I've mentioned this (I hope) a couple of times: how in love we are with numbers and dates... the little significances (significai?) that we give to the stupidest things. The Millennium. Nostradamus's predictions. The third World War. "We're all gonna die, I tell ya! In just 3 short months, the world is coming to an end, and you're going to look pretty stupid trying to rush out the next issue of Devil Shat!"

Sure, the world's gonna end, but that small talk won't stop small significances: those that mean nothing but WILL if we say and pitch them loud enough.

It was with a cynical little cackle that I realized this issue of Devil Shat reaches you on the ninth day of the ninth month in the ninety ninth year before our death. 9/9/99! Shout it aloud, cos it's only gonna happen once!

I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I could find more than just these examples but 9/9/99 is significant enough for the MTV Music Awards to air (and to make tons of advertisements with the pseudomillennialtechno9999cooliofoolio edge), the next level of video gaming (the new Sega machine) and the new Final Fantasy VIII. Ho-hum. You know... WHERE the hell did Virtual Reality go? I want my VTV! I want to run around fully clothed, thinking I'm on the beach with a million dogs and one woman who all want to hump my leg. That's heaven, my friends: sitting in a pile of filth, waiting for the world to end, being loved by a million and one.

If you haven't made plans to go anywhere exciting this year for the Millennium, then you won't. Everything is booked up already, I'm told, so you'll have to sit back and watch it on your TV with a hastily gathered group of friends who are just as drunk as you and probably are wondering (as you are) who the hell everyone else is. Drunken reveries certainly bring the best out.

I'm going the Arthur Clarke route, though. The millennium ain't for another year and three months. THAT'S when we're gonna die. Those damn monkies on the SuperStation will take over the world, I tell ya. Spread the word.

Cos Devil Shat said so.

(Part One of Ten)

I don't personally believe in God. I have nothing against the concept of a higher power, but I'm not going to plan my day around it nor will I give into the basic rule that mainstream religions teach, which is "any good idea you have is God's, and any sucky one you have, you probably made up yourself" If you don't recognize this rule in your own personal theology, keep looking. It's in almost every one.

Still, I'm only a "pseudo-anarchist" and thus I'm willing to give room for a brief set of rules, and where better to start then the Ten Commandments? And that, my friends and acquaintances, is the subject of this ten part anthology: to determine if I've been a good little boy or a bad one.

We are first going to start with the assumption that despite thousands of years of alcohol accompanied, word-of-mouth storytelling and hundreds of poorly translated versions of its one and only text, there is a God, and Christianity is the end all, be all. Please, for this to work we've gotta suspend disbelief a bit.

Next, we are going to discount any ramblings of current religious leaders. I'm sure they mean well, but... um... actually, I don't think they really do, so fuck them, right? There, steps one and two are finito.

Now, the hard part, actually finding a clear, concise listing of the Ten Commandments. Not such an easy task as I was led to believe. My first impulse was to check the most obvious place, the Bible, but the thing's so damn enigmatic I could only pin down about seven of them. This could be thought of as a failing in me but I doubt it.

Digging deep within my Gen X roots, I leapt aboard the internet. Luckily, there are millions of sites about the Commandments. Of course, most of them are so full of sermons about how life sucks because we don't follow them, that the site usually never takes the space to list the actual Ten Commandments. I felt a slight catch twenty-two in this but pressed on. Finally, I found not only a list but an explanation of what each one meant. Goodie. Now we can answer the big question:

Am I going to Heaven or Hell?

I will answer this question over the next ten months going from Commandment to Commandment. I only count the actual written rule and the brief explanations given from the site as my parameters, nixing all the other loopholes that religions use to get out of Hell. I encourage all of you to play along at home.

No. 1 - Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me. (God, Exodus 20:2,3)

Parameters: Violations of this Commandment include all forms of idol worship, worshipping any creation as God, fearing and loving any creation more that God and trusting any creation more than God.

Okay. As stated before, I don't believe in God so as worshipping goes, he's at the bottom of the list. This could be considered a big strike against me, but in my defense I've never worshipped anything else. No statues or inventions have ever brought me to bended knee so I guess that's a plus.

It mentions idol worship. My parents and friends are my heroes and I would take them over God any day, but I don't worship them. That's a strong word. Unfortunately, those issues are just semantics as my entire argument falls to bits as I hit the "loving and trusting" part.

Sadly, I trust my toaster to toast my delicious morning snacks a golden brown over an egomaniacal invisible person to save my ass from wickedness. Sorry. There's just too much bad craziness in this place to stop and worry about whether I'm giving the Lord enough credit for my accomplishments, not that there are many.

Also, I fear other things more than I do God. I fear crazy, sick fucks with explosives and time on their hands. I fear enraged rush hour drivers who have had another bad day. I fear these things more than God and I don't think that's a fault. I think you should fear these things over God, whom supposedly loves me more than words can say but has no problem condemning my eternal soul to a fiery pit just because I never told him I loved him back.

Hell, my last girlfriend broke up with me over the same reason and I can see, hear and feel her. Plus, she still has a key to my place and an ax to grind (literally) so you tell me who you'd fear more? I guess I lost this Commandment, huh?

SCORE: Hell - 1 / Salvation - 0

Or: I'm more than just a mouse with a hypothalamus, damn it!

What are we educating for? To what purpose? What's our objective(s)? Has anyone met with their local school districts and participated with teachers when curriculum is being decided upon and developed? I mean, do we have meetings in which we discuss the general conditions of our society, ID problems, brainstorm resolutions, develop plans of action, etc. In other words, educate ourselves so that we improve our quality of life?

Human beings, as a species that wants to continue to evolve (thrive vs survive,) should be focused on things like learning more about cooperation, free flowing communication, removing obstacles to networking and access to information and communication.

We should be studying adaptability. We should be learning and teaching critical thinking and long term planning and problem resolution skills.

Computers, the internet, communication technologies - these are tools that can be used to gather the collective intellect of our species, to organize it and to make it accessible to each individual member. Thank goodness we have these tools!

Who wants to learn the same old formulas and theories, generation after generation? And who wants to be learning in an environment that's crowded, violent, uncooperative, understaffed, underfed?

What sort of social, technological, spiritual, and intellectual development can we expect to achieve as a species if we keep information away from our kids, refuse to communicate with them, refuse to educate them, and blatantly ignore them and their problems (most specifically, child abuse by adults - almost always a family member living with them or in close proximity.)

You can't have sex, you can't talk about sex, you can't watch other people having sex, you can't learn it from your parents, you can't learn it in school... You can only be ignorant and blind and stumble along like everyone else has generation after generation. Butt you can be titillated almost every waking moment by advertising in all its forms - that's ok.

It's ok to use sex to sell you cigarettes, to sell you cereal, to sell you milk. It's ok to use sex as a lure, to get what you what from someone else. We've been learning what makes us tick - you know, conditioned response stuff - i just wonder what kind of sexual sm/bd scenes might take place between a pair of successful predatory marketers sharing life and career together - and bringing up kids together...

Personally, i think kids would be a lot better off without their parents, especially these days.

We could be a thriving species, instead of one on its way out. (I'm surprised that we haven't yet organized the human evolution steering committee... I guess the United Nations would be the place to look for something like that... Hmmmmm...)

One of our biggest problems as a species is our resistance to change and our intolerance for something different. We see something different and our first response is to reject and destroy when we should be responding with curiosity, acceptance, and study.

There are so many huge problems today, and I remember these problems being identified back in the 60's and 70's and we did nothing back then to ensure a better future for ourselves and our kids and their kids. Nothing. So crack babies grow up, communities become destroyed, people become poorer, the quality of life diminished, things are harder for everyone. It's easy to see why it's happened, it was easy to see back then that it was going to happen - it's easy to see that we let it happen.

Who cares if someday no one will know how to spell? Maybe the need to is on its way out. Who knows? As long as the document being read is clearly understood in the way it was intended, then you're on target with your objective.

Someday we might be using only pictures or sounds or something else... The point is, as long as we're communicating clearly, that's the objective, that's where we want to be. Maybe we'll be using "picture-check" instead...

99-Sep-26
blackoak@balista.com

I love it!!!!!!!!!

HELLO!
MY NAME IS SATI,AND I AM 16 YEARS OLD.
I LIVE IN NORWAY IN A PLACE WE CALL ODDA.
I LIVE WHIT MY MUM AND MY TWO SISTERS.
THE DEVIL IS MY FATHER AND HE TELS ME WHAT I CHAL DO.
I LOVE THE DEVIL YOU SEE.

Damn, this sounds like the shit I wrote as a disenchanted eleven year old. Print some good shit for once, maybe I'll have to send you some.

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Devil Shat is published by Disobey & is protected under all copyright laws.
Devil Shat Fifty Six was released on 09/09/99. Last updated: 09/09/99.