by Steve Lowe
Imagine if Mailer’s actual proper literary endeavors were as trite, jumped-up, and egocentric and had such little connection with reality. Surely then we’d all stop buying them? Oh, yes, that’s right: They are. And we have.
NU-SNOBBERY
The poor are hilarious: Look, they don’t have much money! Ha ha ha. But there’s a downside, too: They sometimes have bad skin because they don’t use the correct sea-salt-based exfoliant scrubs, and they can be violent. And they never appear in their own reality shows! Unless you count those Bumfights videos. And we don’t. So the poor are worthless. Struggle to survive somewhere else, you dirty fucks.
O
OBITUARIES IN THE FUTURE
Scientists predict that, if the ratio of celebrities to everyone else continues increasing at the present rate, then by 2048 the size of the New York Times will have expanded to fill the average two-bedroom flat. The increased space will be needed to cover stories about all the new celebrities and also to report the deaths of the old ones: Sadly, Johnny Fairplay will not live forever and some poor sod will have to write his obituary.
The Paper of Record will presumably dedicate whole sections to obits for celebrities: celebrity carpenters, celebrity gardeners, celebrity dishwashers, all the entrants in all sixteen seasons of Dancing with the Stars (the seventeenth was canceled after the one with the ’stache out of The Killers broke his neck attempting to foxtrot), celebrity newsagents, celebrity wig makers, celebrity adult literacy tutors, and Jared from the Subway ads (“Increasingly Jared found that the only thing that helped him lose weight was crack cocaine”).
Celebrity obituary writers will prepare their own obituaries. Which is poignant, in a way.
OBSERVATIONAL COMEDY
Standing on a stage. Making trite observations about everyday life. In a futile attempt to be funny. What’s the deal with that? Have you seen that?
“OFFICIAL SPONSORS” OF SPORTING EVENTS
MasterCard, official sponsors of the World Cup 2006, received a lot of criticism for initially insisting that all ticket sales had to be done by extremely complicated bank transfers unless paid for by one, and only one, brand of credit card: Visa! Only joking—it was MasterCard.
Coke famously banned Pepsi products from events they sponsored. Now, you may ask what Coke is doing sponsoring sports anyway what with it making you really fat, but it’s actually got quite a long tradition of sponsoring sporting events, having gotten behind the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—aka the Nazi Olympics, the one where Hitler wanted to show off Aryan superiority. Coke was pretty chummy with the Nazis generally. Indeed, Coke-staple Fanta was invented by improvising with local ingredients when the German Coke plants ran out of cola syrup during the war: They loved pop, the Nazis.
Anyway, at least Coke could argue it’s an “energy” drink. What about Canon—the “official camera” of the NFL? So, in the run-up to a big game, do the players like to snap some shots for a night of post-game scrapbooking?
OPENING CEREMONIES
Great international sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup are designed to bring people across the world together, to realize briefly our underlying commonality. And the opening ceremonies do indeed unite all the corners of the world with the same thought: Just fucking get on with it. And also: Where did they get all that material?
Wherever the host nation, these gaudy displays of national pride always look like a school special assembly with serious money to burn. But there are moments to cherish: there’s the grandeur in Bob Costas’s voice as he reads from the script: “And now . . . here come the grape pickers . . . in their traditional costume . . . picking their grapes . . . from the grapevines . . . on the hillsides.” Or there’s his mute disbelief at the sight of Björk dressed as an ocean singing about sweat.
The transcendent opening ceremony moment of recent years occurred at the opening of the 2002 Winter Olympics at Bonneville when each country was introduced with a short rhyming couplet—in French and English. One particularly memorable example went: “They come from a land that’s long and hilly / Welcome to the gallant athletes from Chile.”
ORGANIC CONSUMER SCAMS
If you buy organic produce from abroad, and the organic produce has been transported by plane, then that organic produce, far from being an in-touch-with-nature, straight-from-the-soil bundle of environmental goodness, will have probably burned its own weight in aviation fuel to get here (as part of a larger consignment; you don’t get kiwi fruits individually flying themselves here from New Zealand).
The ethical farming group Sustain analyzed a sample basket of twenty-six imported organic goodies. They found it had traveled a distance equivalent to six times around the equator (150,000 miles), a journey that will have released as much CO2 as a four-bedroom household cooking meals for eight months. But the supermarkets know that the little ORGANIC sticker means more money for them, so they really could not care less about jet-set comestibles.
It hurts to say this, but if you want to go organic, you might have to end up dealing with hippies. Farming is the only area of life where hippies are best. You never hear about hippie builders, say—oh, we got some hippies in to do the extension and they were really good.
For farming, though, we’re with the hippies. It’s either them or you end up with subsidy-guzzling reactionaries who fuck foxes. That’s the impression we get, anyway.
OSCARS, THE
Another year on and Hollywood’s managed to turn out, what, maybe three decent films? That’s right, give yourselves a big clap. Funny how you never seem to win awards in competitions not run by yourselves.
OSCAR PARTIES
So many parties, so little talent. There’s Barry Diller’s pre-Oscar luncheon, CAA agent Bryan Lourd’s day-before shindig, the Weinstein Company’s Saturday bash, the Governor’s Ball, InStyle’s viewing party at Republic, and—of course—the Vanity Fair soiree at Morton’s.
They all sound amazing, except for the fact that you are not allowed to get pissed (“You just want to have a celebratory glow,” says one insider), there’s never enough room (“There’s never enough room,” says another insider), and if you’re not either a mogul or someone involved in a nominated film, no one will be that interested in talking to you. Says yet another insider: “If you’re not one of those people, you’re always looking around wondering, ‘Who do I know, who do I talk to, why am I here?’ ”
Of course, the party to be seen at is always Elton John’s party. Everyone simply has to get into Elton’s party. If you aren’t at Elton’s party, you don’t want to know about Elton’s party. You will choke. You’ll just die. You have to be there. Nobody who is there can even bear to tell others who aren’t there how good it is: That’s how good it is. Actually, an insider has spilled the beans: “It was lovely, lots of margaritas.” What time is the party? Margarita time.
We do not understand this. How is Elton John, now, in the twenty-first century, still the celebrity hub around which revolves whole other galaxies of vain, vacuous fluff? He had some hits in the 1970s. Then there was The Lion King. And what else? Is it a Diana thing? What?
This is supposed to be Hollywood. You know, the shining city on the hill; homeless runaways being lured into the porn industry; “It was just the pictures that got small”; complicated young people with a whole set of personalities . . . Have they not seen those photos of Captain Fantastic in the duck outfit?
To us, it’s not screaming Rita Hayworth.
OVERSTIMULATED CHILDREN
Are your children mural artists? No. So do not encourage them to draw on the fucking walls. If they must display an artistic bent, simply supply them with a piece of paper. Or a canvas. Try to find a happy medium between fucking them up—you may not mean to, but you do—and letting them trash other people’s houses. No one wants a miniature rampant id crashing around their house, drawing on it.
According to many reports, children are increasingly brought up to believe they are
the last in line of the Ming dynasty. Recent studies show that middle-class parents are creating a new generation of “brat bullies.” Apparently, some parents are unwilling to curb their children’s desires, believing this would stifle their creativity. These worshipped little gods “expect all the teachers and other kids to kowtow to them. If they don’t, they start to bully the other children.”
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PANDA DIPLOMACY
In this ever-changing world in which we live, communication is more important than ever. Which is why all efforts to step up diplomacy are now so imperative. The pandas are on board. Are you?
In January 2006, the deputy secretary of state assigned to manage U.S. relations with China, Robert Zoellick, entered the seemingly cuddly, but actually rather prickly, world of panda diplomacy.
Asked to meet a prize cub, he acknowledged to reporters that he and his aides had pondered any message the image might convey. They had discussed the various inferences that could be drawn from several panda poses before agreeing to “take Jing Jing on his lap.”
We, too, share doubts about what message this pose might convey. “You want to know how the panda felt?” Zoellick asked reporters. “Very soft.”
In fact, panda diplomacy is among the more treacherous forms of diplomacy. In 2005, Taiwan was offered two pandas by the Chinese Communist Party. The panda diplomacy, in this case, was backed by hundreds of missiles pointed at Taiwan across the hundred-mile channel that separates the island from China. So accepting the pandas meant subconsciously acquiescing to Chinese domination: “Look, pandas! Accept Chinese rule. Aren’t they cute? What did I just say? Oh, nothing. Accept Beijing’s divine diktat. Aaah, pandas . . .”
When Taiwan understandably hesitated, the China Daily newspaper painted President Chen as “bellicose” in his opposition to the “peaceful pandas.” The editorial ran: “Stubborn as he is, Chen has to face the reality: he may be able to block the entry of the panda couple but he cannot stop the Taiwanese people’s love for the pandas.”
Frustrated with some of the media’s coverage, Jan Jyh-horng, secretary general of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, argued that “pandas are not communists.” That is true. Pandas tend to fall into one of two camps: They are either instinctively in favor of bringing about greater redistribution of wealth by reform of the capitalist system from within; or they advocate a simple life based on anarchist collectives, which admittedly is communistic, but certainly not in any sense akin to Stalinist-style “communism.” How do we know this? We asked one.
Want to know how it felt? Very soft.
PANINIS
Panini was once simply an Italian sticker company selling packets of cartoon character cards from small boxes situated by the counter in a card store. Then it went into the cheese toastie market and really cleaned up.
It was so successful, in fact, that it overreached itself and ran out of bread, so it started to make its cool, continental snacks out of cardboard instead. It also didn’t have time to print the standard warning on the side of the packet: “Do not under any circumstances heat this fucker to 400°F as that is hot enough to melt the inside of someone’s head.”
In Milan, no one would serve you a Caesar salad panini straight from a lovingly sealed polythene bag that is now practically on fucking fire. Unless, for some reason, they hated your family. Hot leaves? Bubbling hot yellow sauce? This is not the Italian way.
Breakfast paninis with scrambled egg? Balls to them.
PAP PICS OF CELEB KIDS WITH THEIR FACES BLOCKED OUT
Here’s Angelina walking Maddox up to school. But look, we respect their privacy, so we’ve made little Maddy’s face all squarey so he looks like a victim of crime. But he’s holding his thumbs aloft, so he must be all right. Look at the caption: “Thumbs up—shows he’s happy.” See?
But should his thumbs have been pixelated, too? You don’t want his face growing up perfectly well adjusted while his thumbs turn into really weird digits, all warped by the strains of celebrity. Have the boy’s thumbs not the right to privacy?
Or maybe we’re missing something and celebrities just have children with really blurred faces.
PAYING OFF YOUR MORTGAGE IN TWO YEARS
With house prices now being set by absinthe-crazed madmen throwing dice at each other, people are taking out 35-, 40-, even 45-year mortgages. But you can do it in two.
Saving pennies makes dollars, so if you save a lot of pennies, well, there you go, you’ve paid off your mortgage. It’s all about tightening your belt here and there. To the point where your waist measurement is the same as your shoe size.
Money-saving tips in these kinds of books include stopping smoking (they all add up, and are bad for you anyway), not buying coffee (instead, go to places where they give you free coffee), and, if you must buy things, getting them on the Internet (it’s slightly cheaper!). Be careful, though. One top tip warns: “If foraging or looking for food in the wild, make sure you properly identify safe foodstuffs.” So try to avoid toadstools and deadly nightshade if you can. The road to early mortgage repayment is full of victims who, rather than shedding the dark cloak of mortgage, had their stomach pumped after munching the wrong kind of toadstool.
But even this is amateur child’s play to the King of the Saving of the Pennies, financial writer Cliff D’Arcy. If saving pennies were a sparky young lady with excellent conversation, he would be her Mr. D’Arcy, Cliff D’Arcy. He’s the sort of guy who thinks lying down in a darkened room is wasteful.
In July 2006, Mr. D’Arcy announced in a promotional e-mail sent out by popular financial Web site the Motley Fool that he was about to embark on a period of “Extreme Budgeting”: “In January of this year, my discretionary spending came to less than $15, which is a new personal best . . . [Now] I plan to steer clear of alcohol, cigarettes, drinks and snacks, fast food and takeaways, with my only treat being a weekend newspaper or two . . . I appreciate that extreme budgeting isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, because it is a tough test of willpower.”
Speaking of tea, Mr. D’Arcy signed off: “I’m off to have a nice cup of tea, which is my only vice during my (financial) detox month!” Presumably reusing the bag for the twentieth time. Possibly a bag that came from the Red Cross.
Putting aside minor worries that money is just a chimerical, abstract way of exchanging goods, services, and human effort, and that this might be an utter waste of miserable time that involves actively hegemonizing yourself with the mores of Mammon, I have created my own “Very Extreme Indeed and Certainly More Extreme Than the Motley Fool’s, Which Isn’t Extreme at All . . . In Fact They Are Just Pussies: I Could Pay Off My Mortgage in Three Months, No Bother—What Do You Think of That? Budget.”
Take all of the measures we have listed here and you could be saving—quite literally—in the region of $200 or even $300 every single year:
1.Swap credit card and utility companies to get the best deals. Switch companies anything up to four or even five times a day. By really staying alert, you can save well over a whole entire dollar each and every week. Some people might argue that if you expended the same amount of effort working, you would make considerably more, but screw them. They don’t know.
2.Don’t piss your money up against a wall. I get tired of endlessly telling people that if they keep going to bars, buying beer, and generally enjoying themselves, they will inevitably have less money than they might otherwise have had. Why can’t they just suck on the juicy beer mats provided at the bar? Money’s going in one end and getting pissed out the other. Unless you can find me someone who will pay for piss, I’m not interested. And you won’t. Because that doesn’t happen. A piss merchant, buying and selling piss—it’s a fucking stupid idea. (If you do ever come across somewhere with a piss merchant, let me know.)
3.You should always—always—only use financial products you’ve never heard of. If you’ve heard of an ISA, you need a cash ISA. If you’ve heard of a cash ISA, you need a mini cash ISA. If
you’ve heard of a mini cash ISA, you need to call the Bank de Bank, Zurich, and ask for Juan. Say you need “a dirty one.” The code word is “flaps.” You’ll also be wanting a PEP, a PAP, the PUP, and a PARP. Don’t forget to claim your allowances for those, either, like some sort of ass-clown.
4.Boil up some grass to make grassy stew. Eat stuff out of bins.
5.Sell your toenails on eBay (what are they actually for, anyway?).
6.Never. Ever. Do. Anything. Ever. At all.
7.Help us.
8.Kill yourself. There’s no surer way to spend less than being dead. As a bonus, any insurance policies you hold will be paying out like a fruit machine with three triple bars on hold—not that we’d know about that, not risking our precious pennies on such atrocious frivolities. Irony is free—so treat yourself to a highly poignant death by smashing your brains open against the window of your bank. (If you bank online—which we would advise; there are some great deals out there—just go to the nearest branch of the bank of which your online account supplier is a subsidiary.) Now, for insurance reasons, it needs to look like an accident. You’ll need a big run-up to get enough force to kill yourself, so start from the other side of the road while looking down the street and smiling and waving into the distance, as if you have just seen an old friend or acquaintance and have become distracted. Just keep running until you hit the bank and hopefully die. Remember to run very fast or you won’t get enough force to kill yourself. No one wants to come around outside Citibank with blood from their own head smeared down the windows. Also remember, in the days leading up to killing yourself, that you can save money by not eating anything or turning on any lights.
PENIS ENLARGEMENT E-MAILS
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