Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?

by Steve Lowe

  DUBAI

  We’ve seen the future and it works! Well, with the help of slave labor it works, anyway.

  Through a combination of ambition, sunshine, not levying taxes, and old-fashioned lunacy, Dubai has turned itself into the fantasy-world holiday destination of the age, offering ample parking, shopping, and money-laundering opportunities on the side. There are underwater hotels plus the world’s tallest building, and the whole thing is being run off slave labor. It’s what Vegas would be like if it had any kind of gumption at all. Have you seen all the amazing things going on over there? It’s almost like, only eight hundred miles away from the chaos in Iraq, there’s this awesome, glittering haven that’s . . . well, it’s chaos, too—but mighty fine chaos.

  The new opportunities and cheap flights are attracting people of all descriptions: 15 million of them visited Dubai in 2005, of which the largest single group were the Brits (650,000 of them). Richard Branson has an island there; Gordon Ramsay has opened a new restaurant; David Beckham, Posh Spice, and her implants have a villa. This dusty, quite deserty garden of earthly delights has become our closest terrestrial equivalent to those casino-planet pit stops the Starship Enterprise was forever stopping off at in the original Star Trek: a place where all species can kick back and where Captain Kirk’s eye will be caught by a woman with big hair and blue skin before the facade cracks to reveal the kingdom’s dark secret . . .

  In Dubai, being big is big. The most famous landmark is the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel, the world’s only self-styled seven-star hotel built on its own man-made island with a helipad on the 28th floor. Everything is covered in gold. It’s the last word in luxury.

  When finished, the $5 billion Dubailand theme park will be the world’s biggest, bigger even than Manhattan. There’s the world’s biggest mall, commonly called The Mall, soon to be supplanted by an even bigger mall inside the world’s upcoming tallest building, the Burj Dubai. The world’s largest indoor ski resort will be supplanted by another, which will feature a revolving mountain (great news for all those who see a mountain and think: Hmm, if only it revolved).

  Not having much real coastline, Dubai has built more: The artificial island shaped like palm fronds, called The Palms, adds another seventy-five miles. Soon to arrive will be an archipelago of three hundred human-made islands, roughly reflecting a map of the world, called The World. This World is a funny old world: Rod Stewart has reportedly already bought up Britain. And there’s no Israel.

  For many, this energetic display is a demonstration that only when you cut the brake cable does capitalism get really good. “In the next ten years,” reckons free-market journal Liberty, “Dubai look-a-likes will spring up around the world like variations on a theme . . . it’s either imitate Dubai, or become a petting zoo for those who do.”

  So how does it all happen? Well, through a kind of magic: an ancient form of magic called serfdom. Workers (largely Muslims from the Indian subcontinent) hand over their passports, work twelve-hour days, and live eight to a room, then send home their wages to families they don’t see for years at a time. Work is supposed to stop whenever temperatures top 100°F, which they do often, but that never seems to happen. This is because of one of the truly magical aspects of the Magic Kingdom: Whenever it exceeds 100°, there is officially “no temperature,” so work continues. “Hot, you say? I grant you, it might feel hot. But to be off the scale would require a scale to be off. And today, there is simply no temperature, scaldingly hot or otherwise. Even though we are, as you say, sweating like a pair of bastards.”

  But look, they’re happy! Oh no, sorry, they’re not. Like slaves throughout the ages, the construction workers in Dubai are often very unhappy. Puzzled by a recent wave of strikes, interior ministry official Lieutenant Colonel Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi declared: “The workers are demanding overtime pay, better medical care, and humane treatment from their foremen . . . But they agreed to their employment conditions when they signed.”

  Poor workers enslaved by the forces of kitsch: It’s very much the future! “Can I have my passport back so I can see my family again?”

  “No! You must finish building this water park made from gold . . .”

  Of late, there has been a spate of workers committing suicide by walking into traffic. (If their deaths are deemed to be accidents, their families back home receive their pay packets.) In Dubai, even suicide isn’t really suicide. That’s post-modernism for you, to match the sixty-floor apartment blocks in the shape of Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  DVDS WITH ADS YOU CAN’T SKIP

  The target group for these ads is quite small—the sort of person who wants to watch the same 40-Year-Old Virgin clip every single time they use their DVD. Because certain studios have ensured that the option of skipping the ad reel and going straight to the menu has been disabled. Ho, ho, ho, there’s Steve Carrel awkwardly describing boobs. Again.

  The other thing DVD production bastards do is stop you from skipping the copyright information—and then put it in 782 different languages, with a running time of seven hours. Just in case you thought it was perfectly legal to burn copies of DVDs but only if you went to Norway and did it.

  Non-skippable ads are like Time Warner Cable modifying your television so that if you press the MUTE button during the ads and try to get up for a snack, you get a huge surge of electricity through your sex parts. And even Time Warner hasn’t sunk that low. Yet.

  E

  EARLY IN/LATE HOME

  Wrong way ’round.

  8TH HABIT, THE

  Seven habits must surely be enough, even for the highly effective. Certainly they were highly effective enough to make author Stephen Covey a highly effective billionaire with many highly effective dollars.

  But following the initial 1989 list in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he discovered another one. And so, in 2004, he published The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. This doesn’t inspire confidence. Say you wanted to become highly effective yourself, how could you be sure they won’t find a ninth habit, or maybe even a tenth?

  We’re not even up to speed with the first seven habits of highly effective people (although we imagine it’s things like getting up early and never finding yourself on a Tuesday evening at last call with someone saying, “Let’s go on somewhere else”). But start adding further habits, and very soon you are verily swimming in “habits.”

  And now we’ve crossed the Rubicon, where will it stop? This adding of habits could become habit forming. He might start introducing, say, complicated ways to cook fish.

  E-MAIL BRAGGING

  People who complain about how many messages they get sent, especially after they get back from vacation—“I’m still plowing through them!” Yes, well done. You’re really fucking important.

  EMERGEN-C

  Of all the cold-and-flu-relief citrus-flavored powdered drinks, only Emergen-C encourages you to, quote, “Feel the good.” Apparently the more direct “Feel the chalky water” didn’t test as well.

  Emergen-C is scientific. Science with a capital “Science.” Even the tropical ones. The heavyweight nature of this best-selling concoction is reflected in its Web site, encouraging an entire “the good” lifestyle with links like “share the good,” “good ads,” “good stories,” and “worship the good.” Apparently if you fight colds with anything else, you’re living “the bad.”

  Oh, hang on, it’s just some crushed-up vitamins that tastes a bit lemony. It perks you up slightly, but then so does Gatorade.

  What you need to make your own Emergen-C:

  •Water.

  •Alka-Seltzer.

  •Vitamin C. Important note: Make sure the C is capital. Vitamin c will only produce Emergen-c.

  ENERGY DRINKS

  These days, being given “wings” is not enough. Today’s young folk sleep around 20% less than their parents’ generation, while being 64% more badass, which means they need 75
0% more tartrazine, sugar, caffeine, and lurid food dye.

  Rockstar energy drink—“Party Like a Rockstar”—plays on rock stars’ legendary love of energy drinks. Sometimes they party on energy drinks to the point where they choke on their own energy drink vomit.

  Another group with much activity to cram into their busy days are pimps. Their favored energy drink is Pimp Juice, which does not contain juice. They also probably take cocaine.

  Or at least “Cocaine,” the energy drink with “three times as much caffeine” as Red Bull that was pulled from shelves in May 2007 after the FDA decided the beverage’s manufacturer was “illegally marketing their drink as an alternative to street drugs.” Don’t panic, though: One month later, Redux Beverages began redistributing the drink under the new labeling of “No Name.” Because who can focus their eyes to read when they’re jittering so much they look like bobbleheads.

  ENTOURAGES

  Imagine, if you can, being a member of Donatella Versace’s entourage. Is it the height of sophis de sophis? Or do you fear the night, the dark, hollow times when you believe that you do not even exist?

  As we all know by now, from the VH1 documentaries, from the HBO series, or just from the ether, entourages are great fun. Diddy has a permanent video diarist and on-call writer for off-the-cuff speechifying. Mariah needs people to hold her cups, to waft cigarette smoke away from her environment, and also to waft the air when she farts. Shania apparently goes around with grooms for her horses and two sniffer dogs (plus handlers) who sweep concert halls for explosives. (Who could be bothered to blow up Shania Twain? Who?)

  Then we can drool over the fabulous gunplay between rival rap packs who, with ineffable willingness, shoot each other’s legs off for their main man. Like the incident resulting from 50 Cent deciding to kick The Game out of his own G-Unit entourage. When you’re out of an entourage, you’re out: not a bit in and a bit out. Out. So outside Hot 97 in New York, a member of The Game’s entourage—he, of course, had his own entourage by this point—was shot three times in a confrontation with 50 Cent’s new entourage. Another of 50’s crew got really confused and sadly shot his own arms off.

  All this is clearly guns-a-totin’ fun, but all these Western pretenders have so much to learn. They have nothing—nothing—on North Korean player-dictator Kim Jong Il. That guy is so boss! Since his debutante days under his father’s rule in the 1970s, he’s accumulated a truly world-beating entourage, including a multinational team of personal chefs. While “his people” starved—North Korea endured a famine—he imported ovens and two Milanese cooks to prepare his favorite dish: pizza. Extra capers? You bet. “What do you mean, only one visit to the salad cart? With these words, my friend, you will die.”

  In 1978, when he decided he wanted to build a native film industry, he simply kidnapped the South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choe Eun-hee. Kim forced the director to make twenty propaganda films, and sent him to prison for reeducation classes when he tried to escape.

  We can but hope that, in years to come, capricious, famine-ignoring, velour-tracksuit-wearing dictatorial kook Kim Jong Il might decide that he needs his own velour-tracksuit-wearing hip-hop/fashion mogul and spirit away Diddy. Maybe Donatella, too. And Mariah. For them, what’s the difference? This is the promised land of lifts in your shoes, and a penchant for foreign liquor.

  ESTATE AGENTS SHOWING PEOPLE AROUND HOUSES ON TV

  ESTATE AGENT: So, here’s the bathroom.

  PERSON ON TV: Okay . . .

  ESTATE AGENT: And, uh, the second bedroom—quite a nice size . . .

  PERSON ON TV: Mmm.

  It’s amazing how often you can see estate agents showing people around houses on TV.

  ETHICAL CONSUMER SCAMS

  Spotting liberal soft touches from a distance of forty miles, supermarkets have been known to mark up fair-trade goods to make them more profitable than non-fair-trade items. So the small coffee producer is getting slightly more for his goods. The conscience-driven consumer, on the other hand, is getting fleeced to fuckery. This is “ethical,” apparently.

  Even if you don’t buy your Nestlé in a supermarket, world capitalism is not exactly quaking in its Jimmy Choo boots. Clearly a few small producers getting more for their coffee beans is not a bad thing, but fair trade accounts for only 0.001% of world trade. Even in areas where fair trade is strongest, their market share is puny: 3% of the UK coffee market and 4% of the banana market.

  Meaning that, as a strategy for changing the world and challenging the structures of global power, “buying coffee” is possibly not the most effective.

  So . . . thank fuck we’ve got those wristbands as well.

  ETHICAL LIVING

  Throughout our history, we have wrestled with the complex webs of emotions and reason and social relations and aspirations and power and freedom that define us. Thinkers and activists alike have debated who we are, what we are, and how we should be—from Aristotle’s belief that virtuous behavior is inherent to us and would see us flourish as ideal, happy human beings; to Kant’s assertions that we should obey immutable moral rules—categorical imperatives to be good; to Marx’s ideas that we can’t understand humans without considering their social context—that for humans to flourish as Aristotle had foreseen, there can be no slaves, no aristocratic society like Aristotle’s, no classes. Plato, Ayer, Nietzsche. Liberals, Christians, Muslims, Marxists, James Lovelock—all of them addressing two questions: How should I live, what actions ought I to perform? and What sort of person should I be? In essence: Can I be good? How should I be moral? What is right?

  And all of them could not see the truths that were staring them in the face and which now we hold to be self-evident. What sort of actions ought I to perform? Buying fair-trade coffee, hemp Frisbees, and a GIVE PEAS A CHANCE organic baby onesie. What sort of person should I be? Smug.

  The salvation of humanity lies through the judicious purchase of ethical goods. You can read up on all the new products in special magazines while you fire one out on your compost toilet. You can even buy stuff you don’t want or need—it all helps. Let us now take a moment for reflection and self-congratulation by cracking open some fair-trade Sauvignon Blanc.

  “EVERYONE’S DOING IT—EXCEPT YOU!” CULTURE

  The school playground has long revolved around the question: Have you done it yet? By adulthood, the answer is generally yes, so magazines have to invent new questions by changing the it from “had sex” to “had sex with three or more tranny geishas in a hot tub?” If the answer is no, you’re pretty much still a virgin.

  Basically, it’s time to get it on with the new sex rules. (What do you mean, you don’t find rules sexy?) Women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan open up this awesome new bedquake by offering cover lines about “Kinky Survey Results” revealing “The Daring New Sex Everyone Else Is Having! Lose your morals on p. 94 now.” Everyone, that is, except you.

  To prove they have what it takes, too, men’s magazines send reporters into the underbelly of this new sexy sex-beast. Maxim offered “Dominatrix Detection” or, rather, ten signs that your co-worker might be Mistress Riding Crop. Among the clues: “She’s always wearing at least one piece of clothing made from patent leather.”

  Now, whatever anyone wishes to do sexually, we personally couldn’t give a flying fuck (hey, you could even have a flying fuck). But we do wonder if everyone is constantly pushing the boundaries in the same way as the reader of the UK’s New Woman magazine who, when responding to the Kinky Sex Survey, revealed her “hottest sex ever” was—no lie—“being spanked by a dwarf while tied up.” Come on! Everyone else is being spanked by a dwarf while tied up! What? You haven’t tried that yet? We thought everyone had done it by now. Oh well.

  We’ve no idea why she was showing off anyway. Spanking is not where it’s at with dwarf sex this week. She hadn’t even watched a leather-clad Russian oligarch felch a blind Asian crack dwarf while herself manually pleasuring a Shetla
nd pony. Everyone’s done that.

  EXERCISE VIDEOS

  Here is a fun quiz. Which is the weirdest exercise video of them all? Is it:

  •Anna Kournikova—Basic Elements. Combines a workout with an elementary chemistry lesson.

  •Carmen Electra’s Fit to Strip. Which shows you how to get fit by rubbing yourself on businessmen’s crotches and getting implants. Possibly.

  •The Bollywood Dance Workout with Hemalayaa. Like all things Bollywood, you’ll get bored and turn it off after five minutes, yet still tell friends it was totally entertaining.

  •Girls Next Door Workout. Starring three busty blondes who live at the Playboy Mansion. Watch as they take turns bench-pressing Hef.

  •Tantra Tai Chi for Couples (Adult Educational). Eh? Eh? We’ll say.

  •Denise Austin: Boot Camp—Total Body Blast. In which the 1980s fitness guru takes on the seemingly unbeatable Russian monster Drago to avenge the death of her friend Apollo Creed. Actually, no, now we come to think about it, that’s Rocky IV.

  F

  FAITH SCHOOLS

  God helps you learn stuff. Everyone knows this. If God’s there glaring over your shoulder, it really focuses the mind on understanding how glaciation works. No one can put the fear of God into you like God. Don’t think He can’t see you drawing a penis onto Henry VIII’s forehead in that textbook. He’s a big fucker, too, so watch out.

  In twenty-first-century America—a place where people think more about Ron Jeremy than about God—a tenth of all schools are now allied to a faith. The nation is blessed with Catholic schools, Muslim schools, Jewish schools, evangelical schools, Seventh-Day Adventist schools; in Hartford there are even plans for a school that worships Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, where pupils can specialize in bolt throwing, beard maintenance, warmongering, and, of course, thunder.

  Now, if people want to spend a year’s salary to send their kids to a school without certified teachers just because it teaches that dinosaur bones were buried in the ground by Satan to test our faith, that’s their choice. Their stupid, stupid, stupid choice. At least this helps relieve overcrowding in the goat-sacrificing, God-raping public schools.