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Devil Shat 1997 09 11
.ili. Devil Shat Nine .ili.
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Cloning ............................................ by Morbus
Teletubbies: Watching You ..........................
Watching Them Watching You ............ by Peter Stokes
THE DEVIL'S DUMP .................................. by various
This is Devil Shat Nine released on 09/11/97. Devil Shat is published by
Disobey and is protected under all copyright laws. All of the issues are
archived at the Disobey website: http://www.disobey.com/
Submissions, email, and news should be sent to morbus@disobey.com. Your
comments are welcome. What do you want us to write about? Send an email
and let us know.
Hello, me, it's me again.
-------------------
.ili. Cloning .ili.
------------------- by Morbus
I'm an advocate on cloning, but not for the reasons you think. It's not
because I need someone to do more chores for me (although I need it).
It's not because I want someone to help me play tricks on people
(although it would be fun). And it's not for me to rip some lungs out of
him when I start dying (although immortality does have a nice ring to
it).
No... its simply because I want to be a child again.
When I was a little tyke, I was heavy into science fiction and I use to
read everything I could get my hands on. And I use to watch all the
shows that even remotely had a hint of sci-fi. I was fascinated by the
possibility of cloning, and seeing three or four of me running around.
The world I lived in was one of awe, and fascination. It was beautiful.
The only reason I want cloning to become reality is because it will
bring me back to those days when I read a book, set it down, and said
"wow" and then let my mind wander in the universe that book had created.
Naturally, I have a rather biased view when it comes to this issue.
But before anything becomes reality, there is always the long debates
about consequences, the ceaseless questions, and hard interpretations of
what will really happen. One of the problems that people are stuck at
right now is "What is life?"
This is a more important question than immediatly appears. If a clone
satisfies all the definitions of life, then he no longer becomes
important to us. Mankind is selfish and our first use of clones was to
rape them of their body parts and use it to replace ours. If its
considered life, then we're screwed.
If a clone satisfies all the definitions of life, then we have to go
through a long identification process. He would need to be
fingerprinted, measured, social securitied and all that good stuff. But
more importantly, we have to remember this isn't a twin. Twins are
lookalikes, and maybe thinkalikes to a degree. But a clone is an exact
copy of you. It's going to want to live in your house, mess with your
wife, and take your children to the park.
If a clone satisfies all the definitions of life, then we can't use them
for war. And we can't tell them to test our new theories in the lab. We
can't tell them to work our job while we are on vacation. Having a clone
wouldn't be any fun.
But what if a clone isn't considered life? How much of cloning do we
really know? Do clones "lose" something in the process? Do they become
stupider? Sure, they cloned a sheep, but sheep are stupid anyways (see
the sheep movie at the website) so that solves nothing. I remember
reading a story where a clone becomes more aggressive for each time he
is copied. Could we begin to see an army's super soldier... only it's
YOU to the 12th degree?
People talk about taking a clone and putting it in cold storage until
you need a body part. Sure, that's not a problem. But what if you die
anyways? Do we have to have two funerals now? How are they going to
dispose of the clone body? We already have enough dead people, do we need
to have imitation dead people?
And I haven't even touched on another issue: are we playing God?
I would have to say no. Cloning is much like giving birth. You are
transferring life from yourself into a new body. Creating life is being
able to take something that is not alive, and to give it life. That is
not cloning. From a religious standpoint, life was created only once...
everything since then has just been transferred from one living thing to
another.
Now... let's get evil.
Imagine your typical mad scientist... bushy eyebrows, wicked gleam, and
a bottle of Jolt soda. He's gonna clone himself. He's gonna clone
himself twice. Hell, he's gonna make a crapload of himself. With all of
him running around, he can finally accomplish his world domination
theory: steal people from their houses while they sleep, or when they're
on they're way to work, and then replace them with his evil clones.
Sound far off? Maybe... but look at the 1990's compared to what we
thought was going to happen when we were a young, naive 1970. A lot of
things have come true and some a lot worse then what we imagined.
---------------------------------------------
.ili. Teletubbies: Watching You
Watching Them Watching You .ili.
--------------------------------------------- by Peter Stokes
Imagine a child-size marshmallow candy--something like a pink, frosted
"snowball" with a mutant face stuck at one end and a strange little coat
hanger or pipe cleaner thingamajigger coming out of its "head." You may
not know it, but what you are imagining as you read these words is a
"Teletubby"--the latest curiosity from those limey folks at the BBC.
We're a long way from Ab Fab here folks. This is programming for the
under-two set, and it's headed our way. Educate yourself, and be ready.
A recent Wall Street Journal article on the Teletubbies phenomenon
currently sweeping the English nation is peppered with phrases like
"neon-green," "shower-heads," "toast and custard" and "weirdest things."
You can see we're strangers in a strange land here--Teletubbyland, to be
precise. And we're not even through the first column yet. Other unusual
clusters of words reach out to you from the inky pages as well: "banging
their bellies together," "sings along," "warm feelings" and "better than
yoga."
The strangest thing about this program is, perhaps, the way in which it
gives a whole new meaning to that allegedly enlightened turn of phrase
"children's television." As the Journal describes it, the distinguishing
features of these Teletubbies are "the antennas on their heads and the
TV screens in their stomachs." Fair enough. We all feel like that
sometimes. But it doesn't stop there, I'm afraid. Consider what gets
displayed on the little TV screens embedded in these "alien
techno-babies," as the program's creators call them. Why of course it's
"videos of real children playing or singing with their parents."
Now if I had written that sentence, I'd have felt morally bound to the
put the words "real children" in scare-quotes. Because if the
Teletubbies achieve anything, it is a truly thorough interrogation of
"the real."
Kids, apparently, love them. They can't get enough of the "silver foil
quilts" our Teletubbies sleep in or the "pet vacuum cleaner" our
Teletubbies call "Noo Noo." Kids have to have it, and the day care
centers of England are prepared to give it to them. Imagine clusters of
little children huddled under a TV chanting for their Teletubbies to
take them to Teletubbyland where horrific, imaginary creatures project
images of "real children" precisely where you'd expect to find their
Teletubby-buttons.
Adults seem to need them too, albeit for different reasons. In England,
where all headlines invariably end with the word "SHOCK," the
Teletubbies have generated something of a controversy. Not because they
suggest acid eating television programmers working for the devil. Quite
the contrary. Because the show's creators recently fired "the actor
inside" Tinky Winky, one of the show's fab four 'tubbies. The powers
that be put the sacking down to "artistic differences" and the actor's
"misinterpreting the role." But The Sun, England's largest circulation
and most scandal-crazed tabloid, stood by "the actor inside" Tinky
Winky--a "former Shakespearean thespian" by all accounts.
The Sun managed, in fact, to disseminate across that green and pleasant
land some twenty thousand bumper stickers bearing the slogan "Save Tinky
Winky." In his own defense, the actor inside Tinky Winky, one Dave
Thompson, is reported to have said, "I was always the one to test the
limitations of the costume. I was the first to fall off my chair and
roll over. I took all the risks." Latest reports indicate that Mr.
Thompson is currently licking his wounds in the remote wastes of the
Falkland Islands and not answering the telephone.
So there we have it. A feedback loop of the strangest sort: where
children look at deformed toys reflecting back images of children doing
things other than looking at deformed toys, and where adults advocate
the reinstating of the actors "inside" these truly unsettling
frighteners. Take a moment and see if you can spot "the real."
"Everything about the show is designed to make very young children feel
love and happy," its creators are prepared to vouchsafe. Whereas Q, the
British music magazine, characterizes the program as "kiddytime hokum
starring four potbellied, big-arsed towelling aliens with speech defects
(typical greeting: 'Eh-oh!'), who fanny about for most of the day, do
everything fucking twice, and show films of inner-city schoolchildren on
tummies."
Is it any surprise, really, that the show is "produced in a remote
farm"? Prepare yourselves for a "merchandising blitz" dear readers. The
Teletubbies are coming. And they're already watching you watching them
watching you. Eh-oh!
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.ili. THE DEVIL'S DUMP .ili.
---------------------------- by various
---THE MOVIE HACKERS by Nimbus
What is this world coming to anyway? I saw the movie "Hackers", and I
was appalled. In my experience in... um, I mean, what I've seen about
hacking, little blue, gold, and green shiny images don't float around in
"Cyberspace" while "running around in a unix system"... its all code,
hackers dont wear power gloves, and last I knew virii don't project
images of people that are explaining the course of action the virus is
going to take in plain english. Now, I understand that this movie was
aimed at the alternateen's who worship their MTV culture, but giving the
message to mommy's little rebel that hacking is that exciting and
realistic is just wrong. Granted if the movie industry made a film
realistically about hacking, it would be boring... plain and simple.
---SHIVERS (pg 33, paragraph 4) by Morbus
SHIVERS is a UK published horror magazine that dotes upon the X-Files
like every other magazine. And, the purpose for this little entry is a
small little comment that received little attention. The situation
called for a bunch of little children to run around screaming while
60,000 bees (all real) flew and buzzed around their heads. The director
says, "And four or five [children] got stung. We had paramedics there
who took out the stingers and put on little Band-aids."
The clincher comes in her next line: "But the mother or father would
say, 'Get back out there! You're on the X-FILES!"
I guess being able to show your neighbors a videotape of your kid
running around getting stung on the X-FILES is far more important then
being a parent. It's not like your neighbor's would actually SEE your
kid anyways. Kinda reminds me of those people who get photos of the
Boston Marathon, and circle this little pixellated dot, all the while
yelling out "That's Me! That's Me!"
---PRINCESS DI AND MOTHER THERESA by Morbus
We all know this happened. And we all know that we're sick to death of
hearing it. And after seeing the photos of the car crash, and literally
seeing the number of Princess Di websites that sprung up from her death,
I have grown just as sick of it too.
Whoop ti doo. I just think it's funny that Princess Di is getting far
more media coverage than Mother Theresa. And then they have the audacity
to proclaim that Mother Theresa was "saddened" to hear of Princess Di's
death. Isn't it great how they pull the two tragedies together, but
still make Di seem more important?
What I want to know is since Mother Theresa's last words were "I cannot
breath"... were Princess Di's last words "I'm a bloody princess"?
---DAMN TWIX BARS by Morbus
So I'm walking into a conveinance store before I go to work. You know,
I'm kinda hungry so I buy a Twix bar. No big deal... it wasn't until I
was sitting down and reading the back package out of boredom that I saw
3 innocent words: "May contain peanuts".
I was mystified. I turned the Twix bar over... Nope, it said caramel.
What the hell is this all about? Is the Twix-making factory right next
to a peanut factory and every once in a while a peanut sneaks in? Did
they put this clause on the package so they wouldn't get sued?
It just makes me wonder if someday "virtual pets" will contain an
advisory "may contain life".
--- WHITE HOUSE DOT COM by Morbus
Stop on over to WHITEHOUSE.COM and catch Hillary and Bill making love in
whips and chains. Yes, it's true. The Whitehouse is now corrupted, and
Bill does a lot more than "just gettin' it on".
Or at that website, at least. WHITEHOUSE.ORG is the official website for
our President and First Lady, but most people might make the mistake and
type in COM instead. And what they will see is one big porn site.
Apparently, the owner first had made a political parody... people would
come, get a few laughs, and then never come back. So, in order to keep
people coming, he changed it all to porn.
Now the site gets from 100,000 to 200,000 hits a day.
I guess my main problem with this is the fact that all he could think of
doing was changing it to porn. Whoop to doo. There are already millions
of porn websites out there, the only thing that is making his any better
is WHITEHOUSE. I wonder why he couldn't do anything more... intelligent?
If all these people are searching for the real Whitehouse, and they
stumble onto his site, why doesn't he have articles and reams on
information about why the administration is doing a bad job, or what
people can do to make America better.
Porn is overrated. Thinking is underrated.
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Copyright 1997-1999 Disobey. You may not steal, maim, hold for ransom,
kill, or rape any part of this issue.
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