Tetherd Cow Ahead

Mon 2 Jun 2008

Polly Wanna Cracker?

Posted by anaglyph under Food & Drink, Words
[14] Comments

I will be serving the following appealing snacks at the Shriek of the Mutilated film evening as a treat for all my friends:

Parrot Prawn Crackers

The Fine Print

These are much more peculiar tasting than the inferior “PRAWN” BRAND PARROT CRACKERS, which tend to suffer badly if they become gamp or limp. I know you will all appreciate my indulgence in the extra expense.

Mon 2 Jun 2008

Let’s Call a Spade a Metal-bladed Digging Implement.

Posted by anaglyph under Idiots, In The News, Insane People, Religion, Skeptical Thinking, Stupidity, WooWoo, Words
[9] Comments

I keep promising to turn the scathing bovine eye of The Cow onto Scientology at some point but whenever attempt to pick up my quill on that particular subject my brain just turns to custard. It should be just like shooting fish in a barrel, but heck, it’s such a small barrel and there are so many big fish and if I wanted to do something futile and time-wasting I could just go play another level of BioShock and have a LOT more fun …

Anyways, Atlas Cerise brings my attention to this story in the Guardian about some recent antics involving the Church* of Scientology. To synopsize: a young man picketing the CoS headquarters in London as part of a peaceful demonstration by the anti-Scientology group Anonymous was arrested and is facing prosecution for calling Scientology a ‘cult’.

Let me make it quite clear what’s happening here, because it’s way more scary than the usual dumbo stuff that the Scientologists themselves manage to concoct: the CoS itself is not bringing this accusation against the teenager responsible; it’s the City of London Police who have charged the boy. He was told by an officer that the word ‘cult’ was ‘abusive and insulting’ and that he could not carry a placard which read ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’

This is how the Ask Oxford online dictionary defines the word ‘cult’:

cult â€¢ noun 1 a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object. 2 a small religious group regarded as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. 3 something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society.

Hands up who thinks the Bill are going to pull this one off?

What’s deeply worrying is that the best proper accusation that the UK Law can bring against this boy would appear to be that he was airing an opinion. If that kind of thing is encouraged, then Scientologists and all the other loonies like them will get a free ticket to legitimacy.

If you’re not scared about that, you should be.

UPDATE: Well, I don’t know why it surprises me to find out† that, in fact, it seems that the CoS was involved in the above incident. Not directly, but certainly implicitly. It turns out that for some time now the City of London Police have been, shall we say, receptive to offers of entertainment and donations from L. Ron’s flock. It appears that the laws under which the young man I mentioned above were detained are almost never actually acted upon, except, perhaps when you have friends in the right places.

Let there be no mistake: Dotty belief combined with money & influence always equals setbacks for the human species. Just look at the havoc the Catholic Church has managed in its time.

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*Even though I am in no way religiously inclined, something really grates on me having to refer to these loons as a ‘church’. They are no more a church than the entire fandom of Dungeons & Dragons is a church, only a lot less rooted in reality.

†Thanks to the Skeptical Rogues.

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Sat 31 May 2008

Elastic Morals

Posted by anaglyph under Insane People, Peter Popoff, Skeptical Thinking
[15] Comments

It seems that somehow* despite my best efforts to the avoid him, Peter Popoff has tracked me down to my new address. So after a brief respite, I am again receiving his pearls of wisdom.† And his obsession with me, and the need to reveal the fluctuations of his every bodily function has, quite incredibly, become even worse.

About Peter Popoff's Bowel Movements

So now it’s 2.00 am bowel rumblings in addition to his previously mentioned 5.30 am flowings. Show of hands: who thinks it’s demonic forces? OK, and who thinks it’s last night’s curry? Yeah, that’s what I figured. Seriously, getting a complete rundown of the biology of this guy’s early morning hours makes me feel extremely queasy.

Mysteriously, with this latest epistle Prophet Pete has included three coloured rubber bands.

3 Rubber Bands

I’m sure there is some hare-brained reason for this, but I gotta tell you people, this time the usual infinity-pages-long incoherent letter went straight to the trash. I’ve recently been reading‡ the pdfs of the Scientology Operating Thetan Levels I – VIII on Wikileaks and I’ve finally discovered that there’s a point beyond which** the human brain completely rejects the addition of any further ludicrous gibberish. Trying to read this junk is a lot like taking Valium: you know there’s stuff going on, but you simply don’t care. Only Valium is rather more pleasant.

My fuse for the tolerance of religious idiocy is becoming increasingly short lately, possibly in direct proportion to the escalating exposure these yo-yos seem to be getting and the seemingly almost endless capacity for people to be swindled by the most extraordinarily daft nonsense. I mean, I knew Scientology was brainless, but folks, the scrawlings of L. Ron make the ramblings of Prophet Pete look like Bertrand Russell.

With so many people evidently believing all this vapid twaddle, I suddenly see myself finding uses for last post’s gadgetry.

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*As if I didn’t know. But be warned: a secret alias will be no protection and since I have your address too, Prophet Pete might also be warming your ~~bowels~~ heart a little in the months to come.

†Well, pearls not so much. Pearls are dainty and pretty and subtly lustrous gems. If we were picking an analogy to some form of organically-produced petrified matter to describe Prophet Pete’s wisdom, a 4 kilo coprolite would be a better fit.

‡I say ‘reading’ with quite some scorn. The OT material, the Scientology ‘Bible’ as some have said, is simply utterly incomprehensible. And not incomprehensible in the way that, oh, Stephen Hawking’s writing about astrophysics is, where you know there’s some deep meaning going on there but your brain just doesn’t have the neuron power to grasp it. This is more the kind of incomprehensible you get where you’re wondering, between when you hit your thumb with a hammer and when the pain strikes, how the hell you were stupid enough to do that.

**It happened about one third the way down page one, if you anyone was curious.

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Thu 29 May 2008

Global Warming? Huh?

Posted by anaglyph under Insane People, Stupidity
[16] Comments

Blowing It Out Your Exhaust

Oh yeah.

In a completely incredible New Flavour of Stupid, a company called Autoloc is selling kits that will allow you to turn your car into a flamethrower.† The basic idea is that you stick the ‘Autolocâ„¢ Advance Flame Control System’ up your exhaust pipe after which ‘this sizzling product can make up to 20 feet of flames shoot from your exhaust tips with a touch of a button!’

The Tetherd Cow Ahead Psychology Department suggests that this is the automotive equivalent of lighting your farts.‡

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†The Autolocâ„¢ website warns that the exhaust pipe flamethrower is ‘For Off Road Use Only!’ but the smell of snicker snicker snicker is at least as overpowering as the smell of napalm in the morning. Yeah, that car demonstrating the product really looks like an off-road vehicle…

‡I guess there’s your demographic right there.

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Wed 28 May 2008

The Bear Facts!

Posted by anaglyph under True Fiction
[10] Comments

You might remember that I mentioned that NASA scientists had concluded that a white ‘speck’ on one of the first Phoenix lander photographs was ‘probably not a Polar Bear’. Well, the boffins at TCA Labs have had their digital photo enhancers on the case from the get-go (you know how these geeky types are!) and they tell me today that they beg to differ with the NASA boffins.

So here for your scrutiny is the latest hi-def enhancement from the NASA original, using the proprietary Tetherd Cow Ahead Laboratories ‘Deckard II’ Photographic Augmentation Scanner.*

The Truth!