Tetherd Cow Ahead

It seems that somehow* despite my best efforts to the avoid him, Peter Popoff has tracked me down to my new address. So after a brief respite, I am again receiving his pearls of wisdom.† And his obsession with me, and the need to reveal the fluctuations of his every bodily function has, quite incredibly, become even worse.

So now it’s 2.00 am bowel rumblings in addition to his previously mentioned 5.30 am flowings. Show of hands: who thinks it’s demonic forces? OK, and who thinks it’s last night’s curry? Yeah, that’s what I figured. Seriously, getting a complete rundown of the biology of this guy’s early morning hours makes me feel extremely queasy.

Mysteriously, with this latest epistle Prophet Pete has included three coloured rubber bands.

I’m sure there is some hare-brained reason for this, but I gotta tell you people, this time the usual infinity-pages-long incoherent letter went straight to the trash. I’ve recently been reading‡ the pdfs of the Scientology Operating Thetan Levels I – VIII on Wikileaks and I’ve finally discovered that there’s a point beyond which** the human brain completely rejects the addition of any further ludicrous gibberish. Trying to read this junk is a lot like taking Valium: you know there’s stuff going on, but you simply don’t care. Only Valium is rather more pleasant.

My fuse for the tolerance of religious idiocy is becoming increasingly short lately, possibly in direct proportion to the escalating exposure these yo-yos seem to be getting and the seemingly almost endless capacity for people to be swindled by the most extraordinarily daft nonsense. I mean, I knew Scientology was brainless, but folks, the scrawlings of L. Ron make the ramblings of Prophet Pete look like Bertrand Russell.

With so many people evidently believing all this vapid twaddle, I suddenly see myself finding uses for last post’s gadgetry.

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*As if I didn’t know. But be warned: a secret alias will be no protection and since I have your address too, Prophet Pete might also be warming your bowels heart a little in the months to come.

†Well, pearls not so much. Pearls are dainty and pretty and subtly lustrous gems. If we were picking an analogy to some form of organically-produced petrified matter to describe Prophet Pete’s wisdom, a 4 kilo coprolite would be a better fit.

‡I say ‘reading’ with quite some scorn. The OT material, the Scientology ‘Bible’ as some have said, is simply utterly incomprehensible. And not incomprehensible in the way that, oh, Stephen Hawking’s writing about astrophysics is, where you know there’s some deep meaning going on there but your brain just doesn’t have the neuron power to grasp it. This is more the kind of incomprehensible you get where you’re wondering, between when you hit your thumb with a hammer and when the pain strikes, how the hell you were stupid enough to do that.

**It happened about one third the way down page one, if you anyone was curious.

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Oh yeah.

In a completely incredible New Flavour of Stupid, a company called Autoloc is selling kits that will allow you to turn your car into a flamethrower.† The basic idea is that you stick the ‘Autoloc™ Advance Flame Control System’ up your exhaust pipe after which ‘this sizzling product can make up to 20 feet of flames shoot from your exhaust tips with a touch of a button!’

The Tetherd Cow Ahead Psychology Department suggests that this is the automotive equivalent of lighting your farts.‡

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†The Autoloc™ website warns that the exhaust pipe flamethrower is ‘For Off Road Use Only!’ but the smell of snicker snicker snicker is at least as overpowering as the smell of napalm in the morning. Yeah, that car demonstrating the product really looks like an off-road vehicle…

‡I guess there’s your demographic right there.

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You might remember that I mentioned that NASA scientists had concluded that a white ‘speck’ on one of the first Phoenix lander photographs was ‘probably not a Polar Bear’. Well, the boffins at TCA Labs have had their digital photo enhancers on the case from the get-go (you know how these geeky types are!) and they tell me today that they beg to differ with the NASA boffins.

So here for your scrutiny is the latest hi-def enhancement from the NASA original, using the proprietary Tetherd Cow Ahead Laboratories ‘Deckard II’ Photographic Augmentation Scanner.*

C’mon NASA! Maybe the Cydonia ‘Face on Mars’ is just a rock formation (yeah, right!) but let’s see you deny this one!

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*TCA Labs has some very hush-hush high falutin’ technical wizardry out there in the barn…

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Yeah. Looks dead to me. Hang on, let me poke it with this stick…

Just for fun, blogging the NASA Phoenix Mars touchdown as it happens.

The NASA TV Stream is here. Phoenix has just successfully separated from its cruise stage and commenced its automatic landing sequence – that is, NASA is about to turn over the complicated descent process to the spacecraft’s onboard computers. Phoenix must complete dozens of tricky manoeuvres to get to the Mars surface in one piece – this is the part of the process that has seen disaster in many previous Mars missions.

The Odyssey Orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are both relaying Phoenix mission data back to Earth, the mission having been planned to take advantage of the positions of each of these craft.

• Phoenix is just about to enter Mars atmosphere.

• Heat shield has been deployed.

• Phoenix altitude information is being successfully relayed… 1600 metres….

• Phoenix has touched down successfully!

• Jesus H. Christ, Windows Media Viewer is a shitty piece of crap – NASA! Have you people never used Quicktime? Please let Apple handle the media broadcast next time!

• There is some short delay while Phoenix prepares to begin its own independent transmissions back to Earth. The mood in Mission Control is jubilant though, so all has gone exactly to plan. I wish I could have seen them at the moment of touchdown, but the piece of rubbish that is WMV dropped all the image out and I had to reboot Firefox to get it back.

• Waiting for Phoenix telemetry to come online. Phoenix is tilted at a mere quarter of one degree from the vertical, and the next part of the process involves the unfolding of the solar array which of course is Phoenix’s power plant.

• Phoenix is functional and sending back images.

For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars. I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement. ~ NASA Administrator Michael Griffin

Some points of interest:

• After the touchdown, the Phoenix team waited for over 15 minutes before deploying the solar panels, one of their concerns being that dust kicked up by the engines might cover the solar cells and reduce their effectiveness. In the event, there was no discernible trace of dust at all.

• Phoenix is at Mars’ North Pole and is looking for proof of extant water (most likely in the form of ice) on the planet. The Phoenix team agrees that a white object that has been seen in one of the first surface images is probably not a polar bear.

The First Phoenix Press Conference

Mission Earth Day 2:

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this astonishing image of the Phoenix descending to the surface of Mars on its guidance ‘chute:

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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In Comments on the previous post about Julian Doyles forthcoming ‘Chemical Wedding’, JR made a remark that reminded me of a film that I saw quite some years ago – a cinematic treasure that I feel is my duty to introduce to all my devoted Acowlytes. Running with the tagline A Corpse is Bait in the Trap of Terror!, Michael Findlay’s Shriek of the Mutilated (1974) is a work that makes Plan 9 From Outer Space (a film widely held to be ‘the worst of all time’) look like Citizen Kane. Sure, there are many, many bad films – miles of wasted celluloid that is boring and incompetent and just plain unwatchable – but films like ‘Shriek’ fall into a very special category: Cinema that is so bad that it is entertaining.

I first saw SOTM sometime in the mid ’80s on late night tv, after I’d come home (relatively) early from a dull party and warmed up the tube to see what was on. A scene of a man attacking a woman with a broken gin bottle flickers into view, lots of slashing, lots of very fake-looking blood. Ho-hum. The man makes his way to the bathroom and fills up the tub, inexplicably climbing in fully clothed. Hmmm… I stay my hand from the off switch… Meanwhile, we find that the woman, lying ripped and bloodied on the kitchen floor is not dead. Slowly, painfully, she grabs the cord of the toaster, pulling it from the bench above and with her last remaining strength pushes it with agonizing effort down the corridor and into the bathroom, where she lobs it into the bath thereby electrocuting the man to death.

Awwright!!! I’m hooked! This couple has a toaster on a fifty-foot extension cord! With shameless disregard for the laws of reality like that at the fore, the film was plainly a work of genius! I fired the VHS into record (because my sixth sense told me I was watching a very rare event that might never repeat itself), rustled myself up some toasted cheese sandwiches and sat down for the most entertaining late-night movie fare of my life.

JR’s comment prompted me to see what I could find out about SOTM after all these years, and to my immense excitement I uncovered a YouTube vid of a trailer for the film. And, unlike most trailers of the modern era, it actually does capture a fairly true representation of the film you’re going to see, without giving away the best bits! So, without further ado, let’s crank up the Wurlitzer and give you a little taste of the kind of cinematic genius that they just don’t know how to deliver anymore (by the way, this is one of the very few film trailers where you can play ‘Spot the Armadillo’ – watch carefully, it’s cunningly disguised…):

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*Just one of countless memorable quotes from the film.

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Calloo callay, oh frabjous day! Or perhaps ‘Callow callay’ might be a more appropriate salute in this particular case, for next week sees the release of Julian Doyle’s Chemical Wedding, a film starring the wonderful Simon Callow, that has some misguided university types using ‘the world’s biggest super-conductive (sic) computer’ to resurrect the spirit of the redoubtable (if arguably substantially unhinged) Aleister Crowley to possess the body of a classical history professor.

Of course it all goes horribly wrong (as things necessarily must if one attempts to strike up a rapport with the self-proclaimed greatest Satanist of our time) when the reborn Crowley embarks on an effort to call up the Power of the Abyss to unite the Biblical Beast of Revelations with the Whore of Babylon in the Ultimate Satanic Rite – The Chemical Wedding. A showdown between the forces of magic and technology, and other jolly antics, thence ensue.

Oh how I look forward to this film! No-one can do this kind of high camp techno-occultism with anywhere near as much panache as the British, and when the director is the guy who edited Brazil and the writer is the lead singer of Iron Maiden how can it possibly fail to be worth the price of the ticket?!

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Props to Sean for the heads-up!

…and RaJ – how can I possibly have failed to miss the Number of the Post? And I call myself a Reverend. I’m definitely losing my touch.

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I was loitering over at Radioactive Jam yesterday, where the Jamster was musing about an epiphenomenon of texting (namely ‘twittering’) and where he posed the following question:

What about you, my feiends? Do you use your phone for text messaging? If so how often, and how many people do you communicate with using text?

Well, for me, that question was like waving a red flag at a bull. Or, to be specific, since we evidently have so many pedants in our midst, like waving a Pantone 032 HC woven textile heraldic banner at a toro lidiado.

Because I absolutely detest texting. To me it seems like a useless 21st Century gimmick that will surely, and quite properly, go the way of CB Radio craze of the mid 1970s*. My reasons are many, and only one of them is because I’m a grumpy old geezer. Here are some others:

1: On a normal keyboard (that is, one designed for human fingers) I’m a pretty fast typist and it drives me absolutely BANANAS to try and tap out messages on those stupid little phone keypads. Especially when it is almost always faster and easier to dial the number and actually talk† to the recipient.

2: Predictive texting doesn’t help matters any. How many times have I sent a message to Violet Towne that says ‘DON’T WAIT FOR OF. I’LL BE GOOD LATE.’ or something equally as baffling. Additionally, the software for predictive texting (on my phone, at least) is written by an insane person. Let me give you an example: recently I was keying in a word, let’s say it was ‘hamster’ (because I can’t remember what it actually was – suffice to say it was a word in fairly common usage as opposed to, oh, quincunx, or something). Anyway I get as far as H-A-M-S… and the phone makes its irritating little ‘ping’ noise and says WORD NOT IN DICTIONARY. OK, so its dictionary doesn’t know hamster or hamstrung, even. Understandable, I suppose, if somewhat moronic. But then one day I find I’ve inadvertently keyed E-X-P-O-N-E-G-F-D-E-R and it’s still letting me merrily type away, with no advisory ‘ping’, as if somewhere, somehow, if I keep on adding on enough letters exponegfder… is suddenly going to turn into a word it retains in its feeble little nano-brain. What the fucking hell is that all about? It’s the kind of thing that can only happen because a mad person is at the controls.‡

3: I have a rare genetic disease¤ that means I am unable to write sentences without using punctuation or correct spelling. This slows texting down by nearly one million percent, because people who write the software for mobile phones are illiterate and don’t care about such things. So if you want to put an apostrophe or semi-colon in your text, you have to first have a Degree in Illogical Thinking to figure out how to do it, and second, spend an extra two minutes actually doing it.

4: Texting is the method nonpareil for avoiding taking responsibility for bad behaviour. Let me draw you a picture (and tell me this has never happened to you): you’ve just spent 30 minutes standing in the rain, chilled to the bone by a raging blizzard, fighting off drunken louts who seem to think they have more right to the taxi that you flagged down than you do, arrived at the cinema for a film that you really don’t care too much to see but which you’re prepared to endure because, well, you’re a good friend and you do that kind of thing, only to have your message alarm make its chirpy little beepity-beep-ta-ping!: ‘SORRY CANT MAKE IT 2NITE CATCH U L8R!!!’†† When you try to call back, the phone goes straight to message bank. C’mon, hands up, who can relate to that? Even more pertinently, hands up who’s guilty of sending that message! Yes, just as I suspected.

Of course, in Ye Olde Days, being stood up in some similar fashion might have easily happened too, but back then we had GUILT™. In this new Age of Instant Communication, the text message somehow allows a weird kind of magical dispensation whereby the fink that ditched you can now be tucked up all warm and comfy on the couch at home with a tub of Cherry Garcia and the DVD Box Set of the Remastered Outer Limits Collector’s Edition and able to enjoy the rest of their evening somehow completely absolved of any remorse!

Because they texted you that they couldn’t make it.**

5: You don’t need even the smallest degree of commonsense to be allowed to use your phone to text. Last week I was traveling back along the airport freeway in the rain when a car just in front of me in the right-hand lane swerved so close that I was forced to slam on the brake to avoid a collision. As I slowed down, thanking the Spaghetti Monster that I was still in one piece, the culprit went weaving back into his own lane, oblivious to what had happened. Yes, you can guess what was going on. Whilst travelling at 100 kilometers an hour on a multi-lane freeway full of cars on a wet night, this idiot was texting someone. Not only that, I bet my entire Spam Fortune (which is quite considerable now – about 120 billion dollars at last count) that his message was something like ‘SORRY CANT MAKE IT 2NITE CATCH U L8R!!!’. This guy was equipped with a car, a phone and the English language, any one of which would been an obvious challenge for him to deal with on an individual basis let alone all at the same time.

Oh, there are many more reasons I could go on with but I’ll give it a rest now. Anyway, I can see you all twitching your fingers there below the table, undoubtedly Twittering something along the lines of ‘REVEREND A WAFFLING ON AGAIN PLUS CA CHANGE PLUS CEST LA MEME CHOSE’

(Does ANYONE see how pathetic and sad that phrase looks without the proper punctuation? Anyone? Sigh. I thought not).

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*Most of you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about unless you’re around my age. And there’s a very good reason for that.

†Yes, yes, I know that talking business is SO Last Century.

‡I’ve spoken previously about other aberrant behaviour in the predictive texting of my phone that gives weight to this theory.

¤Its technical name is ‘Education’.

††The multiple exclamation marks are mandatory in cases like this. They do not represent ‘punctuation’ as such, but instead are meant to evoke a sentiment something akin to ‘Oh I’m just SUCH a kooky crazy wacky kinda person and, gosh, life is just so topsy turvy, and like ANYTHING can happen really. Wow! How can you possibly hate me?’

**Seriously, if you ever bother to take the matter up with the fink the next day, the response is invariably one of indignation on their part: ‘What’s your problem – I texted you to let you know!’

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Spam Observations #46

Ah, dear Cowmrades. This morning, quite out of the blue I had an email from the lovely Mrs Shirley Oswald, who, as I’m sure you can’t fail to know, is the Presidential Library & Museum Former Director International Online Lottery Co-coordinator.*

Attention: Dear Prominent User Of The Internet

- she begins, momentarily staying my hand from punching the ‘Junk’ button. ‘Cause the Internet is BIG, right, and being a prominent user is important, surely!

How are you today? Hope all is well with you and your family? I hope
this mail meets you in a perfect condition.

Well, Shirl, there was a little rain damage and some teeth marks, but it’s mostly perfectly readable if somewhat grammatically innovative.

This is from a total cash prize of US$600,000.00 dollars, given to the first FIFTY (50) people who will be compensated in this world internet programs. All participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web site Through computer draw system and extracted from over 700.000 companies we are using this opportunity to thank you for using the internet daily.

Sadly, Mrs O, that paragraph is completely incomprehensible in a linguistic sense, but ignoring the sentence structure and just trying to extract some approximate meaning from the words themselves indicates to me that you’re offering me some money for merely using the internet on a daily basis. How novel! And furthermore, how entirely stupid!

Due to your effort, using internet programs indoor and in your office, We want to compensate you…

Ah, Shirley, I see! You have made the mistake of thinking I use Microsoft products! No, no, no Mrs O! I’m a loyal Mac user! I don’t need any compensation for using my internet programs, they work fine! In fact, mostly I even enjoy using them! And it matters not a jot whether I use them indoor or in my open-air office among the lantana and serrated tussock (my goodness, how did you know that?). That being said, I can entirely understand your error in thinking I might be an unfortunate PC user, and how a kind-hearted person such as yourself, backed by the generosity and philanthropy of the Presidential Library & Museum, might be overcome with grief and remorse for those sad and disadvantaged persons who have been driven to the edge of madness by attempting to get Vista to do anything useful. I doff my hat to your magnanimous and empathetic spirit!

…and show our gratitude to you with the sum of $500,000.00 United States Of America Dollars

Now hang on a tic, Mrs O, you lost me there. Wasn’t that a TOTAL cash prize of $600,000 divided among 50 lucky Prominent Users of the Internet? By my reckoning that’s $12,000 per credulous chump lucky winner. Where did the $500k come into the picture? That figurin’ is more confusing than The Monty Hall Problem.

Please I will like you to accept this token with good faith as this is from the bottom of my heart.

Dear Mrs Oswald, there’s nothing I’d like better than to accept your ‘bottom-of-your-heart’ offer of 500,000 US dollars, only, something tells me that if I showed even the slightest interest in your proposal, I’d find you reaching your hand over your kindly, bespectacled, grandmotherly visage and tearing your face off Mission-Impossible-style to reveal a swarthy, unshaven, cigar-chomping spammer.

Call me cynical, but that’s what becomes of being a Prominent User of the Internet.

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*I’ve never encountered a co-coordinator before, but guess this is entirely possible, if, for instance, there are two coordinators working together. Although I’m not convinced that the extra ‘co’ is entirely necessary even in that circumstance.

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