Dubai Aquarium Cracks Almost Flood Mall with Giant Sharks
Feb 20 2010

There is nothing to see here! Delete your cameras! Dubai is a City of Wonders!

We’ve told you before that Robby’s sister, Ann-Louise, is fascinated by all things Dubai, and has been using it in cocktail conversation for years, forever telling people Dubai is where she’ll finally get to star in a TV show (once all the studios are built), Dubai’s where she’ll live like a princess and never have to pay for anything again (because she’ll marry some sheik), and Dubai’s where all of her dreams will come true (with her chief dream, as always, being to never work again and have everything done for her).  ”It’s my playland,” she says, “the place I just know is meant to be home.  While I love New York, I ADORED Dubai”.

She has, of course, never actually been there.

She gets all her news from old Vanity Fairs and other Conde Nast publications she reads while waiting for Momi or Katya for a cut and color at Miani Viel off Park Avenue, nibbling on croissants, drinking mimosas while 90% of the country’s hard at work.  ”Dubai! Dubai! Dubai!  It’s GLORIOUS!”.  All the fops in the salon agree with her, as they dart here and there to fetch her more chocolate for her croissant or orange juice for her mimosa.  ”Orange juice is yucky.  Just skip to the champagne.  When I live in Dubai, I’m going to bathe in champagne.  Champagne will come out of the faucets, and I will just pull an ivory lever and Veuve Clicquot will rain down on me in a golden shower”.

<< snort >>

If you lived in Boystown, you’d know why it’s roll around on the ground hilarious every time Ann-Louise starts waxing poetic about her champagne-induced golden showers in Dubai.

Frightening she thinks Dubai is a Wonderland, but funny, after having a gay brother for, oh, over 20 years, and surrounding herself almost exclusive with gay dudes in New York, she’s picked up on so little of the lingo.

Ann-Louise is a slow-learner, though.

She’s not alone, apparently, because whoever’s building all of the giant, enormous, largest-in-the-world, champagne-covered oddities in Dubai apparently hasn’t learned how to build anything properly.

In a horrifying chain of events that would make a GREAT disaster movie on SyFy, Dubai built a giant shopping mall (the world’s largest!) that was wrapped in a giant aquarium (the worlds largest!).  We’ve told you before that all the building projects in Dubai used imported slave labor from Pakistan, India, and various Asian countries.  The men were tricked into coming to Dubai because they were promised they’d make, in one week, what they’d earn in a whole year back home.  So, the Muslims in Dubai got all the labor they wanted.  The poor flocked to Dubai in droves, giving the Muslims the pick of only the strongest, youngest, and most desirable men (which seems to be quite often their preference in many ways). Once these laborers crossed the border into the United Arab Emirates, their passports were confiscated, their personal items were removed from them, and they were sent to live in shipping crates hobbled together in labor camps until their bodies gave out or the mammoth Dubai construction projects were finished — whichever came first.

Dubai refused to pay these workers.

Dubai refused to let them go home.

Dubai enslaved these men to build, on the cheap, all of the marvels that fascinate Ann-Louise Melton.

We’ve told you before that we firmly believe the Burj Khalifa, the current tallest building in the world, is going to collapse within 10 years.  It’s already started falling apart.  We think it was so shoddily built that it’s a danger in and of itself…but we can’t imagine men enslaved to build it would strengthen its structural stability. If you had to live in a hot shipping crate, and you weren’t being paid for your work, and you weren’t allowed to go home, would YOU do a good job fastening rivets so your slave-master’s Tower of Babel doesn’t fall down?  The Muslims didn’t seem to think about that.

The Dubai Aquarium Mall is perfect self-parody.  Why build a mall inside an aquarium?  Because we can!  We are Dubai!  City of Marvels!

Just imagine the horror of all inside as the seams in the acrylic start to pop and salt water floods the Gucci and Prada-strewn marble corridors of the mall…where giant sharks swimming overhead look down at the tasty morsels scurrying away from the water.

There is still nothing to see here! Don't take any pictures!

What’s interesting is that Dubai’s police arrived on scene not to help the people in harm’s way, but to protect Dubai’s image. Read the article linked above.  Look towards the bottom at what the police were doing as they arrived.  They confiscated cell phones and cameras and made people delete all pictures of the aquarium breaking and flooding the mall.  When the tank burst, someone came over the loudspeakers and told everyone to run for their lives because the sharks were coming and the aquarium had “exploded”.

But, as soon as police eliminated all the evidence, the Ministry of Propaganda stepped in and said, “Oh, no, there was no explosion.  All the sharks are swimming nice and are smiling.  Someone spilled a large glass of delicious date juice on the floor and then a small child thought it had come from the tank, and that is why people thought there was a problem.  That child has been killed and will make no more problems for Dubai.  Anyone who contradicts this cheery assessment of things and perpetuates the story that the tank burst will join that child on the garbage heap.  This is Dubai, City of Wonders! Press conference ended.  Get back to work”.