Tetherd Cow Ahead

The blogosphere is a funny place, defined as it is by ephemeral digital bits that flit around the planet at speeds that were once inconceivable, and turn up on luminous screens as words and pictures of pretty much every imaginable sort. At this point in time there are probably somewhere in the vicinity of 200 million blogs on the web,⁽ⁱ⁾ and although the boom years of blogging have probably passed, the number is still growing.

Of course, of these 200 million offerings, barely a hand full are worth attending to, as we all know. And even of these, most settle into the well-worn, usually pedestrian, reiterations of the kind of media that we’ve had for centuries: magazines, news reports, gossip, diaries and opinionated grumblings.

In my opinion, the real potential of blogging has been overlooked by all but a very special few. Joey Polanski, or ‘Sir’ Joey as he is known around these parts, is one of those special few. Or, I should say, was one of those special few, for as many of you already know, a couple of days back, Joey brought down the curtain on his blog The Joey Polanski Show. I watched the lights go out in the JPS theatre with the greatest of sadness, because over the years, the flitting digital bits that have made their way to my screen from JPS Central have formed themselves into something quite remarkable: a friend.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ When I started blogging, I would never have thought something like that possible. Now Joey’s retirement is certainly not the same as if he suddenly disappeared and I never knew what happened – indeed, I even had warning that the Show was going to fold. But it does leave me with the feeling that an actual real friend has left town and that when I wander past his place all I’ll see from now on is windows with drawn shades and cobwebs forming under the eaves.

I think I do understand Joey’s reasons for closing up the show though. Sometimes a thing just runs its course, and the time becomes right to leave it be. I can’t imagine that happening at The Cow just yet, but I know I couldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility. Whatever the reasons, Sir Joey says that even though the theatre has gone dark, the old hoofer isn’t averse to a special appearance now and then and I hope that’s so.

I said before that Joey was one of a special few that, in my opinion, understood the real potential of blogging. The way I see it, anybody can write a diary, but it takes skill, and humour and prescience to understand the idea that a blog works best as a two-way street. This, indeed, is one of the reasons I think that the traditional media is having so much trouble with their presence on the net – they don’t understand the fundamental appeal of being an active part of the thing you’re reading.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ That was one of the very first things that attracted me to The JPS – even when I first started visiting YEARS ago, there was a constant amusing, sometimes hilarious, banter going on. It was like wandering into a party in full swing, and being handed a beer at the door.

The best thing was that Joey started coming to my parties too, and brought some of his infectious irreverent humour with him, and I know you’ll all agree that his shtick in the comments of some posts has often been more entertaining than the posts themselves. On more than one occasion I’ve even had to step back into the shadows and let Polanski and Atlas steal the stage entirely, and indeed, those two guys are responsible for big chunks of Cow Lore. It is without doubt a situation of the sum being greater than the parts.

Joey’s Shelf will remain permanently installed at The Cow. It’s in the basement (which I confess, is prone to flooding) but I do make sure that Sister Veronica dusts Joey’s trophies every now and then, and removes any of the crap that Atlas has dumped there. I urge you to visit The Shelf from time to time as a sort of homage to Joey. You never know what you’ll find.

Joey, thanks for all the good times over at the JPS. Thanks for the laughs and the pomes. And thanks, above all, for getting it.

So, as this sad era comes to a close, only one thing remains to be said:

Sir Joey Polanski: The Cow Salutes You!

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Footnotes:

1. It’s actually hard to get an exact figure. This number is based on a best-guess estimation from Technorati and Google. It’s probably an underestimate if all foreign-language blogging is accounted for. [↩]
2. And a strange and wonderful kind of friend; the person who I know in my head as ‘Joey Polanski’ is a fiction concocted by a real person. I’m sure there’s a lot of that real person in Joey Polanski’s character, but I am always aware that ‘Joey’ does not exist in any corporeal way. And yet, I still conceive of him as a friend. What a remarkable a magic trick that is! [↩]
3. The Guardian gets it – there is an increasing involvement of readers in the Guardian site. The comments on many articles rage into enormously entertaining debates, and there are Guardian photography and writing competitions – active communities that feel like they are part of The Guardian world. Contrast that with Rupert Murdoch’s cloistered communities, dotted with doddering old fogeys who are wondering why the Letters pages are so empty all of a sudden. [↩]

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Well Dear Acowlytes, the clocking over of the New Year is virtually guaranteed to bring out the loonies. Above is the cover from the new issue of some rag called Psychic Reader which I swiped off a stand at the local railway station this morning. In it, a ‘spirit medium’ alleges to have been channeling our old friend Rasputin. According to her, the Mad Monk is not just mad – he’s completely furious!

I’ll spare you the interminable claptrap that makes up the majority of the article and just give you the bare bones. Madame Zora, a clairvoyant of dubious credentials (she claims to be the reincarnation of Gilbert Einstein, Albert’s lesser-known brother) believes that she has become the chosen vehicle for Rasputin’s beyond-the-grave communications:

Rasputin came to me in a dream and told me that I was to bring his message to The Earthly Plane. He said that his penis is to be returned to him or he will visit his wrath on all those who have participated in its defilement!

Yeah, right. And I suppose Madam Zora speaks fluent Russian. Oh, wait – she doesn’t need to:

He sort of talks inside my head. It’s not in language – I hear his thoughts.

How entirely convenient.

Rasputin’s penis was removed from his corpse shortly after he was murdered on December 16, 1916, and has gone on to enjoy notoriety in its own right. According to Madame Zora, Rasputin’s spirit has been tagging along with it on its corporeal adventures and is far from impressed:

He is offended that it was put in a museum for all to see, and that it has now been cloned by Chinese scientists and is sold all over the world.

Madame Zora claims that in her dream Rasputin appeared wielding a huge knife and vowed to cut off the member of any man who has offended his name. She doesn’t specify what will happen to women who have crossed the Mad Monk.

Rasputin says, according to Madame Zora, that with her help he will find his penis wherever it may go. I guess it’s a good partnership – you obviously can’t hide the salami from a clairvoyant.

Seriously – how do people believe this stuff? It’s so implausible I couldn’t make it up if I tried.

With 2009 being as chock full of cretins and swindlers as it was, I’m really nervous as we head into 2010. Could this be the year that Scientology claims a US President and Shoo!TAG™ makes a cool billion on the NYSE? Could this be the year where homeopathy gets accorded WHO approval and Jasmuheen is granted credibility as a bona fide religious leader? Could this be the year when the followers of Catholicism exceed 1 billion in number? (Oh wait, that already happened…) As the world becomes more and more stupid, the possibilities are grim. But remember – when things look the very blackest, when the churning storms of the preposterous threaten to overturn your little boat of commonsense, Tetherd Cow Ahead will always be a lighthouse of rationality, reason and logic. And the lighthouse keeper will always have whisky. I hope 2010 brings each of you fulfillment, wisdom and contentment – all with a minimum of cash imparted to crackpots and mountebanks.

Oh, and in case it needs to be said… let the games commence!

Edgar Allan Poe is 200 years old today (but still doesn’t look a day over 40!). So break out the Amontillado and raise a glass at midnight to one of the Great Dark Geniuses of our age.

OK.

Time to review ‘em.

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(Also, be sure to catch The Trailer over at Old Fish and Lemonade… Really, you do want to…)

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Today,while looking for something else entirely* I came across an image of a curiously titled painting, ‘In Praise of the Pickled Herring’, by the 17th century Dutch painter Joseph de Bray (someone of whom, until today, I was entirely unaware).

The website where I learned of Joseph, which is dedicated to ‘Food in the Arts’, leads me to believe that this painting is a fine example of ‘Fish Still-Lifes’, an artistic niche that had also previously (and regrettably, I must add) passed me by.

This is the full version of the painting (click to get a closer look), which features, as a centrepiece, a stone table drapped with herrings and onions, and inscribed with the poem that gives the painting its name. It was penned by preacher and poet Jacob Westerbaen, and contains the picturesque declaration that the consumption of pickled herring:

Will make you apt to piss
And you will not fail (with pardon) to shit
And ceaselessly fart…

I immediately set about attempting to track down a complete rendering of Westerbaen’s poem, because if anything at all in this world is certain, it is that Cow readers will be clamouring to learn all that is to be known about literature that involves soused fish, poetry and bodily functions. It appears, alas, that no-one has seen fit to bring the genius of Westerbaen’s herring musings to the digital world, which is a shame because I feel it is more than obvious that there is a monumental dearth of pickled fish verse in our lives today. To that end, faithful Acowlytes I know you will more than rise to the occasion, so I’m declaring a TCA competition:

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to write a paean to preserved fish. You may include references to the digestive process if you wish. Most importantly you should understand that you toil in the shadow of greatness – make Jacob Westerbaen proud!

There will be a real prize this time.

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*Another reason I love teh internets.

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Pay no attention. This is just another filler post.

Spam Observations #47

You may remember some suggestions previously here on The Cow for methods by which spammers might… hmmm… let’s say elevate… their craft, a concept inspired originally by a shining example from one of the Masters of Literature at how it could conceivably be done.

Well, this morning I had a communication from one Carmelo Butcher*, who is pitching what I assume to be some kind of health tonic in the following verse:

The more you think
The more stars blink
They are young today
But were elder yesterday
Want to live free and become a star
Get a good health and be the best by far

Oh someone pluck out mine eyes and feed them to the crows.

Carmelo manages, in one fell swoop, to demonstrate that he is challenged in literature, physics, philosophy and salesmanship.

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*Interestingly, a qualified Google search turns up only two results for a ‘Carmelo Butcher’ (and I suppose I’m adding another one with this post). One Carmelo appears to be a randomly generated name in something called ‘The Nashville Guide’ and the other a spammer.

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Well, colour me impressed! I must admit, I had rather low expectations for the outcome of this particular mêlée but once again my loyal readers have dazzled me with their wit and their prowess in the literary arena. The task was to write a piece of Sildenafil Spam in the style of your favourite poet. The Cownoscenti rose to the challenge like they’d been popping the little blue numbers all night.

It was a tough call to sift out a winner.

Universal Head set the tone early by channelling Ted Hughes as his muse, and he held the field for quite a few days in front of a good many contenders. Jedimacfan completely missed the point and showed that he is probably already employed by could easily rival the spammers, with an effort that would undoubtedly cause Joyce Kilmer to writhe in horror. And later topped it with something even more gag-worthy. Cissy Strutt managed an awesomely impressive e. e. cummings-style creation and it has to be said that if spamming was around in his day and nominative determinism has anything in it, I’m sure cummings would have been right in the spammy fray.

Casey‘s muse, Thomas Spams Eliot, shows us why his initials anagrammatize handily into ‘toilets’ with some verse that doesn’t stray altogether too far from something the real T. S. might have penned. A very worthy effort in two parts, and very nearly the winner.

Sagacious Hillbilly managed to persuade Tennyson to ring in a whole cast of reprobates to dance a spammy jig and Tequila Mockingbird fired right back, but alas, The Reverend was quite unable to work out who she was riffing on. My bad, TMock!

A guest visit from Spam Ayres* cements her position as the person you’d most like to avoid at a party, and Phoebe Fay‘s re-interpretation of Ozymandias gives new meaning to the term ‘rock hard erection’.

But the person who I have chosen to be the Tetherd Cow Ahead Literary Ambassador to SpamCon 08† is…

Tastes Like Chicken!

Yes, TLC managed almost to reach the lofty heights of The Cow’s own Laureate Rupert Brookes’ wonderful creation, with a William Cullen Bryant-style ode that is at once tragic and hopeful. If ever there was a romantic paean to the powers of Viagra, this is it.

Tastes Like Chicken, The Cow Salutes you. I will need a mailing address where I can send you your prize. Write to me at [reverend-at-tetherdcow.com] with your PO Box or park bench number.

Thank you everyone! Once again, I doff my bone-clad top-hat to yez all!

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*US readers should probably go here to understand the humour in this. (The entry would have had a much greater chance of winning had it been an audio recording, btw)

†There is no such thing, alas. The reason for this is fairly obvious – if all the world’s spammers were to meet in one place at the same time, then I believe that not a single person on the entire planet would object to the deployment of a small nuclear device at that location.

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Spam Observations #45

Terrapraeta, longtime Cow reader and sometime commenter, earlier this week had a cheery howdy-doody from her new-found friend Rhonda K Lugo. With her well-honed Cow sensibilities, TP instantly knew I would need to bring Rhonda’s musings to the attention of the Cownoscenti.

Those of you with keen memories will recall that a little while back I suggested to Fabron Jenkins and his spammy pals that their ham-fisted wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach could do with some re-imagining (as they like to say in the ad business) and that they therefore might like to consider waxing a little more poetic with their paeans to Sildenafil.

Sure enough, with the sophistication of Keats and Brooke and the subtlety of Yeats and Eliot, Rhonda K is first out of the starting gates:

Now that you’ve got a girl that’s hot
You wanna screw her juicy twat.
She’s full of passion, she’s so nice!
But would your penile size suffice?
Not sure she will long for more?
You need a wang she would adore!
But how to raise it long and thick?
Your only hope is MegaDik!
You’ll get so wanted super-size
And see wild craving in her eyes!
Your rod will stuff her poon so deep,
Tonight you’ll hardly fall asleep!

Ah, the passion! The yearning! The verve! The style! Not quite how Rupert would have put it, fair enough, but hey, at least Rhonda’s giving it a go!

So. You all know what the The Reverend does when he sees that the ante is desirous of upping – yes, that’s right, he holds a competition!

Namely: Write a piece of spam in the style of your favourite poet.

Now pay careful attention to The Rules:

• Your favourite poet may not be yourself.

• Your favourite poet may not be Joey Polanski.

• Your favourite poet may not be Rhonda K Lugo.

• NO references to Rasputin. Save that for January 1.

OK. Have at it Acowlytes. There will be a prize. If Joey wins he can nominate to whom his prize is delivered.

This morning, while listening to the radio I heard the following two items of interest:

The director of this year’s Young Writer’s Festival in Newcastle NSW, Nick Powell, was asked how the opening day went on Saturday and he declared enthusiastically that ‘it literally blew my mind!’

No, Nick, it really didn’t, because you’re talking to us on the radio. If it literally blew your mind you’d most likely be in a cold metal cabinet with a tag on your toe, and someone would be sloshing liberal quantities of Clorox over the Writer’s Festival office floors. It figuratively blew your mind, perhaps, and it seems to me that if it is incumbent on anyone to know difference between those two things it should be the director of a Writer’s Festival for chrissakes.

On the same show, reviewer Geoff Page dispensed some pearls of wisdom about poet Jane Gibian’s new collection Ardent.

There is considerable range here, from the mystery of the title poem… through certain semi-satirical works… to several impressive haiku and tanka sequences. These latter forms can be a trap for younger poets who take them to be easier to write than they are, especially since, quite reasonably these days, we ignore the strict syllabic requirements of the Japanese.

Whoa there boy!

When did it become quite reasonable to abandon the strict syllabic requirements of the haiku? I said it before about limericks, and I’ll say it again about haiku: you can forget all about the structure of the form if you like, but then the thing you’re writing is not a haiku!. It is a short non-rhyming poem. Or, being charitable maybe, a short haiku-like poem. BUT IT IS NOT A HAIKU.

Allow me to draw an analogy: an elephant is a big heavy grey mammal with four solid legs and a fearsome demeanour. If we ‘ignore the strict descriptive requirements’ of the biologists we could call it a rhinoceros. Indeed, an elephant even bears some superficial resemblances to a rhinoceros, but I put it to you Mr Page: you may disagree with the biologists about what it is, but that does not actually change anything in reality.

So. A traditional Japanese haiku is a poetry form such that three lines consist of five syllables, seven syllables and then five again. There are many variations of this form that are similar to haiku, such as senryu, haibun, kimo, scifaiku and waka, but here’s the thing – they are variations, and are not called haiku! That’s why they have other names.

The Reverend sighs
When those who keep the language
Are its greatest foes