Tetherd Cow Ahead

The BBC reports that:

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial trumpets to ward off swine flu.

OK. Someone remind me again which century we’re living in. Oh that’s right! The one after the one when they invented powered flight.

The article goes on to say:

The flu is often referred to as H1N1 in Israel, where pigs are seen as unclean.

Well duh! If the little porkers had washed their hands after visiting the piggy bathroom they wouldn’t have gotten the flu in the first place.

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Thanks to Kirke for bringing it to the attention of The Cow

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Good morning Acowlytes all. Speaking of things that are so absurd that I couldn’t have made them up in my wildest flights of fancy, I ask you to cast your mind back in time to Sunday April 27, 2009. Can’t remember what you were doing on that day? Well then, you evidently haven’t been using your Special One Drop Liquid. If you don’t recall that particular milestone of scientific progress, I urge you to go back and refresh your memory before reading on…

…because I have been contacted by someone who quite obviously has a stake in Special One Drop Liquid. Entropy0 left this comment on that post:

Wow. What a glorious display of just how stupid and ignorant you all are. Attacking a product you’ve never even looked at with your own eyes, with infantile mockery and ridicule. A product someone had to find for you on the net. A product who’s operating principles you’ve demonstrated to be too stupid to understand. Not only have none of you morons ever tried the product you’re bashing (you kids obviously couldn’t afford it anyway), you’re all too dumb and insecure to have even tried the free tweaks you’re bashing. You are the same unevolved cretins who back in time, lambasted a surgeon with mockery and ridicule for being so silly as to wash his hands before surgery. How nice to see some haven’t evolved beyond their ancestors in hundreds of years. Luddites literally so scared of science, they prefer to revel in their own ugly ignorance and display it before the rest of the world; rather than try to understand the world better. I mean really! Aussies. Is there any race on earth stupider? Given that you people are known to chainsaw your own arm off to win a bet, it’s hard to imagine. Thanks for making me laugh in the middle of my day. LOL! Now go back to slapping each other on the back for squashing a bug.

Well, after the inevitable pinging noises in my brain settled down, I decided we should scrutinize some of Entropy0‘s points. After all, there’s nothing I like better than a good reasoned argument.[tippy title=”*”]OK, OK, I know I shouldn’t engage in Loon Bashing, but really, they bring it upon themselves…[/tippy]

First of all Mr 0 (may I call you Entropy?) infantile mockery and ridicule is not something I dispense lightly here on The Cow. Oh no, I save that for very special grades of stupidity – like Breatharians and people who believe their anus is haunted or that lizard men rule the Earth. What these things have in common with the claims of the purveyors of Special One Drop Liquid is that they defy the rational, normal commonsense with which we navigate the world.

Now, let’s examine some of your criticisms:

•I haven’t looked at the product with my own eyes.

No, that’s true. But I don’t need to try and live on nothing but air for a month to know that idea is an unparalleled piece of stupidity either. Nor do I need get myself bled to get rid of an illness, nor feel the need to sacrifice a goat when the moon eclipses the sun in order for the light to return. Why? Because I’ve made an effort to understand the world through rational thought. Unlike yourself.

•Someone ‘had to find’ the product for me on the net.

Er. No. Your implication is that I was looking for it. I could never have anticipated something as daft as Special One Drop Liquid in my most bizarre dreams. It was brought to my attention by someone as something I would find amusing, which I do.

•We ‘kids’ couldn’t afford Special One Drop Liquid.

Well first of all, that would have to be the first time I’ve been called a kid in forty years or so. I’m flattered. Oh, I see, it was meant to be condescending! Silly me. And I actually could afford to buy it, but the measure of my sanity (not to mention my robust financial situation) is that I choose to spend my money sensibly.

•I don’t understand Special One Drop Liquid’s ‘operating principles’ because I’m too stupid.

I don’t understand Special One Drop Liquid’s ‘operating principles’, that’s for sure. But it’s not because I’m too stupid – it’s because the claimed ‘operating principles’ defy any kind of cogent thought processes. Allow me to quote a small segment of the press release:

To ascertain the effect of the One Drop Liquid on any object, it is only necessary to initially stand the small bottle containing the Liquid on the face of the object.

So, to paraphrase: if I stand a bottle of SODL on an object, I will be able to ascertain from that act the effect of the liquid itself on that object.

Without even entering into any discussion of what Special One Drop Liquid does, this claim is manifestly absurd (well, except if the liquid does nothing at all I guess, in which case the proposition is self-evident).

•I and my readers are ‘too dumb to try the free tweaks we’re bashing’.

Oh, would they be the things like: A piece of blue paper placed under a vase of flowers will improve the sound of music played in the same room? Or: Tying a reef knot in the power cord of my music system will improve the sound?

Just to prove I’m not ‘too dumb’ (or perhaps to prove that I actually am) I tried both of these things. As I expected, there was not one whit of noticeable effect on my music. So how are you going to explain that, eh? (let’s just forgo the old pseudoscientific party-line that my ‘skeptical vibes’ stopped the effect from being activated – it’s the lamest get-out-of-jail-free card of all time).[tippy title=”†”]And I will point out here that I am a very experienced sound engineer, and eminently qualified to assess any ‘effect’ on the music that might have been taking place.[/tippy]

There is no reasonable explanation that you can offer that these things would work, and there isn’t one on the Special One Drop Liquid website either.

•I and my readers are ‘the same unevolved cretins’ who would not have scoffed at medical hygiene in previous eras.

Ignoring the rather desperate and sad name-calling (of which you seem inordinately fond – excellent debating technique sir!), the conjecture is unprovable and irrelevant; show us proper science behind the absurd claims for Special One Drop Liquid and we will believe it! It’s simple.

•I and my readers are Luddites.

Do you actually know what a Luddite is? Let me quote from Dictionary.com:

Lud·dite (lÅ­d’Ä«t)
n.
1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.

2.One who opposes technical or technological change.

Now I assume you are not accusing me of being a 19th century mill worker, so you must, somehow, think I am a person who opposes technological change. If you’ve bothered to read any of The Cow you will know that’s an absurd and erroneous claim (except when it comes to robots, it goes without saying). Mr 0 – I am not opposed to technology or change. What I am opposed to is ludicrous piffle that poses as science.

•Australians would chainsaw their own arm off to win a bet.

Aside from demonstrating your incredible gullibility (the chainsaw bet is a much-loved yarn, pal) you are using the most pathetic of ad hominem attacks: damning one person on the basis of a racial stereotype. Nice work.

On a serious note, Cowpokes, people like Entropy0 confuse, frustrate and sadden me. It is plain that unlike the Steorn swindlers, or the ShooTag crooks, Mr 0 and the sellers of Special One Drop Liquid are not fully attached in this reality. His tendency to name-calling and ad hominem vilifications is a measure of his inability to fully engage with the lack of any real rationality in the claims of a product like Special One Drop Liquid. I find it hard to take his vitriol personally (like I most certainly do with the badly-educated Melissa Rogers from ShooTag).

It makes me wonder what a strange world Mr 0 inhabits, where things like turning up the corners on a curtain in a room or placing CDs overnight in the freezer have magical effects on music quality. Is he just deluded and imagining the effects? And does that actually matter if he thinks the music ‘sounds better’? Has he ever bothered to try a blind test, where, over a series of trials an impartial person randomly determines whether or not to place blue paper under a vase in his ‘listening area’? And if he did, and found that he actually couldn’t tell the difference, how would he respond?

Your task for today is to try one of the methods for ‘improving’ your music suggested on the Special One Drop Liquid site. They’re all pretty simple and cost nothing at all. If your music sounds better – or even different in any way at all – make sure you let me know.

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*OK, OK, I know I shouldn’t engage in Loon Bashing, but really, they bring it on themselves…

†And I will point out here that I am a very experienced sound engineer, and eminently qualified to assess any ‘effect’ on the music that might have been taking place.

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Dear Cowpokes. Sometimes one is beset with a problem so vexing and, er, personal that it’s difficult to know exactly where to turn for help. One such problem is Anal Haunting, and that is the topic of today’s discussion.

Yes, you read correctly – today we’re going to examine the problem of what to do if a ghost takes up residence in your ass. ((And by this I don’t mean ‘in your donkey’. That’s an altogether different (and, in the light of today’s discussion it has to be said, somewhat prosaic) kind of haunting.))

Over on Haunted America Tours someone by the name of Maryanna Chatelaine Moresby addresses the issue of ‘Sex after ghost hunting – exorcisms of a womb or anal ghosts: And when is the right time to have sex afterwards?’

You think I’m making it up, right? Or that someone’s having a leg pull, right? Oh no dear Acowlytes – by now you should surely know that when it comes to woo-woo, there is nothing under the sun that I could invent that would be as daffy as things some people really believe.

Maryanna has an awful lot to say on the subject of paranormal sex and I simply can’t cover it all – I don’t have the time and besides I’m almost exhausted from laughing so much. So for the purposes of this post, I’ll focus on the terrible ordeal of Maryanna’s husband, Riley, who, it appears has a chronic anal ghost problem. This is Riley:

The bright flare at the bottom left of Riley is an anal apparition. Hey! STOP LAUGHING! This is serious. According to Maryanna:

My husband Riley has had an anal ghost infection on several occasions in the past few years. The phenomena can be very disturbing and unnerving. And the word frightening does not equate to the level of panic it caused me.

Riley, it seems, is a ghost hunter, and his nocturnal adventures appear to have had some unexpected consequences:

At night laying inn bed after a ghost hunt with his group he would begin to let out gas. The stench was horrible. It smelt like something dead and raw sewerage.

After ghost hunting. R-i-i-i-g-h-t… Just in case you couldn’t make it out, Riley’s shirt says: If you can’t stand the heat, go get me a beer. I’m thinking that Riley has the grin of a man who really likes his beer. And his curry.

But wait! Maybe I’m being hasty…

It even formed word with the sounds of his flatulence. And it went as far as cursing out individuals in restuarants, Church and a funeral of a close relative.

Yeah, sure – I know how that goes: “I swear! Maryanna! It wasn’t me it was the ghost!”

The intense passing gas attacks my husband had actually produced audible words that clearly sounded like a man speaking with a gruff or raspy voice.

Is it just me, or is that something people want to hear a recording of? I mean really, the day my arse starts forming legible words, you can be sure I won’t just be fondly recalling the memory on some website. But what kinds of things did Riley’s sphincter have to say?

It would say ” You Are F——g Doomed!” in a farty sounding voice like sound. Or, “Mutha F__K, He Is mine until the day he dies!”

Yes, OK, well, I can see why that might not go down so well at a funeral. Maryanna goes on:

at first I thought it was Riley just playing games with me, throwing his voice like a ventriloquist, until the black diarrhea started while he was still asleep in his favorite chair.

Erk. Okk. I mean. Black diarrhea? Please! The image of Riley and his favourite chair soaking up a puddle of black diarrhea is really something I wish hadn’t formed in my brain..

If the voice from his anus was not enough when it grabbed the sheets and starting pulling it inside him! I was petrified and chilled to the bone, ready to run for the hills.

STOP LAUGHING! Riley is sitting in his favourite chair covered in black diarrhea, sucking sheets up his bum and you’re laughing. Some people.

Besides suffering from intense pain my husband would feel it move inside him like a clawing animal. Once it even blew out the candles on my mothers birthday cake from across the room. And the stench was like a dead skunk and a refrigerator that had lost power for two weeks and was full of food.

Wha… I… cggglfl… how? And… Truly I am at a loss for words. I feel that the only option we can take at this point is to take Maryanna’s lead and pray to St Michael:

† Oh great Angel St. Michael hear my prayer.
Please in your divine justice and wisdom remove this ghost that infest my bowels and anus.
Remove this foul ghost from me as you did the Devil from Heaven.
In your wisdom bless me and free me from this evil affliction now and forever.
† Amen

But even if St Michael successfully intercedes, the road to a happy and normal life is still fraught with difficulties:

After the removal of a real womb or anal ghost it’s not just you that might not feel like making love!

That’s right Cowpokes – an anal ghost problem shared is an anal ghost problem halved! If an anal ghost has been ruining your sex life, you might want to take some of Maryanna’s tips for dealing with the aftermath:

•Talk to each other about how you feel. Voice your fears!

•Be gentle with each other and build up to things gradually. Avoid the anus and vagina if it was recently haunted.

•Avoid penetration of these areas and concentrate on caressing and oral sex the first few times. The ghost might try to return or another take it’s place.

•Spend more time on kissing, caressing and foreplay to aid arousal.

•If you have dispelled a Vaginal ghost: Until your hormone levels are back to normal your vagina won’t lubricate itself very well, so try using a water-soluble lubricant.

•If you are in pain from a an anal ghost removal You may also find a warm bath and lubricant will help.

•Try different positions if you feel discomfort. And keep an eye in a mirror to see if you can see the ghost trying to return.

And please, if you get any pictures, you know where to send ’em.

In case you were wondering, faithful Acowlytes, Prophet Peter Popoff still regularly communicates with me, albeit in a conversation that is fairly one-sided. He still hasn’t managed ever to respond to my questions, and one must consider that the silence after my last heartfelt offering has been decidedly chilly.

Previously, as you will recall, I had gotten a little excited that I am the only one who has made any money out of our exchange, but evidently my crowing has come to Prophet Pete’s attention. Today I received a missive in which he asks for his money back again:

Of course, that’s never going to happen, especially when he goes on to tell me that he ‘must do something very spiritual and private’ with the money. I think we all have a pretty good idea what kinds of things Prophet Pete does in the apse when no-one is around.

I am making quite a collection of Peter Popoff paraphernalia though, including, not before time, the elusive Dead Sea Salt, which arrived a few weeks back.

Prophet Pete must have known how much I’d been anticipating it – he couldn’t stop himself from scrawling his excitement on the front of the envelope:

Indeed, it excited someone in the post office too, because before it arrived in my letterbox the letter had quite obviously been opened and then sticky-taped closed again:

And lest you think it was a mistake, and the letter was ‘opened in error’, a second envelope inside the first one (Prophet Pete is very fond of a little envelope-in-envelope action) was opened also:

But the Dead Sea Salt was still in there, so I can only assume that the snoop didn’t truly understand the value of the contents. ((Either that, or they stole the winning lottery ticket that Prophet Pete had thoughtfully enclosed…))

I’ve added the little salty baggy to my expanding Prophet Peter Popoff portmanteau, along with some other recent acquisitions – a golden Disk of Healing, another ten thousand dollar note, a piece of blue cloth (I can’t remember what the hell that was supposed to be), Aaron’s Rod (a toothpick in a little cotton bag), and one of Jesus’ sandals (funny, all that Bible verse and not one mention that Jesus had paper footwear).

I am confident that soon I will have enough to open the world’s first Prophet Peter Popoff museum! Admission charge will be 2c.

Acowlytes! The END IS NIGH! Run for the hills!!! TERMINATORS ARE ALMOST HERE! SkyNet has become self aware and before you can say ‘Hasta la vista baby’, we’ll all be vassals of the Machines!

Yes, this is front page news in this morning’s Melbourne Age. The above breathless gush was headlined as an op ed piece from military futurist Peter W. Singer who speculates that if computers continue to become powerful at the rate that Moore’s Law hypothesizes, by 2030 we will have military robots that carry computing power a billion times their current capabilities.

Of course, a newspaper can’t let it go at that[tippy title=”†”]Because that story is basically: Computer power expands exponentially, so everything that uses computers, including weaponry, will get more powerful. Yawn…[/tippy] Oh, no, no, no! In Newspaper Land science is boring so you have to jazz it up a bit to get the idiots readers interested – that means TERMINATORS! This is what I call ‘Brain-In-a-Jar’ science fiction – the kind of thing that, twenty years from now, will look as goofy as Flash Gordon and 50s images of robots stealing earth women look to us today.

In the article Peter Singer is critical of the Australian Defense Department’s lack of foresight in mentioning robots in a recently released ‘white paper’ outlining Australia’s military strategies for the next couple of decades. You all know how I feel about robots. If they do as well in warfare as they seem to be doing in other areas of deployment, then seriously, we’re well better off without them. Those of you whose skulls aren’t crushed under the treads of the machines in the imminent Northern Hemisphere robot wars can come live here when it’s all over.

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†Because that story is basically: Computer power expands exponentially, so everything that uses computers, including weaponry, will get more powerful. Yawn…

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Recently over at Nurse Myra’s Gimcrack Hospital, we had cause to discuss the ‘curse’ on the 1976 movie The Omen, starring Gregory Peck & Lee Remick. Numerous movies are affected by such ‘curses’ (Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Poltergeist and The Crow to name but a few) and it will come as no surprise to you, dear Acowlytes, that about such matters I am highly skeptical. So, as I promised Nurse Myra, today I’m donning my Tsk Tsk Tsk Hat and taking a look at the Omen Curse through my acid-tinted glasses.

Nurse Myra’s jumping off point was an article that appeared in the Sunday Herald that features the point of view of the designer of The Omen, John Richardson, who paints a grim picture of the bad luck surrounding the making of the film.

You can read the Herald’s picturesque account if you want to get the full flavour, but it would take me pages to go into detail, so I’m just going to bullet point the gist of it:

•1: John Richardson and his assistant on the film, Liz Moore were in an horrific car accident in Holland, in which Moore was killed.

•2: Afterwards, Richardson claims that he realised the accident bore uncanny similarities to a death in The Omen, in which actor David Warner is decapitated.

•3: Richardson also saw a road sign at the site of the accident that indicated it was 66.6 miles from the Dutch city of Ommen.

•4: Gregory Peck’s son killed himself two months before the film commenced shooting.

•5: When Peck set off for London to start on his role, his plane was struck by lightning over the Atlantic Ocean.

•6: A plane carrying Omen Executive Producer Mace Neufeld was struck by lightning a few weeks later.

•7: The hotel where Neufeld was staying in London was bombed by the IRA, as was a restaurant where the some of the cast and crew were due to dine on November 12.

•8: Stuntman Alf Joint was injured when a stunt when wrong.

The article goes on to describe how “everyone involved in the production was freaked out to some extent. They all felt that something wasn’t quite right and that included the cast.”

Well, there we have it. The scariest thing in the whole report is the grammar in that last sentence. ((Although I have been on a number of films where we all felt the cast wasn’t quite right, so perhaps that’s what they really meant.))

Even just bullet-pointing the ‘best evidence’ for a curse, rather than using the highly coloured language of the article, throws a sobering light on the collected anecdotes. For the sake of pedantry, though, let’s cast the Cow Eye of Rationality over them and see what we can determine:

•1: From the get-go we’re on shaky ground. The credit list for The Omen reveals that John Richardson was not a designer, as the Herald writer tells us, but is instead listed on the IMDB under Special Effects – an entirely different department. A small point perhaps, but a very good example of how misinformation propagates in these kinds of urban legends. The car accident in question actually happened almost a year after Richardson finished on The Omen, while he was working on A Bridge Too Far. Since Liz Moore is not credited on either film, we must raise an eyebrow on her actual credentials for being ‘cursed’ at all. Is it enough to merely work with someone who has been involved with a cursed film, to bring the curse down on yourself? That would certainly increase the potential victim pool by a substantial order of magnitude.

And even if Moore did work on the film, why did the curse indiscriminately pick on an assistant, rather than go for a head of department? Was it afraid of a fight or something? ((Some reports say Moore was Richardson’s girlfriend, but I haven’te been able to substantiate this. It would make sense.))

•2: Moore’s injuries were identical a to death depicted in the movie, so the legend goes – specifically the untimely end of David Warner’s character, Jennings, who is decapitated by a sliding sheet of glass. Gruesome, for sure, but heck – don’t people know what kind of things happen in car accidents? Vehicle fatalities are one of the most frequent types of non-natural death in the industrial world and decapitation in such situations is certainly not uncommon. And I would be most surprised to find that the victim’s head was severed as cleanly and bloodlessly as that of Jennings in the film (call me skeptical). So what we’re noting is this: while Richardson was working on A Bridge Too Far, a year after he had completed The Omen, an assistant of his, who we can’t actually be sure had even worked on either film, was horribly killed in a car accident, suffering terrible injuries. Um. So how is it that A Bridge Too Far is not cursed? And anyway far from being the victim of a terrible fate, John Richardson is surely lucky to have survived such an awful tragedy!

•3: Richardson says he noted a road sign that indicated the accident happened 66.6 miles from Ommen. Are you detecting a whiff of over-embroidery here, Astute Acowlytes? Distances in Holland are marked in tenths of a mile? With decimal points on the road signs? I’m prepared to be corrected, but I’d find it highly unusual if this is the case. I suspect that if we drilled down into this factoid we’d find that the accident happened ‘about’ sixty-something miles from Ommen, and the 6.6 has somehow crept into the tale for ‘neatness’.

•4: Gregory Peck’s son committed suicide before the film commenced shooting. This happened two months prior to the shoot. Is the curse prescient as well as omniscient? How far before the shoot would the suicide have been acceptably not the work of a curse? How far after? Are all relatives and friends of all the cast and crew susceptible to a filmic curse, with a two month window on either side of a probably 18 month production timescale? Crikey – given the numbers of folk who work on a film, does it strike anyone that it would be incredible for an accident or death not to happen to any of several thousand people over a two year period?

(I’m also prepared to bet that Peck’s son’s suicide didn’t just, like, happen out of the blue. Suicide usually occurs in profoundly unhappy individuals after some deliberation. Indeed, here we learn that:

He (Jonathan Peck) had serious health problems (most of them heart-related), a recent breakup with a girlfriend, and suffocating work conditions (he was working for a local news station which expected him to come up with a certain amount of footage per day, whether there was any news, or not). On top of all this, he had to live up to being the son of Gregory Peck (and here, his astonishing resemblance might have indeed been a drawback). He left no suicide note, but it’s not hard to speculate that the world just became too much for Jonathan to bear.

So not only is the curse responsible for Jonathan Peck’s suicide, it presumably must also be held accountable for his unhappy life…)

•5&6: Planes get struck by lightning. It happens a lot. I’ve been in a plane that was struck by lightning. ((… and it’s totally possible I watched The Omen either two months before or two months afterward… spoooooky!)) It’s generally not a big deal, and rarely results in any problems of any kind. And again, neither of these two events constitutes the outcome of a curse, since both times, exactly nothing happened to all the passengers and crew on the planes concerned.

•7. The cast and crew were affected by IRA bombings in London in 1975. Duh. 1974 and 1975 represented two of the most active years for the IRA intrusions into England, with 7 serious attacks over that time. Famous and wealthy people stay in expensive hotels and eat in exclusive restaurants. The IRA was consistently targeting expensive hotels and exclusive restaurants. There’s a surprise here?

Notwithstanding the fact that no bombings occurred on November 12 as it happens, so that’s another complete error. And in any case no-one was actually bombed anyway! They all escaped being bombed! Surely, once more, that’s good luck as opposed to the gruesome execution of a horrible curse.

And, if we’re going to expand the curse’s powers to include not only bad things happening, but missing out on bad things happening… well, need I elaborate?

•8: A stuntman was injured on a film! HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!

Stunts are dangerous. That’s why they have professionally trained people do them, rather than just throw the lead actor onto a row of metal fence spikes (although sometimes that would be more desirable). I know a few stunt people. They’ve all had accidents of some degree or other. Again, on a film with a lot of stunts (and The Omen had its share) it would be more remarkable not to have had a few accidents.

Now, I can hear your objections already Cowpokes: “Yes, yes, yes, Reverend, that’s all very well, all those things taken as individual items, but what about them all happening in confluence? Surely that’s the evil handiwork of a curse!”

Well, as we’ve seen, about half of those incidents can’t really be considered bad luck as such, because the sum result for those involved was no consequence at all. To the contrary, not being in a restaurant that was bombed is surely the best kind of luck you can have! The remaining unhappy events (all cherry-picked out of hundreds of thousands of possibilities after the fact) can be easily assimilated as the normal flux of daily life mixed with some exaggeration and a little bit of coincidence. All entirely within the realms of natural occurrences.

Movie curses (like other famous ‘curses’ such as the one on the tomb of King Tutankhamen) work on one very simple principle – if you allow your criteria to be stretched to the widest possible extent, you can, with hindsight, find all kinds of seemingly ‘related’ phenomena. Because the ‘logic’ is retro-fitted to the circumstances, anything can be interpreted in a manner that befits the curse.

If we examine the ragtag bunch of ‘facts’ from The Omen curse, one thing is immediately evident – there is nothing at all to relate them to one another. How is the Dutch city of Ommen important in any manner aside from having a name that is similar to the name of the film? What has ‘lightning’ got to do with the ideas behind the film, other than in the loosest possible Wrath-of-God way? How come Gregory Peck’s son and Richardson’s partner were bumped off – what did they do to particularly anger The Omen demons that was more egregious than, say, directing the film, or funding it? What have the IRA, or hotels, or restaurants got to do with anything? All these things are just unrelated events tied together by one common thread – over time, disparate people have come to think they constitute a curse!

Seriously, if I was a demon and I wanted some serious curse action, why would I bother with all this maybe-it-is-maybe-it-isn’t vagueness? It doesn’t speak well for promotion in the demonic workplace. Why wouldn’t I bump off all the principal players and the director and the producers of the film… in the manner of each of the deaths portrayed in the story… on the night of the premiere? Now that would be food for thought!

But like all myths and hooey, there is no logic, no method and, when it comes down to it, no substance of any kind behind The Omen curse. It is just a piece of pop culture mythology spun out of a general queasiness about entertainment meddling with religion. And, dare I be so cynical, something that did no harm at all to the marketing of the film.