Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (16 page)

And what’s “funky” about that, then? Eh?

LOST

Lost interest.

LOW-CARB POTATO

Today we know that carbohydrate is dangerous both morally and spiritually. Previously spuds were cursed with a sizable carb content—they were famous for it. People used to say: “Have some spuds, they’re good for you. Spuds are full of carbs—which is a food group.”

But now researchers at the University of Florida have developed a new breed with 30% less carbs than the standard baking potato. “When it comes to beautiful potatoes, this one is a real winner!” assured Chad Hutchinson, assistant professor of horticulture at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. He went on to eulogize its light yellow flesh and “smooth, buff-colored skin.”

Now,
that’s
science.

GEORGE LUCAS

Obsessively secretive movie mogul George Lucas spent years up in his Skywalker Ranch (crazy name, crazy ranch) plotting the second trilogy of
Star Wars
films. The renowned filmmaker, who last made a decent film during the final years of the Carter presidency, would spend hours explaining to his minions how the first
Star Wars
film was actually not the first film but, in fact, simply the fourth episode of a twelve-part saga.

There’s a whole new backstory concerning Anakin Skywalker that will show everything we already know in a new light. And there’s a Rastafarian frog called Jar Jar Binks. These new films, he would continue, would be far superior to those earlier works because they are “digital.” George Lucas loves “digital”—in the late 1970s he was one of the first people ever to buy a digital watch (it could perform Beethoven’s
Für Elise,
which used to drive everyone on the
Empire Strikes Back
set absolutely nuts). In the twenty-first century, his prime mission has been to change worldwide cinema technology over from film to digital projection. The new
Star Wars
films, which history would see as his true masterworks, would display the first flowering of this innovation’s awesome potential.

At some moments, after spending many hours in front of the bluescreen, one imagines he would become distracted and cackle: “They laughed at
Howard the Duck.
A film about a duck called Howard? Don’t be stupid, they said. And . . . well, maybe they were right. But this time! This time I’ll show them all. These three films will define the landscape of the blockbuster in the early years of the twenty-first century. At last, Spielberg will be my bitch!

“What’s that you say? Someone who actually knows about making half-decent movies is doing
Lord of the Rings
? Yeah, well . . . Those guys haven’t reckoned on Jar Jar. Ha!
And
I’ve got Christopher Lee . . . What? They’ve got Christopher Lee, too? Oh . . .”

Sadly, George was so distracted by the awesome potential of CGI technology that he turned the most loved film franchise of all time into anus sandwich. This was partly because the CGI-designed Rastafarian frog Jar Jar Binks was seemingly based on 1930s black stereotype Stepin Fetchit. Not only that, but he also based the story on a script so bad that the actors found themselves physically unable to act “excited” or even “remotely unembarrassed” in front of the camera.

Amazingly, Lucas was the only prominent New Hollywood director not on drugs.

M

MAC JUNKIES

“Oh, Macs are just so much better than PCs. The operating system is about twelve times faster and they’re just so much more efficient in, ooh . . . so many ways.”

Are they? Are they really? And how the fuck would you know, when all you use them for is downloading MP3s and looking at porn? What you actually mean is: “They look nice.”

The Mac junkie will also crap on without end about how Microsoft is a big nasty corporation. No shit? And Apple’s what, then—a workers’ co-op? No, it’s a smaller nasty corporation—which uses child labor and beats its workers, whom it pays in beans, with sticks (possibly).

Do you know what Apple employees call company chief Steve Jobs? We’ll tell you: Big Jobs. Or Shitty Jobby Job-head. And that’s true. Okay, it’s not.

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS

A flourishing sector of the business world that is employed, at very great expense, by managers in other businesses to explain how to manage—in particular, how best to cut costs.

Remarkably often, consultants’ advice comes extremely close to that given by management-consultant-turned-Enron-CEO Jeff Skilling
^*
in 1997: “Depopulate. Get rid of people. They gum up the works.”

But—and this is key—
do not
get rid of any management consultants. Or you’ll be really fucked.

NELSON MANDELA, PEOPLE COMPARING THEMSELVES TO

In a major interview to coincide with the publication of his autobiography, Bill Clinton revealed that what got him through the Lewinsky scandal and Starr inquiry was the example of Nelson Mandela—who had been in pretty much the same situation.

Clinton said: “[Mandela] told me he forgave his oppressors because if he didn’t they would have destroyed him. He said: ‘They took the best years of my life. They abused me physically and mentally. They could take everything except my mind and heart. Those things I would have to give away and I decided not to give them away.’ And then he said, ‘Neither should you.’ ”

Mandela got into his spot of trouble by fighting one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived, apartheid. Clinton got into his spot of trouble spunking on a young woman’s dress.

Mandela was jailed for twenty-seven years. Clinton was told off a bit.

Martha Stewart, speaking about her impending incarceration for insider dealing in 2004, said: “I could do it. I’m a really good camper. I can sleep on the ground. There’s many other good people that have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela.”

Stewart’s situation would indeed have been identical to Mandela’s—if only Mandela had owned a business empire worth $800 million and been jailed for lying to investigators regarding a suspicious stock sale.

Actor Johnny Depp, meanwhile, was so miserable working on the TV detective show
21 Jump Street
between 1987 and 1992 that he tried to get himself fired by pulling stunts such as (and this is true) setting fire to his underwear. Speaking years later about his heroic struggle, Depp said: “I was like Mandela, man.”

How true. And what if Depp had not managed to break those manacles of oppression? There would have been no
Finding Neverland.
All together now: “Free-ee Joh-hn-nny Deepp! Free-ee Joh-hn-nny De-epp!”

In the world of international celebrity, you don’t need to have been imprisoned to stand comparison to Robben Island’s most famous inmate. Or have any discernible beliefs. After all, in his brave fight for what was right, what exactly did Bill Clinton stand for? La la la. Clinton Clinton Clinton—Old Billy Clinton: What did Big Bill C, 42nd President of the US of A, stand for? Nope, nothing coming. Ah yes, that’s right: blowing his saxophone, staying in power for a while, having his saxophone blown.

There is, though, one major similarity between Mandela and Clinton: They are both black. The writer Toni Morrison called Clinton “the first black president of the United States.” He wasn’t though, he’s white—we’ve seen him on TV. And it’s a funny sort of “black president” who, during the 1992 primaries, would fly back to Arkansas, where he was governor, to oversee the execution of brain-damaged black man Ricky Ray Rector simply to look tough on crime.

Maybe Toni Morrison just meant that he was really into hip-hop. Or that he likes saying the words: “You go, girl!”

MARKETS’ REACTION, THE

Whenever a new terrorist catastrophe hits a major Western city, the first thought on every citizen’s mind is:
Hmm, I wonder how my shares are doing. Oh, that’s right, I don’t have any. Still, I wonder how other people’s shares are doing . . .

This is why, following the 7/7 London bombings, news networks speedily escorted viewers and listeners away from the sites of the atrocities and toward the City of London to discover how “the markets” might be affected. And what did our market reaction correspondents tell us? Stocks remained “resilient” throughout trading. Thank God.

Showing touching concern for their War on Terror comrades, our own Fox News even discussed how to capitalize on all the murder and maiming. Washington managing editor Brit Hume told host Shepard Smith (great name, Shepard) on air: “Just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought,
Hmmm, time to buy.
Others may have thought that as well. But you never know about the markets.”

Those markets, eh? What are they like!? You just never know. If we dare tangle with their mysterious workings, they’ll be liable to strike down upon us with great vengeance and furious anger. They’re like Dennis Hopper meets Krakatoa—on crack! One flick of the tail and, seriously man, we’re all goners. If only these terrorists knew what they were messing with . . . well, then they’d be sorry.

To be fair, Hume did get some flak for positing 7/7 as a great day for bargain hunting. But maybe using the instability to make a killing is actually a noble way of doing our duty. After 9/11, one media stock commentator—James B. Stewart of
SmartMoney
magazine—even urged readers to follow his example and buy shares “both as a sound investment and as an act of patriotism.”

Momentarily halt the quick-buck roller coaster? You might as well piss on the Stars ’n’ Stripes. More weirdly still, some readers responded that Stewart wasn’t being sufficiently selfish to be a true American. Surely, he later paraphrased, “Something as abstract and emotional as patriotism was heresy, and that the sole basis should be a rational calculation of economic self-interest. Anything less, they argued, undermined the markets’ efficiency and in that sense was actually unpatriotic.” To which the only rational response is: “Aarrgh!! Aaargghhh!!” And probably: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggghhh!!!!”

The message for those with capital to burn is clear: In the event of the next horrific attack on a major Western city, don’t flinch from making merry. Don’t you dare. To display even a tiny chink of respect or humanity might anger the markets. They’ll think we’re going pink. Then they’ll fuck us. They’ll fuck us all to hell. Then we’ll really be fucked. Not like we are now. More fucked.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the markets. (We exaggerate, of course.)

BOB MARLEY MERCH

But Marley is more than just the ultimate signifier of our multicultural world. He is a symbol of resistance. Particularly for middle-class white boys who have always enjoyed pretending to dig him. In the old days, this used to require some effort, such as growing some dreadlocks by not washing your hair. (Admittedly, not washing your hair doesn’t require that much effort, but it does indicate a certain stiffness of resolve.)

These days, you can see clean-cut Aryans sitting on trains playing games on their mobile phones wearing Bob Marley T-shirts and toting a Bob Marley bag. Human beings could not physically look less like they were feeling some Rastaman vibrations or were dedicated to the downfall of Babylon.

You look like Zac Efron. You
are
fucking Babylon.

MEDIA STUDIES

After three years studying “the media,” I must be a real expert in “the media.” Can I have a job in “the media” now, please? Vacuous jerk-offs.

MEN’S MAGAZINE COVER LINES

Pulling in readers (or “readers”) to
Maxim, Stuff, FHM,
and other Victoria’s-Secret-catalog-with-articles magazines is a fine art. These titles somehow need to convince discerning young men that this month’s piss-poor pictures of underdressed women are not exactly identical to last month’s. This time, they’re so disgustingly enthralling that, on opening the magazine, readers will instantly feel like pigs in shit. So they adopt cover lines like: “Special Report: The Search for America’s Hottest Club Girls.” (That’s real.) And: “Warning: Keep It in Your Pants Till You Get Home—You’ll Be Sore Tomorrow!” (That isn’t real, but it could be.) Incidentally, if any inspiration-starved editors want to use the line “This Issue Will Make You Issue in a Tissue,” they can have it.

Of course, these mags aren’t just tits and ass. They also have the trickier job of letting readers “buy into” an inspirational brand that will keep them informed about shaving . . . while still assuring them that there are also juicy pics to rub out onto. This tightrope act is seen when
Maxim
opts for cover lines like: “Sex! Cheating, One-Night Stands, and Your Friend’s Hot Sister” or “Office Sex! Naked Ambition Has Its Rewards.” Not to mention all their name-dropping like “Hayden Panettiere Loses Her Cheerleader Outfit!” or “Milla Time: Come See the Spread That’d Raise the Dead!” Which conjures up disturbing images of numerous well-groomed young bucks eagerly drooling over photographs of Milla Jovovich wearing slightly fewer clothes while zombies tear apart their flesh.

If you are such a person, you should try using the Internet. Honestly! You won’t know what hit you!

MEN’S MAGAZINE PULLQUOTES

The big, bold quotes extracted from interviews with young women to go alongside the pictures in men’s magazines are “cleverly formulated,” too. The smuttier titles inevitably pick out lines like: “I love my bum—it’s great to hold on to” or “Another woman? Sure, why not?!” or “Yes, I definitely think the readers of your magazine would have a chance with me, I really do. I’m sure they’re all fantastic lovers.”

In the more aspirational titles, when interviewing a bona fide respectable star like, say, Rachel Weisz, the interviewer will awkwardly throw in a quick question about doing nude scenes or having sex. The actress’s world-weary, noncommittal answer—something like “Well, okay . . . I guess you could say that I like sex . . .” or “Hmm, my breasts . . . whatever”—will be printed in 40-point bold curlicues to hopefully bolster the impression that she is opening up her darkest desires rather than absentmindedly wondering about lunch.