Tetherd Cow Ahead

So, Nurse Myra and I have been invited to visit our friends Tuan and Trinh. They’ve just finished doing some renovations on their apartment and they’re showing us around.

The gadget above, sitting on a table, catches my eye.

You’re probably thinking what I thought – some kind of tennis racquet, right? With a power button…? Hmmm. That’s weird. Maybe for a game or something?

“No, no, no!” says Tuan, and picks it up.

He swishes it through the air and there is a z-z-z-z-z-a-p! You know the kind of thing – like an Insect-O-Cutor® sound. And a little violet flash of light.

Oh man! It’s a rechargeable electric mosquito zapper that you can swing! All my life have I wanted this gadget, had I only known it existed.*

Yes, I had found the:

Of course I know that you’re way ahead of me with the ‘all purpose‘. Like, it’s just one purpose, surely? That being the total annihilation of the little blood-sucking creeps.

Aha! Again you’re forgetting the VCF (Vietnam Chaos Factor). Shall I elaborate? Sit back, grab a bowl of dried watermelon seeds, pop yourself a can of Bird’s Nest White Fungus Soda and get comfy.

Nurse Myra and I knew we had to get some of these things to take back home. Hell, with some judicious plugs from Engadget and boingboing I reckon I could sell off a container-load of hand-wieldable Ozzie Mozzie Terminatorsâ„¢ come Sydney summer, but for the moment we thought maybe we’d grab just a modest half dozen for friends and family. Next morning we headed off on our bicycles to a nearby electrical appliance shop.

With the help of our phrase book and some RADA-quality mosquito-extermination miming (with zapping sounds), we simultaneously amused the locals and procured our goods with lavish amounts of our exotic currency†. Now this is what Free Trade is all about!

Simplicity itself.

Unfortunately, Free Trade often comes a cropper when you cross the border, and The All-Purpose Mosquito-Killer Bat was to demonstrate one of its other purposes rather quickly; it is also very effective at holding up the departure of aircraft.

The next day, just as we were about to board our already delayed flight from Danang to Hanoi, we were taken aside by airport security people and quizzed about our belongings.

“You have a mosquito killer in your baggage, yes?” said the polite‡ official.

“Er… yes,” I said.

“It must be switched off for safety reasons,” she said.

“Oh, er, of course,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot. Little zillion-volt spark generator; aircraft-fuel/oxygen mix in the baggage compartment – I got the picture pretty quickly.

The Cellotape came out, there was some quick swishing and sticking – they’d done this kind of thing before. And we were on our way.

Danang to Hanoi, no problem. Hanoi to Sydney…

Nurse Myra got all her zappers confiscated at Sydney Customs.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because they are classified as dangerous weapons,” said the Customs Official.

Well, sure, if mosquitos are drawing up the Import Legislation.

“He told me you could kill a dog with one,” she told me later.

“You could kill a dog with a litre bottle of single-malt whisky,” I said “But they didn’t stop me from bringing that through”.

They somehow failed to stop me from bringing my Mosquito-Killer Bat through either. Tsk. How careless is that?

Do they have any idea who they’re dealing with?

___________________________________________________________________________

*Those living in colder climes sans mosquitos may not fully realize the magnitude of my rapture at this discovery. Calloo Callay! No more prancing naked around the bedroom in the middle of hot summer nights with a rolled up newspaper (well, not in the pursuit of exacting vengeance on mosquitos, anyway).

†They cost us about $3 each…

‡I should probably just dispense with the ‘polite’ whenever I’m talking about Vietnamese officialdom; it can just be assumed.

Well, that was ridiculously simple.

The combination of Dreamhost and WordPress made it the work of minutes. It’s still pretty basic as you can see, and there is a bit of tidying up of internal links ands so forth, but that doesn’t seem like it should be too hard.

And I did it all in my coffee break.

I will sort out all my links stuff as soon as I have a moment. Anyone who subscribes to The Cow RSS feed will have to re-subscribe to the new site.

Huzzah!

Folks, I’m really sorry, but Blogger continues to be stuffed. It all seemed to be working this morning and now I’ve noticed the Comments page isn’t loading again and I’m having further formatting problems.

Blogger technical people are being spectacularly unhelpful. There is no information forthcoming about what the problems are, the magnitude of them, or when, or even if they are likely to be fixed. Blogger Status information continues to be completely useless (they haven’t even changed the message in two days).

This is immensely frustrating as you can imagine. Because of the bizarre and intermittent nature of the problems, I can’t even tell if things are working from one moment to the next.

I’m also extremely busy at the moment and I don’t have time to execute my preferred option, which is to migrate The Cow across to some other platform.

As a result I’m going to put the blog on ice for a week or so, so you won’t see any posts.

I simply cannot convey the measure of my extreme annoyance at this poor service from Google/Blogger. I can only reiterate what I said before: Google is cruising for a fall. If they can’t reliably look after something like Blogger, why would you ever trust them with anything valuable. You have been warned.

Adios for a while.

The Reverend.

I’ve been meaning to write something about the eerie phenomenon of Alien Cattle Abduction for some time (because you know this will be a subject of continued concern here at The Cow), and now Radioactive Jam has stumbled across some breaking news in Canada. Visit this site and find out all about the unsettling facts that governments are hiding from us!

Thanks RaJ, and thanks Canadian Milk Board for doing something funny with advertising for a change.

Is your computer behaving erratically? Do you suffer from Hangs, Crashes or Freezes? Did you ‘accidentally’ open that ‘hotnakedwives’ jpeg or click on the ‘Nude Kim Possible!’ link that was ‘mysteriously’ sent to your email address last week? Have you comprehensively failed to practice safe text?

Well, Intrepid Internet Adventurer fear no more!!!

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How Does it Work?

Just view the picture above on the screen of any computer you believe might be infected! Yes, that’s ALL YOU HAVE TO DO!! By activating the Homeopathic Law of Digital Similars the VGWâ„¢ goes to work immediately on your computer without you even being aware of anything happening! INCREDIBLE! Behind the scenes, the VGWâ„¢ is cleansing every single bit in your RAM, on your hard drive, and in your cables using Atto-Magnetic Rotation (AMR)â„¢ and Double Spin Holographic Resonance (DSHR)â„¢. As long as you keep the VGWâ„¢ somewhere on your hard drive, and view it from time to time (our Researchers suggest weekly), we give you our 100% MONEY BACK GUARANTEE that your computer will BEHAVE BETTER and FEEL MORE FRIENDLY than it has ever been! Not only that, your screen will appear SHARPER and and all websites and emails will be CLEARER and MORE DEFINED. In addition, your keyboard will feel MORE RESPONSIVE, typing errors will DRAMATICALLY DECREASE and unwanted spam will be REDUCED BY HALF!!

How Much Does it Cost?

Well, as a Special Introductory Offer, we are making the VGWâ„¢ available to readers of Tetherd Cow Ahead ABSOLUTELY FREE! Yes, you heard me right, ABSOLUTELY FREE! Best of all the VGWâ„¢ is already working on your computer!!! The Virtual Homeopathic Technology we have used is SO POWERFUL that just by viewing the image in this post, viruses have been cleansed from your system.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. What’s the Catch?

Faithful Readers. I know you will be SO IMPRESSED by the VGWâ„¢ and SO GRATEFUL to have been given the chance to be the first to experience this revolution in Computer Health that you will be wanting to share the VGWâ„¢ with ALL your friends. That’s right Folks, I want you to be my Watery Army and start The New Flood! Send the VGWâ„¢ to all your friends! Send them a link to this post! And make sure they send the Word on to their friends, and to their friends’ friends!†

Why Are You Using So Many Capital Letters and Exclamation Marks?

I DON’T KNOW! I just started writing this post and I COULDN’T HELP MYSELF!!!

So, all you Aquifying Acolytes, off you go to Splash the word around! I want to see my web counter clock fifty thousand hits by the end of the week! Onward towards a Healthier, Happier and Wetter Internet!!!

†And while you’re at it, how about some product endorsements in the Comments?

I am loathe to just pinch articles from boingboing but I’m afraid I had no choice but to make sure you all knew about The Cat Piano.

Yes, it’s exactly what you think: the keyboard is connected to a mechanism that jabs a sharp spike into the bum of the appropriate cat, each of whom has been selected for the pitch and tone of its meow. Oh the cruel mirth.

I am obliged to recount that the brother of a certain reader of this blog has a variation of this instrument, called The Cat Bagpipes, in which the cat is held splayed in the arms in a manner that resembles bagpipes. The cat’s tail is held in the mouth and upon the ‘player’ biting it, the cat then utters sounds not unlike the tones of a bagpipe.

Now before I get spammed by animal rights activists, I just want to say I don’t condone this behaviour.

But it sure is funny.