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 © 2002-2008 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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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
In a triumphant return to the review page, I explain why I hate Scrabble.
"But UD," you protest, "don't you love games -- and crosswords? You should love Scrabble!" A common mistake, my child, I assure you. It is precisely because I love games and crosswords that I hate Scrabble so much: it's a shitty game that has nothing in common with crosswords. It's like saying to a World War II buff, "Hey, you like war, right? You probably love the Iraq war, right?!" 5 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Monday, March 02, 2009
RESURGENCE
So remember when I was blogging for a bit about having surgery back in October 2008? Like 4 months ago? Well, after a resurgence of my presurgical symptoms (including acid surging into my esophagus) I had some tests which revealed that my Nissen Fundoplication had "slipped" -- a kind of surgical relapse. Not a full-blown, stitches-ripped undoing, but enough slippage to require... A DO-OVER! I tried my best to console my surgeon. SURGEON: Supposedly this happens about 7% of the time after this procedure, but I feel terrible.... UD: It's okay, man. It happens to a lot of surgeons. SURGEON: (sniffling) Not to me, man. Not to ME. UD: Shh... It's okay. SURGEON: Sniff! UD: Buck up, guy! Hey. Hey! Look at me, do I seem upset? Huh? SURGEON: No.... UD: We can go again in 20 minutes, okay? But really, it'll happen later in March. Still covered by my insurance! THIS NEXT BIT IS DIRTY, SO IF THERE ARE ANY TEENAGERS READING, MAKE SURE YOUR PARENTS LEAVE THE ROOM. When I was a teenager just starting to mess around with sex, I was typically eager, nervous, and clueless. I assumed that, even though I was interested in advancing quickly to more mature sexual activities, most girls were not. Why I thought this is not wholly clear, but I blame society [shakes fist at society]. I have come to find that this was not necessarily true, but I couldn't have known that at the time without engaging in open discussion, which I viewed as a grave violation of etiquette, as well as totally uncool. Sexual beings always know what they are doing without talking about stuff. Right? Remembering my first experiments fooling around with girls, I blush. They usually happened at big sleepovery parties with a bunch of teens strewn around the living room floor. (I think parents thought "well they can't get into too much trouble that way" -- and they were kinda right.) The fumbly hookups usually went something like this:
I doubt I've gotten a whole lot smoother since then, but I am much more comfortable with transparency and open discussion. In hindsight, I think I should have said something like this: "So listen. After fooling around with you for the last 97 hours, I am about to ejaculate powerfully. Would you like to be involved in that experience? If not, I understand completely. If so, let's sneak to the bathroom and see if we can make some magic happen. Maybe we'll learn a thing or two. But at the very least it will be an ADVENTURE!" Better? 2 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Friday, January 23, 2009
Q. IS THIS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN REDUCED TO?
After watching Intervention for a while, I got a little obsessed with The Dog Whisperer. After talking incessantly about Cesar Millan, someone told me to watch Supernanny. All three of these shows are great, and they're all kind of the same. In each, some person or group of people (a family, parents, dog owners) calls a TV show because they are having trouble with dogs, children, or some kind of addict. In almost every case, the people who make the call think that the TV is going to roll on down and fix the mess by addressing the dog(s), kid(s), or addict. And in each case, they are totally wrong. The Supernanny teaches the parents how to provide discipline and structure for their kids -- and unruly behavior seems to melt away. The Interventionist explains to the addict's family and friends that the addict won't seek help as long as the family keeps providing material or emotional support -- in other words, until they change their behavior. And in my favorite of the three, The Dog Whisperer teaches the onwer(s) that they have been totally fucking with their dog's heads. You've really got to watch The Dog Whisperer to understand how awesome he is, and to see how many ways he has of helping the dogs by correcting their neurotic owners. But the entire gist of his program is that owners must establish themselves as the pack leader in the eyes of their dog(s), and they way to do that is to project a calm assertive energy, and to reward calm submissive behavior in their dogs. Dogs detect and will not follow a dog -- or a human -- who projects nervous, angry, unstable, or neurotic energy. Q. SO YOU'RE OBSESSED WITH TV SHOW ABOUT DOGS. WHO CARES? DO YOU EVEN OWN A DOG? You're right, I don't own a dog, and I've never wanted to -- until I started watching TDW. I walked my neighbors' overly energetic dog last weekend, and applied some of Cesar's techniques to great effect. I also hurt my shoulder. But since I am now obsessed with projecting a calm assertive energy around dogs, I am noticing again (as I do whenever I re-read Keith Johnstone's seminal, must-read, life-changing 1979 book Impro) the status-determining behaviors of humans. So here's my theory: In the age of television, Americans elect the presidential candidate who BEST projects calm assertive energy. Just like a pack of fucking dogs looking to be led. The adjective "presidential" is synonymous with "calm assertive." I made a stupid table to demonstrate this. Now that I look at it, it doesn't seem like very profound or new information. But, man, watching Obama at the inauguration, he was like a statue -- never moved his head unnecessarily. Very strong. No wonder he won. Policy can suck it. 6 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Tuesday, December 23, 2008
WIPING YOUR ASS WITH BABY WIPES IS THE NEW BLACK
A long time ago, a friend of mine came back from India extolling the merits of two poop-related features of that wondrous nation. First of all, she was mad for squat-johns (you should really go look at the wikipedia page right now. I'll wait here). Which I gotta say I'm pretty persuaded by a lot of the pro-squat arguments, but I can't see them getting installed in a lot of American households anytime soon. How fucking precious would those early-adopters be? I picture a Maude Lebowski-type giving a tour of her pied-ŕ-terre: "And here's my bathroom, nothing unusual here," flicking on the light and lingering long enough for the guest to get an eyeful. "Whoa. Is that a bidet on your floor?" "Oh, what? Oh! No, silly! Don't tell me you haven't seen a squat-john before? Oh they're just too too superior! American are such poop-phobic Puritans. I can't believe you've never even seen one! Sigh!" But anyway. The second thing my friend loved about pooping in India was the lack of toilet paper. She described with approval (but not too much detail) how she washed her dirty bits with water from a bucket provided near the squatty poop-hole (which I'm pretty sure makes it a "rinse," not a "wash," but whatever). I don't know what look was on my face when I heard this, but it was probably the look you have when you are trying to calculate the volume of rubbing alcohol you would have to employ to ever feel clean again after putting your hand in a communal butt-water bucket in a pestilent third-world petri dish of a country. (Sorry India!) Seeing the paralytic doubt clouding my face, she went on to justify the use of water vs. toilet paper by saying "if you had sticky mud on your leg, you wouldn't use a dry clump of paper to get it off, right? You'd use water." And you know what? I had to agree. Furthermore, I had to admit that if I got actual shit on my leg, I would be much more likely to use water to remove it than toilet paper. That was when I truly understood that toilet paper is: retarded. Totally retarded. Wasteful, ineffective, abrasive, indefensible. I don't want to use a butt-water-bucket, but now I don't want to use toilet paper either. What to do? Enter the flushable baby wipe. Faithful readers might recall that I've blogged about Kandoo before, and with typical disdain. But after hearing some outdoorsy types talk about the advantages of damp wipery -- and after seeing very macho soldier types using wipes in Generation Kill -- I now believe that Baby Wipes are about to tip. All that's needed are some high-profile adherents to provide social proof for the behavior (I'm looking at you, Brangelina), and a better product (a lot of baby wipes are not flushable. WTF? Who wants poopy cloths in their garbage cans?), marketed to adults. I think this is about to explode. I don't think toilet paper will ever fully disappear, but within a decade, it will seem, at best, a poor compromise for when baby wipes are unavailable or impractical. DON'T CALL YOUR EX BEFORE NEW YEAR'S Many of you will get lonely around New Year's because of the pressure to kiss the nearest person at the stroke of midnight. You may feel strongly tempted to reach out to an ex (or a less significant intimate acquaintance) as a bulwark against a crushing sense of solitude. They weren't that bad, right? Maybe you broke up with them in haste, or in a moment of anger. Maybe they deserve a second chance? DON'T DO IT. It's not worth it. Why start the new year by reestablishing a connection that you will just have to sever, full of remorse, when you return to your senses? And if the ex has already reached out to you? Same thing. Don't. Play Pictionary with your uncle or something -- the loneliness will pass before you know it. Or, if you can't stomach the deprivation of someone else's saliva, make out with a random person on the street -- a gutter punk or something -- and just walk away. 4 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) 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 (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) 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. 0 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Thursday, October 09, 2008
THE HISTORY OF THE PAIN
Longtime readers might know that since my early 20s I've suffered from terrible, if intermittent, heartburn. I've used many appealing analogies over the years to communicate the sensation, e.g.:
So for years and years and years I either (when I was smart) took a prescription stomach-acid reducer like Prilosec or (when I was dumber) gobbled handfuls of Tums to manage the immediate flare-ups of glass-shard agony. But over the years the problem got worse, and led to a problem called Barrett's Esophagus, which means (to quote Dr. Lexus) my shit's all retarded. Esophageally speaking. THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM But that's only part of it! The GERD and Barrett's are both symptoms of a hiatal hernia, which is not quite as gross as it sounds. See, at some point in my life -- we're not sure when -- my stomach attempted to defect from the region of the torso in which it had long resided. It moved upward in a desperate break for freedom, but, as it was attached from below by the pylorus and duodenum and so on, it could not get far, and got wedged in the hole in my diaphragm like a fat man trying to leave by the bathroom window. It petulantly refused to go back where it belongs, and though one time this massage dude stuck his hand under my ribcage and pulled it back into place, it slipped back up after a few days. Barrett's (cellular changes to esophageal cells) can lead to esophageal cancer if your cells continue bathing in flamboyant acid fountains for too many years. Surgery is usually indicated to fix the hiatal hernia, and it usually works, too. THE TESTS THEY DID Two tests I had were interesting enough to mention briefly because they sound kinda sci-fi: 1. The Momentary Cyborg Test. They implanted a monitoring capsule into the lining of my esophagus during an esophagoscopy. The capsule measured the amount of acid squirting out of my stomach and transmitted a pH reading to a phone-sized device I wore on my belt. For two days, I had a constant readout of how acidic I was, right there on my belt for all to see. 7! 6.3! 3.5! 2.1 oh my god ouch! Eventually, the capsule just detached and went on its disposable merry way. I gave the receiver to the MD, who was like: oh, look, you have acid squirting into your esophagus in great quantities. UMM YES I KNOW DUDE IT BURNS ME LIKE ANGRY BEES. But thank you for making me a cyborg temporarily, because that was cool. 1. The Radioactive Breakfast. To check if my stomach processed food at a normal pace, the Medical Establishment fed me RADIOACTIVE EGGS and then had me lean against a gigantic glorified Geiger counter for two hours. The thing looked positively Soviet, as did the technician, whose name was Igor, for real. THE SURGERY I'M GETTING So the tests said I'm a go for the surgery, which is laparoscopic (which means done through tiny holes, not giant slashings). Before you click the next link, I will warn you that it's not only gross, it's weird.The procedure I'm getting is called a fundoplication. The weirdly wrapped part of my stomach will keep the whole mess from sliding back up into the Northern part of my torso, and hopefully the gushing pain-fountain will be stilled evermore. AFTERMATH The surgery is next Thursday, the 16th of October. I'll be kept overnight to ensure that I don't start hemorrhaging or whatever, and then I'll be released into the arms of a non-sedated adult. I'll be drinking only fluids for two weeks, and then only soft foods for another two. There is a chance I will never be able to swallow gigantic, poorly-masticated hunks of gristly flesh again, but if I puree, finely chop, or just chew my damn food I should be okay. Also, there is a chance I may never burp or vomit again. And that's the unkindest cut of all. Wish me luck! POST SURGERY UPDATE: Here is a picture of my incisions. They made five holes. 0 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Tuesday, September 16, 2008
I am always disappointed by my reaction when people die. Even when it's somebody I knew fairly well, I don't usually cry and I don't usually lose sleep. Of my relatives, I've really only experienced the deaths of two grandparents, and those each happened during the callowest of my teenage years. In adulthood, I haven't yet lost anyone close enough to make me cry about it -- at least not until I got swept up in the emotional manipulation of the memorial services: nothing makes me cry more than seeing other people cry. So I worry sometimes that I'm cold, heartless, selfish, uncaring, even though I don't feel that way.
Usually, when someone dies, I think: "Yes. This is how it is supposed to be." When I think of all the ways it's possible to die, and the effort so many of my friends have put into self-destructive acts, I find it pretty miraculous that any one of us made it past 30. But most of the people I've known since high school are still alive. (I can think of one suicide, one car crash, and one overdose. But I'm probably forgetting some, right?) Still, I hear of death and think: "yes, this happens." Sometimes I even react to news of impending death, whether of the gravely diseased or the self-destructive, with a similar stoicism: "yes, they will die, as will we all." Am I sick, spiritually advanced, or in staggering denial of my own feelings? I read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest for the first time back in 1998, starting about week before I graduated from college. The first time I read it, I thought it was one of the funniest books I had ever read. The second time I read it, about a year later, I thought it was one of the saddest. I was right both times. I loved IJ from page one, and I read everything Wallace wrote thereafter. A lot of my writing style was cribbed directly from DFW, and I was so open about my love of his work that many of my friends wrote me notes of condolence on hearing of his death. I was reading Infinite Jest, again, on the day he killed himself. My friends knew how upset I'd be before I really began to feel it. But I feel it now. As is probably obvious, I'm not spending too much time crafting this half-assed eulogy, and over time I'll probably understand my grief more. But here's what I think I know so far: I love Wallace's writing style because it mimics with terrifying accuracy the way my own personal mind works. The wild, obsessive digressions, the panicked self-questioning, the endless speculative fantasy-spinning, and the total fascination with the inner walls of my skull. I didn't ape his style because I thought it was cool -- it was more like he showed me 1) it was okay that my mind worked the way it did, 2) it was acceptable to transcribe it a little more faithfully, and 3) here's how you can do it. Like many Americans, I feel selfishly, ridiculously entitled to be entertained (this is one of Infinite Jest's major themes), and therefore I feel cheated of his future work in the same way I feel cheated by the untimely deaths of Elliott Smith and Heath Ledger. But this death hits me harder. Even though I'm sure we would have found each other insufferable in person, I feel like I lost a great spiritual teacher and friend. And in keeping with the other great theme of Infinite Jest, I feel the impossibility of communicating how I really feel. It feels like a wad of newspaper in my gut. Most writers intuitively understand and accept this impossibility like fish accept water; it's so obvious and all-encompassing that it is unremarkable. And while Wallace understood the fact too, he couldn't keep from flailing against it like those Asian carp that keep jumping into people's boats. I could have watched him flail for years. But now I will just have to try on my own to ensnare the world I see with an endless ribbon of mixed metaphors, braiding sentences around the cotton-candy maypole of life. 1 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Thursday, August 28, 2008
OPERATION KABUKI FACE
Eating my spicy soup at a restaurant on Bedford Ave, I had that old familiar feeling that I got from growing up in Soho: hatred of the bridge and tunnel crowd. In this case, it was a stockbrokery type with his sorority-type girlfriend. He was touching her face a lot -- apparently attracted, moth-like, by the shiny whore-polish she had liberally applied. He was also doing that back of the neck-clamping I-own-this-woman thing that makes me want to learn to castrate someone through telekinesis. On good days, I try to sit with my intolerance, to understand its origins deep within my flawed self. On other days, I just grimace like a Kabuki or Noh actor, or someone grossly afflicted with a facial tic. Usually, if I make the face, I have the decency or self-control to look away from the person who caused it. But now I am thinking that it could be used as a form of social control, to keep the people I don't like from my neighborhood. Obviously, if I do it alone, I will just look like a crazy person, so the participation of like-minded people is essential. When you see a rampaging fucktard in the hood, make a kabuki face. I expect this to be more successful than the machete-attacking strategy allegedly employed against bike-riding hipsters by certain residents of the South side of Williamsburg. This is because the hipster population, being mostly composed of spoiled white folk with overblown feelings of entitlement (like me, like me), will respond to physical attacks like Londoners during the Blitz, going about their hip little biz and whistling all the while. 1 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) Monday, July 21, 2008
DISPATCH FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN CHINA
(July 20, Qingdao, China) The Chinese government has declared martial law in Qingdao. But don't worry, it's only for one day: the day of the Olympic torch relay. This is why we have a pregnant Australian woman sleeping on our sofa. Let's call her Yinky, since that's what her parents apparently christened her, although I still have trouble pronouncing it. She'll probably call her own child Numbat or something. Anyway, she is not allowed to return to her hotel, which is in the Relay Zone, until after the relay is finished. It seems they mistook her for some sort of terrorist. Her husband is in the Zone, but he is not allowed to leave. Fortunately our apartment is just outside the Zone, so we are still free to shelter terrorists. From the window we have a magnificent view of the Sea Wall protecting the Olympic Marina from algae terrorists. In fact, we can see the algae building up outside the Wall -- but like our Australian friend Yinky, it is unable to enter the Zone. The system works. * * * At about five past ten Thursday morning, a charming little student named Reginald* -- who I used to teach every Sunday without incident -- attempted to organize a mutiny in my co-worker Don's class. "I'm the teacher now," said Reginald, rising from his seat with real authority, "I'm taking over the crass." There was an immediate chorus of "Shut up, Reginald!" from the Siberians. Seeing that he lacked the support of his fellow children, Reginald did the only thing an unsuccessful mutineer could do: he pulled out a life jacket, proceeded to inflate it, and finally put it on, doubling his already ample girth. Rendered speechless for a moment, Don finally asked "Reginald, where did you get this?" "This? Oh, my palents give to me." Apparently Reginald's Mommy and Daddy, protective of their dysfunctional son as only the Chinese can be, had equipped him for literally any eventuality that might befall him at Summer Camp. Fortunately, Reginald's very strength is also his greatest weakness. His Attention Deficit Disorder leaves him vulnerable to the paradoxically calming effects of common stimulants like caffeine and amphetamines. Don happened to have a Starbucks Bottled Frappuccino in his pocket. "Remember how you like coffee, Reginald?" Within minutes he was slumped, barely conscious, on the floor. And since he was still wearing his life jacket, Don was fairly confident no harm would come to the little scamp. The world is safe again -- until tomorrow. That is the news from China. -- Katie Legs, China Bureau Chief and Engrish Teacher * Some names have been changed to protect our correspondent's cover. But not "Yinky." That shit is for real. -- UD 0 comments (use this link now! old comments are about to die!) |
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 |
