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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Saturday, October 29, 2005
Colonel Larry Wilkerson is totally fucked, career-wise, but he's my hero of the week. He's Colin Powell's former chief of staff, and he gave a "talk" at some DC organization called the New America Foundation. I have no idea what the NAF is about, what they stand for, what they believe in, who they give money to, or who they try to bribe for a good seat at the fancy restaurant. I don't even have the energy to check out their website, because I spent all my energy formatting the transcript of Col. Larry Wilkerson's talk so that it looks nice. I made it that way so you could read it, so go ahead, right-click and download this Word doc: Col. Larry Wilkerson's talk.
Just cuz I formatted the whole thing doesn't mean I read it, but the whole reason I got interested in the first place is that Jon Stewart played a video clip of him saying this: COL. WILKERSON: ...Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety-blank man in the world? He was. [nervous laughter from the crowd] Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met...[pause]... a dumber man. Woo hoo! Awesome! Not the wisest thing to say, maybe, and he frets at one point that he maybe is being a little too candid, but then he's like "fuck it" and keeps going. I think it's a case of a dude playing to the crowd in front of him without proper regard for any cameras pointed at him. Don't we see this all the time? It's amazing, maybe, that people in positions of power could be so un-media-savvy, but half the hilarious clips on The Daily Show's news segment are the result of this syndrome. It's a scary thing, public speaking, and the desire to entertain is powerful, powerful stuff, and it makes people say the stupidest, awesomest, most ill-advised things. Executives read little books so to better prepare churchy ice-breaker anecdotes or slightly dirty jokes, depending on whether they're addressing the entire staff or just the board. The podium makes demands. You gotta make the people laugh, and if you don't have a store of jokes, you've got to resort to embarrassing personal stories, juicy gossip, or nasty snaps on, say, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. The actual President does this all the time; he's not comfortable with formal ANYTHING, especially press conferences, so he tries to turn everything into chatty, jokey little bull sessions, like he's pals with the press corps. Have you seen this? It's fucking embarrassing -- he still thinks he's the life of the party, and he still thinks that that's something to aspire to, even in his position. Oh God. Rove and Cheney must look at each other with wonder ever day, still amazed that they passed off a monkey for a human being and the American People bought him. Back to Colonel Wilkerson: it's too bad if Larry's desire to entertain costs him socially or professionally in DC, but it's so goddamn refreshing when somebody tells the truth about the people in charge (and it'll happen more and more often now that the ship is finally sinking; the rats will squeak as they climb the ropes to the dock). Maybe it won't hurt him that much. After all, Doug Feith resigned in August, and if anybody deserves a heaping helping of shit, it's him. Look at his picture -- he looks like an honest-to-god, old-fashioned village idiot. Seriously, doesn't he look like he's about to ask for pie? And then ask for pie over and over again for half an hour? During a cabinet meeting? Like this secret recording from a meeting during the run-up to the war: SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Thanks, Wolfy. We'll have the legal boys flesh that out and dash it over to the hill. Anything to add, Doug? UNDERSECRETARY FIETH: I want pie. I want pie. Is there pie? Cuz I want it. Pie. Pie pie pie pie pie! Where's my pie! I want pie! Dougie want pie! Pie Pie! Dougie pie pie! ...and etcetera. Sorry about the partisan content, folks. I usually refrain, for the sake of those readers who like to pretend that I don't hate everything they think they stand for. But I couldn't not get political today. Like Del said: Hats off to Larry. Boo-yaa. Friday, October 21, 2005
YET ANOTHER SUBMISSION OF MINE
REJECTED FROM "METROPOLITAN DIARY" Viva culture! This afternoon I walked back into my office building from Au Bon Pain with a baguette tucked under my arm. Tony, the second-shift porter, slapped David, the day porter, on the arm to get his attention. He pointed at my bread, saying "Dat's da one." David replied "Ah," and nodded. When I looked at Tony like dude why are you pointing at my bread, in explanation he pointed even more vigorously at the loaf and said to me with conviction: "Dem shits is good." As I could hardly argue, I smiled and went up to my office, where I slaughter small children. Wednesday, October 19, 2005
My life is one long search for a comfortable place to sit or lie down. Sometimes this search fades into the background, during long periods when my back, for whatever reason, decides to give me a break. But the urgency is renewed instantly when something goes spasmy like it did just as I was trying to go to sleep last night. I won't go into the detail, nor will I try to concoct elaborate metaphors of agony. But I will show you a picture of something that looks very comfortable to me. If I were in the market for a large jet from which to run my business, high above the quotidian concerns of surface dwellers, I would strongly consider the AirBus A380, basing my decision solely on this "artist's conception" of what the interior could look like. It looks real enough to me, even if it is just a 15-foot section in a warehouse somewhere. That thing's bigger than my apartment!
---------------------------------- Every once in a while, a conversation or article (or, like, an associative word) will remind me of something from my past or childhood that I had completely forgotten about, which essentially means that I hadn't thought about it since before 7th grade. Like here: if I say the name "Gunther Gebel-Williams," does it mean anything to you? As a hint, here's his picture, which I love, and which bizarrely looks gay -- awesomely, powerfully, Roy-maulingly gay, but gay nonetheless; check it out: (hint picture). Did you look at the picture? I could tell you did, because there's a little bit of gay on your lapel (no, not you, sir). Okay, so as hints go it's a pretty easy one. But I heard Gunther's a pretty easy one too! Oh snap oh no you di'in't! Oh yes I di'id! Tsk! Williams was the rugged Aryan lion tamer (is that term obsolete? Do you say animal trainer now?) for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus when I was a kid. But so as soon as I heard my coworker mention his name during a conversation about the circus, memories came rushing back to me, first in incoherent chunks and then a little bit more sensibly, eventually slowing to a seepage, and finally to the point where the memory flood has slowed to the decomposition speed of U-238. I don't have a billion memories about Gunther Gebel-Williams, after all. Who does? You know who does? His cats. I bet that immediately after each one was born, he sedated its mother so he could get close and then pried its damp little eyelids open so that he'd be right there and imprint on them as mother/protector, instead of their legitimate, furry mommy. And that's just the beginning of the abuse: big cats can run really fucking fast when they're chasing an impala, eland, kudu, or some other animal that only exists in Africa or crossword puzzles. But I bet he doesn't let them run. Who could afford a place that big? Even if you built a giant "cat run" you'd have to, like, put a dome over it, or enclose it with several concentric rings of electrified fence, because cats also love to climb shit and they like to escape and they hate being enclosed. Cats would make great spies -- if they weren't so lazy (The Rosenbergs rarely took a break to nap in a sunbeam). But will Gunther let his cats be spies? Nope. What a jerk! I shouldn't joke around so much -- some people, like for example this guy, actually take this issue so seriously that they are willing to dress up like "the devil" in public on a day other than Halloween.* I put the devil in quotes because I think it's pretty presumptuous of us to presume we know what the devil would look like if he existed. But actually that last sentence is an ironic metacomment on the PETA dude, because it's just the kind of pedantic, hyperliteral complaint that superserious protester types are always yappityflapping on about, no matter what the discussion. Like one time this girl stopped me in midsentence to correct my usage thusly: "Um, what you're referring to is the vulva, not the vagina. You should use the correct term, because so many people get it wrong." Later she almost removed my head when I mistakenly used the degrading term "Suffragettes" to refer to the members of the Suffragist movement. She was of course correct in both cases, but we were just in a private living room, shooting the shit, you know? It's not like I used the wrong terms on like Sesame Street, tainting the minds of children for years to come. And in defense of the Suffragette error, it's less a result of any deeply ingrained misogyny as it is the result of watching Mary Poppins a billion times too many.** Whoops got a little tangential there. My point was gonna be about how the memory came back to me after years of being completely suppressed. J_____ said his name and my brain recognized the sound pattern, the pleasing series of three two-syllable words with the stress on the first, the second syllables all containing schwas and all mumbled almost to the point of elision: GUNthur GAYbul WILyums. It sounds soooo good. Whoever picked that stage name was a genius, because it feels so good just to say it that it's almost its own advertisement. I wonder if the Ringling Brothers (see below) noticed that? They must have an instinct for the ear-catching turn of phrase, descended as they are from carny barkers who had to get you in the tent with your nickel in your hand before you walked past their tent.*** Hmm. That was kind of a digression too. Speaking of promotional speech, the page I got the picture from is pretty fantastic -- breathless RBB&B promotional pap that starts out with a bang: "From the moment Gunther Gebel-Williams stepped into the giant steel cage of The Greatest Show On Earth®, he was destined to change the face of the American circus forever." Wow! What a first sentence! Don't you want to see that guy? He's got destiny! He stepped into it! Into Destiny! Step Into Destiny. Also, you may be interested to note that The American Circus has a face, fagodsake. Gunther changed it, but it exists. Anywhey, the whole thing is pretty great in a similar vein. The page reveals that he starred in a made for TV documentary called My Father, the Circus King. I also love how in the world of PR that produced this, "over twenty-five years" always becomes "more than a QUARTER CENTURY" (emphasis mine, but can't you just feel the all caps in that term, and hear a deep booming bass voice over the PA system? I can). Anybop, digression digression digression. If I had an original point, it's inextricably snared in the Sargasso of my digressions. I think I was going to say that it was cool how hidden in my brain Gunther Gebel-Williams had been, how deeply lost to my conscious mind, but still there, waiting, waiting, a sleeper cell of information and memories, activated after all those years underground. I seriously think it was deep enough that if you had asked for his name in a trivia context, where my retrieval of arcana is top notch, I wouldn't have been able to access it. Heh. This was also gonna be a quick, short post. It was gonna be the first of a new breed of Universal Donor post: old school one-paragraphers, hit-and-write, speedy gonzales, kiss kiss bang bang, die with your mask on kind of things. Guess I picked the wrong week to quit sniffin' glue. ---------------------------------- Today I've accomplished an important long-term goal of mine. It's a real milestone, so don't laugh. I've always wanted, after quoting someone else in my writing, to use the term "emphasis mine," (assuming I made part of the quote all caps or bold) or "italics mine." It seems so professional, so serious, something important in the writer's box of knowledge and tools, right alongside little foreign phrases, the difference between synecdoche and metonymy, and the proper usage of the semicolon. But more than that, somehow: a tool of someone whose life is lived among belletrists and theater reviewers, someone who quotes others so often that he feels comfortable just adding emphasis willy nilly, waking up one morning and saying "think I'll stress that clause right now! Gonna add me some italics or bold up that Shaw." And now I've joined the lofty ranks of those who have added emphasis and then acknowledged possession thereof.* Not only that, the guy is willing to actually go to hell just to observe the displeasure of animal abusers, and last time I checked, there weren't like short vacation packages or time-shares in Hades, so Mr. Protester is making an eternal commitment to confirming his enemies' pain. That's baaadasssss. Thursday, October 13, 2005
A manhole caught fire and exploded last week, and as a result I have no internet access at my office. Don't ask me how a manhole catches fire, seeing as how it's a) made of iron and b) a fucking hole, but that's what they said happened, and I got no access, so whatevs. Therefore, I can't do like 90% of the computing that I usually do. I am forced to compute from home, or elsewhere, which I hate hate hate doing. I'm sorry about the lack of posts, and if you've sent me emails and received no response, now you know why. It's not 'cause I hate you -- well, probably not. God! See how bad this paragraph is? I can't compose quality prose on this shitbox I have at home. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Soon this will all be fixed. Until then I plead for your further patience. Please. Thanks.
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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" |
