2007 - Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  In Orwell’s 1984, the citizens vented frustration in the state-sponsored Two-Minute Hate’. I’m proposing something slightly different: a citizen-led two-minute howl of despair. We set a time and date, and we pass it on—we fire a simple email at everyone we know.

  ‘Feeling trapped in the middle of a fight you didn’t pick? Mad as hell? Not going to take it any more? Well hip hip hooray- it’s venting time. At the allotted date/hour, stop what you’re doing, put down your tools, step into the street and join us, the sane remainders of the human race, as we howl inarticulately at the skies.’

  Futile noise beats futile silence, people, so howl till your throat burns—howl yourself dizzy. Millions of us, simultaneously, howling round the world. Who knows: maybe it’ll prompt the man in the moon to float down and save us. It’s worth a shot—for crying out loud.

  Things Robbie Williams hasn’t done

  [9 December 2005]

  Rubbish singer Robbie Williams has won ‘substantial damages’ in a libel action against the People newspaper, which had alleged he was ‘pretending’ to be heterosexual, that he ‘engaged in casual and sordid homosexual encounters with strangers’, and was ‘about to deceive the public’ over his sexuality in an autobiography. Pretty strong stuff, considering it turned out not to be true.

  Now I’m no Robbie Williams fan—I’d rather shatter my jaw on a concrete bollard than sit through one of his videos—but I’m worried this legal action might lead to a reduction in the number of gossipy articles written about him, thereby creating a dangerous vacuum at the centre of modern tabloid culture.

  In the absence of regular double-page spreads about Williams’ latest notional high-jinks, the red-tops might start printing other things, such as step-by-step photo guides instructing their readers how to wield pitchforks, form mobs and overthrow democracy.

  Civilised society? I give it three weeks.

  Only two things can save us. First, David Walliams needs to plug the gap by cranking up his colourful social life yet further, to the point of having sex with hollowed-out potatoes in public. And second, rather than printing stories that claim to be true yet turn out to be false, the celebrity press should start printing stories that claim to be false and remain that way.

  After all, ultimately no one cares whether any of them actually get up to this shit. That secretary flipping through Heat in her lunch break knows full well she’s not reading vital information—just something dimly glitzy that’ll take her mind off slashing her wrists and spraying blood in the faces of her co-workers for 10 seconds. That’s all she wants. They can print what they want—even a row of numbers will do, so long as it’s broken up now and then with the names of a few celebrities.

  With this in mind, I’d like to dedicate the rest of this week’s column to a list of things Robbie Williams would absolutely, positively never say or do. Read it in your lunch break. OK? Let’s go:

  Robbie Williams would never shoot a man just to watch him die. Robbie Williams would never wrap a mouse’s head in blotting paper and crush it with his heel. Robbie Williams would never threaten to gore a sales assistant to death with his antlers.

  Robbie Williams would never jump on to Philip Schofield’s back and demand to be flown to the nearest star-gate. Robbie Williams would never suddenly turn into a two-dimensional diagram of himself printed on the inside of a ball bearing which continually rolls out of your field of vision the second you realise it’s there.

  Robbie Williams would never deliberately break a dairymaid’s heart with a sarcastic puppet show. Robbie Williams would never attack a hill with his feet, hands and forehead. Robbie Williams would never change his name to Baron Plop-Plop and fly across Devon in an undersized Sopwith Camel with a hole in the bottom so he could stick his bum out and poo on people trying to enjoy picnics below. Robbie Williams would never seal himself inside an immense iron drum for fifteen years with only a bee and a puddle for company.

  Robbie Williams would never drink chalk, steer clouds, bite France or breathe deckchairs. And nor would Tom Cruise.

  God: massive bastard

  [16 December 2005]

  If you’re looking for proof that God doesn’t exist, don’t bother investigating the big stuff, like earthquakes or famines or the tsunami. Start small. Right now I’ve got a sore throat and as far as I’m concerned that’s evidence enough.

  The constant awareness is the worst part. Usually I walk around blissfully ignorant of my throat. I never think ‘Ooh, aren’t I lucky to have a throat?’ or anything like that. But right now I’m obsessed with it. It’s like the early days of a love affair, when the other person is all you can think about, except here the ‘other person’ is played by my own throat, and there’s no sex involved because that would be impossible and probably just make it even more sore.

  I’m also extremely conscious of just how often I must nonchalantly swallow saliva in an average day without even realising, because suddenly it hurts like hell each time it happens. Every few minutes it feels like I’m trying to squeeze a splintered cupboard door down my neck—yet I can’t stop doing it. It’s humiliating.

  Even sleep brings no respite: I wake spluttering in the middle of the night, feeling like a cat’s just clawed through my gullet, trailing furballs in its wake. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

  In summary: a mere sore throat is proof enough that there is no God—or that if there is, he doesn’t give a toss about human suffering. In which case why bother worshipping him? That’s like fellat-ing someone who intermittently stubs fags out on your head for no good reason. And we all know how unsatisfying that can be.

  Still, perhaps I’m wrong and perhaps there is a God. Perhaps he’s reading this right now, on the toilet in heaven. In which case, perhaps he’d like to do something to prove his existence. Once he’s washed his hands.

  Yes, perhaps Mister so-called ‘God’ could create a highly infectious disease that was both non-fatal and fun. And by ‘fun’, I mean something that generates symptoms that feel nice instead of nasty. How about an illness that induces the sensation of sliding into a warm bath? Or the satisfaction of having just finished a really good novel. Or one that spends an entire week gently but firmly bringing you to a thundering orgasmic finale.

  Wouldn’t it be great? You’d jump for joy at the first symptom. If a doctor gravely ushered you into his office and said you were infected, you’d end up kissing him. If the virus was transmitted via saliva, he’d kiss you back (and if it was sexually transmitted, he’d lock the door, take his phone off the hook, and bang you round the room like a dirty little doctor-loving bitch. Ain’t that right? Say it, ho: say you love doctors. Mmmm. This be some prime medicinal lovin’, right here. I be taking your temperature real good. Uh. Uhhh! Uhh-hhhhh!).

  Yes, that’s how great the world of sickness and disease could be. But it isn’t, because God’s being an arsehole about it. If you’re the sort of person who prays every night, ask him to stop dicking around, yeah?

  I’d do it myself, but my throat’s too sore.

  King Kong times two

  [6 January 2006]

  Last night I saw Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong for the second time. This makes me an idiot. Partly because it’s three hours long, and partly because it’s rubbish, but mainly because even though I’d already seen it, I’d been in such a state of denial about it being three hours long and rubbish that, on being invited to see it again, I cheerfully accepted.

  Ten minutes in to my second viewing, I suddenly realised I’d made a terrible, baffling mistake. And now not only was I going to have to sit through the whole thing again, but I’d somehow have to explain to my two companions (who spent the duration yawning, writhing and fouling themselves with disgust) just why I’d been prepared to waste six hours of my life watching such a mammoth fountain of shit.

  There simply isn’t space to list everything wrong with it. Its most glaring flaw is being sixteen times more overblown and histrionic than necessary. For instance, Kong do
esn’t just fight one T-Rex, as per the original. No, he fights a whole bunch of them, while entangled in vines, dangling above a ravine, and tossing Naomi Watts from paw to paw like a Hacky Sack—for ages.

  If there’d been a scene in which Kong went to the toilet, it would’ve run like this: (1) Kong unfurls his lokm penis and piddles into an erupting volcano for 45 minutes; (2) Kong turns around and passes a stool the size of a blue whale, in slow motion, to the strains of a 2o,ooo-strong choir, while Naomi Watts stares at him, her eyes brimming with love; (3) his bowels emptied, Kong plucks the planet Jupiter out of the sky and swallows it for no reason, while fighting fifteen giant crocodiles. And a robot. And a pig.

  What’s more, the cast are just plain weird to look at. Jack Black looks like he’s playing the lead in Young Prescott, Adrien Brody resembles a cross between Ross from Friends and a disappointed sundial, and Naomi Watts spends the entire film gawping, sobbing, screaming or turning into Nicole Kidman in your head. Until the final scene, when she does all three at once. In slow motion. Atop the Empire State Building. In 3D.

  As a film, it’s the fattest, most swaggering, numb-headed and pointless assault on the senses it’s possible to imagine. What I can’t understand is why I enjoyed it first time round.

  I suspect it was something to do with my state of mind at the time. I’d been Christmas shopping in a particularly miserable shopping mall—one of those modern ones consisting entirely of shiny floors and echoes, JD Sports and Nando’s Chickenland. I was dioroughly sick of it and, by extension, of life itself.

  At which point I was faced with a choice. I could drop to my knees and headbutt the floor until my skull split open in front of thousands of horrified shoppers. Or I could go and see King Kong, which I figured would probably be far too long and not very good. My expectations thus lowered, I actively enjoyed it. I’d adjusted my filter beforehand.

  It’s all about adjusting your filter. Just don’t try adjusting it twice.

  The root of all stupid

  [13 January 2006]

  So the other day I’m watching The Root of All Evil, Richard Dawkins’ new Channel 4 series about religion, and it’s alternating between terrifying and hilarious. Terrifying because it feels like a report detailing the final seconds before the world slides into an all-out holy fistfight, and hilarious because every time Dawkins meets a religious spokesman, which he does at regular intervals throughout the programme, he quickly becomes far too angry to conduct a civil conversation with them—visibly fumes, in fact, and adopts the expression of an outraged Victorian gentleman who’s just been mooned by a cackling street urchin while escorting a lady across Bloomsbury Square. It doesn’t exactly move the debate forward.

  Still, his central point (that the irrational dismissal of logic encouraged by religion often leads to tragically irrational behaviour, such as blowing yourself up on the tube or listening to Christian rock) seems pretty valid from where I’m standing, i.e. cowering on the sidelines of a fight I didn’t pick, and which seems to be escalating out of control. Life on Earth would be simpler and less blowy-uppy if religion didn’t drive so many of its followers crazy—so why isn’t anyone researching a drug that can cure it?

  It can’t be that far-fetched. After all, there’s no shortage of boggle-eyed drug-guzzling bores out there willing to describe their spiritual experiences at punishing length. They can crack on for hours about the time they took a nuclear strain of hallucinogen they found on the internet. They ran outside in the moonlight, glanced down at a bit of old stick on the floor, and suddenly found themselves journeying inside its mind—suddenly the air tasted of wood, they felt bark growing on the outside of their brain and they slowly realised that when you really bloody think about it, we’re all sticks, in a way, and let me tell you that revelation was bloody life-changing, it absolutely was. Do you want some? Do you? Do you want to take some now? Go on. I need someone to talk to, someone on my level. TAKE THE PILL!

  If we’re smart enough to create drugs that tickle the spiritual node in the brain, perhaps we can create a few new ones that’ll shut it down completely. I’d make it mandatory for all schoolkids, worldwide. Actually sod that—I’d pump it into the water supply myself.

  Imagine! Nothing to kill or die for! And no religion too! It’s amazing literally no one’s ever had that thought before.

  OK, so there’s always the possibility that the same part of the brain that handles fuzzy spiritual feelings is the same part that handles love and sorrow and pity and joy; the same part that makes us create songs and jokes and books and art and brightly coloured computer games in which an animated weasel collects starfish in a fountain; so once we wipe it out we might all be left scampering around the planet like thick, bipedal, cultureless mice—rutting, foraging, scratching behind our ears and doing very little else. But look on the bright side. No more religious conflict and no more novelty ringtones. Two almighty evils erased for the price of one. Bargain.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In which Jeremy Kyle interrogates the unfortunate, Neighbours celebrates two decades of bland existence, and George Galloway impersonates a cat.

  Beating them off with a stick

  [20 August 2005]

  Last weekend I went to the Natural History Museum and got seriously impressed by spiders. It’s the way they catch flies. There’s your standard web—which is incredible in itself- but there are also exotic variants on the theme.

  Take the purseweb spider, which constructs a tubular web that protrudes from the ground, ready to swallow anything dumb enough to land on the tip. Or the bolas spider, which creates a glob of webby goo on the end of a silvery thread, then twirls it around like a lasso until it catches a moth.

  I’m not that fussed about eating flies myself, but I’ve got to hand it to the spiders: their determination is astounding.

  I was reminded of this while watching Studs of Suburbia (C4 ), a documentary about men who know what they want (sex with ladies) and know how to get it (charm).

  Oops—did I say ‘charm’? I meant the opposite. In fact, imagine embroidering the word ‘charm’ on a piece of satin, wrapping it round a rock, and blasting it skyward through a high-velocity cannon, all the way over to the other side of the universe. Then walk away from the cannon and accidentally step in some dogshit. Now examine your shoe. That’s what these men have instead of charm. But they also have countless notches on their bedposts. As a fellow man, this upsets me.

  Take Alan. Alan is fifty-two and hails from a small town in Yorkshire. He looks like a cross between Rodney Bewes and John Prescott. He lives with his mum. He speaks with a bloated jowly gargle and has nothing of interest to say.

  He’s beating them off with a stick.

  His secret? Suggestive chat and dogged persistence. Apparently he gets turned down ‘eight times out often’, but despite closely resembling the animated mascot from Bullseye he succeeds with the remaining 20 per cent. He once got three women pregnant simultaneously. OK, not literally simultaneously—he’s not that potent—but it’s still quite an achievement, if you measure success by the number of people you’ve slept with, which all men secretly do. (Even Magnus Pyke. In fact he’s probably even drawn up a pie chart detailing how many naked ladies he’s seen. And then he’s drawn a pair of boobs underneath it. Great big pink ones. And he’s dead, for Christ’s sake.)

  We also meet Clive, a fifty-five-year-old Welshman who claims to enjoy similar success using a high-tech spin on the same basic technique. He spam-mails women on dating websites, firing off the same flirty messages again and again until he scores a hit. At one point in the documentary Clive tips a carrier bag full of knickers all over his bed, then sorts through them, chuckling to himself. It’s his trophy collection.

  I can criticise Clive until I’m blue in the neck. He’s a selfish, dough-faced tail-chaser with the moral outlook of a skunk, and I’m not. But then I’ve never tipped a carrier bag full of knickers over my bed and sat about laughing. No. I spend my weekends gawping at spi
ders in a fucking museum.

  Somehow, Clive has won.

  Lost

  [27 August 2005]

  Like about 6 million other people, I tuned in for the two-part premiere of Lost (C4) a few weeks ago, and mightily enjoyed it.

  Yeah, so they all look like supermodels, apart from token Blobbo Boy. And yeah, so despite the plane crash, they’ve only sustained cosmetic little injuries—a dainty scratch here, a neat graze there, and absolutely no one with a whopping great shard of metal jutting from their eye. And yeah, so a few of the characters could be replaced by simple glove puppets with ‘Tormented Hero’ and ‘Selfish Macho Guy’ stitched on them, and you wouldn’t really notice. So what? I liked it.

  Because oooh, I thought to myself, oooh, it’s a bit like a cross between The Twilight Zone and 24: schlock, but quality schlock. What’s the mysterious force that keeps smashing down trees? How come there’s a polar bear on the island? Will they get to the bottom of the looping sixteen-year-old distress signal? Pointless questions, but they intrigued me.

  And just like everyone else, I started theorising about what might be going on. Perhaps they’re in purgatory. Perhaps they’ve gone back in time, or been zapped into an alien theme park. Perhaps the last episode will end with the camera pulling back to reveal the whole thing’s been happening inside the brass knee of a gigantic clockwork robot. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Now, several weeks in, perhaps it’s just a big con. I was halfway through this week’s episode when I realised, with a bit of a jolt, that I was finding it profoundly irritating. I stopped wondering about the mysterious island, and started wondering whether Lost itself is worth bothering with—because it’s starting to strongly resemble a load of navel-gazing soap claptrap that passes itself off as something more stimulating by going ‘woo, woo, I’m mysterious’ every five minutes. It reminds me of the sort of rubbish ‘surreal’ painting you do during art class aged fourteen (you know—a giant eye hovering over a desert landscape, surrounded by floating question marks, the kind of thing even a Marillion album cover would consider embarrassing).