Tetherd Cow Ahead

In Coogee, Sydney. I wonder if they appreciate the irony at all? Click on the pic for the full experience.

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Thanks to hewhohears for the intrepid photo-scouting for this one! Anyone else find any of these, please send ‘em on in.

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These two shops side-by-side on Parramatta Road in Sydney. Click on the pic for the full experience.

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Thanks to Pil for the excellent photo!

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OK. Now from the get go I want to impress upon you that I’m not making any of this up. Y’know, I just couldn’t in my screwiest dreams. I opened the envelope and this is what I found:

A cotton glove, a vial of ‘anointing’ oil and a plastic baggie. I swear.

It’s not enough that Prophet Pete writes to me about his 5.30 am ‘powerful flowings’ whilst calling out my name – now he’s evidently hinting that I get in on the act as well.

Let me see. What does he say in his letter this time… life changing opportunity… all things are possible… God’s hand touches you… Aha! Here’s the nitty gritty:

Take the enclosed packet of Holy Oil and completely cover your hand and place your HAND into the HAND OF GOD GLOVE… letting the oil saturate your needs. THEN FOLD IT AND RETURN IT TO ME along with this page as soon as possible after you place the glove into the enclosed zip lock bag.*

Really, I totally swear I’m not making it up!

Before you put it into the zip lock bag… TUCK YOUR SEED GIFT OF $20.00 into the HAND OF GOD GLOVE… saying “I CONFESS BOLDLY, GOD’S PLAN IS TO PROSPER ME, ELEVATE ME, AND CAUSE HIS FAVOR TO SHINE UPON ME. AS I FOLLOW GOD’S PLAN TODAY, ALL THAT MY HANDS TOUCH WILL BE BLESSED, AND FAVORED OF GOD, THIS SEED DETERMINES MY GREAT HARVEST THAT GOD WILL RELEASE TO ME.”

Now, is it just me, or is all this talk of oiling up your hand, powerful flowings and tucking your seed becoming just a teeny bit disturbing…?

The letter goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages until shortly before signing off, Prophet Pete promises to send me yet another gift:

GOD HAS GIVEN ME 3 FAITH CONTACTS TO RETURN TO YOU… God told me to send you 3 sticks of gum.

I swear on the Noodly Appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I really am not making any of this up.

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*All emphasis exactly as it appears on the letter.

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A letter from Peter Popoff is always an unexpected surprise! Well, not really, since he sends them with unrelenting tenacity, but hey.

Like many of these Popoff Epistles, this one contains something, and I thought I might share the anticipation and excitement of the Glorious Gift with you all.

So. Guesses to what’s inside? (Whatever it is, it appears to be a few inches long, flattish and squishy).

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My mail redirection from the old house ends pretty soon and I’ll kind of miss old Prophet Pete’s dogged determination to get my money. NOT.

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Spam Observations #46

I notice that it’s been quite some while since I’ve posted up one of my Spam Observations. This is not for a want of actual spam, you understand – I get bucketloads of that every day. No, it’s mostly because the quality of the spam I’ve been getting has plateaued out into a banal greyish phlegm with nothing at all to distinguish it from the efforts of a million monkeys at typewriters. Gone is the time when spammers actually tried to sell their useless gimcrackery. Their efforts now seem to have degenerated into a kind of indifferent spew aimed at… well, who can say what it is they hope to achieve? I certainly can’t see how a one line email apathetically suggesting the purchase of watch-that-looks-like-a-Rolex-but-isn’t can be even remotely persuasive as a sales pitch. But hey, it must work in some way or another or I guess they’d stop doing it.

So while my new best buddy Evan Eva* doesn’t reach the poetic or literate heights that we’ve seen in the past from Landon Flanagan, Rhonda K or Raymondo, he at least got a laugh out of me with his email this morning:

From: siredd@fr-kristiansen.no
Subject: Interesting mp3 Demi Moore
Date: 11 April 2008 7:33:09 PM

Jennifer Lopez Full video without cowards. The dvd is Interesting! Only 1 day trial – get this Shocking photo now!

w00t! I’ve only got the JLo video that comes with the cowards, so I can’t wait to see the one that’s coward-free! And most Demi Moore recordings I’ve heard are less than interesting. Oh how I love the internets!!

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*There’s that hint of Spammer Gender Confusion again…

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Sorry, I had to bump the Bride of Wildenstein further down the page so I wouldn’t have to look at her every time I glanced at my laptop screen. So here instead is a picture of a real cat.

This is the very cute Rusty, Glitch’s nemesis and the most talkative cat I’ve ever encountered.

This from the most recent issue of New Scientist:

Matteo Caleo of Italy’s Institute of Neuroscience in Pisa has found that botulinum toxin – which is used as a cosmetic anti-wrinkle treatment – can travel down nerve fibres and into the brain within days.

To which I can only say that explains a lot.

I’ve been lurking over at Reasons You Will Hate Me for a bit these last couple of weeks. Ms Fits, who is the proprietor, is funny I think, and can spell and use punctuation, which does make for a more readable experience than many.

Unlike myself, Ms Fits is famous in the blogging world. My observations of RYWHM suggest that this has advantages and disadvantages:

Advantage: Lots of people read and comment.
Disadvantage: Lots of stupid people read and comment.

But I digress from the point of this post. Her recent post on bad texting in the face of calamity is amusing. It refers to this story about a ‘school machete rampage*’ in which five youths went on a spree through a Sydney highschool wielding baseball bats, swords, machetes and other sporting equipment.

Ms Fits tells us that she feels that a text message sent to the outside world even under such duress should be spelled correctly (in contrast to the one that the newspaper intercepted), and it will come as no surprise to you, dear Acowlytes, to hear that I agree with her on this matter. She then proposes that the predictive texting on phones should be updated to include abbreviated messages that can be sent quickly in times of peril. She gives an example, viz:

SND HLP GNMN/OMG BMB/TWN TWRS :(

This got me to thinking. In the great moments of our past, what would the shapers of human history have texted, if the technology had been available? I have offered you one such example here on The Cow.

Keep your suggestions short. You get charged more after 160 characters.

(Extra points if you show off yr mad Photoshopping skilz).

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*There’s another one o’ them thar Zombie Words.

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You may recall that some little while ago I talked about Stupid News Speak – the way in which the news media mangles the English language for their own unfathomable ends.

Well, this recent discussion about wild weather reminded me of another curious phenomenon in the world of news linguistics – the circumstance of The Anachronistic Word.

This is when a word that would otherwise have been relegated to the Old People’s Home of language is artificially kept alive like some kind of etymological zombie to do the bidding of semi-literate journalists. For example, consider the word chiefly. Who uses chiefly except news weathermen?

The West will see some rain, chiefly on the ranges…

And, when does anything wreak havoc except in the news description of a tornado or mob of unhappy student protesters?

In the world of news, a person does not fall to their death. No way José! They plummet. Hands up who’s used the word plummet in conversation in the last decade?

But my favourite must surely be the way that about the only thing that is ever hampered in the modern world is rescue efforts.

There are many more of these. Your favourites?