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 Dan Deacon: Bromst Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes 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 © 2002-2010 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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Wednesday, October 27, 2004
When looking for roommates, I try very hard to mask my identity, using a dummy email account without my name on it, using only my first name in all correspondence and messages, etc. This is because googling me sends you directly here, and I would rather my first impression on a potential roommate not be the bilious alter ego I use to write this blog. Now you might say that forcing applicants to read the blog would be a good way to weed out the incompatible, and I might agree with you in theory, but in practice I am very lazy and I usually only have like six people look at the place and though I will generally end up with someone who would vibrate with sympathetic laughter while reading this site, the rarefied, best-foot-forward/ first-date protocol of roommate searching precludes whimsy and cynicism. It's all faux up-frontery and gushing earnestitude. Honesty is desired in higher than usual concentrations, but don't go admitting that you sometimes clip your nails on the couch while watching QVC, letting the clippings hurtle willy-nilly towards the beverage glasses of your companions.
But Hotmail went down during the search process, and I had to communicate using my work email address to one prospective tenant/roomie. I forgot that I had done this when we met, and our first conversation included this exchange: SHE: So, what do you do? UD: I work at a [blah de blah about my job]. SHE: Uh-huh. That's cool. What else? UD: What else? Well, I'm in a band with some friends [blah blah blah bandcakes]. SHE: Mm-hmm. What else? UD: Oh. Well, I publish a zine, and -- SHE: [unable to contain herself] Yeah, I think I saw that. UD: Umm? Really? SHE: [giving away the gag] I totally googled you! Which ended up not being creepy, because I do the same thing all the time. (And as it turned out she was totally cool with the site and would have been an ideal roommate except that she was planning on moving back to the West Coast in a few months, and I need someone for longer. (If you're reading this, JL, I mean it: you're the balzac and I wish you didn't have to Capistrano yourself into the sunset.)) We googled her back (fair's fair), we got a lot of hits for a professional pool player with the same name. We laughed and talked trash about her bitchy opponents. So what is it with an alter ego? I find that without one, the act of creation is much more difficult. I've had songwriting dry spells as Jeremy Broomfield, even as Tex churns out cowboy zombie tunes like a horse makes poo. Universal Donor can write for an hour straight on any topic at all, while the primum ego (?) blows spit bubbles at a blank word-processing document for an evening. What is the mechanism by which the alter ego works? If you write as someone else, are you responsible for what he says in the same way you are responsible for what you write above your own name? Our pal V. would say definitely yes, but I submit it's more complicated. Richard Bachman's work was a bit trashier than Stephen King's, and maybe not as good -- but it was still better than most other offerings from the genre at the time. So what? I dunno. All I know is that I, Universal Donor, feel comfortable calling Lance Armstrong a wife-beating niece-fondler. An alter ego is like a heavy parka that I put on to ward off the chill of writer's block -- and wearing a parka, I'll go places I'd never go in a t-shirt. 0 comments |
OTHER REVIEWS: Scrabble NEW! 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" - misuse of reflexive pronouns, as when someone says "Please talk to Bob or myself." Come on people now. "Myself" is not just a fancy version of "me"! LEARN IT. - tattoos in the Courier font - any use of Comic Sans |