Tetherd Cow Ahead

Boy some people can come up with daft ideas.

Violet Towne has just started back at work for the year and in her work-supplied stationery package she found the above-pictured ‘Write Aroma’ pen*. Of course she thoughtfully passed it on to me (because she knew how much I’d love it), and I in turn pass it on to you (because I know how much you’ll love it too). In case it’s not immediately obvious from the packaging, it’s a car air-freshener that comes breathtakingly bundled with a pen. Or, conversely, a pen that comes bundled with a car air-freshener. Brilliant!

Because you know how often you’ve been in a car and simultaneously wished:

A: That it smelled artificially of apples

and

B: That you had a pen to write a sonnet.

I can’t begin to enumerate the times that’s happened to me. Now, thanks to Pentel, should I be in such a situation ever again, I am completely prepared. Truly a Wonder of the Modern Age. I’m so glad that natural resources are being squandered for the manufacture of this this must-have item. This is how Pentel pitches it on their website:

The convenient Write Aroma Car Kit features the new Pentel Energel dulex retractable rollerball pen. The pen (RRP $3.95) conveniently clip onto the airfreshener(RRP $6.00) so you will not loose $5.00 & never be lost for a pen in the car again.

Crikey. For people who make their business out of selling writing implements you’d think that Pentel might take some trouble to get some actual writers† to work on their advertising. I’m not at all sure why the Write Aroma is ‘convenient’ (it seems to me that for something to be convenient, it has to have some kind of actual utility to begin with – a gewgaw that does nothing useful in the first place can hardly aspire to make a grab for the added status of ‘convenience’…), and I’m completely baffled as to how it stops me loosing $5.00. Or losing it either.

You may be forgiven for making the mistake of thinking, as I did at first, that the pen writes with a perfumed ink as well. Now that would be a truly stupid idea.

So stupid in fact that there are abundant puveyors of such items. At Aroma Writes, for instance, you can buy pens that scribble in little trails of lavender, patchouli, rosemary, Pina Colada and cappuccino.

Why is this desirable, I hear you ask? Obvious: you choose a scent for the type of letter you’re writing! Let me elaborate:

Lavender: Dear Mum & Dad, I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time why I am so fond of musical theatre…

Patchouli: …and then we found these awesome mushrooms and spent the whole evening talking to the pixies…

Rosemary: Of course, for Sunday dinner I cooked up a roast leg of lamb which the whole family enjoyed…

Pina Colada: I also just love getting caught in the rain, the feel of the ocean and the taste of champagne…

Cappuccino: Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middle class!

…and so forth.

But here at Tetherd Cow Ahead, we feel that a real sense of vision from these perfumed pen peddlers is tragically absent. To this end, the clever boffins at TCA Enterprisesâ„¢ are hard at work improving on the Scented Pen concept in an effort to bring you a whole new world of olfactory calligraphic delights. So far we have perfected pens that will scent your correspondence with: bacon; ozone; asparagus-tinctured urine‡; mildew; Roquefort; whiskey; anchovies; pond water, formaldehyde and bratwurst. And we make a car kit too! Just think of the possibilities! Now, when you run into someone’s Merc in the parking lot you can leave them a bacon-scented apology note! Who could fail to be mollified by that?

And that’s not all! TCA Labs have even discovered a way to bring this concept into the digital age! Yes, that’s right, using the very same technology behind the TCA Virtual Glass of Water (VGW)â„¢, TCA Enterprisesâ„¢ in association with Hello From Hell Inc. brings you iSmellâ„¢. With iSmellâ„¢ you can now send aromatized** emails to your friends and families! I bet you didn’t see that coming Steve Jobs!

And should you think that concept has a fishy bouquet about it, just remember the folks at Pentel who managed to convince someone that bundling a pen with a car air-freshener was an idea worth bank-rolling.

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*You have to consider the concept that these useless tchotchkes are so unappealing and worthless that the only way that Pentel can get rid of them is to throw them in with other actually-useful stuff.

†Instead of out-of-work spammers.

‡Note: this scent undetectable by around 40% of people.

**It’s a real word. Ugly, I know, but somehow… apt.

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It has been noted that to make The Reverend a very happy man, all one has to do is sit him down with a good cup of hot tea and a slice of fruitcake. Of course, as Christmas approaches, the opportunities to offer fruitcake (in the form of Christmas cake) proliferate and the Reverend is continually on the lookout for the very best offerings.

It probably doesn’t need to be said that the highest calibre Christmas cake is always homemade. This does not mean that just because Christmas cake is homemade it is necessarily exceptional of course.

What is true is that I have yet to taste a commercially manufactured cake that is anything other than merely mediocre. Unfortunately, and in spite of numerous examples to the contrary, I continue to be ever-hopeful.

Consider the label on this nicely presented tinned Christmas cake I bought yesterday. Pay particular attention to that phrase: Authentic homemade recipe. Now it’s quite plain what the Woolworth’s people intend to convey with this, but seriously, it’s just one GREAT BIG LIE!

First of all, before we go into the semantics, who are they kidding with the basic pitch here? There were, by my rough count, around three hundred cakes in the stack that this one came from, and I think we can assume that this wasn’t the only Woolworths’ supermarket to feature this product. So at around 800 Australian Woolworth’s stores x 300 cakes, we’re looking at display stock of 240,000 Christmas cakes.

Whose home did they make these in?!! Donald Trump’s?!!

The idea that this cake was homemade, then, is plainly preposterous. So there must be some trickery in that phrase authentic homemade recipe. You can see where I’m going here, I know. Yes, when the lawyers go before the judge in the Tetherd Cow vs Woolworth’s Christmas Cake Action of ’08 they are going to say this:

But Your Honour, it is an authentic homemade recipe. Old Mrs Woolworth did really scribble down this recipe at home. Sure, we make the cakes themselves in a fifty floor stainless-steel factory full of conveyor belts and robots and digital cherry glazers, but the recipe was authentically made at home. That’s all we claim on our product.

The defense rests.

And the cake? Well, it wasn’t bad. Desperately in need of a good dosing of brandy, and a little wimpy as far as Christmas cakes go, but passable. Not even close though, not even remotely, to the delights I used to sample every year as the judge for Kate & Annie’s annual Christmas bakeoff.

After all, homemade is where the heart is.

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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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The people at RadioShack have been running a rather clever advertising concept illuminating their ‘Do Stuffâ„¢’‡ slogan. Briefly, it involves demonstrating how to accomplish some task, such as shooting candid nature shots of wild animals, by buying off-the-shelf RadioShack items and repurposing them.

Being a bit of a techno-geek, I respond very well to this kind of idea, so I’ve been checking in with the RadioShack site now and then to see what else they’re coming up with. Amusingly, the current (December) offering sees the RadioShack Geek Department comprehensively out-clevering itself in an enthusiastic bid to ratchet up the Christmas shopping turnover.

The concept is outlined in easy-to-follow steps under the uber-tekky, up-to-the-minute-geeky* title Caroling 2.0 and this pitch:

When the weather outside is frightful, and the fire is so delightful, it can be pretty hard to get excited about caroling. Luckily, all it takes is technology and a little know-how to sing to the neighbourhood, without dashing through the snow.

To synopsize the idea: you video yourself singing Christmas carols, edit the results and transfer them to your iPod. You attach your pod and a little speaker to a radio-controlled toy truck and then, from the cosy comfort of your living room, drive it off to your neighbours’ houses to infuse them with jolly musical holiday cheer (and all of the aforementioned tech-toys are purchased from RadioShack, of course). Easy peasy, eh?

Or, as the RadioShack Geek Department rates it:

Difficulty: Easy
Time: About an hour
Result: A new holiday tradition

Here at the Tetherd Cow Geek Department, we think it would go slightly differently:

Difficulty: Somewhat easier than assembling an IKEA bookshelf. But not much.
Time: How good is your singing and how competent are your editing skills?
Result: One stolen iPod & RC toy

Aside from anything, isn’t the whole point of Christmas caroling that you get together with a bunch of friends and trudge through the snow in order to spread the neighbourly Christmas spirit? And so you can trudge back again and enjoy brandy and eggnog and chestnuts roasting on an open fire?†

Sigh. Obviously I have, once gain, been left behind by the latest trends.

These days, it would appear, with a RadioShack purchased Wireless AV Sender, a RadioShack purchased camcorder and some RadioShack purchased AV cables, not only will your kids get see mommy kissing Santa Claus, they’ll be able to project the whole sordid affair as it happens, for all the world to see, using a RadioShack purchased video projector pointed at a convenient neighbourhood snow drift.

So with that thought in mind, a Special Tetherd Cow Christmas Competition!

Your task: re-imagine a Christmas tradition using a combination of products from the RadioShack catalogue. Keep it realistic (ie, feasible), make it purposeless (points will be deducted for anything deemed useful), make it inspired, and make it funny. If possible, refer to the lyrics of your favourite Christmas song.

There will be a prize for the cleverest invention. And it will be a special one.

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‡Is it just me, or is all this trademarking starting to get A Bit Out Of Handâ„¢?

*Sarcasm (in case you think I was being serious).

†Well, I dunno. We don’t have anything like snow or icicles or Frosty the Snowman here of course, but from watching all the American films, I certainly got the impression that that’s what it was all about.

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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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Many years ago, my good friend Bronni & I used to amuse ourselves by taking well known proverbs with animals in them and substituting a cow for said animal.

This was a source of constant mirth. So for today’s diversion, I give you:

•Like a cow up a drainpipe.

•Flat out like a cow drinking.*

•That’s put a bit of a cow in the ointment!†

•Wow, she really has a cow in her bonnet!

•That’s put the cow among the pigeons!

•More tricky than herding cows.

•Better a cow in the hand than two in the bush!

•He’s a real cow in the grass.

•As cunning as a cow.

•The early bird catches the cow.

•Like a cow on a hot tin roof.

•I’d like to be a cow on the wall for that conversation…

OK Acowlytes – over to you. The one that makes me laugh most gets a Cow Medallion!

UPDATE: It occurs to me that some of you may have missed the point of this particular activity. It’s all about the image that you form in your head when you do the transposition of animals. For instance: ‘a cow on a hot tin roof’ conjures an amusing vision of a cow clattering along on your corrugated iron verandah awning… Get it?

So:

‘Cow in a gilded cage’ = Funny
‘Let sleeping cows lie’ = Not Funny

See – it’s not just as easy as chucking the word ‘cow’ in any old proverb.

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*Hmm. Some of these might be a little obscure to non-Australians…

†Isn’t ‘ointment’ a great word? Why don’t we have ointments any more?

Thanks to Radioactive Jam for sparking old memories.

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The Tetherd Cow Ahead Horoscope of Infinite Detail™
with Iotas Scrivener
Week Commencing August 27, 2007

Aries ~ The Ram

Well Aries – the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars in no uncertain terms this coming week. You know your office mate that stole the pencil sharpener last Thursday? The one with the cheeky smile? Well consider yourself in like Flynn! Yep, before the week is out you two are going to be under the covers and going at it like rabbits. To cap off the week, when you eventually turn on your phone after three days of hot sex, you will discover that you have inherited nearly a hundred million dollars from a fond uncle. You will also receive an erroneously calculated gas bill and find termites in the east corner of your house. Your lucky number is 17 – why not buy a lottery ticket – you’ve siphoned all the luck out of some other poor bastard’s universe, may as well go for broke!

Taurus ~ The Bull

Few weeks of your life will be quite as boring as this one. When you accidentally kick over a cartoon of orange juice on Flinders St on Tuesday, it will seem like an earth-shattering event to you. None of your friends will think so, however, especially Aries. Other than that, you will watch a re-run of House on tv, pick your nose twice and notice that all the cars in your street have number plates ending in 3 or 7. On Thursday you will get out of bed on the opposite side to the one you normally do.

Gemini ~ The Twins

With your sign under the influence of Uranus, this will be a real arse of a week for Geminis. An electrical fault in your car ignition system tomorrow will cause you to break down in the middle of commuter traffic. When you get out of your car to lift the bonnet so you can pretend that you actually have a clue what goes on under there, a passing motorist will call you a ‘pugnacious lemon-brained froth-sucker’. At least that’s what it will sound like as they speed past. After you have trudged to work in a relentless drizzle you will remember that it was your day off anyway. The rest of the week is a little better, with a nice warm day on Tuesday and a particularly tasty chicken salad sandwich for lunch on Wednesday. Your lucky colour is off-white and your lucky fruit is cumquat.

Cancer ~ The Crab

There’s no business like show business Cancer, and that’s no business for you to contemplate for even a second. Monday evening brings the temptation to go centre stage at an after-work karaoke escapade, a temptation to which you will quickly wish you hadn’t succumbed. The video clip taken by a workmate will be posted on YouTube and will receive 172,980 viewings. Most of those viewers will be laughing at you, not with you. You will not go into work on Tuesday, which will turn out to be a wise decision. On Wednesday you will receive news of a distant relative’s win on the lottery. You will eat a mediocre pasta dish on Thursday evening and drink a little too much red wine. On the weekend you will see a bizarre accident involving a person dressed in a bear costume and a clothes rack. Your sleep will be disturbed by dreams of escaped bees.

Leo ~ The Lion

On Monday you will be crushed to death by an unsecured piano falling out the back of a furniture truck.

Virgo ~ The Virgin

With Neptune high in the sky and Mercury on the ascendant, the next few days bring many exciting small things for Virgos. Early on there will be a letter in your name with a ten dollar voucher at K-Mart. On Tuesday a man in Liederhosen will goose you on the bus. Wednesday morning sees the commencement of a subscription to National Geographic and the afternoon brings an offer of scones and jam. Thursday you will be given a small parcel by a Middle Eastern man. It will contain Turkish Delight, a packet of cardamom pods and some spools of maroon thread. Over the weekend there will be some nice weather. You will see something funny on the tv that will cause you to snort Coca Cola over a clean shirt.

Libra ~ The Scales

After last week, you’ll be wanting to sit down and take it easy you Librans! Which is what you’ll attempt to do, and fail. You face a week of constant interruptions, aggravations and stomach ailments. You will try to avoid being contacted by switching off your mobile phone, but that won’t work – news of a relative’s recent windfall (an inheritance due to the death of a wealthy uncle) will reach you by singing telegram. A car will break down in front of you in peak-hour traffic and you will uncharacteristically shout obscenities at the poor sod looking under the uplifted hood. You will witness an horrific accident in which a person is crushed to death by a piano.

Scorpio ~ The Scorpion

Scorpio! What a week you have ahead! You know how you’ve always wanted to parachute out of plane at 3000 feet? No? Well that’s what you find yourself doing anyway. It’s not at all fun. Later in the week you will hit your head very hard on the sharp under-edge of a cabinet. There will be a lot of blood. But fear not! Romance is in the air! A tall dark mysterious stranger wearing a cape will give you flowers (an attractive selection of gerberas, daisies and lilies) at the bus stop. Unfortunately they will trigger your hayfever and you will spend the rest of the week in bed. An email sent to you by Bill Gates, offering you a million dollars, turns out to be spam. Your lucky number this week is 1.232 and your lucky woodworking tool is an awl.

Ophiucus ~ The Serpent Bearer

As usual, people will fail to take any notice of you this week, and you will feel transparent and insignificant.

Sagittarius ~ The Archer

A trip to deep thermal vents in a submersible is on the cards for lucky Sagittarius this week. You probably don’t think that’s likely, but it is a damn site more likely than the discovery of the alien civilization at the bottom of the ocean which follows. You find yourself front-page news along with the other 500 million Sagittarians who were down there. Your lucky colour is taupe and your lucky grain is barley.

Capricorn ~ The Sea-goat

Remarkably, this week for Capricorns is exacty the same in every detail as last week.

Aquarius ~ The Water Carrier

Aquarius can look forward to a letter in the post this week. It will contain some news from Peter Popoff, with a lot of writing and a piece of The True Cross. Later in the week brings a visit from a Greenpeace representative wanting you to join up. She will give you a leaflet and a sticker. You will have a very spicy curry on Wednesday night, and some garlic naan bread. A noisy neighbour will keep you awake on Thursday by playing seemingly endless repetitions of ‘My Sharona’ on their hi-fi. Your lucky vegetable is a swede, as is your lucky National representative.

Pisces ~ The Fishes

As the week commences Pisceans might start to think that they’re going insane. As, in fact, they are. By Wednesday the hallucinations will have well and truly set in, and you’ll all be completely bonkers by 3pm Thursday. Your lucky colour is paisley and your lucky medication is Valium.

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As mentioned last week, Iotas Scrivener, The Cow’s resident astrologer, claims that the accuracy of these predictions is better than 99.72%. Iotas uses state-of-the-art quantum processors to compute simultaneous outcomes in an infinite number of parallel universes. Whilst the precision of the results is guaranteed, the TCA Horoscope of Infinite Detail™ cannot be held responsible if the outcome of the prediction is not applicable to the universe in which you reside.

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