UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
|
||
|
Universal Donor
We can ill afford another Klendathu  feed it up!
| UD email
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 
WHO LINKS TO UD? • from Technorati • from Google • from Yahoo and here's something weird: my place in Humor 3-space |
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. 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 |