Tetherd Cow Ahead

Sir Elton John, international pop icon and fashion maven, has called for the internet to be shut down.

The Oddball Pinball Wizard bemoans the fact that the internet “stops people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff” and instead might allow them to make their own music at home. This is, apparently, a bad thing because it “doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision”.

Elton John joins a growing list of people who think that the internet is some kind of intellectual property communist plot and will ruin the arts, the media and just about everything else in which they have vested interest. Foremost among these is the laughable Andrew Keen. Keen, who has described the net as a “grand utopian movement” like “communist society” and recently penned the whining Cult of the Amateur, is, however, very happy to use the net to promote his views through his blog and his podcasts.*

Elton sobs out his fear that there will be no more great art if that intertube thingy is allowed to continue unhampered:

“We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet.”

So there you have it you lazy bunch of no-hopers! What are you doing sitting around reading this. Go out an create a pre-internet work of genius!

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*You will note that in contrast to my usual method here on The Cow, I have not hot-linked any of Keen’s net presence instances or works, other than an information link to Wikipedia (a site which Keen detests, predictably enough). I consider him to be a major hypocrite, an elitist and worst of all in my opinion, an old-fashioned bore.

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From yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Darwin’s lord mayor has been found guilty of using stolen council funds to buy a fridge, underwear and a Darth Vader voice distorter.

It was women’s underwear. Mayor Peter Adams also purchased a punching bag. I swear – in my wildest flights of fancy I couldn’t come up with material as good as this.

In breaking news, the Australian Defence Force yesterday revealed that Australian Navy personnel were compelled to confront and repel members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in an altercation in the Persian Gulf in 2004.

The incident took place as the Aussies were investigating a grounded cargo vessel. Commodore Steve Gilbert revealed that the trouble began when the Iranians made some ‘very overt gestures’ and attempted to capture the Australian sailors.

Things could have turned very ugly, but then, according to the BBC, the armed Iranians smartly withdrew after the Australians demonstrated their military superiority by brandishing their machine guns and using some ‘highly colourful language’.

Thus, the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Australian Armed Forces’ most devastating new weapon is whisked aside for the world to see.

North Korea might be developing the Bomb; Iran may have chemical weapons; any number of contenders might be tooling up containers of anthrax and smallpox, but hear this n00bs: you are NO match for us Aussies when it comes to calling a spade a fucking shovel.

A terribly tragic event happened in South Eastern Australia yesterday when a semi-trailer collided with a fast moving country train at a rail crossing. Many people were killed and many more hurt.

The news services have been running stories on it all day, and a nutty phenomenon is emerging: witnesses and other associated persons-of-involvement, when describing the scene of the disaster, are prone to blurt out the phrase “It was like a bomb had gone off!”

How many of these observers, I wonder, have actually seen the results of a bomb going off? Why are they using this comparison? Why, indeed, are they using any comparison at all? Surely, for the majority of these people it is most like a train colliding with a truck.

The American rapper Snoop Dog has been banned from entering Australia where he was due to host the Australian MTV Awards this weekend because he was deemed by the Australian Department of Immigration as being of ‘unfit character’.

“He doesn’t seem the sort of bloke we want in this country,” said Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

Oh no sirreee! We only admit persons of much higher moral fibre. Like, oh, er… this guy!

After this morning’s tragic bombing in the Iraqi Parliament, I heard on the radio at least half a dozen Persons of Influence ‘strongly condemning’ the act.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett condemned it. British Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “I strongly condemn the terrorist attacks that have occurred in Baghdad”. Just now I heard President Bush strongly condemning the bombing.

I’m sure as the rest of the world wakes up they’ll all strongly condemn it too.

Since it’s all the rage to make daft empty declarations of nothingness, let it be known that Tetherd Cow Ahead strongly condemns the bombing. And I suggest all you folk strongly condemn it too, loudly and publicly.

Maybe if we all condemn strongly enough… oh, I can’t go on. Someone save me from vacuous politikalspeek.