Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (3 page)

Don’t make the mistake of thinking his life has any meaning. Because it hasn’t. Okay? Selling lots of records in America? He’s not bothered. “People have said it sounds like she died or something like that,” he admitted. He’s very hunky with his top off and all that. But wouldn’t you chuck him, too? The moaning fucktard.

BODY ART

Actually, we think you’ll find it’s called a
tattoo.
When Picasso painted
Guernica,
it was not, as we understand it, a toss-up between a nightmarish pyramid arrangement of horrors in black, white, and gray representing the effects of fascist bombing, or a big eagle with
MOM
written underneath it. We could be wrong.

BOOKMAKERS

It is not true what your granny tells you: that no one makes money from gambling and the bookies always win. Very rich people who own horses make money from betting, as they have the information and connections to get on to a good thing. It’s old men who hang around in OTBs all day smoking, cheering for horses and dogs in a very quiet, desperate, defeated way, often abbreviating the name as if using the full name of an animal that will, in all likelihood, only cause them pain is just too much for them, who tend not to win.

If bookies look like they’re going to lose—that is, loads of people start betting on something that is likely to actually happen—they slash the odds to the point where no one will bother. If that doesn’t work, they close the book and stop taking bets. They would call this “sound business sense.” We would call this “being a bunch of cunts.”

So it’s okay to go in to the bookies and say, “I’ll put ten bucks on Mystical Dancer in the two thirty. I have it on the excellent authority of a man down the bar that it is a very fast horse indeed, certainly faster than all the other horses in this race, which is, after all, the nub.” And they just say, “Okey-dokey, pal.” At no point do they say “Mystical Dancer? Cock Dancer, more like. It’s a fucking donkey, mate. Save yourself the cash: Unless all the other horses fall over during the race, you haven’t got a fuck of a chance. And even then there’d be no guarantee, it’s fucking garbage.” But if you go in and say, “I’ll have one hundred crisp green dollar bills on
Big Bag of Bullshit
by Pompous O’Bastard to win the Booker Prize at 66–1” and some guy in Miami has done the same, and they think you know something they don’t and they might lose a few bucks, they say: “Sorry, chief, 66–1? Oh no, that should have read 1–20—slip of the pen—and, erm, anyway we’ve closed the book for fear we might not make loads of money.” Bastards.

BOOKS ON CD (EXCEPT FOR BLIND PEOPLE)
^*

We may not know much, but we do know this: Books are for reading.

Being read is one of the key characteristics of your actual book. If you don’t like reading, you’re just not the sort of person who wants to get involved with books. And this isn’t rocket science: We learned it in preschool.

The second most insane example of the audio book is the complete
Ulysses
by James Joyce. Now, this is by no means an easy book. It is a very long book—with long words in it and, famously, a really, really fucking long sentence. Not being a booky type, you may decide it’s not for you. Fair enough. But what sort of freak who doesn’t wish to read
Ulysses
buys the Naxos 22 CD set of someone else reading it for them? You can’t be bothered to read it, but you can be bothered to listen to 22 CDs? Freak.

But the first most insane example is
Finnegan’s Wake
(also by Naxos), a book that even people who really like reading get frightened of. Indeed, people who like reading so much they do precious little else, who like it so much they majored in Double English Literature with Extra Reading at college just so they could do a shitload of reading, have been known to run off down the street when someone produces a copy of
Finnegan’s Wake,
shouting “Stay back! That’s too much reading!” For this reason, we firmly believe that all the
Finnegan’s Wake
CDs are actually blank.

BOTOX

NewBeauty
magazine, dubbed by the
London Times
“The new magazine for the Botox generation,” has helpfully collected “40 Uses for Injectables.” It’s “highly experimental,” but Botox can potentially “inhibit the nerve impulses that make you feel hungry.” Furthermore, sticking it into the armpit can “completely shut off the production of perspiration.” So Botox can save you from sweating or getting the munchies. That’s right: just like Barbie.

It’s not all post-sweat, post-comestible fun, though. High-powered bankers are injecting Botox to stop looking all frowny and stressed after regularly working eighteen-hour days. One told
Time
magazine: “It’s important to look your best . . . like you can take it in your stride.”

Of course, injecting yourself with bacteria to look like you’re not tired when you really are
very
tired would make you a living metaphor for the age. Which is sort of cool. Hopefully, we’re on our way to a big-bosomed, non-frowning utopia. Hey, maybe we should all dye our hair blond and put in blue contact lenses, too? Wouldn’t that be perfection?

When the Botox generation dies, what will its ashes look like?

BRATZ

Look, here’s saucy leatherclad Roxxi, one of the Bratz Rock Angelz, playing a flying-V rock guitar and showing off her midriff and high heels. Kind of like when Britney dressed up as a Nazi dominatrix. “Hi! My name is Roxxi,” says Roxxi. “My twin calls me Spice because I like to spice things up!” Twins, eh? Eh? Wicked!

Bratz are taking over. You might have thought they were just a line of dolls, purple-spangly teenage dolls in “funky” outfits slathered in makeup. But you would be wrong. The Bratz doll is not a doll. Well, it is a doll, anyone can see that. But it’s also, according to Paula Treantafelles, who initially created the toys, a “self-expression piece.”

How this “self-expression” piece expresses itself is mainly through the prism of having the right trinkets, phones, accessories, and shoes. (Without shoes, the Bratz dolls have no feet. It’s kind of a metaphor.) They are “the only girls with a passion 4 fashion!” It’s a sort of celebutard training course for six-year-olds.

Doll designer Lui Domingo insists: “We are not making a deliberate effort to sexualize these dolls. We are making them fashionable, and coincidentally the fashions these days are rather sexy.” Not trying to sexualize them? They look like a series of Hollywood central casting whores made out of plastic!

Then there’s the passion 4 dating guyz: the “Secret Date” range of Bratz includes a dolled-up doll, plus a mystery date (one of the Bratz Boyz) and—oh yes—champagne glasses! Why not go the whole way and chuck them naked into a Jacuzzi? Bubblicious!

Then there are the Bratz Babyz—sort of what babies would look like if they decided to become strippers. And there’s a Babyz Night Out fashion pack and Brattoo Parlor playset. Because if there’s one thing babies need it’s more nightz out and tattoos. They could go out and compare their new markings: “Look, I’ve got a spider, what about you?” “Mine says ‘soul’ in Chinese.”

Bratz Big Babys (yet another range) have “Designer Diapers”—lovely frilly knickers, which they set off with highly peculiar coquettish poses. Oh yes, and earrings. And a bikini bearing the slogan
I BLOW BUBBLES
! This is also a coincidence. The fashion among babies is definitely for looking like little sexpots. Oh no, hang on . . . Even the Bratz Babyz Ponyz have colored highlights and makeup. So they’re sexualizing ponies now? Come on—if you’re sexualizing ponies, you’re definitely taking the sexualizing way too far. Or is this a coincidence, too? Are there slave-to-fashion ponies out there now, right this minute, having their tits done?

Hey, we know! How about a Babyz Self-Harm Kit? Or at least just supply the Secret Dates with Rohypnol. Or is that going too far? How does one judge? Anyway, let us be thankful that children are not generally impressionable or easily led—or we may end up with a generation of stifled, consumer-crazed fuckups. Another one.

BRITAIN’S ROYAL FAMILY

All shit.

Well, except for Prince William, whom even we—heterosexual males with strong anti-monarchist beliefs—have to admit to finding so unbelievably beautiful that we almost want to cry. Lord knows, we didn’t want this to happen. But just look at him!

Sometimes, we actually find ourselves wondering whether it’s love and start spinning involved romantic fantasies in which we both write each other poems and laugh and giggle and laugh some more.

Then, in our darker moments, we can’t stop thinking about being taken roughly from behind by Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi.

BROADBAND SERVICE PROVIDERS

While broadband service providers maintain the illusion of competition by vying to have the stupidest name, they actually collude in keeping us in a state of roiling panic.

One day, according to their fiendish plan, you might be up and me down. The next day, the situation might be reversed with me on top, cackling with a glass of something nice, while you’re down in the pit feeling abandoned like an abandoned dog feels abandoned when it’s been abandoned. Fucked, essentially.

It’s the broadband whirligig of life that makes weak, impotent pawns of us all. In fact, when Polish sociology guru Zygmunt Bauman formulated his new theory of the “liquid life,” a scary new precariousness that sees the 21st-century individual walking on quicksand, under perpetual siege, while seeking shelter from the storm in Pandora’s box (which is on fire), he had just lost his broadband connection and was being seriously dicked around by the helpline staff.

Or is it even more cosmic than this? Is it part of the divine plan, of which broadband companies are mere fucknutted minions? Is there some kind of karmic payback going on? Do we get the broadband service we deserve? Or are we randomly picked out for this torture because we’re completely controlled, both physically and metaphysically, by complete bastards? They send our instructions down the broadband cable. It’s possible. Well, probably it is—we don’t actually understand how it works.

We think it’s all of the above. And more.

GEORGE W. BUSH

George W. Bush is much vilified for reasons such as wars, oil, incapacity to eat pretzels without causing injury to himself (the freak), abolishing taxes for the rich, stuff like that—but his critics miss the central, absolutely key point: the fact that George W. Bush claims to “speak Spanish.”

Chutzpah?
Hola! ¡Sí!
Fucking hell,
¡sí!
You’d think he’d be better mastering one language at a time, and that English would be a more pressing priority. But
no, señor.
This Hispanic turn is, of course, politically motivated. Here’s how it works. In Texas, there are lots of Hispanic voters. So it helps, if you want to be governor of Texas, to get Hispanic people to vote for you. So you “learn Spanish.” It’s unclear if “speaking Spanish” means he can conduct negotiations with Mexican trade ministers in their native tongue. Or maybe just that he can almost ask his way to the swimming pool—if there’s also a mike strapped to his back. But still.

As news of his Latin temperament spread, Bush’s share of the Hispanic vote rose from around a third in the 2000 presidential election to 44% in 2004. Kerry (whoever she was) still took 53%, but the gap with the Democrats closed from a 36% deficit in 2000 to 9%—which, as any seasoned election analyst will tell you, is less. If you did some more sums you could predict by how much Bush would lead in the Latino vote next time if he were allowed to run, which he isn’t, and it would probably make for scary reading, we should expect.
¡Hola!

This is why Bush has been sponsoring massive immigration from Spanish-speaking countries—mainly Mexico, which Bush really likes because it rhymes with Texaco, but also Spain itself. That’s why Laura delivers leaflets saying “Come to America” outside Mexican wrestling matches. And why the pair of them often hit the Andalusian coastline to swim naked and free. Which, in fact, come to think about it, isn’t happening. So, actually, all this stuff about the Spanish thing is wrong and the people who concentrated more on the wars and tax cuts and stuff were right. Sorry.

As Bush’s term comes to an end, perhaps we can teach him two more words of Spanish:
“Adios, fuckwit.”
Which means: “Bye, President Bush, and thanks for everything you’ve done for us.”

C

CALAMITY PORN

The coffee-table tome of the Apocalypse will look amazing. Certainly, the dry run—
New York September 11,
containing photos of that terrible day taken by the photographers from the illustrious Magnum photo agency—is an eye-catching, one might even say jaw-dropping, document. A vivid memento of one special day to remember.

The 2006 documentary on the Falling Man was built upon the premise that we cannot bear to look upon the image of the midair mystery man jumping to his doom and so end up censoring the image. This was good because it enabled everyone to print the image again, really big, just to prove that we are now brave enough to face the image. Look, here we are: facing it.

Photoshopped images of a future London after some future flood? Horrendous, yes. But also quite cool. After all, didn’t New Orleans look dramatic? The picturesque hobos, the battered streets, the martial law surrounding the chain stores . . . and what a soundtrack: Between all the blues and all the jazz, nature could not have wreaked havoc in a more culturally enriching setting.

For years, torture was a very worthy, late-Pinter sort of subject, but now it’s family entertainment with pliers-on-body action adding real piquancy to the plots of hip television series like
Lost
and
24.
The whole taboo has really lifted of late: After 9/11, the
New York Times
said that conversations “in bars, on commuter trains, and at dinner tables” were now turning on the relative ethics of torture. It’s almost worth a supplement spread: Torture Chic.