Tetherd Cow Ahead

Faithful Acowlytes. If you’re reading this, then the world didn’t end in 2012. Oh, I know the Mayan calendar supposedly had us all vaporizing on December the 21st, but hey, I’m prepared to give those Mayans a little headroom. By anyone’s reckoning, January 1st 2013 by the Gregorian calendar is a fair margin of error, right?

Of course, this was about the kajillionth time the world has ended recently anyway, so the Mayans had their thunder stolen somewhat by Harold Camping et al last year (and the year before that, and a couple of years before that…) and so looked a little tawdry in the End Times Predictions stakes. But enough of all that world-ending malarkey. It’s not like that’s going to be a problem any time soon is it? My it’s warm here today.

Despite the constant preoccupation with End Times scenarios, I had a pretty good 2012 all in all. I know the Cow hasn’t been as active this year, and that’s for many reasons, but is mostly to do with a fairly busy work schedule on my part. It’s not for want of subject matter that’s for sure. The world continues to be full of Cow-worthy events – so full in fact that I have about two or three dozen ideas for Cow posts in my scrapbook, if only I had the time to get around to them. These next few months we’ll be examining a machine that lets you talk to ghosts, stones that make your hifi sound better, more wacky antics from our friends the robots and another wonderful contender for stupidest and most ineffectual pest gadget on the planet. So be sure you stick around.

For now, though, let me wish you all the best things for 2013, and thank you sincerely for your friendship and repartee through 2012. The Cow continues to be one of the best fun things in my life, and without my readers, that would not be so.

But let’s not tarry any longer – I know what you’ve all tuned in for… As you can see, this year I’ve roped in Sir Christopher Lee to help with the festivities. He’s a pretty good sport having even recently participated in a heavy metal Christmas album, so I just know he’s going to rise to the occasion for today’s event. If you’re puzzled as to what’s going on here (and what goes on every year on January 1st at Tetherd Cow) you might want to familiarize yourself with The Rules, and then dive right in. I expect solid participation from the lot of you!

And I apologize to Joey – this isn’t the easy lob out of the ballpark that I hinted it might be last year. Thinking caps on my friends! Make the Bard envious!

Happy New Year!

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Ah, Acowlytes, Cowmrades and Cowpokes all! Welcome to the passing of another year on Tetherd Cow Ahead. It really doesn’t seem like a whole year since the last Rasputin Competition, does it? That’s because it wasn’t! Haha. I was just testing you – as you will recall, last year’s comp ran a little bit late, owing to me being snowbound (and workbound) in the good ol’ US of A (and that doesn’t seem like a whole year ago either, I have to say). But this year, the pageant is right on time. I thought I’d better make sure it was, because as you all know, the world ends in 2012⁽ⁱ⁾ and that could be anytime from today onward.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

This year, we hark back to the origins of the Competition somewhat, so I suggest that a little refresher might be in order. I recommend it to newcomers at least. In fact, I suggest that newbies and old hands alike might like to go back and peruse previous years to get some idea of the playing field. Here, and here were pretty good years I seem to remember…

The rules, as always, can be found here.

OK, well the only thing that remains now is for me to wish you all a very Happy New Year. As I’ve said on many occasions, the Cow is nothing if not the sum of its parts, and some of those important parts are indisputably all of you, my dear Acowlytes. I hope you will keep on visiting the Cow through 2012 and keep on making it the swell party it is.

Oh… I nearly forgot!

Let the Celebrity Penis Wars commence!

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Footnotes:

1. True, it did ‘end’ several times last year as well and we’re still all here, but this time it’s for real! How could the Mayans – a primitive and superstitious culture that tore out people’s hearts for fun – possibly be wrong? [↩]
2. The Mayans themselves didn’t actually predict the world would end in 2012, in case you didn’t know that. To them, it was an unimaginably distant future time, and the truth is that their calendar, like all calendars, had to end sometime. [↩]

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The Rules.

You know what they say, Faithful Cowpokes: ‘Better late than robots!’ Well, maybe only I say that. But you know what I’m getting at! I know some of you can barely keep your pants on in anticipation of this year’s Annual Rasputin Competition. Well, here it is. For the newcomers, rules, as always, can be found here (I suggest the veterans revisit them too). Obviously the opening and closing dates are not relevant this year, so I’ll keep it running until I stop laughing. It would be nice if we could get some new players too, so spread the word. It’s always more fun with more people.

And lastly, do try to keep it clean.

HAHAHA! Just kidding. Hit me.

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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