Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? Read Online Free

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