__ __ \ \ /_/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/ __ __________________ _ __________________ _ _________________ __ __ ________________ _ __________________ _ ___________________ __ __ ______________ _ __________________ _ _____________________ __ 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 :: You can catch VD, from using Microsloth products or by watching Finish reruns of the X-Files. But if you want VD delivered to your mailbox, you have to send an empty email to: v_d-subscribe@makelist.com Conversely, if you use Linux or don't speak Finish, or if you just fucking hate us (like we really care), then send an empty email to: v_d-unsubscribe@makelist.com Pretty simple huh? Even 1st year university students could figure it out. Well, maybe not. If you have something you'd like to see in VD or an idea for a section you'd like to write or whatever, type it up and send it in a note to v_d@iname.com or don't. Viewer Discretion is archived exclusively at Low Bandwidth - http://www.disobey.com/low/listings/viewer_discretion.htm 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 __ _______________ _ ___________________ _ _____________________ __ __ _________________ _ ___________________ _ ___________________ __ __ ___________________ _ ___________________ _ _________________ __ Morbus made me put this here cos he's a "visionary"... Viewer Discretion and its back issues are available at: http://www.disobey.com/text/ 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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