken it upon herself to give the girl an impromptu -- and utterly unsolicited -- list of recommendations. Fuck! "Oh, you should read Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingfisher [sic]. It's not a an old book, but it's exquisituh." She then takes a chance, suggesting the daring Pride and Prejudice or something. ("I love period pieces," said the girl a few stops before the Kingsolver incident, "I'm totally hooked on Masterpiece Theatre." Trying to be friendly, find a connection, and to which Lady replied "Oh, I don't really watch television." ARGH! She gets uglier the more she talks.) "Um, I really like Lawrence, too," says my girl, "I just finished Lady Chatterley's Lover and I loved it." THE FUCKING LADY ACTUALLY BLUSHES, saying "Ooh! Don't admit that out loud on the train!" I half expect her to say "Scandalous!" and fan her stupid face with a doily. I pull my hood over my head in broadly telegraphed exasperation, hoping that someone fat and condescending will notice and SHUT HER DOILY HOLE, but I get dizzy from the funk in the hood and pass out for a while, which is almost as good. There are some really wonderful people out there. I am one of them. I think people like me should be selected by the government as Sacred Executioners of The Intolerably Loud Fucktards, and given fancy curved daggers or twirling-bladed face-blender sticks. I can't even bear to transcribe some of the other things this... I keep wanting to say "walrus" but her weight's got nothing to do with it, eeerrrgggggghhh... this beast-lady said. Awfulness exists, and though I could make a case for this lady's extinction, as SEotILF, I wouldn't have to. I'd be untouchable. Anybody I face-blended would be declared, ipso facto and post mortem, to be a Fucktard. I win. Your corpse is exquisite, beeyotch! Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Tooth Gunk: It seems that as I get older, my teeth attract more food particles than ever before. Is this illusion? Did I just never notice before? The newly renovated bathroom in the office has better light over the mirror, so maybe that's it, but I think it's more likely that food-magnetism is one of those things about getting old, like enlarged ears/noses, more ear/nose hair, and lower-hangingness of your various hanging parts as they reach symbolically for the earth to which we will all return. Well, at least having spinach in your teeth says "I ate some spinach," which should be attractive to health nuts or Olive Oyl, and it's a damn sight less huke-invoking than "Oreo Molar" or "Blue RazzleBerry Lollipop Tongue." Should I start carrying teatree oil-flavored "dental stimulators" (toothpicks) everywhere I go? No, because that would be unforgivably metro. Plus it would add extra weight to the retarded survival kit of garbage that I carry in my backpack all the fucking time, which threatens to pin me to the ground to death if I ever fall down.
Parka Funk: Man, this parka is stanky. I had the thing dry-cleaned after last year's interminable Ingalls Wilder winter, which means it must have been pretty ripe then, too. Because I don't take my clothes to the cleaners unless they could be cut into swatches and used in place of smelling salts. But the parka has a hood lined with fuzz, and the fuzz spent a good two months slurping up hair grease, which really holds the stench of cigarette smoke like a bulldog holds a baby's face. I haven't tested the armpits, because I have learned that my smoke-damaged nostrils just can't detect my body odor at less than 100,000ppm. Which means it's doubleplusscary that I can smell the hoodfunk. Used to be I could lift the voluminous hood over a girl's head for a private, darkness-shrouded kiss. Now I can save money on chloroform and kidnap Mormons with it. Ayugh. Art Punk: I'm going to the opening reception of the Whitney Biennial, because I am cool like that. (Ha ha! Follow that link to see gay bouncy squares! [clapping] Ha ha! Yay!) The invite specifies "festive attire," which I figure is an out for artsy types who are too cool for a tux or like to pretend they're still poor and shit. I've invited J.Ro as my companion and image consultant, and because that girl knows how to rock a party right. I've seen her start fights (not with her lily-smooth hands -- she gets other people to fight), I've seen her say fucked-up shit to famous people and have them love her for it, and I've seen gay men swear off cock at the sight of her fabulousity. I just hope she doesn't puncture any canvases with her pointy shoes, or amend any sculptures with those caviar-on-a-crepe canapés. Should I go pinstripe suit or artstanky? I would like it best if people looked at me like "which one is he?" Ha. What a fucking pipedream. Maybe I'll drop copies of Fear Not around and wait for the movie offers and book deals to stream in DOUBLE HA. Probably just pig out and sit in a corner grumbling about the lack of comfortable seating, like always. Tuesday, February 24, 2004
I can smell the McDonald's food that my coworker's eating for lunch, and I think it's a good sign, survival-wise, that I feel like hurling up the cocktail of bile, water, Tums, and multivitamins that currently inhabit my stomach. I react to the smell of McD's like a farmer from an unspoiled idyll reacts to the smell of Gary, Indiana or Elizabeth, NJ. This is one of the very few survival instincts that my body can manage to remember, and it's a good thing, too. If I ate fast food I'd be one slothful dying hockey puck of a hermit, telecommuting myself into the grave through a haze of muscle relaxants. As if it weren't bad enough to eat the stuff, my coworker got her food delivered. Oofah. Like, if you can't even walk to the store, dude? Definitely don't eat the food, because soon you won't have the energy for anything more strenuous than harvesting your toejam. Do you think a lot of suicides are prevented by people being just too depressed to get off the couch long enough to guzzle a handful of Xanax and vodka? Or like too lazy to go to the store for the rat poison?
I learned a lot about Cricket from the BBC's "Sport" site. I am not entirely recommending that you do the same, but there's the link, if you like. It feels very strange to immerse yourself, if only for a moment, in something completely foreign that has such a long history and means so much to the British and some of their former colonial holdings. But then, I guess, you could say the same for any culture's traditions, yah? That maybe the problem with the world is that people don't take enough time to learn about other peoples' traditions (and therefore their humanity etc) blah blah blah sensitivitycakes. Except maybe most traditions don't involve quite so much highly specialized padding. Are you sensitive to Japan's national culture of sex with video game characters? Get sensitive. I wish there were some new music to get excited about. I'm excited, against my better judgment, about the Dawn of the Dead remake that's coming out soon. How you gonna remake the best zombie movie ever, right? But the previews look pretty fucking good, and some of the zombies seem to move very fast, Dan O'Bannon-style, which is just fine with me. If you've read the Fear Not Guide to Life, you know that my theory of zombie mobility has to do with undecayed muscle mass, so the most recently-risen fiends have no particular reason to stumble around clumsily. Makes them that much harder to kill, but it's best if you're not surprised by a speedy brain-muncher. Another argument against the fast food: high cholesterol slows your zombie-killing reflexes. Therefore, fast food is a crime against humanity! Boycott Big Macs! Save the species! Friday, February 20, 2004
Things I've been doing instead of writing you a sassy new post:
Opening a new bank account. Picking at this thing on my neck. Tossing my head around like that creature on the subway car in Jacob's Ladder in a fruitless attempt to shake the stress out of my neck muscles. Trying, also fruitlessly, to convince my coworkers not to play the lottery despite the stupidly huge jackpot: "Here are your odds, here is your expected outcome, which as you'll see works out to a negative expectation, which as you can also see is like betting a quarter to win a dime on a coin toss, which as you SHOULD be able to see is just STUPID." "Yeah but that's a lot of money." Glarrgle. Watching as they fall prey to a sophisticated combination of common causes of human misjudgment. Sighing with exasperation. Reading Lore Sjöberg's Book of Ratings, which is just unbelievably fucking hilarious. The consistency of his style and the application of his chosen form never lessens the joy. Too good. Fulfilling orders for Fear Not #3, which are coming in heavily as word gets around, but only slightly more frequently than requests for free copies, which what gives? I'm not made of postage, pals. Buying paperback reprints of Jaime Hernandez's stories from Love & Rockets, and crying while reading them because they are so fucking beautiful. Berating myself for reading superhero comics as a teenager when I could have been reading this stuff. I was an idiot. Why didn't anyone tell me? What a waste. Panicking because the new office chairs, which seemed so comfortable in the store, now seem to be about what you'd expect from a $125 chair. Am I looking at even worse back pain from now on? Sweating at the thought. Sweating more because the chair is covered with a fabric designed by IG Farben during WWII for Nazi interrogation chairs, and which can make you sweat even as you shiver from the cold of the office. Realizing that crying while reading comics, while understandable in the current instance, is probably a sign that I'm feeling a little more fragile than usual. I had a shiver the other week, when the temperature topped 45 degrees, an atavistic flush of chemicals that screamed "spring is almost here." It felt wonderful, really fucking transcendently so. I almost cried again. But spring is not almost here. I don't need a groundhog to tell me that it snowed in April last year, and that I'm not mothballing my arctic parka until about the same time this year. I see the hipsters wearing sportcoats and scarves in the subzero chill and I know they felt the same thing, but are young enough to live by their false hopes. I'm tired of waking up with frigid shoulders poking out from under a comforter that slips down while I sleep. Remembering when it was too hot to sleep with even a sheet on top of my sticky body. Remembering the blackout: I walked from midtown to my parents' apartment in Soho, hung out on the fire escape watching spooky flashlight beams crisscross on the silent street seven floors below, and wandered out to a candlelit bar where I was handed a guitar and asked to sing. I sang. I went back to the loft, where I slept on the fire escape, 'cuz even a hot wind is better than no wind at all. Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Reading Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar (a collection of 13 years of his comics from Love & Rockets) made me rethink my feelings about small-town life. Life in Palomar seems so simple, supportive, intimate, and human -- all the things city life supposedly isn't. Of course, Palomar is also fictional, but it rings true: the gossip, the incest, the town drunks, the multigenerational patterns and extended families, the poverty, the sense of community, the guy selling shoes out of a wheelbarrow for two cents apiece, the passions and jealousies incubated in a bell jar of boredom and monotony. It all seemed very cute for a moment or two.
But I've read other books, too, and I've talked to people who come from small towns, and I even spent four years in small-town Ohio. All evidence points to the fact that small-town life is miserable, depressing, and dead-endsville. Also that small town people hate hate hate it, even though they exhibit some kind of knee-jerk defensive pride if challenged, which is probably a reflex left over from high-school sports rivalries. HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS. Oh my god. Is that not a perfect example of Small Town Stupidity (STS)? I love city life, so I ended my reverie, went to the 24-hour bodega and bought some crack pipes, and rode the subway at 3am to the Japanese bookstore to buy some tentacle porn to give to my favorite tranny hooker over by the river. I've been thinking about going on a vacation to Europe this summer, because a) everybody thinks about going to Europe for vacation, b) New York in summer is hella hot, bwah (see the posts of any New York blog from last August) and maybe a week in Scandinavia or something would involve slightly less ass sweat, and c) I have so many vacation days that I can't afford to use that if I'm not careful I'll have to take a forced sabbatical. I'm really curious about the world's opinion of America right now, and instead of reading about it on the InTerWeb, I'd like to talk to actual world-people in person, and see if I can get them to divulge their feelings about my country and its policies! "Hello, Hans, I'm from America, what do you think of me?" which BTW a lot of non-Americans hate it when you refer to the U.S. as "America," because they pretend that it slights Canada, Mexico, and South and Central America, but the whole rest of the world slights 'em anyway (except when criticizing Americans, who BTW they have no problem calling "Americans" with a sneery face and eye-roll). Anne has invited me to play a gig in the Czech Republic. Several Germans deserve a visit. My Danish friends have all left Denmark, which does not speak highly of the country I guess, and it means that I wouldn't have a place to stay except maybe with that crazy junkie I met while I was playing guitar on the street for kroner. Eep. I just used foreign currency in a familiar sense on my blog. That sucks. Ask me about the crazy junkie and I'll tell you how many Danish laws I watched him break while I was hanging out with him. Friday, February 13, 2004
I have a short workday today, for no particular reason, and that drives me crazy. What am I supposed to do at 3pm? I guess I'll go flirt with the girl at the Scientology bookstore. I'll put on my skeptic face, offer her a cigarette, and chat in that way that implies I'm open-minded and ripe for conversion, maybe over lunch. Why? Because I think the Church of Scientology owes me lunch for having to watch Battlefield Earth. OH GOD. Now I was either drunk, under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, or I had a fever, or maybe I had a concussion. I can't remember a single scene from the movie -- just a couple of still shots of Barry Pepper's flaring nostrils, which conveyed no emotion more powerfully than "I am going to eat my agent's brain after I whip it in his skull like a soft-boiled egg." Except with a lot of exclamation points, because that movie was one big gray-green exclamation point screaming "Do not watch me! Watch a bedsore ooze instead." I didn't rent it. I don't know how it got in my house, or into my VCR, or how I got onto the couch in front of the television and how the play button got pressed. But I do know that I want lunch. Two hours of free lunch.
Last night I showed my father the recent Simpsons episode that featured Thomas Pynchon, because Dad likes Thomas Pynchon. Neither my father nor my stepmother had ever seen an entire Simpsons episode, mostly because my dad has this thing where he feels that if he watches something on FOX, he is personally cradling Rupert Murdoch's balls in his mouth. An upsetting concept, to be sure -- but if it keeps you from watching the Simpsons, who's the real loser? My little half-sister, age 10, had an attack of "tummy upset" exactly at bedtime, and since we ate the same sushi I got seriously worried that I'd get a similar attack of diarrhea on the hour-long subway ride home. Turned out I was fine, and when I called my full sister, age 25, she said she was in the middle of making dinner, specifically dumpling soup, which I thought was fucking hilarious. "You know," I said, "Caroline was making dumpling soup earlier, too!" Then I laughed out loud at my reflection in the dark television screen. I got a haircut the other day, and once the initial cleanliness wore off, it started looking pretty good. At first I looked a little like Reggie. This morning I got all the way to work without realizing I had a bad case of bedhead, which you should understand is only sexy if it looks like you just finished tossing your head around a pillow in throes of orgasm. Not if you look like you sleep a lot. Not that anybody looking at my eye luggage thinks I sleep a lot. I always look like I get less sleep than Paris Hilton during fleet week oh no he di'n't! Yes. Yes, he did. Not only that, but this: the bigger of my little sisters asked me: "Did Janet Jackson release a single?" and I was like "THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SHE DID." Boo-yaa! Wednesday, February 11, 2004
So what the fuck is up with this shit? I give money to Channel Thirteen because I like public television. I give money to WBAI because I like listener-supported radio. But apparently them bitches sold my address to every left-wing organization west of Trieste, because the freaking Democratic Socialists of America sent me some plea for cash yesterday, along with Greenpeace, Working Assets Long Distance (puh-lease), and other members of the Giant Lefty Consortium of Organizations Who Think I Make More Money Than I Do. Ugh! How many red flags are fluttering madly from my file at the Justice Department? We already talk quietly about politics in our house (and only with five tape decks simultaneously playing random sounds and noise bursts in the background) to foil the microphones that we can't see but we find it best to assume are there. Often, when HTR says something particularly inflammatory about the powers that be, I will speak loudly at the chandelier: "I, Universal Donor, couldn't disagree with you more. I think our government is doing a FINE, FINE JOB. Remember the Alamo! Boobs are bad!" or whatever I think will get me off the hook. When they declare martial law, I'm gonna have to run down the fire escape and live in the sewers.
Yesterday I got my teeth cleaned at the dentist like I do every six months, and I was inordinately proud when he said "you've been flossing more." Aww, you noticed! But so after I'm cleaned I have to chat with the assistant for like 20 minutes about how much my insurance will pay, and where they'll send the reimbursement, and blah blah blah coverage cakes. When I get back to the office, I notice A HIGHLY VISIBLE GLOB OF GREEN DENTIST TOOTHPASTE ON MY CHEEK. On my fucking cheek, plain as face paint. What the fuck, dentist? What the fuck, grumpy Israeli secretary? What the fuck, cashier at the deli? WHAT THE FUCK, EVERYBODY? Sunday, February 08, 2004
People were walking out of 21 Grams the other night, which means either a) they couldn't handle the intensity, or b) they had actually bought tickets for Along Came Polly and it took them until act three to figure out that Naomi Watts wasn't Jennifer Anustown. Fucking retards. I've never walked out of a movie; I don't drop ten bucks unless I'm pretty sure It's gonna be worth it. Though I have fallen asleep every single time I've tried to watch Prospero's Books. It's good, but it makes me sleepier than a Brompton Cocktail.
Also retarded was the propaganda film before the previews where the Hollywood stuntman begs me not to pirate movies because it's basically the same as stabbing his children in the throat. Have you seen this? I must have seen it ten times now, so I've had time to think about it. First of all, this guy wouldn't be getting paid for appearing in a propaganda film if there weren't any piracy, so I really think he shouldn't bite the hand that feeds him. Also, if he's really a stuntman, he's taking work away from actors who could be appearing in the spot, portraying a stuntman much more convincingly than he did. Does he get his SAG card for that? Great! More competition for the waiters of Los Angeles. Who's stabbing whose throat now, you sanctimonious fucktard? When I used the bathroom at the theater, there was this twitchy kid in there, must have been about 22, pacing back and forth by the sinks. When a stall became vacant, I gestured towards it and waggled my eyebrows, like: you were here first, dude, go ahead. He shook his head no and looked away, started pacing harder. If you don't need to use the toilet, what are you doing here? This isn't the girl's bathroom; if you're waiting for your friend to finish his business, wait outside. You're skeeving me. lo and I ate at Burritoville after the movie, where I had two flautas, a dish I'd never heard of, consisting of tightly rolled and deep-fried tortillas filled with chicken, cheese, and pico de gallo. Right after ordering, I had a suspicion that the dish was not a traditional Mexican dish at all, that the restaurant invented them to give the Mexicans behind the counter a chance to laugh at the customers, becuase I bet "flauta" is slang for cock. Sounds plausible, right? I say "quiero flautas, por favor," and the guys all snicker ("This guy loves cocks! Everybody who comes in here loves cocks so much!") Well. We were in Chelsea, after all. My favorite line of the evening happened when we went into the subway. As I was blathering a jolly story about how many accidental deaths occur in the subway each day, lo got this look on her face like: oh shit. But subtly, just a sudden widening of the eyes. "You forget something?" I said. "Um. Yeah." A panicky edge to her voice. "What, a book or something? In the theater?" "No, I forgot about the tampon. In my bag. Which should be somewhere else right now," said lo, wearing a sad, just-kill-me-now look on her face. "Oh. Can you make it home? You could always run into the L Cafe at Bedford... or something," I said. "No, it's too late," she said with resignation. "I know I'm gonna have to wash my pants when I get home." She paused. "I'm just wondering if I'll have to wash my shoes, too." Thursday, February 05, 2004
I have a fun habit I'd like to tell you about. I often absentmindedly sing snippets of songs out loud, which is normal, you know, whatever comes to mind, or has been stuck in my head all day, or whatever. But if I feel I'm being ignored -- even after the desperate plea for attention that singing out loud represents -- I will insert the name of the person nearest me into the song. So just now, to my co-worker: "Oh she may be weeeeeary-heh-hee/And young girls they do get wee-a-reee-uh/Waaay-rin' that same-ol' shabbay dray-ee-yeh-heh-hessssssah!/But (-tah!) when she gets wee-ah-ree-yuh/ Try-high... a little ten-derness...JESSICA." Which of course makes Jessica look up, startled, like I've been talking to her for the last ten minutes and she hadn't noticed, or makes her think that I've been singing a whole song about her. You should try this. It's a lot of fun, and very, very annoying.
Now I will help you clean out your purse. Your purse is full of crap to which you have attached undue value, and you need my keen eye to purge the dross. (Will you help me with my room, though? Because I suffer from a similar but MUCH LARGER problem. I have a box on a shelf marked "clothes I never wear but can't bear to throw away" which is totally re-re, and a microcosmic example of our ridiculousness. But you can relate, right?) DUMP YOUR PURSE OUT, RIGHT NOW. I don't care if you're at work, at home, or on the crosstown bus with your Palm Pilot -- dump-a-roonie. Pick up your cash, credit cards, datebook, lip balm, Altoids Tangerine Sours, cell phone, and prescription meds. Put them back in the purse. Now light everything else on fire and kick it towards your least favorite colleague, roommate, or fellow passenger, screaming "OH MY GOD MY BABY'S ON FIRE!!!!" If the person has a soul, they should instinctively gather the flaming pile of garbage into their arms and fling themselves into the nearest body of water, which may be several miles away. It's a funny thing to do, and it cleans your purse. Please note that you can do this at anytime, especially if you carry gasoline-soaked rags in your purse. You know what's gross? People who carry their cash in their pockets in a filthy, mangled wad. What are you, twelve? Flatten out those bills, make the presidents all face the same way like a good OCD victim, crease them with a mother-of-pearl-inlaid ebony creasing wand from Hammacher Schlemmer, and tuck them gently into your pocket. Then jam your hand into your pocket and thrash it around like a wet cat, because you are hopeless. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? FUCKING GOOD! FUCK! Worst. Post. Evvah. The absolute nadir. But a different co-worker just asked me, again, if I have read the Harry Potter books yet. "YET." As if. As fucking if! These questions splinter my consciousness into a million white-hot shards of inability to think, is all. Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Also, hey. Only one awesome reader has ordered the latest issue of Fear Not, on sale now in the store. The rest of you should follow suit. It's like the blog, only better, because there are drawings! Of zombies!
I love my Pakistani bodega, because I know that if I hung out there every day, I'd never want for material. Last night, I'm picking up milk for my cereal dinner, but I've got my eye out for other foods that need to come home with me. There's an extremely pregnant lady there, too, and I mean she is ready to burst -- if she were a zit on your back I would pull you into the light, yank down your shirt collar, strap on some lab goggles, and the teensiest pressure from my opposed thumbnails would release a cubic centimeter of pus and plasma at the speed of kapow.
As I'm paying for my milk, I spot the pudding cups and the two-liter of Hawaiian Punch on the counter. The pregnant lady is tsking and sighing like this is the worst store ever, looking around all frustrated at the humongous mountain of junk food that comprises the bodega's inventory to the exclusion of everything else. (Seriously. There has never been a vegetable inside the place, unless you count the Lifetime Achievement Award-winning alcoholic guy who will shovel snow for a 40.) Anyway, staring at the junk, Pregnant Lady says "Goddamn, don't you have any junk food?!? Tsk!" Hah. She wasn't kidding, either. GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR BABY, LADY! Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Apparently, Gregorsus still has posting access.
OK, so my boyfriend and I like to hit each other. Not during sex or in any way sexually, and certainly not as abuse; no, we just get bored and whale on one another, and I don't think I ever realized there was anything particularly unusual about it until getting into the following conversation: Girl: You have a bruise on your arm! Me: Oh, that's from C____. Girl: He HIT you? Me: Yeah, but I was hitting him. (pause) Girl: Are things all right with you guys? Sure! Never better! Now here's the thing: I don't think we've ever discussed our wrestling or beating, it's just something we do on Sunday afternoons when we've been lying hungover in bed, and his roomate is watching the TV downstairs and I still haven't had coffee but I don't have enough energy to MAKE coffee, and it's 3:00 PM we've been up for 3 hours but not DOING anything, and I'm not really hungry enough for brunch and anyway he's trying to save money, and maybe we could go see a movie, but he's REALLY trying to save money and then [hit] Oh fuck you! you think you got me [hit!] yeah, that's right oh no you don't oh no you [HIT!] Ahhh take THAT [HIT!!!!!], and so it continues until I get him in a headlock or he gets my arm trapped under the couch. I really fail to see what's so weird about that, but I happen to think that most Americans these days are unduly cautious when it comes to physical contact. Don't get me wrong: I think it's reprehensible when a man uses physical power to continually intimidate and subdue a woman that is smaller than him, but some horseplay is perfectly acceptable -- hell, why not hold her down and tickle her? Once she feels overwhelmed and wants out, she knows where she gotta aim her knee for maximum efficiency. Or she could always take a tip from my own coping mechanism as youngest child of four: when faced with a larger adversary, find the largest object in sight and hurl it at their face -- a trick that got me in a whole fuckload of trouble with my grandfather. For that matter, though it isn't neccessarily right, I fail to see what's so earth-shatteringly awful about a lone slap to the face when people are arguing. Now, I honestly haven't ever really executed this move (though I have come close), and I don't think it's a habit to get into, but it does serve its purpose as the final ante-upper in the "fuck you," "no, fuck you" nature of most relationship fights. There are rules about its correct usage (once every six months, and no going back for seconds if you get slapped back), and it has to be a slap, not a smack. Honestly, though, I'm one of those pro-spanking freaks. I mean, I get annoyed when concerned parent groups start moaning about "you can't touch one hair on their precious little innocent heads!" If they need to be spanked, then spank the little fuckers. I was spanked as a child, because I was the only one out of the four children who figured out how to defeat my parents' psychology and they had no choice. For me, spanking was a badge of fucking honor. I was the one who knew they'd still love me even if I deliberately defied their orders; I was the one who didn't give two shits if they sent me to my room because I knew I was 3 and they wouldn't be able to leave me unsupervised for too long, and I was the one who knew enough to be so totally untrustworthy that they couldn't really put me on timeout for very long. Not spanking your children makes them devious little shits, seriously, because then they're able to start deceiving you. Back to adult beating: I think every relationship would be unspeakably better, and our world an unspeakably better place, if all couples took 15 minutes of each day to have a Fight Club. I'm serious. I've always said that I wouldn't ever date anybody who I didn't think I could take in a fight, if it came down to it, and I stand by that logic. Now I know that's a lot harder for you ladies and you're going to need some more cushioning, so I propose big Couples Therapy arenas be erected with public funds that would look exactly like the battle-stages for American Gladiator, wherein each man and woman would get outfitted in cushioned head gear, boxing gloves, and possibly giant q-tips, and then just fucking go for it. How fucking awesome would that be? You and your loved one, beating away at each other with a mob of thousands of couples waiting their turn, cheering you on. Afterwards falling in a helpless, exhilarated mass upon one another, still sort of feebly swinging, clinging for joy? And there would be special "Singles Hours" where you could pick somebody out of a lineup and fight them as a "get to know you" kind of thing, and as always the designated Gay Night would get dirtier and go later. Jesus Christ, rather than protecting marriage through yet more tax cuts and appalling constitutional amendments, this is what our Government needs to do: install thousands and thousands of Marriage Mayhem Arenas. I'm serious, wouldn't this make life better? Sunday, February 01, 2004
I am not proud of being a smoker, but at least I don't have any illusions about it. My name is Universal D., and I'm a smoker. I smoke a certain amount of cigarettes every day. In order to succeed at this fairly simple task, I must have access to those cigarettes, and I have found that the easiest way to get cigarettes is to buy them. That way, see, I don't have to bum cigarettes off other people, neither friends or strangers.
Why is this such a difficult concept for so many smokers? If everybody exercised just a little bit of forethought, nobody would ever bum cigarettes. YET I AM CONSTANTLY HOUNDED BY PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BUM MY SMOKES. What the fuck? Squirrels are better prepared than you fucking assholes. Is it a matter of denial -- you don't want to admit you're a smoker? Fuck you. Is is that you don't know how many cigarettes you need during the day, so you are constantly underestimating? You smoke every day. CAN YOU COUNT TO TWENTY? Are you like the dude in Memento, repeatedly surprised by the tattoo above your nipple that says "you are a smoker"? I can't remember the last time I bummed a smoke from anyone. Because I have a brain and I therefore I always have cigarettes. Maybe it wouldn't bother me so much if I weren't so fucking magnanimous and empathetic. I simply cannot say no to a request for a cigarette. Here, take one. Homeless? Take two. I understand the pain of the nic fit, that it's as powerful as that crack hunger that sets in five minutes after your last rock. My nic fits never last long, however, because unless I'm watching a Lord of the Rings movie in a theater, I have access to cigarettes and the flame to light them with. I always have an extra pack with me, and I bring two extra packs if I'm going to a party. And there's nothing I hate more than the disingenuous and insulting offer to "buy a cigarette," offered by fuckwads on the street -- they're daring you to be a dick. Holding out the two quarters that they think oblige you to give them a cigarette even if you don't take the cash. Well fuck you twice, asstard. Thank you for acknowledging that smokes are expensive. Why don't you rub those four bits together until you have enough for your own stupid pack? Today, for the first time ever, I put my foot down. I was tying my shoe on the street, hunched over and busy, when some dude spotted the stick in my lips and said to my back "yo I could get a smoke?" I didn't look, but said "yeah, hold on a sec." I took my time, tied my shit real tight, and stood up to see some 16-year-old homeboy looking disinterestedly at the sky. I gave him the smoke and asked if he needed a light, another act of politeness programmed into me by my Miss Manners upbringing. Kid didn't even say thanks. I take TWO FUCKING STEPS and a goofy-looking hipster kid is right in front of me, saying "hey, could you possibly spare a cigarette?" "Did you just see me give a smoke to that kid?" I said. "What?" he said, puzzled. "No...." "Well I'm sorry," I said. "I can't do it. Not two cigarettes on the same fucking block." "No, of course not. Sorry, dude. Thanks," he said, walking sheepishly away. Still, I'm a retard. It took all my willpower not to turn around, chase that hipster down, and shove a Camel into his goofy paw. |
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" |
