Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? by Steve Lowe, Alan Mcarthur, Brendan Hay

in years to come . . . But Myron, I’ve just put a page of A4 paper in sunlight and watched it spontaneously combust. “Sheer alarmism—we’ve always had hot days!” But Myron, a herd of gazelles has just elegantly pranced past the window of our Manhattan studio. “Er, yes, they’re mine. I brought them along with me. That big one—he’s called Dave and he likes nachos.”
    And Myron, now you’re being swept into the skies by a freak tornado. “What a funny thing you are! I see nothing extraordinary in this turn of events . . . It’s great up here! Hi, George, good to see you! Pretty breezy, I know! You what? You want to know more about it? It’s okay, I’m on it!”
    GOOD AND EVIL AS DEMONSTRATED IN THE MARKETING OF AUTOMOTIVE TRANSPORT
    Now, more than ever, we need a firm moral compass to guide us through our treacherous age. Let us be thankful, then, for car ads.
    It might not have escaped your notice that many of the ads are car ads. And you might well admire the way many cars embody very distinct moral attributes. Some cars are repositories of goodness that make you feel honest, real, and true—like getting emotional about the memory of
Brokeback Mountain
while sitting in a hedge.
    Other cars, very different cars, make you feel dark, cruel, and sleazy, like you’re eating a dirty burger for breakfast in preparation for a day’s gunrunning.
    Very much in the former camp, the new Nissan Note understands that having kids is the greatest adventure in the world (it’s not, though—skydiving is: it’s over quicker, and people don’t clam up when you talk about it). Billboards show this vehicle of virtue speeding through the countryside with a kite flying behind in the clear blue skies. It’s wholesome, pure, and pure, like Coldplay’s Chris Martin, fresh from having a bath, smelling a fragrant meadow at dawn.
    Alternatively, if the idea of going on holiday with children makes you feel nauseated, there’s the infamous ads for the European Ford SportKa, which gained worldwide notice for showing a sentient hatchback decapitate a cat with its sunroof. Seriously. All to brag that this car is—again, no joke—the “evil” alternative. All that was missing was the tagline:
You’d better be one sick puppy to drive this baby. Ford SportKa.
    Or you might prefer something closer to nature. “Go Beyond,” says Land Rover. Appreciate nature, the hills, the beaches, the misty forests . . . by driving through a misty forest, in a Land Rover! Because the Land Rover is the only off-road vehicle that naturally occurs in nature. Land Rovers are actively beneficent—like sharing cherries with an Eskimo would be good. Maybe the Eskimo has never had cherries before, and you’ll laugh and laugh and laugh.
    Or you might prefer batshit crazy. In which case, enjoy the VW Polo. A controversial viral Internet ad shows a Middle Eastern suicide bomber driving up to a café in the Polo—but when he triggers the bomb, the ensuing explosion is contained within the Polo. Why? Because the Polo is
that tough!
It is the
only
car that can contain terrorism! If you love freedom and dead bad guys,
buy VW!
    So the choice is clear: You can drive a car that’s truly at one with the cosmos, that will make you feel like the Buddha on a mellow tip. Or you can drive a car that thirsts for blood. At least until these two eternal opposing forces come crashing together in a final titanic struggle that will see the skies rent asunder, the ground shake, and the seas get decidedly choppy. At this point, the lamb will lie down with the lion. The shepherd will lie down with his flock. It will rain cats and it will also rain dogs. The beetles will lie down with the monkeys. The Green will lie down with the Black. Everyone is lying down.
Brm brm.
    GRAVITY-DEFYING CREAM
    Clinique’s Anti-Gravity Firming Lift Cream is marketed to women as preventing the inevitable downward effects of the aging process: “A lightweight oil-free formula [that] helps