Tetherd Cow Ahead

I know you have all been anxiously awaiting the leopard toilet seat. The linguistically excitable Innovations copywriters spruik it like this:

Put a leopard in your bathroom!

Replace your drab toilet seat with this easy to install, stunning leopard-design toilet seat.

…it will look exotic with any colour scheme.

I don’t know about you, but I like a level of comfort and safety to be present in the toilet environment. Evidently not everyone feels that way or else you wouldn’t get this kind of thing.

The Cow suggests that you might feel more at ease with one of these accompanied by one of these.

As threatened, more gems from the Innovations catalogue… This one the Portable Plasmaâ„¢ trumpeted thus:

Harness the Power of Lightning

Imagine, a wireless sphere of magical plasma light you could take anywhere!

Yep, it’s something I’ve imagined often: Oh, look at the time. I’d best be off to buy some wainscotting. If only I had a wireless sphere of magical plasma light to take with me!

Portable Plasmaâ„¢ creates a dramatic display of multicoloured light under a hand-blown glass dome.

Surely that’s a mouth-blown glass dome. Or a hand-made glass dome. I’ve heard of things being overblown or fly-blown but hand-blown? What the bejeezus does that mean. These Innovations copywriters are world-class language manglers.

Fascinating to watch, the dome begs to be touched – just watch the bolts of glowing light follow your every move.

Now I’ve seen these plasma thingies, and I think it’s stretching matters just a teeny bit to call the little fluffy flickering tendrils of plasma bolts. A bolt is something that screeches from the sky like an express train on crack and splits telegraph poles in two, whilst simultaneously fracturing your eardrums with a kind of atmosphere-tearing-asunder kind of sound. These little wimpy finger tickling lighting effects are not bolts. There’s a word for that kind of exaggeration. It’s called bullshit.

And while we’re on the topic of exaggeration, is it a bit much to be claiming that with this gadget you’ll be able to harness the power of lightning. I mean this implies, surely, that you’re going to be able to get the awesome power of genuine lightning and do something with it, like strike down the febrile moron with the leaf-blower who lives across the road into a charred smoking mass of barbecue fuel.

Great for parties or gatherings or use it on any shelf as a mesmerising display.

Oh man, I’m really bummed that I don’t get invited to those kinds of parties.

“Hey Daddyo, this new Portable Plasmaâ„¢ is a gas! That Singing Troutâ„¢ that Maynard had at his clambake last week is so squaresville when you put it next to this!”

I also like to imagine the kind of gatherings it might be great for. I bet they involve robes and goat’s blood. Or even more unsettlingly: Tupperware.

Requires 4 “AA” batteries (not included).

And surely, after all the hyperbole, this is where the reality-check kicks in; we’re expected to believe that 4 AA batteries are going to give us the juice to harness the power of lightning.

Excuse my skepticism. Next they’ll be trying to tell us that a Lava Lamp contains real lava.

Well, my birthday is nigh and Nurse Myra certainly knows the way to a young blogger’s heart. Yesterday she gave me a copy of the Innovations Christmas Catalogue. I am not entirely sure if it is my present, or if I am supposed to choose my present from the vast possibilities contained therein. It’s a win/win situation. It’s going to keep me supplied with blogging material for months. Crikey, where do I start? Maybe here:

This object doesn’t actually have a name (missed opportunity, or what!) but this is what the catologue promises:

Feel your tension drift away – total relaxation at your bedside!

Let the sounds of nature soothe you to sleep or aid your meditation. This beautiful relaxation centre reproduces 8 realistic sounds including a running stream, rainforest and songbird. It casts a beautiful, changing light through the crystal ball, and you can use it with aromatherapy beads (supplied). Measuring 21 x 15 x 15 cm with a 10cm glass sphere, it is powered by a mains adaptor (included). The sound and light will turn off automatically, so it’s perfect for bed time.

Man, I want this relaxation centre so badly. It’s a work of genius: light, sound and smell all in one neat unit.

Think of the sensory experience available at the push of a button! There’s Ocean Waves – imagine: the warm light of sun through your closed eyelids, the soothing sound of the surf and the scent – courtesy of the aromatherapy beads (supplied) – of the salty spray from the sea. Or Rainforest: dappled sunlight through the leaves, the smell of damp warm leaf mulch and the sound of monkeys screeching in the canopy high above. Or the enigmatically suggested Rural Sounds: the flickering light of flame from an autumn bonfire, the restful tones of tractors and hay-bailing machines with occasional pig squeals, and the nostalgic aroma of cow manure and superphosphate. And we shouldn’t forget Summer Nights: the strobing of police lights in the street outside, the distant doof-doof-doof of the house down the road where all the teenagers live and the cheap perfume from the hooker who’s set up shop in front of your house.

Genius, I tell you.

And the Innovations people have helpfully added advice for any unimaginative browser who might think “What the hell would I do with one of those?”: Give it to someone as a gift! Now there’s something you’d never have thought up yourself!

You guys just wait till you see the leopard-print toilet seat.

Organic water? Huh? My brain hurts. What do they mean? Why are they torturing the language so? In the proper scientific sense of the word, water is profoundly not organic since it contains no carbon compounds.

The only way it could be considered to be organic, would be if it contained carbon-based life-forms. That is, things floating in it…

I think I’ll go have a beer.

[Thanks Sarah]

OK, so I was watching the DVD of the Jacques Perrin/Jacques Cluzaud documentary Travelling Birds (Le Peuple Migrateur) last night, and what should I see at about 8 minutes in, but the following sequence:

~Migratory ducks arrive in snowy landscape.

~Ducks settle down to weather out the cold and blustery night.

~Ducks awake in the morning. The blizzard has subsided.

~Ducks make many and sundry quacking noises.

~An avalanche begins and ducks fly away.

There you have it: a filmic record of a duck’s quack starting an avalanche! (Sure, the film-makers try and make it look like the avalanche startles the ducks and causes them to take flight, but I believe the footage speaks for itself. Go rent the DVD. Tell me I’m wrong.)

In further news, this site reveals that scientists at Sanford University have carried out a comprehensive Duck Quack and Echo experiment, so those nitpickers who scoffed at my own exposé (no names except to say Universal Head) can now go view a (sniff) proper experiment.

My friend Bronni, travelling across the wilds of Dorset in the UK, reports back to The Cow:

“And we single girls thought Sydney was hard. Look what the English lasses are forced to contemplate…”