Tetherd Cow Ahead

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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OK. Now from the get go I want to impress upon you that I’m not making any of this up. Y’know, I just couldn’t in my screwiest dreams. I opened the envelope and this is what I found:

A cotton glove, a vial of ‘anointing’ oil and a plastic baggie. I swear.

It’s not enough that Prophet Pete writes to me about his 5.30 am ‘powerful flowings’ whilst calling out my name – now he’s evidently hinting that I get in on the act as well.

Let me see. What does he say in his letter this time… life changing opportunity… all things are possible… God’s hand touches you… Aha! Here’s the nitty gritty:

Take the enclosed packet of Holy Oil and completely cover your hand and place your HAND into the HAND OF GOD GLOVE… letting the oil saturate your needs. THEN FOLD IT AND RETURN IT TO ME along with this page as soon as possible after you place the glove into the enclosed zip lock bag.*

Really, I totally swear I’m not making it up!

Before you put it into the zip lock bag… TUCK YOUR SEED GIFT OF $20.00 into the HAND OF GOD GLOVE… saying “I CONFESS BOLDLY, GOD’S PLAN IS TO PROSPER ME, ELEVATE ME, AND CAUSE HIS FAVOR TO SHINE UPON ME. AS I FOLLOW GOD’S PLAN TODAY, ALL THAT MY HANDS TOUCH WILL BE BLESSED, AND FAVORED OF GOD, THIS SEED DETERMINES MY GREAT HARVEST THAT GOD WILL RELEASE TO ME.”

Now, is it just me, or is all this talk of oiling up your hand, powerful flowings and tucking your seed becoming just a teeny bit disturbing…?

The letter goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages until shortly before signing off, Prophet Pete promises to send me yet another gift:

GOD HAS GIVEN ME 3 FAITH CONTACTS TO RETURN TO YOU… God told me to send you 3 sticks of gum.

I swear on the Noodly Appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I really am not making any of this up.

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*All emphasis exactly as it appears on the letter.

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A letter from Peter Popoff is always an unexpected surprise! Well, not really, since he sends them with unrelenting tenacity, but hey.

Like many of these Popoff Epistles, this one contains something, and I thought I might share the anticipation and excitement of the Glorious Gift with you all.

So. Guesses to what’s inside? (Whatever it is, it appears to be a few inches long, flattish and squishy).

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My mail redirection from the old house ends pretty soon and I’ll kind of miss old Prophet Pete’s dogged determination to get my money. NOT.

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While we’re on the subject of Peter Popoff, it will come as little surprise that Prophet Pete continues to pester me with his daft letters. I’m not so cruel that I would subject you, dear Acowlytes, to all his circumlocutious waffle even though there are many droll moments in his baffling epistles, but today’s offering is certainly Cow-worthy. It takes him less than a paragraph to get to the point (he’s obviously been tipped off to my usual technique of scanning the first page of his drivel and then chucking it straight in the bin):

You’d better prepare yourself and open up your heart and soul, because what I’m about to share with you comes (literally) from the very Throne Room of Heaven.

Literally from the very Throne Room of Heaven! Literally!

You’re imagining something like this, right?:

Wow, Prophet Pete is really connected! Are you scanning the picture to see what it could possibly be, this thing that comes literally from the Throne Room of Heaven. Well, on page 2 of the letter there’s a photograph…

Oooh. A sparkly gem in a ring! Directly from the Throne of Heaven! Maybe an old trinket that God has lost behind the couch or Mrs God has gotten a bit tired of! I rummage through the envelope…

Oh crap. Surely this can’t be it…

Come on! That’s just a bit of gravel in a bag. What gives Prophet Pete??? I speed-read through the letter: …very special object… will supercharge your faith… powerful ‘faith additive’ (wha?) … Aha! Here it is!

This extremely unusual green stone that I’ve sent you was formed as a result of a meteor shower. It comes directly from a very unique slab of anointed Moldavite from a large crater field in Eastern Europe.

So you say, Prophet Pete. It still looks like a bit of gravel to me. And I don’t know where you got this ‘green’ thing from. It’s a sort of grey. Gravel-coloured. Even under a greenish light. And, not to press a point or anything, you now seem to be talking not so much about a shiny gew-gaw from God’s jewellery drawer as pictured, as about an astronomical phenomenon with a fairly solid basis in science, which for reasons that are quite obscure to me are related to your ability to grant me Three Very Special Wishes. Maybe I misunderstand what you mean, and you’re saying that the Throne Room of Heaven is full of meteorites? Perhaps it’s set up somewhere in the Asteroid Belt? Once again I am two pages in and utterly confused.

Anyways, faithful Cowpokes, the letter rambles on with much impenetrable blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah which sheds no further light on the matter, eventually signing off with the usual Popoff farewell of ‘A-great-big-cheerio-and-can-you-send-me-twenty-seven-dollars’.

One thing you can say for Prophet Pete – he’s persistent. I now have no less than thirteen reply-paid envelopes from him, and I really, really want to make some use of them.

Acowlytes! Help me out here! What can I send back to Prophet Pete in return for his generous gifts of Miracle Water, holy wafers, paper leaves, shredded money, golden thread, Divine Fragrance* and Gravel from God?

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*I haven’t told you about the Divine Fragrance yet. I’m saving it.

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You will remember that in recent times I wrote a letter to my buddy Prophet Peter Popoff in an effort to make the discourse between us more of an actual discourse and less of a him-just-crapping-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on with the baffling and profuse garblings I have come to expect.

My epistle has not, it appears, even halted him in his tracks, and this week he sent me another five foolscap pages of claptrap.

Except… wait… what have we here..? A questionnaire..?

OMG! Maybe I’ve been too hasty in dismissing Prophet Pete’s Predictive Powers. Why would he ask a question like that unless…

Oh Holy Crap! And what’s this:

Yes Prophet Pete! Oh yes, you’re right, you’re right!!! I managed to trick it outside this morning but – Jesus, Mary and Joseph! – it’s trying to get in again!!!.

Prophet Pete! I’m sorry I ever doubted your magnificent powers! Please come ’round with your Holy Water and Golden Braid as quick as you can! I can hear the mournful keening of the creature even now as I sit quaking under a table in the corner farthest from the window.

I know it can only be a matter of time before my soul is beyond salvation…

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Hey CowPokes!! Don’t Forget: the Christmas Competition is still running! Be sure to get yer entry in!

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Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I’ve just encountered ‘the world’s first interactive natural spring water – H²Om Water with Intention‘ Yes, you heard right: H²Om, as in Ommmmmmmm…

You can visit the website if you’ve got the stomach, but I’ll save you the pain: these people are selling bottled water that has been infused with nothing other than (supposedly) positive energy. From their blurb:

H²Om water with intention has revolutionized the bottled water industry by creating the world’s first vibrationally charged, interactive bottled water.

Got that? The water is vibrationally charged. And, to reiterate, it’s also interactive. If your Bullshit Detector Meters haven’t pinned yet, allow me to elaborate: the concept behind this water appears to be that those who drink it think about positive things while they are doing so, and then this somehow makes the water better. It’s not explained exactly how this works, nor in exactly what way the water is better. It’s just better.

The H²Om people have trademarked the slogan Think It While You Drink It™ a catchphrase that simultaneously illuminates the stupidity of the Trademarking system and the brainlessness of anyone who believes that a witless motto such as this actually means anything.

H²Om’s Vibration Hydrationâ„¢ (Oh Spare Me!â„¢) comes in seven great vibrational ‘flavours’: Love, Perfect Health, Gratitude, Prosperity, Will Power, Joy and Peace (I swear I’m not making this up).

Now I want to emphasize here, in case you didn’t get it, that these ‘flavours’ aren’t actually anything, like, flavoursome. If you buy a bottle of, say, ‘Joy’, it’s going to taste exactly the same as ‘Prosperity’- it’s only the vibrations that will be different (shit, I’m laughing as I type this – it’s so much like a parody I can’t actually believe that these people are serious).

Best of all, if this water doesn’t unequivocally bring you Peace/Joy/Love/Pretzels, H²Om have the ultimate escape clause: the water is interactive you loser – if it’s not working it’s your fault!

Still not with me? Still giving them the benefit of the doubt? Not laughing as much as me yet? Then read on:

As an added bonus, once our water is in the bottle, we play a restorative compositions of music, frequencies, and spoken word to the water.

Spoken word? Wha?

Nice water. Nice joyful pretty water. I love you water. You are the best water in the universe. Pretty pretty water. Lovely watery joyful prosperous water.

Seriously. It’s going to be something just like that, right?

Yup. If there’s one thing this website doesn’t lack it’s pages of incomprehensible waffle:

There are several distinctive vibrational frequencies that are infused in each bottle of H2Om. The First is the vibrational frequency of the label. The use of words, symbols and colors on the label. Each bottle contains the symbol of the Absolute “Om”. It also contains the vibratory word “Love” or “Perfect Health” etc. written on the label in many of the world’s languages. A specific color vibration has also been chosen for each bottle, this color coordinates with the corresponding chakra.

Now I know what you’re going to say – this is all flimsy bollocks and no-one is going to fall for this claptrap without some kind of basis in fact! Well, it’s just about now that H²Om wheels out its supporting ‘evidence’ for their miraculous product, and it comes in the form of an endorsement from a personage who was slated to appear in a future edition of the TCA Educational Series ‘Woo Woo Beliefs‘, a minimally educated Japanese ‘doctor’* Masaru Emoto. Some of you may have seen Dr Emoto’s claims promoted in the risible What the Bleep do We Know, a film that is rooted in reality to about the same extent as, oh, your average Warner Brothers’ Roadrunner cartoon.

To encapsulate, Dr Emoto has formulated some ideas (it’s absurd to call them hypotheses, since he doesn’t even pretend to adopt any form of scientific protocol) that water crystallizes in certain ways according to its response to people’s thoughts and emotions. That’s all you need to know – I’ll examine Dr Emoto further at a later time. It is sufficient to note that the H²Om people are so besotted by Dr Emoto that they have made him a partner in their company and are in the process of launching a new line with his imprimatur.

And you know what? I just bet they have the box-office attendance figures for What the Bleep framed on the H²Om office wall, with all the zeros emphasized in fluorescent hi-lighter.

Given the size of that demographic, it’s evident that H²Om’s marketing is dead accurate in one respect anyway: it is very obviously water with intention. Oh yeah. Intention of the people who make it to get filthy rich by exploiting the gullibility of simpletons.

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*His ‘doctorate’ in Alternative Medicine was awarded by an uncredited pay-your-way ‘university’ in India. Make of that what you will.

Thanks Sean for bringing the H²Om website to my attention.

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