
.ili.   Devil Shat Nine   .ili. 
-------------------------------

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

To unsubscribe from this ZINE, reply with "unsubscribe" anywhere within the email. Submissions, email, and news should be sent to morbus@disobey.com. Your comments are welcome. We also send out plain-text copies of our back issues through email. To get these, send mail with "Devil Shat Back Issue X" (where 'x' is the issue number)... your issue will be sent out within a day.


.ili. Contents .ili.
-------------------
Cloning (by Morbus)
Teletubbies (by Peter Stokes)
THE DEVIL'S DUMP (by various)

------------------
.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 expose 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 fxcking 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!

------------------------------------
.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 night 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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
The website edition includes images, a nice design, and all
of the email we have received about this issue. Go there.
http://www.disobey.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------
