Changing Is All About Your Internal Drive
THE SUNDAY AGE
Sunday February 11, 1996
THE latest lapse in taste from our peculiar cousins across the Pacific is the Visible Human, a 3D ``teaching aid" computer- generated from digitised wafer-thin slices of executed mass murderers. This montrous love-child of Silicon Valley and your local deli - ``I'll have a Reuben Sandwich, hold the mass-murderer" - is being distributed on the Internet for the edification of those little ghouls in cream-brick electorates whose fathers can afford modems.
How diverting for our gilded youth. At the touch of a keyboard button the Visible Human can be racked with any of the physical embarrassments that make our lives so exciting, from piles to psoriasis. Even more entertaining, the Visible Human can be made obese, anorexic, decrepit or youthful at will. And when our little pointy-headed torturer has had his fun, a simple touch of the ``reset" button will return his cyber victim to the mild-mannered mass-murdering Visible Human he once was.
Being an extremely visible human myself (I weigh 80 kilograms), I've been looking very closely at my warranty, for it seeems that some careless technician neglected to install my reset button at the factory. To my visible dismay it appears only Deluxe models are thus equipped and we Economy models just have to make do. This is unfortunate because I ate an entire chocolate Bavarian pie last night and my internal drive is giving me hell.
Thanks to my lack of a reset button, it also seems that those unsightly corrugations and odd tufts of hair are permanent additions to my face. My inability to spring refreshed from bed in the morning is likewise a permanent Economy fixture, as are my convictions that the world is going to hell and that Modern Youth is a tribe of gibbering baboons. This is unfair. Not only can Deluxe dads cheerfully feign enjoyment while listening to their sons' Metallica CDs, they also perceive the world to be just dandy, for should a Deluxe model lose his hair, teeth, or sanity, the reset button immediately replaces them. Deluxe models also come in a wide range of attractive designer colors while we Economys are lumbered with hideous marbled pink skins that never tan.
Furthermore, all Deluxe models are equipped with a handy option key that makes them disappear discreetly from embarrassing social situations. As I can't open my communication slot without putting my foot in it, I need this feature. Just last week I found myself innocently listing the repulsive habits of cats to a woman who had not only owned a cat but who had also, I belatedly learnt, lost it under the wheels of a semi-trailer the night before. Anxiously thumbing my ``delete" button, the best I could manage was a sickly smile and a rush for the door. It's a good thing I only socialise with other Economy models. They're not too fussy about their friends.
By far the worst thing about being an Economy model is the constant cringing to Deluxe whims, the cheerful acceptance of the chipped coffee cup, that little smile of gratitude you can't control when a Deluxe actually deigns to speak to you. Of course, deep down we really hate their guts, but it is a loathing tinged with envy. Like it or not, we lumpish Economys were created solely for the amusement of the permanently elegant Deluxe.
So it should come as no surprise that after some prompting from a dazzlingly beautiful Deluxe biochemist, I have decided to give my body to Science. After being tastefully murdered by lethal injection, I shall be snap-frozen, then resected into mortadella-thin slices of Dyson. Some charmless Economy computer whiz with acne and a goatee will then reconstruct me into an electronic facsimile of my former self, package me attractively, then loose me on the Internet.
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the Risible Human, available for a short time only on an Information Bypass near you.
© 1996 THE SUNDAY AGE
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