Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (15 page)

• Something featuring a Mexican wrestler.

• A baby’s first Ramones T-shirt.

• Monkeys.

Of course, no one really wants this crap. But they get it anyway . . .

EMMA:
Here you go, Gran—happy birthday. I got you a T-shirt with
PORN STAR
printed on it.

GRAN:
Oh, cheers. By the way, I never liked you, and your dad’s not your real dad.

L

LEFT/LIBERAL APOLOGISTS FOR ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS

There are some ground rules that need establishing here: blowing oneself up in a shopping center to forward a medieval theocracy involving the suppression of women and the stoning of gays is a bad thing, isn’t it? We think we can all agree on that one.

Ah, apparently not. By some crazy twist of logic, reactionary bigots who seek to plunge the world into religious darkness can become freedom fighters—a “deformed” liberation movement; the ACLU by other means. If you don’t like U.S. imperialism (and hey, even the Pentagon seems to be wavering on that one these days), you must be okay—even if what you do like is slaughtering people standing at bus stops because of their religion. So we end up with anti-war demonstrations where purportedly socialist paper sellers mingle with thoroughly fundamentalist Hizb ut-Tahrir, chatting, standing next to each other.

There’s Rosie O’Donnell, who—when not feuding with other celebrities or acting mentally retarded in the hope of winning an Emmy—fancies herself Long Island’s own Noam Chomsky. Why, during only her second week as co-host of the misogyny-fueling morning show
The View,
Rosie smacked down conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s comment that militant Islam is a “grave threat” by stating that “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.” Now, let’s be clear: We really don’t want to defend Hasselbeck. She’s like Ann Coulter as played by Florence Henderson. But Rosie, radical Christianity is many things—hateful, homophobic, predominantly white—but it’s not shouting “Death to America” or strapping explosives onto its followers’ chests. Not yet. Maybe if Hillary wins in ’08 things will take a sharp left turn.

At a later date, Rosie also told
View
viewers, “Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.” Um, actually, that makes us fear them more. Terrorist mothers and terrorist fathers mean there are little terrorists running around, playing with “Kill the Infidels” Elmo and whatnot.

Of course, Rosie is but one woman. There’s also the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who warmly welcomed reactionary bigot Sheikh
Yusuf al-Qaradawi to his fair city. (Al-Qaradawi supports the execution of all males who engage in homosexual acts and “personally supports” female circumcision. Of suicide bombers, he says, “For us, Muslim martyrdom is not the end of things but the beginning of the most wonderful of things.”)

Historian and novelist Tariq Ali has set himself up as one of the world’s premier cheerleaders for the bigots dominating the insurgency in Iraq, casting them as anti-imperialist warriors and saying: “The resistance in Iraq is not, as Israeli and Western propagandists like to argue, a case of Islam gone mad. It is . . . a direct consequence of the occupation.”

Critics of this abject moral and intellectual collapse are often accused of “Islamophobia.” But this isn’t about Islam per se. What we are talking about is Islamic fundamentalism—a fanatical politico-religious ideology that would outlaw homosexuality, kill trade unionists, institute medieval, religious feudalism . . . sort of like fascism, only less modern.

So, all things considered, if ever the worldwide caliphate is established, it seems like a few people will be in for a nasty shock:

THE MEDIEVALISTS:
Ah, honored gentlemen. If you’d be so kind as to file into this football stadium . . .

ROSIE
: Sure! I love riding buses! Can I see photos of your sons and daughters?

THE MEDIEVALISTS
: Yes, later. Now please, hurry it up. We’ve got a load of stonings still to do—and we’d just like to slaughter you all.

ROSIE
: Lovely. I like buses, you know.

TARIQ ALI
: What? You’re going to what?

HARRY BELAFONTE
: They’re going to slaughter us. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s customary among such peoples. Cigar?

TARIQ ALI
: Don’t they know who I am? You really should have mentioned this before.

THE MEDIEVALISTS
: We did.

TARIQ ALI
: Oh.

ROSIE
: Yes. Now I come to think about it, they did give some signals in this direction. I like buses, you know.

TARIQ ALI
: Well, I think it’s rude. I’m going to write a big piece in the
Guardian
about it.

THE MEDIEVALISTS
: We’ve burned it down.

TARIQ ALI
: The
New York Times
?

THE MEDIEVALISTS
: Yeah, that, too. We didn’t like the
Sunday Magazine.
Only joking—it was for being infidel.

“LIFESTYLE” MUSIC COMPILATIONS

Like all products with the word
lifestyle
attached to them, these compilations are designed for people who have neither a life nor any style. What they say is: “I do not know anything about music. Please, Clever Marketing People, target my demographic and tell me what you want me to like.”

Who thinks these things up, let alone buys them? Take the Elite Modeling Agency Compilation. As the name suggests, Elite would be useful if you needed a model: Perhaps you are a fashion photographer, or have dropped something down the side of the fridge and can’t reach it. It knows shit-all about music. Neither do
Elle
magazine or
Cosmopolitan. Cosmo
is known mainly for doing questionnaires about blow jobs, which are sometimes related to, but are essentially different from, music.

ESPN’s Jock Rock and Jock Jams series of albums are based on a false premise: Jocks do not love music; if they did . . .
they wouldn’t be jocks!
Instead of playing football, they would’ve joined the jazz choir and been beaten up by the football team.

The music label Quango has nonsensically titled compilations available for any ABC drama in need of a musical montage. Dr. Meredith Grey is crying over McHotpants? Cue up the
Mystic Groove
CD!

Describing their extensive compilation series, Starbucks says you should “Think of them as mixed tapes from a friend.” We prefer to think of them as mixed tapes from Beelzebub.

LISTS

1.
OK Computer.

2.
The Bends.

3.
Apple’s
1984
Super Bowl Ad.

4.
Johnny Carson.

5.
Shepherd’s pie.

6.
Who Shot J. R.?

7.
Bobby Ewing in the shower.

8.
The sax solo in
Baker Street.

9.
The Shawshank Redemption.

10.
The Bends.

11.
Thriller.

12.
The Bends.

13.
The video for “Thriller.”

14.
The Da Vinci Code.

15.
Star Wars.

16.
The last episode of
M*A*S*H.

17.
Hank Aaron.

18.
The Heidi Game.

19.
The Beatles.

20.
The otter.

21.
Jesus Christ.

22.
This certainly is an

23.
easy way to

24.
fill up the pages

25.
and schedules

26.
and that.

27.
Abraham Lincoln.

28.
Lake Titicaca.

29.
The Bends.

30.
OK Computer.

31.
The Bends.

32.
The Bends.

33.
The Bends!

34.
OK Computer.

35.
Martin Luther King.

36.
The Shining Path.

37.
Homer Simpson.

38.
Pet Sounds.

39.
Maya Angelou.

40.
The Bends.

41.
Godfather 3

42.
was crap.

43.
But the first two

44.
were not crap.

45.
Did you know that?

46.
I didn’t.

47.
Jesus.

48.
Jesus Christ.

49.
Jesus H. Christ.

50.
Might it just be possible

51.
to start producing more culture

52.
instead of lazily cataloging

53.
stuff that everyone already knows about?

54.
Richard Nixon.

55.
Lance Armstrong in
Dodgeball.

56.
Help

57.
I want to get off

58.
but I can’t.

59.
The Day the Clown Cried.

60.
Flea.

61.
Chuck Norris in
Dodgeball.

62.
No, really.

63.
The Bends.

64.
I’m serious.

65.
Nasty Nick.

66.
This is killing me.

67.
The otter.

68.
Super Bowl III.

69.
The Bends.

70.
Gone with the Wind.

71.
Johnny Carson.

72.
Johnny Carson watching
Gone with the Wind.

73.
Might it be possible

74.
to just be quiet for a bit?

75.
Okay then, let’s see about that.

76.
Here goes . . .

77.
. . .

78.
. . .

79.
. . .

80.
That’s better.

81.
. . .

82.
. . .

83.
Pure bliss, actually.

84.
. . .

85.
. . .

86.
. . .

87.
. . .

88.
No longer . . .

89.
hearing the worthless bleatings . . .

90.
of a moribund civilization . . .

91.
turning everything of worth . . .

92.
and integrity . . .

93.
into another shitty fucking list . . .

94.
. . .

95.
. . .

96.
Pulp Fiction.

97.
NO!

98.
Pet Sounds.

99.
NOOO!

100.
The “Where’s the Beef?” Lady.

LOFT LIVING

In the olden days, factories were for making stuff in. Poo! Smelly! These days, factories have found their proper function: as places for executive dickheads to live in while feeling superior and self-regarding.

Welcome to the “funky” world of “loft living.” This is not, as must be made emphatically clear, the same as living in the loft. Executive dickheads do not spend their leisure hours surrounded by Christmas decorations, broken train sets, and fiberglass couches that make your arms itch. No, these lofts are “funky artist spaces.” They’re “the ultimate in cool contemporary living.” Particularly if you have a “cinema kitchen” (and who wouldn’t want a “cinema kitchen,” if only they could work out what one was?) or a “colorful shower pod.”

Loft living began in downtown New York in the 1950s with beatnik artists and writers with absurdly thick-rimmed glasses taking over vast, cheap spaces in disused factories and warehouses south of Houston Street. These pioneering types all decided: “Walls are for squares! I’m gonna spend all day staring at this decomposing apple core from various points around my football-field-size abode.”

As the Urban Spaces Web site explains: “The loft offered not so much a style as an attitude. Something that would set you apart from the dull conformity of suburban living . . . The disciplined order of conventional living in specific rooms for each task was about to be eschewed for the romantic notion of the bohemian decadence of open space.”

The disciplined order of conventional living in specific rooms for each task? Balls to it. Eventually, of course, all the bohos were driven out by developers. Nowadays, far from being the “cheap alternative to more conventional housing,” loft living is actually more expensive per square foot than pretty much any other form of living. Loft spaces now generally attract the kind of person whose primary art involves devaluing random foreign currencies through the medium of computer terminal and telephone line. The kind of person who makes the average attendee at a Nazi rally look fiercely individualistic and bohemian. This is apparently quite “funky.”

But that’s just the start. With everyone wanting to live in factories, the artists have started moving into art galleries. Meanwhile, all the art is being shunted into bars. Gradually, the drinks-serving aspect of bars will be farmed out to the remaining houses. This will increase the demand for houses—because we all like a drink, however colorful our “shower pod”—and the whole crazy cycle starts again. Factories will start making stuff again, with burly overseers driving the loft dwellers out of their lofts and on to the looms. Southeast Asian economies will nose-dive in the face of sweatshop imports from the United States. America will occupy Mexico, which, after initial resistance, the U.S. populace will support as it brings down the price of salsa, plus everyone’s got bars in their houses so they’re buzzed all the time and really confused.