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 Ratatat: LP3 Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes Band of Horses: Cease to Begin Krauss & Plant: Raising Sand Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs 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 hospitality on parade OMG WEIRD LOVE dead amusement pks craters! all content © 2002-2007 Jeremy Broomfield 
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Tuesday, March 29, 2005
If I haven't mentioned anything about it, it's not cause I'm hiding anything from you, my turtle doves; it's only because it's so, so, same-old-song, sooooo four months ago (and four months before that, and maybe six before that, etcetera etcetera ad infinitum ad nauseam), but it's time I told you: the main reason I've been so blogligent is that I'm down to the wire on yet another roommate search. Yeah, I know. CAN IT. But it's all looking a little bit okay, maybe from where I'm sitting. I'm not inclined to jinx anything here, so I won't actually say it's all good. When it comes to roommates, I do believe in jinxes now.
In fact, the whole shebang makes me kinda shaky. Lined up behind the rental stressors, like an angry queue at the post office at lunchtime when only one window is open, are a bunch of familial obligations, though I've discharged a slew and I'm almost out of the woods here and the goalposts are in sight and if I catch a tiger by his toe, I just might have the right mix of metaphors to completely bamboozle you. But see: it was my Mom's birthday last week. Tomorrow is my stepmom's. Friday is my stepdad's. I'm helping my dad with a massive project involving a book he's going to publish for which I've volunteered to take about 300 photos of book covers in his Updike collection (do not ask, do not ask). Yesterday I hooked up my mom's DSL line; the week before I'd helped her upgrade from an iMac to a Mac mini, which by the way is a superdope computer. My half-sister is turning twelve this summer, which means that I am... let's see... oh yeah -- FUCKING OLDY VON OLDENSTEIN. I'm all jumpy and rattled. Exempli gratia: today, while eating lunch with my father at a new Mexican fast-food joint on the forty-deuce called Chip-otle [sic], I picked up my Nantucket Nectars Orange Mango Juice to give it a good pre-drink shake. Unfortunately, I'd already shaken it, and removed the cap. Juice everywhere, especially all over me, which whatever, but also all over the jacket and pants of a very expensive-looking black suit of another customer, a business-y type. I apologized and avoided eye contact, and the guy left without saying a word to me after napkinning himself off a bit. I reflected on the miracle of the new millennium -- wouldn't that same guy have decked me right in the yapper in the 1950s? Or even more recently? And mightn't he have been justified? No jury would convict -- that was a nice-ass set of threads. But he chose the path of peace. Maybe he's a Buddhist. Maybe he had a spare suit in his other pants. Or maybe he was just a fucking pussy, too scared to say anything to my face. Wanna make somethin' of it, buddy? Care to step outside? Tonight was a nice break from the everyday. Indian dinner with Foxy and PunkyDell, which was relaxing (except for the part where Foxy threatened to smash my newly-bought and dearly beloved Palm Zire 31 with a tureen of raita) followed by a postprandial constitutional in the promisingly primaveran evening air, further followed by a descent into a murky basement hole of a sake bar called Decibel. We drank stupidly expensive sake and made promises to each other and I drew some diagrams on free postcards, something I used to do all the time at bars, but I haven't in a long time. (Which reminds me of the Best Diagram Ever, which I found in a 1953 plumbing manual, thoughtfully sent to me by Isaac earlier this week. You rock, Ikeypoo!) I discovered at the bar that I am so well ladytrained that I unconsciously put the toilet seat down in public bathrooms -- even in the men's room. What a retard. I'm just a dumb animal, and I can hear the women in metaphorical labcoats slapping each other five for a job well done. Here's a message to Dominic and Mike, the two sake-soaked dudes from Queens at the table next to ours: if you're going to be so bold and helpful as to suggest that if I share the train ride with PunkyDell, she might share her genitals with me, you might consider a) shutting up, b) shutting your fat stupid faces, c) not braying your misogynist fucktarditry right in front of her face, d) not expecting me to be your new best hand-slapping buddy when you can't even master the standard three-part urban handshake, e) SHUT UP YOUR FACKING FUCKFACES! I hate bars! I hate drunk men! I hate men from Queens, especially if they are drunk, and in fucking general I hate the alcohol-fueled assumption of camaraderie that makes men think it's okay to say totally fucked-up sexist, racist, or homophobic shit to me as if I were an old frat buddy of theirs and we used to be on the same football, swimming, gang-raping or fag-bashing team. I DON'T KNOW YOU. I've only just met you, but it only took you twenty seconds to make me hate you forever and wish for your drawn-out, painful death at the hands of everyone you've ever harmed. Saturday, March 26, 2005
Hey, kids. I'm not dead -- I'm just in New Jersey, which is [insert Jersey joke here (and brace for impact from Sars, who has a special bat with a big ugly rusty nail poking out of it that she uses to hit people who make NJ jokes)]. I'll be back and kicking it live for your listening pleasure very soon, meanwhile, please stay tuned and prick up your ears for our last minute guest DJ Winston Zeddemore, late of the Ghostbusters.
Bustin' made him feel good-- for a while. But one day he "crossed streams" with the wrong guy in a bus station bathroom, and, well, you probably read about what happened after that. Tonight: Winston tells his side of the story. Back after a station break. Thursday, March 17, 2005
I work in midtown, which is ground zero for parades, and today is the most Irish of all parades, the St. Patrick's Day parade. I had to fight my way through kilted and pipe-weildling throngs of marchers and masses, ten-deep, of deluded fat onlookers with "kiss me, I'm Irish!" hats/pins/sashes on. Here are my alternate shirt ideas:
• Kiss me, I'm drinking beer at 10am on a Thursday! • Kiss me, your local firehouse is empty! • Kiss me, kilts and bagpipes are Scottish, but who knows the difference? • Kiss me, I have terrible acne scars from childhood! • Kiss me, I sunburn easily! • Kiss me before I stink of piss and vomit! Oh wait, I always stink of piss and vomit -- I'm Irish! Whatever. I'm walking with a cane and the cop won't let me cross 5th avenue to get to my office. "yuse gotta go down to fortyseckint, fwah-two, to crew-oss." I look at him, look down at my cane, and look back up at him, hoping he'll make the giant mental leap implied by my not-so-subtle glancings. But he's just really pissed that he's been assigned to manage pedestrian traffic while all of his buddies get to booze it up, tell racist jokes, and wear their fancy version of their uniforms, flashing their bare legs at each other and trying to keep gay cops, firefighters, and Irishmen from marching alongside them because everyone knows the gay AIDS is catching. Goddamn, aren't I too old to hate cops? Shouldn't I feel comforted by their presence? Well I ain't. Sometimes I like to pretend, during an argument, that I have a very close relative in the armed forces, so that I Can say things like "I support our troops and I want my brother to come home on his feet instead of in a box without any feet." I do this because one time I was talking to someone for a work thing, and I was like "what do you think of the war" and she was like "well I have family in the military, so I support the war." Does that follow? I know that there are some with the mindset that no matter how you feel about the idea of a war before it's declared, one must support it after it is for the sake of I'm not sure what. But wouldn't having a family member in the military make one awfully critical of any proposed conflict? Well, I don't actually ever really pretend that I've got a fighting sibling, because I'd crumble under cross-examination. I'd have to make up a unit, or a specialty or something. Or, like, a branch of the Armed Forces. Hmm. I could always just answer any queries with a hissed and critical "hey-- loose lips sink ships, bitch! I ain't saying a word, Ilse! Peddle your papers elsewhere!" Asterix the Gaul is not very good in hindsight. Tintin, however, holds up, despite the "comic" relief of those two cops and the stupid dog that goes "wwoooooaaaaaooooohhhww," a sound no dog in history has ever made. Dudes, there is something wrong with m' fingers, and every other word I write has a typo in it. I swear, it's gotten unbelievably bad. So no more typing for today. [e.g., here's what I just wrote, un-proofed: "and every pther word I wrtie has a typo in it. I sware, it's gotten unbelievebaly bad."] Friday, March 11, 2005
Most people don't like to read manuals, and some people don't even like small lists of instructions. Dur. The result is that people do things poorly or flat out fuck shit up. Whether it's technophobia or just laziness that keeps people from setting the time on their VCRs is unclear to me. Technophobia is very real, afflicting people regardless of intelligence, making them say shit like "I don't know how to do page numbers in a Word document -- will you do it for me?", staring at me all faux-helpless, batting eyelashes if they're the kind of girl who has always gotten what she wants or avoided speeding tickets by eyelash-batting or the occasional tit-flashing, and I'm all "I see, you can't figure out how to use the "help" menu, but you know how to program your cell phone so that everyone of your call-you- during-work- and-gossip- about-each- other friends has her own personal ringtone from a library of James Bond movie theme songs or West Coast Gangsta Rap classics. Granted, Microsoft's Help function is superannoying with its anthropomofo paperclip and its index of answers that is only slightly shorter than À la recherche du temps perdu, but I'm not your personal laziness helpdesk.
Helping technophobes with their computer "problems" can be lucrative and it can be legitimately satisfying, too, as when you elicit screams (or full-chested hugs) of gratitude and relief just by, like, changing their monitor's resolution, or running a virus-checking program. But beware of helping family members or friends for free, because if you help someone for free once, they'll thereafter consider you their 24 hour helpline for any technical problem they encounter, even ones that in the past they might have devoted five minutes to solving themselves ("I made some toast and my smoke alarm beeped! What should I do?"). It's really hard to fix someone's computer over the phone, because technophobes (let's stop pussyfooting around here: I'm talking about old people) don't know the names for things like "dialog boxes," "drop-down menus," "crystal jelly deluxe P-spot stimulating buttplug," "text entry fields," or god forbid "radio buttons." So when you fail to fix their stupid problems, their gratitude and memories of relief fade, dwindle, and morph into disappointment and resentment. You're no longer a "genius" or a "lifesaver." You're just another circuit in the giant motherboard of the computer that runs the conspiracy to make them feel stupid and obsolete. So what's my stupid point? Don't help people? Nah. I wrote the Fear Not Guide to Life specifically to help people who don't read manuals but who still want to improve their lives and who prefer their advice mixed with profanity, insults, and libel. So maybe my point is: don't help family members with computer problems for free. Charge them a lot of money. Here's some free advice, though: Don't ever run a microwave empty. I thought everybody knew this, since there are only two fucking rules for microwaves (the other rule being the "no metal" rule) and two does not seem like a lot of rules to remember. But I was proved wrong in terrifying fashion at a friend's house just one month ago. I was baking some cookies, as usual, and she didn't have an old-fashioned ringydingy kitchen timer. She's like "Oh, I'll just use the microwave to time it" and I though gee, that's smart, of course there's a timer function on a microwave. But when I check on the cookies after maybe five minutes, I see that the microwave's light is on and it's whirring as if it's actually cooking instead of just timing. It's on top of the fridge, however, so I can't see inside it. "Hey Red," I say, "What did you put in the microwave?" She pauses before answering "...What do you mean?" "I mean: what's in it right now? It's running." She must detect something in the tone of my voice, a hint of impending remonstration with a thin, sharp edge of panic. "I'm just using it as a timer, remember?" she says innocently. "Yeah but WHAT'S IN THERE?!" I insist, backing away, holding my hands up to block my sight of the machine in a futile brain-protecting gambit. "Nothing," she reveals with a horrible and timid finality. So I scream like a stepped-on cat and bravely dash to the microwave, slapping the door open button (which is normally a big no-no), risking blisters and melting flesh in the process. Red looks at me like I'm Johnny Von Weirdenpants, and so does Steward. They're like What Gives, Brah? as I'm virtually filling my pantalones with mierda. Turns out they'd never heard the rule about how you must put something, even a cup of water, in the microwave or it will have nothing to nuke but itself, and I don't feel safe around the things anyway, never have, sir, just don't like the look of 'em, and I know that the deadly waves can wiggle their way out and silently cook your innerflesh without you being the wiser, and how when you press the "door open" button while it's still running instead of pressing stop first you shower your phalanges with a deadly spray of excited particles and O god I'd better just leave the vicinity if you're gonna use that thing, let me just get behind this lead shield. Wednesday, March 09, 2005
J.Ro sent me this link to a story about how American Apparel is not the awesome worker-hugging paradise that we all thought it was. If it's true, well, that sucks. I thought Dov was one of the good guys. Dov. Dov Dov Dov. Sounds like a nice guy, with a branch in beak. Betrayed again! But in the end, I'm not really surprised. I think that the last semester of business school (if you make it that far) is devoted to all the top-level corporate scumfuckery, e.g. unionbusting, layoffs coincident with CEO pay hikes, outsourcing to third-world hellholes without child labor laws, keeping people eternally part time so you don't have to give them benefits, et-fucking-cetera. They say "Dudes, forget everything you've learned in Business School until now -- those assignments were just training to see how well you followed nonsensical or dangerous orders from near-strangers strictly because they were in a position of "authority." If you made it to this semester, you have proven that you have no spine, conscience, or heart. Congratulations. Here's your very own copy of the CEO's Yellow Pages. (It's got a section for thugs and goons, in case you need "crowd control" at that union rally. It's got Rolls, Bentley, and Lear dealerships. It's got a registry of nubile "executive groupies" in every major and many minor cities. And so on.)
Furthermore, I believe that at the end of it you are sworn to secrecy about what you've learned, and you are taught how to handle criticism or accusations about those final lessons: how to flat-out deny it; how to brush it off and change the subject; how to laugh heartily as if you were amused by the concept, shaking your head at your critic's paranoia. Viz Nike CEO Phil Knight in The Big One, when Michael Moore accused him of using 13-year-old girls in his Asian factories: PK: No, not 13. MM: No? Are you sure? PK: We use 14-year-olds. [Aaaaaaannnd.... scene!] God, it's boring, complaining about corporations. So back to something fascinating: my health. The hernia surgery incisions will be inspected by the surgeon later today, and I'm sure everything's fine in that department. There's almost no pain in my abdomen at all (unless I cough really hard, which causes this weird sensation in my belly button) and the most lingering ill effect, as predicted by Raekool, is a tenderness in my right nutsack. Ouch. And now, to the indirect effects! Longtime readers might be able to predict this, because anything from a rise in the humidity to falling ratings for Survivor can do this to me, but here it is: back pain. The surgeon nixed certain exercises from my normal routine, and in response, my lower back has pulled out the old repertoire of spasms, aches, shooting pains, and stiffnesses. I am still, therefore, walking with a cane. I think I love this cane. And I love you. |
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" |
