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

down. The next day, the situation might be reversed with me on top, cackling with a glass of something nice, while you’re down in the pit feeling abandoned like an abandoned dog feels abandoned when it’s been abandoned. Fucked, essentially.
    It’s the broadband whirligig of life that makes weak, impotent pawns of us all. In fact, when Polish sociology guru Zygmunt Bauman formulated his new theory of the “liquid life,” a scary new precariousness that sees the 21st-century individual walking on quicksand, under perpetual siege, while seeking shelter from the storm in Pandora’s box (which is on fire), he had just lost his broadband connection and was being seriously dicked around by the helpline staff.
    Or is it even more cosmic than this? Is it part of the divine plan, of which broadband companies are mere fucknutted minions? Is there some kind of karmic payback going on? Do we get the broadband service we deserve? Or are we randomly picked out for this torture because we’re completely controlled, both physically and metaphysically, by complete bastards? They send our instructions down the broadband cable. It’s possible. Well, probably it is—we don’t actually understand how it works.
    We think it’s all of the above. And more.
    GEORGE W. BUSH
    George W. Bush is much vilified for reasons such as wars, oil, incapacity to eat pretzels without causing injury to himself (the freak), abolishing taxes for the rich, stuff like that—but his critics miss the central, absolutely key point: the fact that George W. Bush claims to “speak Spanish.”
    Chutzpah?
Hola! ¡Sí!
Fucking hell,
¡sí!
You’d think he’d be better mastering one language at a time, and that English would be a more pressing priority. But
no, señor.
This Hispanic turn is, of course, politically motivated. Here’s how it works. In Texas, there are lots of Hispanic voters. So it helps, if you want to be governor of Texas, to get Hispanic people to vote for you. So you “learn Spanish.” It’s unclear if “speaking Spanish” means he can conduct negotiations with Mexican trade ministers in their native tongue. Or maybe just that he can almost ask his way to the swimming pool—if there’s also a mike strapped to his back. But still.
    As news of his Latin temperament spread, Bush’s share of the Hispanic vote rose from around a third in the 2000 presidential election to 44% in 2004. Kerry (whoever she was) still took 53%, but the gap with the Democrats closed from a 36% deficit in 2000 to 9%—which, as any seasoned election analyst will tell you, is less. If you did some more sums you could predict by how much Bush would lead in the Latino vote next time if he were allowed to run, which he isn’t, and it would probably make for scary reading, we should expect.
¡Hola!
    This is why Bush has been sponsoring massive immigration from Spanish-speaking countries—mainly Mexico, which Bush really likes because it rhymes with Texaco, but also Spain itself. That’s why Laura delivers leaflets saying “Come to America” outside Mexican wrestling matches. And why the pair of them often hit the Andalusian coastline to swim naked and free. Which, in fact, come to think about it, isn’t happening. So, actually, all this stuff about the Spanish thing is wrong and the people who concentrated more on the wars and tax cuts and stuff were right. Sorry.
    As Bush’s term comes to an end, perhaps we can teach him two more words of Spanish:
“Adios, fuckwit.”
Which means: “Bye, President Bush, and thanks for everything you’ve done for us.”

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    CALAMITY PORN
    The coffee-table tome of the Apocalypse will look amazing. Certainly, the dry run—
New York September 11,
containing photos of that terrible day taken by the photographers from the illustrious Magnum photo agency—is an eye-catching, one might even say jaw-dropping, document. A vivid memento of one special day to remember.
    The 2006 documentary on the Falling Man was built upon the premise