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Jeremy Broomfield



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PRAISE & REVIEWS

"[UD] is a genius."
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"[Claudia] is fucking awesome, and [UD] is a genius. And vice versa. You should all buy Fear Not."
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and here's something
weird: my place
in Humor 3-space

Tuesday, November 18, 2008
 
AIRLINE TRAVELERS
So on one of my flights back from the Caribbean, I witnessed a bizarre exchange between two passengers. I must have missed the moment that touched off the conflict, but when I tuned in, this French Architect-Looking Guy was placing something into the overhead compartment above the Tweedy Businessman, who looked like a skinnier version of Donald Rumsfeld:

BUSINESSMAN: [unintelligible, but aggressive.]
FRENCH ARCHITECT-LOOKING GUY: I am zorry -- what did I do wrong?
BIZ: It's just courtesy.
FRENCH: I don't understan'.
BIZ: I'm not trying to engage you. Just sit down and behave yourself.
FRENCH: (Momentarily stunned.) I waz be'aving myself.
BIZ: I'm not engaging you. You're engaging me, now.
FRENCH: (Totally baffled, sits down next to his girlfriend, two rows ahead.)

The only logical explanation for what I saw was that Frenchy had, like, touched BizMan's property, up there in the bin. BizMan's stuffy, matter-of-fact rudeness, combined with his totally bizarre verbiage -- "engage"? -- made me want to hurt him. But because hurting people physically is wrong, I felt a seldom-used part of my brain spin up: the part that crafts triumphant, withering monologues that leave foes limp and cause spontaneous applause from onlookers.
     I used this skill very often in my teens, mentally lacerating all manner of tormentors. I have never actually spoken one of my mental paragraphs aloud, ever. But for your amusement, here are my two imagined drafts, which were to be given to the Rude Businessman, to punish him for his poor ambassadorship:

THE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BUDDHIST VERSION
UD: You are a sad man, with sickness in your soul; a slave to your pride, your possessions, your ego, and your anachronistic, haute-bourgeois notions of courtesy. No matter how you try to convince yourself that you are happy, at some level you know what I say is true. Your soul-sickness poisons everything you touch, and this makes you a very unpleasant person. I could never wish harm on the sick and enslaved, and there is a chance that one day you may awaken from your sleep. Until then, I wish you peace, joy, and freedom from suffering."

THE SPOOK VERSION
UD: (matching BizMan's pace and walking next to him, looking forward.) Hey. I saw you speak to that man on the plane. Now, I can't be sure where you learned to talk that way. But if you learned it where I think you did, you should know better than to speak that way in front of civilians.
BIZMAN: Excuse me?
UD: You will not be warned about this again.
BIZMAN: I don't understand what you're talking about!
UD: (Pauses for three seconds.) This conversation never happened. (Walks away immediately, preferably through a door marked "Restricted Access")

0 comments
Friday, November 14, 2008
 
RAIN IS DUMB
Rain is good for crops, rain is good for the desert, rain is good for Manhattan sidewalks drenched with horrid midsummer dumpster effluvia. Rain is not good for when I'm sitting on a beach with only a towel, a cell phone, and a very big book. Cruel rain, why did you choose this beach to drench? I can see that in your cumulonimbus caprice you spared the neighboring strand. Fie. I could not have run to shelter, for when I run I look common.
I am wet. And worst of all, I will receive no sympathy from my temperate continental readership. "Oh what's that? Did Little Lord Fauntleroy get some wawa on his silken pantaloons? Pray, instruct his governess to fetch a stout rod with which to thrash him, and the jar for collecting his tears."

MILLIONAIRES ARE DUMB
According to this article, a chap named "Baby" (or "Birdman"), who runs the Cash Money record label, gave profitable artist Li'l Wayne a briefcase full of cash for his birthday. $1,000,000 cash, to be specific.
Hey -- Baby Bird Guy? You are a thoughtful and generous person, there can be no doubt. But you know who could really use $1,000,000? How about almost anyone in the world other than Li'l Wayne. Seriously. Pick someone at random from a list of the world's population. The odds you will pick an existing millionaire are lower than your odds of hitting the actual lottery.
This makes me almost exactly as ill as people who rend their garments and empty their piggy-banks over the mistreatment of various animals -- be they livestock or test-subjects -- while seemingly unconcerned about the vicious mistreatment of HUMAN BEINGS in (e.g.) the nearest penitentiary.

HUH?
Was that a weird transition for you too?

INTERVENTION
If you haven't seen the episode of Intervention starring Allison the all-day aerosol-huffer (see some blog I found for a recap), you have not fully bathed in the fecund pool of contemporary reality television. So many shows ensnare feckless B-list celebrities in situations that force them to consider which is more important: 1) a fleeting table-scrap of fame, or 2) whatever threads remain of their shredded dignity. Their decision is obvious from their presence on the airwaves, as I'm sure there is a clause in celebretard reality-show contracts specifically prohibiting dignity, under penalty of law.
A&E's Intervention shows people in the grip of addictions so dehumanizing that dignity is like a long-forgotten gewgaw at the back of the drawer in an attic, and fame a total abstraction. But the moeny-shot is that it often (though I've heard not always) shows an unlikely -- but real -- happy-ending-style return to dignity. Unlike Dancing with the Stars, which always ends like a burst hemorrhoid. Just watch the humanity: YouTube parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

A RETAIL STORE IS A BAD PLACE TO RETAIN THE CAPACITY FOR LOVE
Recently, at more than one big-box retail shithole, a bored, atonal cashier has called me for my turn to consume by saying "May I help the following customer?"
My immediate thought was: who? Shouldn't a name follow that statement? As in "may I help the following customer: Bob Carver" or, for another example, "hobos will be fellated by the following person: Ann Coulter"? The statement should not be succeeded by silence or slack-jawed eye-rolling until I approach.
May I suggest a substitute for "may I help the following customer?"? It's a word with much to recommend it: it's succinct, easily understood, and proven effective over the course of many decades: "next". Try it. Until you do, I'm gonna start shouting it in response to your long-winded nonsense. I will change the world with my curmudgeonly vigilantism.

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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"
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"drownded"
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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.
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tattoos in the Courier font
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any use of Comic Sans