Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? Read online

  Copyright © 2008 by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group, USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

  First eBook Edition: November 2008

  ISBN: 978-0-446-54340-8

  Contents

  Chapter A

  Chapter B

  Chapter C

  Chapter D

  Chapter E

  Chapter F

  Chapter G

  Chapter H

  Chapter I

  Chapter J

  Chapter K

  Chapter L

  Chapter M

  Chapter N

  Chapter O

  Chapter P

  Chapter Q

  Chapter R

  Chapter S

  Chapter T

  Chapter U

  Chapter V

  Chapter W

  Chapter X

  Chapter Y

  Chapter Z

  Acknowledgments

  A

  ABSTINENCE PROGRAMS

  Prophylactics may sound like the sort of word you’d find in the Bible (“And He did say unto the Prophylactics . . .”), but it isn’t. Prophylactics are a modern scourge, a modern scourge that are sadly prone to bursting and making you die. Jesus, just to be absolutely clear about this, did not like them. He didn’t put them on his head at parties. And He didn’t put them on his willy.

  This is, roughly speaking, the main lesson of abstinence programs: godly guidance in how not to do it. What makes this a particularly difficult campaign is that it’s aimed at teenagers, who, as we know, often get quite worked up about sex, finding the whole thing something of a turn-on.

  The non-doing-it movement has in recent years been backed by George Bush, Pope Benedict, and, of course, a pre-marriage Jessica Simpson. It will solve so many problems: STDs and pregnancy in the West, AIDS in Africa, all sorts. To help it catch on with teens, the movement has even created an accessory: “purity rings.” Purity rings aren’t some sort of exotic sex toy; they’re rings you wear as a pledge not to bang before marriage. “With this ring, I wed Jesus, who doesn’t do it,” is what the wearers say.

  The wearers are dedicatedly not into joining what Silver Ring Thing movement founder Denny Pattyn called “the cesspool generation.” Ooh, smelly. Again, a Silver Ring Thing is not a sex toy. Just so we’re clear on that.

  But how can anyone think that sex is not going to happen because of Jesus? How is the sex not going to happen? In fact, an eight-year study in the United States showed that 88% of people taking pledges of abstinence fall off the non-screw wagon before marriage, which for young girls leads to one common result: They start to look more like Britney Spears. Nowadays. All puffy, lugging around car seats.

  In the spirit of evenhandedness, we have thoughtfully created some advertising slogans for future campaigns against bumping fuzzies, ever:

  •PHALLIC SNEEZES SPREAD DISEASES

  •DON’T GO AROUND DOING IT!

  •DO DO DON’T DONG DONG, DO DO DON’T DONG

  •ONLY LET GOD TOUCH YOU, NOT SOME HORMONE-CRAZED SEX FIEND

  •GET OFF THAT PENIS!

  •JESUS!

  ADS FOR CREDIT CARDS

  “Taxi to the airport: $48. Ticket to Kansas City: $428. Spending Christmas together: Priceless.” No, add up those other expenses and you’ll see it actually cost quite a bit.

  “My life is far from ordinary. That’s why my card is American Express.” Yes, only American Express is open-minded enough to handle your decadent, orgy-filled lifestyle. Visa or Discover? A bunch of bigoted prudes.

  Your life is not exciting enough, quite simply, because you haven’t borrowed enough money. That much should be self-evident. Borrowing money may make you taller. You will have a nicer smile, and have read more books—while still finding time for that all-important Jet-Skiing holiday. It’s possible that, by borrowing money, you can end all wars. Certainly if you get one of Bono/American Express’s Red Cards (where a tiny percentage of your capricious spending is forwarded on to the poor, starving African babies) and you spend, spend, spend enough with it—you know, really absolutely totally ruining yourself—you could end famine. All of this while living in a cool contemporary apartment drinking crisp white wine.

  ADVENTURERS/MOUNTAINEERS/EXPLORERS

  Bong! This is the news: Some bloke with more money than sense has got himself lost on a small dinghy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sorry, when we said “news,” we actually meant “waste of everyone’s time.”

  The world being largely explored now, is there really any need for a load of posh jackasses to try to reach the South Pole living only on roasted peat and using equipment they bought on sale at Patagonia? (Note to any posh jackasses reading this: That’s a rhetorical question—there is no need for a load of posh jackasses to try to reach the South Pole living only on roasted peat and using equipment they bought on sale at Patagonia. We will, however, let you know if this situation changes.) If they do set out over the Pacific in an eight-foot dinghy, risking almost certain drowning, would it be unreasonable to suggest that when they do capsize, rather than expect a multithousand-dollar rescue operation and media furor, they could at least have the decency to drown, quietly?

  These richie riches say things like, “If you make a mistake in that situation, you’re dead.” Well, don’t do it then, you schmuck! Because it’s at least feasible that you’ll make a mistake! Also: “If the weather closes in, you’re dead.” Well, forgive me, but isn’t that what the weather does in the mountains? “At that point, the weather started to close in!” Of course it did. You were climbing up a fucking mountain.

  As re-created in the acclaimed documentary Touching the Void, mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates decided to be the first to climb the treacherous west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. What happened? They made a mistake and the weather closed in. Simpson fell badly, breaking his leg and forcing the bone through his kneecap, causing unimaginable agony. Then, after Simpson fell over a precipice, Yates, thinking his partner dead, cut the rope and his friend fell a hundred more feet into a crevasse. Pulling down the rope, Simpson realized he was alone and almost certain to die. At this point he cracked and started punching the ice wall, yelling: “Stupid stupid stupid cunt! Cuuuunt!!! Stupid cunt! Stupiiiiddd!!! Cuuunnnttt!!”

  A moment of clarity that, all things considered, he might have had in his living room in Britain. The stupid cunt. [See Waits on Everest.]

  AIRBRUSHING CIGARETTES OUT OF HISTORY

  Sorry, but it did happen. I know, it’s shocking. But some people smoked. I’m getting all upset just remembering it, to be honest. It was barbaric. Thank the heavens it’s not for us twenty-first-centuryites, though. Oh, no. We don’t even know what cigarettes are. What are cigarettes?

  Given the stresses inherent in our era, it seems we might have picked the wrong century to quit smoking. But as other dangers pile up, it is kind of good to know that we have tidied away one of the dangers: passive smoking. And the related danger of passively looking at pictures of cigarettes.

  The Bibliothèque nationale de France airbrushed a cancer stick from a poster of the famously chain-smoking philosopher Jean-Pa
ul Sartre (it might make people feel nausée). The U.S. Post Office corrected a stamp of blues legend Robert Johnson to remove the cigarette dangling from his lips. You can go down to the crossroads to do a deal with the devil, just as long as you don’t buy any smokes while you’re there. Why not also alter his mouth to make the miserable bastard look a bit smilier, too? “Cheer up, Rob.” “Can’t. Got hellhounds on my trail.”

  The Beatles have become such a smoke-free zone that you almost suspect that the next time you hear “A Day in the Life,” new lyrics will find Paul McCartney going upstairs to have a vegetarian sandwich. In 2006, the Capitol Albums Vol. 2 box set removed cigarettes from three smoking Beatles. Before, a cigarette was airbrushed from Paul’s hand on the Abbey Road cover—and the song titles were altered from “You Never Give Me Your Money (to Buy Fags),” “Carry Those Fags,” and “Her Majesty (Doesn’t Like Fags Much, But Her Sister Likes Them a Lot).”

  ALPHA MALES

  Does your boss sprawl over his chair like he’s got two prickly pineapples for testicles? Does he clearly consider murder when faced with a promotion competitor? Does he strut around believing all female employees are mere seconds from dragging him to the bathroom for a short, sharp nooner? If so, he probably considers himself an “alpha male”: the kind of business/politics top dog who treats everyone else as his bitch—like the Marquis de Sade with a flip chart.

  It’s amazing how many people swallow this stuff—that a man’s at his best when he’s at his most animal—despite the seemingly obvious fact that we are, in fact, humans. In his doomed U.S. presidential election campaign in 2000, Al Gore was implored by image consultant Naomi Woolf to discover the brooding sex panther within. In 2004, John Kerry had to go out and shoot at ducks. If this process accelerates, we’ll soon be choosing our leaders by getting two beefy Nazis to have a penis-bashing contest in a pit. Dominance hierarchies in the animal kingdom were discovered in the 1920s by Norwegian scientist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe. Studying flocks of hens, he noticed how each member recognized its place above and below its peers; the upper echelons got first dibs at the corn (hence the phrase pecking order) and peace generally reigned. Clever hens, thought Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe.

  But applying the same concept to Homo sapiens isn’t that clever—unless we want our leaders to do head jabs at their opponents’ faces before squatting down in the corner for a crap (actually, that might be interesting). In fact, most alpha males are a brain-rotting liability. Look at our current alpha-male-in-chief, President George W. Bush, a man so virile he could inseminate a lump of coal. When he grants the poor, unwashed media a rare audience, he seems to believe that his rugged rudeness makes all journalists, female and male, want to adorn his body with oils. One worries that when he leaves office, the press corps will miss his verbal spankings so terribly that they may compensate by beating each other with rocks after work.

  But surely Bush’s alpha-male qualifications only ever amounted to graceless egomania, the addition of “Heh heh” to the presidential lexicon, and an endless war in Iraq. Before the UK version of the TV show Big Brother 6 began, a contestant named Maxwell predicted he would be the house alpha male. By Day 11, he was demonstrating his lead-dog qualities by instigating a competition with housemate Anthony to see who could be first to pee in his pants. Wondering what stunt they could pull next, Anthony suggested: “We could shit ourselves.”

  That’s where trying to be an alpha male gets you. Think on, Mr. President.

  ALT-COUNTRY

  Isn’t hip-hop the real “alternative” to country music? Regardless, here are some important facts about alt-country-singer-songwriter-whiny-bastard Ryan Adams:

  1. Add a B to the start of his name and you get “Bryan Adams.”

  2. Ryan Adams really hates this first fact.

  At one gig in Nashville, an audience member satirically shouted for Bryan Adams’s 1985 hit “Summer of ’69.” Ryan Adams singled out the offender and refused to play another note until he left the venue. He even offered him $30 of his own money as a refund. It’s Bryan Adams I feel sorry for. No one should have to be associated with alt-country.

  ANTI-AMERICANISM

  You cannot escape the point: America has produced a vibrant culture that is the pleasure and envy of millions. We have given the world not only Larry the Cable Guy but also “Love in an Elevator” by Aerosmith. Take that, Belgium!

  But despite all these achievements, a wave of anti-Americanism is sweeping the globe. In Indonesia in April 2006, people rioted against Playboy—not because it was porn per se, but because it was American porn. “Down with Yankee tail”—that might have been the slogan. Apparently, even Japanese porn was deemed comparatively harmless—which is weird, considering it basically consists of women dressed up as little girls.

  In Europe, Americans have been traditionally ridiculed for being clamorous, rotund morons who have to be forcibly stopped from eating the furniture. This is all good clean family fun. But now it’s getting out of hand with supposedly rational souls seeing Islamists holding up posters proclaiming GOD IS GREAT AND AMERICA IS EVIL and thinking: Hey, I’ll have some of that. Surely I can harness that enthusiasm for the forces of good . . .Hey, you know what? America is a Great Satan. Eight euros—that’s what going to see Big Momma’s House 2 cost me . . . the bastards!

  If only the rest of the world could understand that people who just happen to have all been born in the same country are, perhaps, not some strange homogeneous Other. Sure, we Americans have never managed to tell any of you people apart, but c’mon! Have we no flesh? (And plenty of it, quite often.) Do we not bleed? It’s a simple matter of divorcing the idea of the American state going around doing all the bad things from the people who live under it. They aren’t the same thing. And we didn’t even all vote for Idiot Boy. That map of the States after the 2004 presidential election—the sea of blue down the coasts, the red down the middle—didn’t tell the whole story. In most of the blue states, nearly 50% voted red, and vice versa. We are a diverse people.

  So now, more than ever, our foreign brothers and sisters, we ask you to demonstrate solidarity with our fine (if often quite fat) people—perhaps by watching some Adam Sandler films while eating string cheese. We as a human race must remain confident in the potential of the American people. We believe they are deserving and capable of human liberty. If we would just pull our fat fingers out of our fucking asses. We thank you.

  ARCTIC MONKEYS

  Listen, we here in America are grateful for the first British Invasion. Without it, we’d be a nation of folksingers, which means we’d also be a nation of sensitive ponytail guys. That said, UK, can you quit forcing the Arctic Monkeys on us. We don’t care how many Spin lists they top; they’re bratty, sloppy MySpace poseurs who are so preciously calculated, they make the Strokes look like the Ramones. They receive praise for stuffing their lyrics full of social realism, but they’re a bunch of teens from the suburbs. Their social realism is having a fake ID rejected. The only innovative thing the Arctic Monkeys ever did was put their music online . . . the same as every other unsigned band. Oh, but they got rich off it. So they’re what, the musical equivalent of LonelyGirl15?

  Of course, everyone’s middle-of-the-road nowadays. Even New Wave guitar-tykes who sing state-of-the-nation songs about prostitution. From occupying the cutting edge of Western social advancement (in terms of sex, class, race, peace, the big stuff), albeit often not that seriously, many bands now seem to find the cutting edge a bit, well, sharp. And, unfortunately, quite edgy.

  Right alongside the Monkeys are the Kaiser Chiefs, who were apparently mildly perturbed to hear that the local police played “I Predict a Riot” before heading out on Friday nights. But this is hardly in the same league as Reagan appropriating Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” There wasn’t any message there to rewrite. Anyway, it’s surely the Kaisers to a T: American Idol indie, the perfect soundtrack for people who don’t really like music, but do like to beat up on dr
unks.

  Of course, the Kaiser Chiefs are just one of the New Wave of Careerist Bands Whose Careerism Makes Them Nowhere Near Interesting Enough to Sustain a Career. It’s often all in the name. Franz Ferdinand—music bloggers’ previous “Greatest Band Ever to Live; Listen to Them, Then Clap Your Ears Until You Go Deaf Because There Is Nothing Else You Ever Need to Hear” titleholder—is in reference to neither a dead archduke nor a disco-dancing German man (what, Franz Ferdinand doesn’t evoke that image in your mind?). The band only chose the name because, according to bassist Bob Hardy, “Mainly we just like the way it sounded. We liked the alliteration.” Lead singer Alex Kapranos added, “Basically a name should just sound good . . . like music.” Sorry, but no. A name should “just sound good,” fair enough, but the music? The music should kick motherfucking ass. Or at least be more interesting than the name.

  ARGUMENTS BETWEEN EQUALLY OBJECTIONABLE CELEBRITIES

  When Tommy Lee calls Kid Rock a “jealous no career having country bumpkin.”

  Or when Kid Rock punches out Tommy Lee.

  Or when Christina Aguilera attacks Britney Spears, calling her wedding “trashy” and “pathetic.”

  Or when Britney Spears calls Christina Aguilera “scary.”

  Or when The Hills’s Spencer Pratt describes castmate Lauren Conrad as “the douche, the psycho.”

  Or when Keith Olbermann declares Bill O’Reilly “today’s worst person in the world.”

  Or when Jacques Chirac says George W. Bush “is so stupid it’s amazing he can eat stuff.”

  Or when Donald Trump labels Mark Cuban a “loser.”

  Or when Donald Trump brands Richard Branson a “total failure.”

  Or when Donald Trump declares Rosie O’Donnell a “fat slob.”

  Or when Rosie O’Donnell writes that Donald Trump is a “slug.”

  Or when Danny Bonaduce throws Johnny Fairplay over his head, face-first, knocking out a couple of his teeth.

  Why don’t you all just play nicely?

  ARTICLES IN NEWSPAPERS REPORTING POLLS IN MAGAZINES

  For example, saying that Duran Duran’s 1995 release Thank You is the worst album of all time, according to a poll by Q magazine. Or that Matt Damon is the sexiest man alive, according to some publishing monkeys. Reading a magazine does not constitute gathering the news. It constitutes reading a magazine.