Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2015, Side 14

14 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 13 — 2015
Politics | Bright?Opinion | Jar City
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• A renewed obsession with all things
“artisan,” especially baked goods
• Getting ripped off /
ripping other people off
• Pre-postcolonial facial hair
• White people
• Bullshit
Most importantly, all of this has to be
blended into a stupid fun-and-games vil-
lage fete cocktail, so that everyone gets
to compete on a remarkably hill-shaped
playing field to see who can make the
very bestest cutesy writings on a chalk-
board to advertise their very bestest arti-
san sourdough baklawa with sea salt.
However, since the Conservative
government says that the cupcake will
no longer be receiving any more of the
hard-up billionaire non-taxpayer’s mon-
ey, we’re left with something much less
fluffy. Furthermore, thanks to platforms
such as Pinterest and Instagram, the
bullshit cocktail now has a global reach—
and everyone wants a sip.
As such, I no longer think the label
of “cupcake fascism” is apt. We are now
living in what I call The Age of Bullshit,
or the Anthropobollockscene for short,
wherein humanity’s powers of bullshit
have irreversibly changed the planet for
the worse. In the anthropobollockscene,
men with pointless hats will sell you the
sweatshop-produced goods you know
and love for twice the price. In the an-
thropobollockscene, you will eat “Japa-
nese tapas” at an “English gastropub,”
and Instagram it. In the anthropobol-
lockscene, you think you are happy.
We are all guilty. We are all to blame.
We are all responsible. And what’s worse,
we all enjoy it.
What does this have to
do with Iceland? Let me
eat my artisan ideology in
peace!
Imagine we—that is, people in Iceland—
are living on a boat. We have now been
travelling up the western shore of the
Bullshit River for a number of years in
search of answers to our problems. Our
final destination? Shoreditch, London:
the heart of darkness in The Age of
Bullshit.
There had been whisperings that
a decorated and respected white man,
Marcus Mumford, had “gone native,”
so to speak, and was ruling the jungle as
a living god with some of his Sons, after
bringing “much-needed” improvements
and investment to the area, such as cereal
cafes and “water bars.”
As we travelled further upstream,
strange changes started to take place
among the denizens of the boat. After the
fishermen’s friends lost all of our money
in a very strange and mysterious incident
at the head of the ship, a mutiny began to
take place on the lower decks. While this
was happening, some of the more entre-
preneurial upper-crusties of the crew de-
cided to venture to the Beach of Folly to
soak up some rays, which beach, despite
its name, apparently had some very nice
Airbnbs and jam jar cocktails.
Impressed with what they had done
with the place, they handed the lo-
cal white savages a funky dance video
entitled “Inspired by Boat,” and some
pamphlets advertising the boat’s whale-
watching services, in exchange for a
loaned crate of beer and a newfound
sense of purpose.
This went on for some time, and with
a great degree of success. The money
started to come back onto the boat, and
we decided that the guys who lost it in the
first place probably deserved a second
chance.
As we ran out of cool boat services
to trade with the sav-
ages, however, we had
no choice but to start
trading away our own be-
longings. We gave them
some nifty sweaters in
exchange for a food truck. We swapped
some cool albums for a Tuk Tuk. We de-
molished some of our cool boat venues to
make space for some shops, so those from
the shore had more places to buy stuffed
Boat memorabilia. We even began to rent
out the lifeboats [via Airbnb].
But it was not to last. The jungle was
growing colder and more hostile the fur-
ther North we sailed. The people of the
boat had traded away their lopapeysur,
and what’s more, couldn’t afford the fan-
cy anoraks we were selling to the tour-
ists. The boat was getting bigger and big-
ger, and those new cabins needed filling.
“We’re just happy you’re here, Mumford
and Sons! We just are so very happy.”
The horror! The horror!
Now the news comes of a new restau-
rant opening onboard—one that serves
“tapas.” In jam jars. In a plank. On one
side of the plank of jars is your starter, and
on the other is your dessert. You eat your
starter, much too close to your dessert.
You don’t use clean cutlery for each new
course. You drink beer from a sixth jam
jar. You wonder how you got here.
But there is no question of “how” any-
more, for everything is already going ex-
actly according to plan.
The King is in his castle
and God is in his weird
culinary landfill-chic
Heaven. You have been
pitched a fresh hells-
cape of a nightmare artisan cheesecake,
and it is rich and sweet on your tongue.
Like hemlock. Or a Macbook charger.
When will it end?
Sometimes, when I go out by myself, I
look across the water. And I think of all
the things. I dream of using those jam jars
to catch that which spills out of the holes
in the colander I’m inexplicably being
served fries in. I think of Swiss cheese. Of
hulls. Of holes. Our Traditional Icelandic
Boat Holes. Of escape from this mortal
coil.
Where will our bodies wash up? Some
bright new shore, populated by strange
creatures who eat food off of plates in-
stead of egg cups? Or somewhere else?
Somewhere where even the toilet paper
is “rustic.” Where cereal is an “event.”
Where the men ride fixed-gear bicycles.
Where pipes are ironic, or unironic.
Somewhere much darker.
“And when Marcus Mumford saw
the breadth of His domain, He wept—for
there were no more worlds to conquer.”
There’s been much (some) made in British discourse of
the phenomenon of cupcake fascism. If you’ve ever been
to London, you might already have a vague, instinctive
awareness of what this entails. If I could boil it down to
five key elements, this is what they would be:
Words by Ciarán Daly
Photo by Hörður Sveinsson
The Heart Of Darkness
In The Age Of Bullshit
In the anthropobol-
lockscene, you will
eat “Japanese tapas”
at an “ English
gastropub,” and
Instagram it. In the
anthropobollock-
scene, you think you
are happy.