Tetherd Cow Ahead

In today’s lesson, we are studying the Australian Coat of Arms, that features, as you will have noticed, a kangaroo and an emu supporting a shield. The shield is divided into six portions, each illustrating one of the six Australian states. The Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, not being yer actual ‘states’, are not represented by any pictures, but their inclusion (and any further inclusions*) is supposedly implied by the seven pointed star above the shield (I can just imagine the marketing meeting where they spun that one up…).

In case you ever visit Australia, and find yourself in the bathroom of a pub using a ‘Turbo’ brand hand dryer, this is not the Australian Coat of Arms (if can’t quite make it out, the kangaroo is drying his paws while the emu looks on):

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*I swear, with Little Johnny Howard at the helm it wouldn’t have been too long before we were launching missiles on New Zealand or somewhere (in order to overthrow some despotic dictator, of course).

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In a product endorsement that must surely attract the status of Super Amusive, this pillow boasts a pedigree that is similar to damning with faint praise.

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Once again thanks go to the ever-intrepid Pil, who should surely start a blog of her own.

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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – One of Nigeria’s biggest daily newspapers reported that police implicated a goat in an attempted automobile theft. In a front-page article on Friday, the Vanguard newspaper said that two men tried to steal a Mazda car two days earlier in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him.

The paper quoted police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying that while one suspect escaped, the other transformed into a goat as he was about to be apprehended.

Cow Observations:

•It sounds to me like the police should have been doing some breath-testing: themselves and the witnesses.

•This is just one more way that a thief might confound Spiderbot.

•Nigerian newspapers must be a hoot.

OK, so I’m in Hollywood, and a good friend of mine takes me to see the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace at the premier Hollywood theatre The Arclight (did I remember to mention that I am in Hollywood?)

Anyway, the film is a big boofy blow-up-everything-in-sight action piece. Lots of car chases, lots of gunfights, lots of (relatively new for Bond, and quite irksome) naval-gazing and self-reflection, and the requisite pantheon of bad guys and hot babes. Well, not nearly enough hot babes for my taste, but you get the picture. Lots of money spent on lots of excess.

The lights come up at the end of the film and the girl sitting next to me says to her friend “So. what did you think?”

He ruminates for a second… “Nah. Too Hollywood.‘”

Whenever you do significant building reconstruction of any kind, there eventually comes the time when you need to choose the colours with which walls & things are going to be painted. Even though I’m a fairly visual person I have to confess that my mind just clouds over when I see a paint colour chart.

“What colour do you think for the walls,” asks Violet Towne, “White?”

“Oh sure, white is good,” I say. “Goes with everything and makes the decision-making simple!”

The problem is, the people who make paint don’t see things merely in black & white. There are TEN MILLION different shades of white. And they have a sample for every single one of them.

I scrutinize the contenders to which Violet Towne has narrowed down the choice, but inevitably, this is always how it ends up looking to me:

Today,while looking for something else entirely* I came across an image of a curiously titled painting, ‘In Praise of the Pickled Herring’, by the 17th century Dutch painter Joseph de Bray (someone of whom, until today, I was entirely unaware).

The website where I learned of Joseph, which is dedicated to ‘Food in the Arts’, leads me to believe that this painting is a fine example of ‘Fish Still-Lifes’, an artistic niche that had also previously (and regrettably, I must add) passed me by.

This is the full version of the painting (click to get a closer look), which features, as a centrepiece, a stone table drapped with herrings and onions, and inscribed with the poem that gives the painting its name. It was penned by preacher and poet Jacob Westerbaen, and contains the picturesque declaration that the consumption of pickled herring:

Will make you apt to piss
And you will not fail (with pardon) to shit
And ceaselessly fart…

I immediately set about attempting to track down a complete rendering of Westerbaen’s poem, because if anything at all in this world is certain, it is that Cow readers will be clamouring to learn all that is to be known about literature that involves soused fish, poetry and bodily functions. It appears, alas, that no-one has seen fit to bring the genius of Westerbaen’s herring musings to the digital world, which is a shame because I feel it is more than obvious that there is a monumental dearth of pickled fish verse in our lives today. To that end, faithful Acowlytes I know you will more than rise to the occasion, so I’m declaring a TCA competition:

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to write a paean to preserved fish. You may include references to the digestive process if you wish. Most importantly you should understand that you toil in the shadow of greatness – make Jacob Westerbaen proud!

There will be a real prize this time.

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*Another reason I love teh internets.

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