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Viewer Discretion vol. 1 issue 17 march 16:99
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\ \ /_/i e w e r issue 17 vol. 1 march 16/99
\ \/| |i s c r e t i o n ISSN 1481-2266
\__| |/ v_d@iname.com
| _ |/ archived at disobey.com
|___|/ http://www.disobey.com/text/
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T h e r e a r e 2 9 0 d a y s r e m a i n i n g . . .
In this issue:
WELCOME
QUOTABLE
HORROR - BY MORBUS
NO FRILLS OF OUR LIVES - BY GOATBOY
BOOKSHITE
NKOTBSHITE
ETC
:: WELCOME ::
Welcome to the "weirdness quotient is rising" issue. As we rapidly
approach midnight on December 31/99 we can all expect things to start
getting weirder and weirder.... It seems that any time humanity has
faced a major century or millennial change, there is a certain amount of
weirdness that begins to creep out from the fringes, where it has been
hiding for the past 1000 years or so, and quickly gains footholds within
contemporary society. Those Hale-Bop-Spaceship-Behind-A-Comet guys were
one particular group that brought not only cults, but the dark/weird side
of the Internet to the forefront of mainstream media
for a while. Personally as far as cults go I much prefer Jim Jones in
Guyana but he was ahead of his time. If he had waited until 1999 to
spike his Kool-Aid then he would be, to paraphrase John Lennon, more
popular than Christ. I recently had a friend send me a clipping from a
local rag about a multiple shooting spree/murder in Finland that the
authorities were tying into an episode of X-Files. And I guess the
point of this rambling bit on weirdness is to say that I too have
experienced a small, but growing number, of "unexplained" weird
occurrences over the last few weeks...
First it was the seemingly innocent event of our electronic, computer
controlled door locks at work mysteriously crashing and locking us out
of our offices. Actually I can live with that - I still get paid even
if locked out. Then our tape back-up unit had a meltdown. Not too much
of a problem but an inconvenience for sure. While that was out being
repaired my hard drive crashed. Completely unrecoverable. That coupled
with no back-up tape unit was a major annoyance. Then my replacement
hard drive crashed. FUCK!!! The Finish X-Files theory is starting to
look right about now...and then it gets even more bizarre...
Now you may choose to believe these next two events or not. It's up to
you, but I swear they happened just as I am about to tell you. You see
for work purposes I decided to upgrade my laptop from Windoze95 to
Winblows98 and the FAT system to FAT32. For those of you who are
uninformed, these are Microsoft products. Microsoft products, while
being the most popular on the planet, almost always can be counted on
to fuck up. Anyways, here's where it gets weird. I went through the
Winblows98 upgrade procedure (I chose to upgrade rather than a clean
install as I had a ton of programs I didn't want to reinstall) followed
immediately by the FAT32 conversion. Both upgrades performed
flawlessly. I was stunned. Microsoft products actually doing what they
are advertised to do without fucking my computer up or taking 15
install attempts requiring umpteen new driver updates?!?! There really
is something weird going on out there. I know now. I've experienced it
first hand. Be careful out there...
In other news, Andrew M. was the first to send in the correct answer to
the birdshite thing from last issue. For his troubles VD has sent him
a larger than life, well OK it's 48 points, ASCII text VD logo - neato!
Tattoo that on yer back! Andrew was also kind enough to supply VD with
most of its quotables for this issue....whether he knew it or not,
hehehe
And I would just like to take a moment to wish my oldest son an early
Happy 6th Birthday! March 17th, St. Paddy's Day, is his actual
birthday. Not that I let him read VD or anything but it's the thought
that counts, right?
Enjoy the issue...
:: QUOTABLE ::
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to life,
mad to talk, mad to be saved desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn,
burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across
the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and
everybody goes 'Awww!'"
-Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"
"Press Ctrl-Alt-Del now for an IQ test."
"You smoked yourself retarded!"
-all the above submitted by or attributed to Andrew M.
"Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best!"
-Frank Zappa (submitted by Goatboy)
:: HORROR - BY MORBUS ::
CARRIE 2: THE RAGE
Is it CARRIE 2: THE RAGE or THE RAGE: CARRIE 2? HELLRAISER 2: HELLBOUND
or HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2? Who the hell cares? 20 years later, I'm
deeply impressed by the amount of awesomeness that CARRIE 2 oozes.
Not only is it well made, well written, well acted (duplicating
CARRIE's unknown cast), and just all around a great movie, CARRIE 2
doesn't ignore its root: we're taken to the old location of the Bates
High School, a graveyard of memories and horror.
I enjoyed this movie so much. Whereas CARRIE took us through the
torturing's that young White went through, CARRIE 2 brings us the life
of Rachel Lang, protected by a shell which begins to crack as she
begins to fall in love shortly after her best friend commits suicide.
As opposed to the bit by bit agony of Carrie White, Rachel Lang gets
hurt in one fell swoop by her greatest fear: just as her shell is
totally cracked, she is hurt where it can hurt the worst.
I rarely, in horror history, have been so happy when she went on her
RAGE and began killing the students who played their cruel trick. Such
a powerful scene - my jaw was agape the whole time. It was beautifully
constructed, and diabolically evil. The closest match that I can think
of in modern times would be the theatre scene with Sidney from SCREAM
2. This is a quality piece of work.
I found myself thinking of the movie, replaying itself over and over in
my head more times than I could imagine. I ache to see it again, and I
shake while I write this review - what a great fucking movie! Perhaps I
exaggerate, but it's well intentioned and well deserving.
The parallels between the two movies are faint, but upon reflection,
noticeable. The suicide of the best friend was sudden and brought out
loud "Wow, that was cool". One of the best sequels I have ever seen,
modern, classic, or the 80's.
You better love this movie. Otherwise you suck.
:: NO FRILLS OF OUR LIVES - BY GOATBOY ::
Do you work here, part deux.
Whoever designs uniforms usually has a fashion sense that even in
the 70s they got snobbed at and a sense of logic that defies any
logical understanding.
Oddly enough this is not the case for our new uniforms at no frills.
Lately whoever runs the marketing department of no frills decided
that, since we have the image of being cheap (i.e. low cost = low
quality), they wanted to rebuild that whole concept into another
way of cheap (i.e. low cost = we save you money).
So the store got repainted from canary yellow to white, the letters
"no frills" instead of being all black are now with a red "no" and we
have bananas painted all over the place.
You see, bananas are no frill's symbol now, because our bananas
not only are the best, but they are always the cheapest (i.e. as in
low cost, not much the fact that you buy them now and three
weeks from today they are still green).
Of course our uniforms changed as well.
No longer do we have the black pants/red shirt combo. Now it's
black pants/black shirt. The shirt has a little trim of red and yellow
on the collar and around the sleeves.
The label says "no frills" in white and has the bananas on them.
To say that we look dorky is to say the least. I'm not sure how
others feel, but while this is way better than the red-Scottish
themed shirts the girls have to wear, I still have trouble walking
around with bananas embroidered on my shirt.
I digress.
So while I was muttering to myself about the lack of taste that the
people in head office showed once again, replacing good, efficient
shirts that could take a beating and still look clean, with shirts that
just a gust of wind can make dirty, I had the pleasure to discover
one fact: our new shirts make us invisible to customers!
I don't mean that I can kick a customer in the nads and he wouldn't
see who did it. But people are far beyond the assumption that I
work here, and confuse me for a customer, as they desperately
look for a "red shirt" to ask questions to.
I don't even get to hear the ever dreadful question "excuse me, do
you work here?" because for their twisted little minds, I can't
possibly work there. I am wearing black.
They are catching on though. I suppose the fact that I do things
regular customers don't do (i.e., pick stuff up from the floor, use the
PA, help a customer with difficulty) they are realizing that it's not
just that we are understaffed (a few people still wear their red shirts
on occasion and when they hit the floor they get swarmed by
customers asking questions like bees around a single flower), but
that in the process of change (what? you mean your walls were
yellow before? I've been shopping here for the past 15 years and I
never noticed they were yellow!) we got new uniforms as well.
Better enjoy the freedom while it lasts.
A not so bitter clerk,
Goatboy
:: BOOKSHITE ::
Mark Dery's "The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the
Brink" should be required reading for all persons entering or living in
the USA. The book is a veritable roadmap of side-show American Culture
on the highway to hell. It is both a perfect follow-up to his book
"Escape Velocity; Cyberculture At The End Of The Century", which
explored the dark side of our increasingly connected world, and a
great stand alone volume. With this latest addition to his works Dery
seems to be amassing his own historical review of the "unseen" American
Culture - and it's a damn good thing for the rest of us that he is.
"The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium" gives us guided tour of the seamy
underbelly of the Wonderful World of Disney version of American Culture
that the mainstream loves to push down our collective throats. A
visceral Ying to Disney's Yang, Dery has explored and unlocked all the
forbidden doors; from psychotic clowns to apocalyptic digerati, from
meat as art to the resurgence of Freak shows, with a cast of
thousands including Timothy McVeigh, Fox Muldur, John Wayne Gacy, Space
Aliens, autopsy cadavers, Mad Cow artists, hydrocephalic skeletons and
even that demon we love to hate, Bill Gates. And behind each of these
unlocked doors are further doors ad infinitum - down a darkening spiral.
Like pealing the layers of onion, albeit a slightly rotten one.
Throughout "The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium" Dery's writing is a dichotomy
that is entertaining and informative, disturbing and delightful. His
observations are at once obvious and insightful. "The Pyrotechnic
Insanitarium" is both an historical view of American Culture as it
approaches the millennium and alternate history/future of a Father
Knows Best/Leave It To Beaver dreamscape that never really existed,
except within the television studios and theme parks that dot the
American landscape like the photographs of painted bruises on wax
models of diseased limbs within the book - pathologically sublime.
"The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium" is sure to be on the reading list of
Cultural Studies students everywhere...except perhaps in America.
:: NKOTBSHITE ::
I got this message below the other night from Lob's Instagon list
(instagon@netcom.com) and found to be rather humourous and thought I
would pass it on as requested by it's author...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 21:45:39 -0500
Subject: giggle
Ok guys, it WORKED!!!
As you probably already know, MTV played "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids on
the Block on Total Request Live as a result of a fun little prank. We
got them to the #2 spot, and as a response, the veejay laid a challenge
before us all...he doesn't seem to think we can keep them in the top
10. Let's prove him wrong! All we have to do is call
1-888-311-4343 (I believe) in the US, and/or go to:
http://www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/totalrequest2/
and tell them to play the song. Think of how funny it would be if we
could get 'em to #1, and keep them there for awhile. I thought I was
gonna die laughing when I saw them just at #2...besides, maybe you'll
even be able to tell your grandchildren someday about how you were a
part of the biggest prank ever on MTV's TRL!
DON'T FORGET TO SEND THIS EVERYONE YOU CAN ASAP!!!!! The more people
you send it to, the sooner that veejay will be eating his words...
Happy Voting!
:: ETC ::
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Viewer Discretion is archived exclusively at Low Bandwidth -
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because Morbus is Mac mouse challenged and we don't discriminate.
Morbus appears courtesy of disobey.com
Goatboy appears courtesy of capnasty.org
Next issue March 30/99
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Morbus made me put this here cos he's a "visionary"...
Viewer Discretion and its back issues are available at:
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Viewer Discretion, VD, its content are. <-Zen style copyright, uh yeah.
Copyright 1998-2000 Neil MacKay <-Legal style copyright, uh huh.
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