Tetherd Cow Ahead

It’s the time of year once more, dear Cowpokes, where we find ourselves wandering aimlessly through our local Giftorium looking for the exactly appropriate gifts for those special people in our lives. My meanderings this Christmas have led me to deduce that the item most wanted in Christmas stockings for 2014 is… a jar. They’re everywhere – in pretty much every homewares store I visited, there was a display featuring jars in one manifestation or another.

Yes, somewhere between now and when I last visited an insane asylum, ((Which wasn’t actually that long, as it happens, as I was at Beechworth only last week. But for the sake of the amusing metaphor…)) the populace has gone jar crazy. But I need to make it clear here – we’re not talking about your standard preserving or jam jar. A jar is just a jar, right – they’re a common utilitarian item and you can pick them up from any ol’ kitchen supply place for tuppence… What makes a jar an even remotely contender for a respectable Christmas present?

Well, I’ll tell you. String.

Yes, my friends, it appears that some string tied around the jars instantly renders them Giftorium-worthy. In this example, the string is tied around four jars at the bottom, but some jars featured string at the top! And don’t make the mistake of thinking that you need to put up with common garden variety ‘rustic’ string – why, string comes in all colours of the rainbow. A jar tied with coloured string is surely the gift that your significant other wants to wake up to on Christmas morning!

If string is not your thing, then a jar with a handle is the next step. A jar with a handle and a straw shoved in it. Preferably a jaunty red-and-white striped straw, it seems. It’s an effort, I suppose, to conjure whimsical images of sunny summer afternoons under the walnut tree, sipping ma’s home-made lemonade while Chip and Bobby Jo take turns at swooping over the river on the ol’ tyre swing.

Of course, there’s something for everyone in the Giftorium! If the down-home image is not your thang, you can change it up with the industrial look – a jar with a handle, a shiny stainless steel straw AND a pattern-punched lid to keep the wasps out.

But where do you go when you’ve exhausted the possibilities of a jar with a lid and a handle? Well, I’ll tell you – a jar with a lid and a handle on a stem! Kind of a wineglass-stein-jar thingo.

Call it a Frankenstein if you like, but I mean, seriously, the only thing that could improve on that is the addition of some string. Amiright?

Acowlytes! Let me introduce you to Food Babe. If you haven’t heard of her up until now, this is going to be a very special post for you. Food Babe, aka Vani Hari, is to put it quite simply, a reality-challenged, uneducated loon. Her basic schtick is to take everyday food items (anything that’s not chia or sprouts, principally) and concoct some kind of conspiracy around how they’re going to kill you.

She also gives travel tips:

The air you are breathing on an airplane is recycled from directly outside of your window. That means you are breathing everything that the airplanes gives off and is flying through. The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this! The nitrogen may affect the times and dosages of medications, make you feel bloated and cause your ankles and joints swell.

That’s right folks, airlines are trying to kill you with nitrogen. Up to 50% of it in the air they FORCE you to breathe when you fly. The fuckers!

Aside from being completely scientifically addled, that paragraph is, of course, nothing but pure unadulterated bollocks. She pulled all that information straight out of her ass – pretty much like she does with all her ‘facts’. The problem is, a HUGE number of people read this hogwash and take it as gospel.

You can read more Food Babe here, if you are a sucker for punishment. I guarantee it will make you feel more nauseous than an all-you-can-eat buffet at Outback Steakhouse.

NOTE: Not only has the main link to this article been redacted from the Food Babe site, someone is systematically moving all the cached links as well. The Google caches have been scrubbed, as has the Wayback Machine cache. In the grand tradition of historical revisionism everywhere, Food Babe is trying to make it seem like she isn’t an A-Grade idiot. Fortunately you can read the entire text of the redacted page at Skeptical Analysis.

Queen Willy has been recently doing a bit of work for a company that provides balloons with slogans printed on them. After seeing some examples, it occurred to me that there really is no circumstance that can’t be improved with a festive slogan-bedecked balloon. I hereby offer a selection of examples as substantiation of my claim.

I mean, look at that! A scary sinister situation instantly transformed into a party atmosphere! And likewise:

Hahaha. Hello Kitty takes the curse off anything, right?!

Riffing on the most recent Cow post, something that other rubber vendor might consider:

And if it’s a merry brightening of a religious event that you’re after, well then the local church fete really can’t go past this kind of thing:

Any kid would be happy to go home with a balloon like that! Thinking on it, religion is just so damn gloomy all the time. It needs LOTS more balloons.

Criminy, it’s addictive. Once you get started…

UPDATE!

Loyal Swedish Acowlyte Magnus sends in this excellent cheering-up.

Thanks Magnus! Cowpokes: send in your effort too, and I’ll stick it here in the main post!

Barbara seems to think we have only two options here: number one is that we accept that imaginary creatures who we’ve never seen, and for whom we have exactly zero evidence, will save our bacon, and number two – ‘the other side of the coin’ – is that we blow ourselves to smithereens. The way I see that picture is that we may as well kiss our asses goodbye right now.

And, y’know Barbara, even if the aliens do exist, I’m not too sure we are advanced enough to handle their presence. In all likelihood, if they set their saucers down on Planet Earth – especially in the good ol’ US of A – they’re likely to get a cap popped up their oviducts. In case you missed it, I’ve aired my views on the aliens-visit-humans scenario previously on TCA and I’m not too sure about being all palsy with them.

It’s less a case of food for thought, than the possibility of us being food for them.

But heck. Congratulations anyway to The Sun for its reporting of UFOs. Someone has to do it.

(Oh, I just noticed that Barbara says ‘They have never harmed us in any big way’… I guess she’s covering her ass, here, so to speak – some people aren’t real happy about the anal probes.)

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With thanks to Omenater for digging this one up.

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One of the fundamental foundations of American society is the indelible belief that anyone, no matter how humble their beginnings, nor how lowly their status, can achieve their personal vision of greatness, whatever that may be. A boy with an interest in flight can become an astronaut; a little girl from the Bronx can become a planetary scientist; a black kid from Hawaii can even become President.

But what all American kids really want to do when they grow up, is to be a superhero. Well, why not, eh? Let me introduce you to someone who has made that childhood dream a reality – Phoenix Jones:

Yes, this man, whose identity is a complete mystery ((It’s not really, but people, for chrissakes – EVERYONE knows that a super hero’s real identity is secret! That’s Comicbook Tropes 101.)) is a real person who patrols the streets of Seattle in a funny costume protecting law abiding citizens from Evil through the use of his mysterious super powers. Well, OK, if you include under the umbrella of ‘super’ powers the ability to use pepper spray and the dialling aptitude for calling 911. And if your definition of Evil is something like two coked-up hysterically screaming women and their shiftless intellectually-challenged boyfriends.

See Phoenix Jones bringing his awesome justice to bear in this clip, where he is accompanied by his trusty lieutenant, Ghost. ((From the clip it’s a bit hard to tell what Ghost’s super powers are but they appear to be the ability to get in the way and the ability to stand near Phoenix looking confused.)) Sure, he spends most of his time running away, but it’s the thought that counts, right? And the costume.

Apparently, Seattle has a veritable Justice League of these dudes. There’s Phoenix and Ghost as we’ve seen, and the atramentous Pitch Black, the sapphire-bewigged Blue Sparrow, The Red Dragon, The White Baron and the Yellow Custard. Well, actually, I made that last one up, but it’s an obvious omission from the League, and at least he could run away with integrity.

The Real Life Super Hero movement to which all these defenders-of-the-common-good (DON’T call them vigilantes!) belong is supposedly about these people helping out the weak and the vulnerable in the night-time streets of Seattle. ((In the daytime, the weak and the vulnerable are on their own. C’mon – no-one‘s gonna go out in those costumes in broad daylight…)) Even though I only heard about this weird story yesterday, there’s been a shitload of press coverage of Phoenix Jones and his cohorts. Something that doesn’t seem to occur to a single news reporter (or anyone else), though, is the very first thing that entered my mind: if you have an elite clique of superheroes shouldn’t you by absolute necessity have an elite clique of super villains? How can Seattle possibly aspire to be a real-life Gotham City with only drunken hookers and mentally challenged jocks for bad guys?

It seems to me like there’s an opening here, Faithful Acowlytes, and I hereby announce the formation of the Seattle Super Villains League. And the League needs YOUR help. That’s right Cowmrades, it’s a Cow Competition. It is your task to create a Seattle Super Villain – I want a name and appropriate super powers, and a description of his/her costume (extra points for artwork). Let’s give Phoenix Jones some real opposition! The funniest, cleverest, wittiest, meanest member of the SSVL wins an awesome something from the Tetherd Cow Shoppe.

Together everybody: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

ADDENDUM: My friend Tone recommends James Gunn’s Super, the trailer of which I present below for your enjoyment: