The Current Global Crisis™

The Current Global Crisis™, which I won’t trouble myself defining here, can best be understood by the comparison of two lists, brought to my attention by an old friend at the Institute of List Comparison in the Scilly Isles.

They read as follows:

Top 10 ‘classical’ CD sales in the western hemisphere

1. The Ultimate Classical Chill-Out (Cloth-Ear records)
2. The Very Best of Gaelic Chilling (Celtic Cash-in)
3. More Ultimate Classical Chill-Out (Cloth-Ear)
4. Yet More Very Best Gaelic Chilling (Pseudo-Celtic Cash-in)
5. Pamper Yourself with Mozart (Rough Skin)
6. The Classic Bathtime Relaaaxxx (Retiree)
7. Calming Classics from Chopin to Enya (Bullshit records)
8. Unwind with Pachelbel and his Empty Cannon (Undemanding records)
9. Soft Gaelic Mellow Show Tunes IV (with no loud bits) (Bubble-gum sound)
10. Comforting Classics for Crap Days (Hard Feet records)

Top 10 news stories read on the Internet

1. UN inspectors find ‘chemical’ warheads, and run
2. Next terror attack imminent, says everyone
3. Kim ‘has’ nuclear bomb, and it’s a big one
4. Bush: ‘You’re either good, like me, or you’re evil, like them’
5. Dollar in terminal decline, global panic assured
6. Sharon set for big victory
7. A global Islamic state: al-Qaida ‘big idea’ unveiled
8. 250,000 more US troops head for Gulf, trouser-less
9. ‘Death to America’: the dawn chant in Paris
10. Arnie: ‘I might run for President’

I turned back to my friend’s note: ‘Unbelievable, huh? Spot the connection?’

Another look, and I did.

Hurriedly, I picked up the phone and called my other friend: a patchouli magnate who heads a billion-dollar industry. I told him of my observation.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ he said, as usual. ‘That’s why I’m a billionaire and you live in that crummy garret.’ In other words, my loaded buddy, blessed with the entrepreneurial instincts of an Iraqi palace builder, had foreseen this ‘chilling’ boom.

‘Years ago,’ he reminisced, ‘I was lying on that park bench, next to you, wondering about future growth industries. At that time, according to the newspapers I was sleeping under, investors were abandoning the “Pamper” market like an infected brothel. With the end of the cold war, people expected a slump in neurosis. But not me. I was sure the world would be a more dangerous place. I predicted the rise of the international terrorist, the upstart tin-pot dictator, and the lone superpower with more army than sense. I knew people would be crapping their pants, like I just had. And, thank God, I was right.’

He sure was.

Here’s an equation for you to ponder over: with every al-Jazeera broadcast of a bin Laden speech, 500 million seaweed foot scrubs are sold.

And another: with every bellicose rallying cry from George W. Bush, 750 million floating scented candles find their way off the shelves and into people’s bathtubs.

Bush has the edge, but the message is clear: the world, conflict-fatigued, just wants to relax.

I put my Carl Bernstein sideburns on and asked the only appropriate question: is there a conspiracy?

‘Of course there is, you moron!’ my billionaire friend would have me believe. ‘I funded Dubya’s presidential campaign to the tune of $20 million. When that didn’t work, I fobbed off the Supreme Court judges with free aromatherapy oils and boxes of Gaelic chill-out CDs. Bush knew what he had to do in return.’ ‘What was that?’ I asked. ‘Deliver,’ my friend said. Deliver what? ‘War, of course! WAR! Or, at the very least, the perpetual promise of it.’

I kept digging, sinking my spade even deeper into the sod. The results, as I’ve come to expect, were dirty.

Take an average copy of an average western newspaper. Apart from the average articles, you’ll find it includes at least five to six advertisements for ‘Pamper’ products. ‘Self-indulgence’, I am told, is the foundation of the Madison Avenue empire.

So do the sums, comrades: your newspapers are being funded by the ‘chill-out’ industry. Scaring your pants off editorially = good financial sense.

Like a cockroach-exterminator in a Parisian hotel, I knew I was on to something big. Without hesitation, or packing, I flew by charter balloon to London, city of enlightenment. But it was covered in fog, as my tourist guidebook failed to warn me. So, thinking quickly, I landed on a hovercraft to Paris, skidding my way up the Champs-Elysees, before colliding with the L’Arc de Triomphe and bursting.

Waiting for me was Jean D’Arc-Glacés, author of the best-selling Eurowimp: a memoir. We strolled to his favourite café, Le Pretentious Francais-phoney avec le Scarf Rouge et le Cheveaux de Floppy, a popular hangout with latter-day Diderots. There, over an egg-cup of tar, we discussed the global climate.

‘It’s one, two degrees warmer,’ he said.
‘Yes, but you are the voice of Eurowimpism,’ I flustered. ‘Tell me what that means?’
‘Bien sur,’ he began, inevitably. ‘L’Eurowimpism is a new philosophie. A Eurocentric global outlook.’
‘But where did it come from?’
‘My stomach,’ he said. ‘Les papillons.’
‘What does it embody?’
‘Une fear de le battle,’ he said. ‘It is très anti-American. You see, L’European, il n’est pas ‘appy avec L’American Bushman. Le President, he is – how you say? – une Dallas Cowboy. He goes around with petit jeans, those spurs, ‘is big Stetson, and he wave les guns around like le John Wayne. Is not L’European.’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Is not.’
He lit a fifteenth Gauloises. ‘Mon ami …’
‘Where?’
‘… ‘ere in L’Europe, we are doings things different.’
‘Like sitting in cafés, you mean?’
‘Almost. In L’Europe, nous est ecouté to le pipes de peace.’

I fiddled with my watchstrap. ‘Is that poetry?’
‘Mais oui!’ he enthused.
‘So, you’re saying that the Europeans are less war-hungry?’
‘Exactement!’
‘That they are more inclined to lie in hot tubs, surrounded by aromatherapy candles, listening to Gaelic pan-pipes, scrubbing their feet with seaweed, than they are to defeat terrorism or topple Saddam?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Although je prefere le metal de thrash.’

As he headed for the bathroom, collecting the rag from the last occupant, I slipped out of the smoky café, and dashed to my desk, wherefrom I have been writing this column.

Next to me, a floating candle is infusing the room with the soothing smell of jasmine flowers. All I need now, I think, is another war.

Cavalcade of Death by Jose Guadalupe Posada