Tetherd Cow Ahead

How often have you noticed the numbers 11:11, 12:12, 10:10, 22:22, 12:34, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 or 5:55 popping up all over the place? These number sequences are not necessarily only time prompts. They can also be number sequences, like 333, 1111 etc. To your mind, is this a coincidence, or are they too frequent to be random? Perhaps you are puzzled or amused by this phenomenon? Possibly even a little bit nervous?

The question everyone is asking is “What does 11:11 mean?” and “Is there a reason for this?”

That’s actually two questions, as it happens, and I have, in fact, asked each of them exactly NO times in my life in relation to any of the ideas advanced on 1111 Spirit Guardians, the website from which this information comes.

1111 Spirit Guardians is a spectacular outpouring of mindless claptrap, which sounds almost like it could have been put together by the same people who brought you Special One Drop Liquid.

The basic gist of the site is that celestial beings called Midwayers are communicating with humans by arranging numbers in such a way as to send ‘signals’ to chosen recipients via digital clocks. Apparently (according to the site) this is happening to a lot of people.

11:11 signals are driving me nuts!

This is a very typical comment from folks who reach this site.

I should think a more typical kind of comment is “Wow, what a load of gobbledygook”, or “Do you also sell Space Diamonds?”

So how is it that these strange supernatural entities have become fixated on the numbers 11.11?

O-k-a-y… So they asked the digital chip makers to reserve them a few numbers…? I guess that does demonstrate some forward thinking. It seems like a kind of a roundabout way of communicating though – why the rigmarole?

Hey – they started it! I would have simply suggested conversation in the first place. It’s extremely tedious trying to get your ideas across in clock language.

What do I have to do?

Acknowledge it out loud. Say – OK guys I hear you, tell me what you want. This speaking out loud is to get around the problem that Midwayers do not automatically have access to our thoughts.

Our clocks, yes, our thoughts, not so much.

What proof have you got?

Well it’s getting so that this is now pretty much proven, simply because by following our instructions, so many other people have found these guys, and talked with them.

Yeah, now see, that’s not actually proof. That’s just you telling us something that may or may not have any truth in it. Proof is independent of personal opinions. You might like to see if you can dig up any of that.

The 1111 Guardians site is, apparently, the handiwork of one George Barnard, a self-styled ‘psychic’ and writer. Barnard claims to be able to ‘channel’ the Midwayers and has transcribed a mind-boggling amount of material from them.

George has been dealing with these guys for over 60 years. He sees them, and talks to them. Mostly he sees with his spiritual eyes, but there have been cases of physical manifestation as well. You could not expect a psych (George) to believe in the voices in his head if they did not turn up physically, could you?

The last sentence seems somehow metaphysically tautological. I don’t think anyone would be surprised if George has, aside from seeing the Midwayers with his ‘spiritual’ eyes,⁽ⁱ⁾ talked to them, shaken hands with them or stayed up late playing poker with them.

What I find intensely (and fascinatingly) strange about people like George, is that they are somehow completely unable to understand the process whereby our brains naturally knit together unrelated incidents in an attempt to find some kind of cohesion for them. We all do this, but most of us realise that it’s just a curious ability that evolution has bestowed upon us – some vestige of our pattern-matching skills honed way back in our time on the veldt, that has now gone into idle mode and leaps to the fore when our brains aren’t productively engaged. Sure you notice the clock is on 11:11. It’s a pattern. As is 12:12 or 10:10 or 12:34 or a wide variety of other numerical combinations. Our brains like patterns. We notice patterns because they are pretty. If the number on the clock is 10:52 or 09:48 it doesn’t ‘stick’ as much and therefore goes completely unnoticed, like nearly every other set of numbers on a digital clock that denote the time.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ People like George are completely unable to see that this process is totally normal. It’s as if their world filters are somehow broken and they are obliged to find meaning in the vast drifts of meaningless trivia that the rest of us are able to tune out.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty making fun of people like George. It is quite probable that he has come to completely and profoundly believe his fantasy about Midwayers and meaningful communications via clocks. How is he different, for instance, from the millions upon millions who believe they have meaningful dialogue with a discarnate entity called ‘God’ who lives in a place called ‘Heaven’ and has an adversary called ‘Satan’? How is George’s communication with his Midwayers any different from praying to God, or taking Communion or giving Confession?

Yes, sometimes I feel a little guilty, but then I glance at my digital clock and see it flip over to 4:44. And then I realise that it’s the Midwayers telling me to make fun of him. And everything is alright again.

Some entertaining links from the 1111 Guardians Site:

•A conversation between George Barnard and what appears to be a veritable cavalcade of Midwayers, in which we find out that parrots like to chat with the spirits.

•A conversation with a Midwayer named Sharmon in which we see biblical links with this mythology (the Christian links are profuse throughout Mr Barnards’ channelling).

•A conversation with a Midwayer named Mathew that sounds rather a lot like stuff I’ve read from the Unarius Society.

•Some Midwayer humour (oh, my belly still aches from the laughing!)

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Footnotes:

1. I idly find myself wondering if you need to wear ‘spiritual spectacles’ if you’re shortsighted? [↩]
2. Unless of course the numbers 1052 or 948 have particular meanings for you, in which case, you might remember them. [↩]

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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!

…and he’s MAD!

Reuters, Thursday, January 1:

In what amounts to one of the most extraordinary technical achievements ever to ring in a New Year, scientists from the University of Xuanpu announced today that they have successfully cloned the penis of the ‘mad’ Russian monk, Rasputin. An unusual alliance forged between Xuanpu and St Petersburg’s Russian Museum of Erotica and funded by Russian internet spam czar Sergei Korzhanenk, now promises to be able to literally sell millions of potential customers a bigger penis.

Rasputin’s preserved member was stolen one year ago from the St Petersburg museum by Italian underworld figure Raphael Spinoza, in a daring daylight heist. It was recovered by police in April after information from an in ‘inside source’ led them to Spinoza’s secluded residence in the Italian alps, and is now under heavy security at the museum. The pickled penis was only made available to the Xuanpu science team for their newly discovered cloning technique after extensive intellectual property negotiations.

Korzhanenk says that the planned market release of the penises to coincide with Christmas was delayed by technical challenges, but that they will be available to customers this week, priced at around $US250.

Ah faithful Acowlytes! Another year has veritably rocketed past, and a new one is galloping upon us. I know it’s been quiet on The Cow these last few months, but I can assure you, my loyal readers, that you were never far from my thoughts, and I have been assembling all manner of succulent tidbits to inflict upon you offer up for your amusement in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s wishing yez all a Happy, Healthy & Prosperous 2009!

Oh, and in case it needs to be formalized: let the Festivities commence!

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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I hereby declare the Annual TCA Rasputin Poetry Competition open!

(Really, why fight it?)

My dear Acowlytes! Let me offer you all the best wishes for a happy, healthy and jape-filled 2008. Let the jousting commence!

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If you haven’t got the faintest idea what all this is about, maybe you’d like to click here!

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Ah, Faithful Acowlites! Welcome to 2006. And what more fitting a way to ring in the New Year could I choose than a post about penis size? And not just any penises. We’ve spared no expense and today we’re going to be talking Historical Celebrity Penis Wars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s start at the beginning. This morning, Nurse Myra, ever on the alert for penis opportunities forwarded me this Important Information from ‘Haltungverbund’:

From: Haltungverbund
Subject: Make your penis visible through your pants.

Have y0ur heard of Erotic Museam in St. Petersburg? After t@k1ng our Viril1ty Patch RX, your dick can be exhibited there as the biggest penis ever.

Make your penis visible through your pants. Our Virility Patch RX can make your penis amazingly huge.

There is a number of medical conditions that affect penis size. These are evident at birth and may require medical intervention.

But there is only one way to fight a small penis. And it’s called Virility Patch RX.

Oh, the mirth.

Well, Haltungverbund had one up on me though – I didn’t know there was an Erotic Museam in St Petersbug, so I looked it up! Yep, there it was: ‘The very first Russian Museum of Erotica’ established by the Head Physician of the Prostate Center of The Russian Academy of Sciences, Igor Knyazkin.*

“I want Russia to be a civilized country that looks into the future and has a correct vision of erotica,” stated Knyazkin to the Nezavisimaya Gazette.”

Which is, after all, an admirable goal. An uncivilized Russia looking backwards into the past with an incorrect vision of erotica defies imagination.

To this end, the exhibit that Knyazkin has chosen to symbolize this forward-looking civilized erotic Russia is, quite logically, Grigori Rasputin’s preserved penis.

“Having such unique item on display, we can stop envying America that treasures Napoleon Bonaparte’s reproductive organ,” states Knyazkin. “In 1970s, Napoleon’s genitals have been sold to an American urologist at an auction for $4000 USD. Napoleon’s private part however is just a mere pod in comparison to our 30cm long organ.”†

Yeah, take that you Yankee pigdogs with yer petite and undoubtedly gay Froggy penis.‡

Yep, that thing that the pretty girl is looking at in the picture, is supposed to be Rasputin’s penis. Here’s a picture on Flickr of another pretty girl looking at it.‡‡

I don’t even want to speculate what these girls might be thinking, but I do wonder if they were there on the same day that Rasputin’s great grandson John Nekmerson visited the St. Petersburg museum. On viewing his ancestor’s pickled part Mr Nekmerson exclaimed, “This is really it, I’ve got the same one!”

He evidently has no need of Haltungverbund’s RX Virility Patch.

Which brings us back to Haltungverbund’s original email and allows us to make a few important observations:

1: If you want to exhibit your dick at the St Petersburg Museum of Erotica, then this surely implies that you need to be separated from it so they can put it in a jar for photographs. Sorry Haltungverbund, I’m not interested in this.

2: The Russians have taken Haltungverbund’s suggestion that “there is only one way to fight a small penis” on board and are countering with their Mad Monk’s Monster Member. Come on Yankees! Are you going to defend your title with the Coquettish Cock of a Cropped Corsican? Surely Lanky Abe Lincoln’s Lengthy Lingam will stand up for you! Or is the Cold War still at work on your nether regions?

3: It’s actually a simple matter to have your penis visible through your pants if that’s really something you desire: just wear cheesecloth pants. This might not count as high fashion, but if visibility is what you seek, and your name is John Nekmerson, none of the girls are going to be looking at the pants.

Happy New Year! S Novim Godom! Bonne Année!

Welcome to 2006!

*Source: Pravda – “St. Petersburg to host the first Museum of Erotica in Russia”

†Did anyone else know this international-scale penis-envy was going on? So that’s what the Cuban Missile Crisis was really about.

‡Dr. Knyazkin has also managed to acquire a gold-plated box containing the genitals of Joan of Arc. If I’d known there was such a trade in the reproductive organs of Historical Personages I’d have paid a lot more attention in history classes (I’ll trade you Genghis Khan’s foreskin for… Anne of Cleves’ nipples and a snuff box full of Rene Descartes’ pubic hair…)

‡‡I’m sorry if I’ve infringed anyone’s copyright here, but I hope you’ll agree it’s in everybody’s interest that these photographs are bought to the attention of the world.