Tetherd Cow Ahead

Wed 23 May 2007

Bridge Over Troubled Water*

Posted by anaglyph under Hokum, Peter Popoff, Religion, Skeptical Thinking, Spam Observations
[17] Comments

Brothers and Sisters!

I can only think that another MIRACLE has occurred since last we spoke. At that time, as you will recall, I was about to open my SECRET envelope with MIRACLE WATER and HOLY GHOST INSTRUCTIONS but I have to confess that SATAN stayed my hand and I put off my task!

And then, AS IF HE COULD READ MY MIND I had another communique from Prophet Peter Popoff! Yes, when I arrived home this afternoon, there he was in my letter box again, this time with a portrait!

Pete Popoff Poses

Prophet Pete is so committed to shoehorning a miracle into my life that in this new letter he has taken the time to personally underline and circle points of interest. Emphatically!

Emphatic Writing

See? How much more emphatic could he get!?

And JESUS’ TEARS can this man churn it out! This letter is another two pages of densely packed waffle, only this time with lots of asterisks and underlines and annotations.

I can see his game now – he aims to confuse me into salvation! That’s a ploy I’ve never seen used before.

And this new letter has ANOTHER included envelope, with ANOTHER set of instructions.

I now have sitting on my desk five pages of writing, two sealed envelopes, one postage-paid return address envelope (oh, the joy!) and, the thing you’ve all been waiting for… the OPENED MIRACLE WATER ENVELOPE!

Miracle Water!

I’m almost wetting myself without the need for the miracle water!

I also have a further two pages of instructions. Holy crap. It’s clear, at least, that Prophet Pete’s efforts are going to be wasted on the illiterate.

Now this new instruction sheet is printed on bright pink paper, and also contains numerous highlighted points and underlinings. First of all there is a bullet-pointed list of things that I must do with the MIRACLE WATER.

Stick with me Cow Fans. I promise, it’s worth it. (Please note: all underlinings and emphasis are courtesy of Prophet Pete. I simply couldn’t have done any better).

Instruction #1:

Lay the large MIRACLE SPRING WATER vial next to your bed TONIGHT ONLY. I believe the angel of the Lord will trouble your water so that when you drink it – first thing in the morning when you wake up – there’s no telling what awesome power and anointing will be released. GET READY!

Now listen. The thought of the angel of the Lord troubling one’s water and causing the release of awesome power might have gone down OK in biblical times when they had easily hosed stone floors and lots of straw to soak stuff up. Nowadays it just sounds frightening and ultimately highly unsanitary.

Leaving that aside, hands up who would be prepared to drink water from a plastic vial sent to them in the post by an unknown person. Uh-huh. As I thought. (Put your hand down Jam, it is not at all like chugging Bawls).

Instruction #2

Claim the miracles you need (with prayer) and ask God to open the pathway to your very own MIRACLE DELIVERANCE… the pathway to your victory… through your RED SEA of need.

Don’t let your RED SEA of need interfere with your ability to make it through to Instruction #3:

Send me your prayer requests (on back) along with your best gift to God. When I get the empty container back with your name written on it I will know that you have obeyed God’s instructions and acted in obedience.

Cowerati, I know that the DIVINE ILLUMINATION of the Cow has already shone for you on the PATH AHEAD here and you can see where we’re going to go with this…

Yes. Prophet Peter Popoff is inviting us to send something back to him. And HE’S PAYING! (Sorry about the dribbling… opportunities like this just never hand themselves over all that often and I’m going dizzy with anticipation…)

Now. I have SO MUCH MORE of Peter Popoff’s revelatory message to pass on to you, but it’s simply TOO BIG A TOPIC for even my deftness and skill to condense into just this one further post. This has become a CATEGORY IN ITS OWN RIGHT, and deserves much greater consideration.

So, instead, just for the moment let us pause and ponder this latest opportunity to come our way. I’m turning it over to you, dear Cow Folk: what, do you think, should I send back to Prophet Pete in his reply-paid envelope?

Keep it decent, keep it small enough for a standard DL envelope and make it something you think Prophet Peter Popoff will appreciate.

There will be a prize.

(Further installments on the Letters of Peter will be forthcoming).

___________________________________________________________________________

*Title courtesy of Pil

___________________________________________________________________________

Tue 22 May 2007

Instant Miracle – Just Add Water!

Posted by anaglyph under Hokum, Peter Popoff, Religion, Skeptical Thinking, Spam Observations
[26] Comments

O frabjous day! Callooh, callay!!!

Here I was wondering what the heck I was going to serve up as a delectable morsel for my Acowlytes to dine on today when an act of Divine Providence happened right on my doorstep! Well, in my letterbox to be more exact, but the doorstep is only about three feet away from that.

Yes my faithful feiends, it appears that the spammers, not content with assaulting me through my e-conduit have decided to take their message right to my real live front door on actual milled-from-living-trees paper. One can only hope that they don’t manage to upgrade their current quota of 90 billion spams per day to this method.

Anyway, this particular missive arrived addressed to me by name with the opening line:

Our prayer center received your phone call and your prayer request for God’s blessing on your finances… I have been praying for you non-stop ever since the operator gave me your name.

Since I can’t recall making that phone call it stands to reason that it was well over, oh, a couple of weeks ago (that’s about the limit of my memory these days) so this guy’s knees must be pretty stiff by now.

Flipping to the last page to see who I’m dealing with (there are two pages printed on each side with densely packed print featuring LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS) I see that it has been sent by my new friend ‘Prophet Peter Popoff’.

Hey waiddaminute… that name sounds familiar… let me just consult the Internets… Well stone the crows! I’ve been fingered by Spam Celebrity!

Yes, Peter Popoff has written to me personally to tell me how concerned he is for my wellbeing! Really!

Awww – I can see you don’t believe me. Here, let me show you just one of the envelopes he enclosed in his letter:

The First Envelope

See! That’s his real handwriting on there! Fair dinkum!

Well, what does Pete have to say? I won’t go into detail, there’s way too much to digest, but in a nutshell, if I follow his instructions I will get nothing less than EVERYTHING I WANT. Incredible, huh?

Oh there are SO many goodies in this ramble, it’s hard to know where to start.

Firstly, PPP makes an honest-to-God concrete prediction, viz:

I feel YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS AN UNPRECEDENTED MIRACLE as you follow divine leading and direction. You’ve prayed for a seemingly impossible miracle. On July 09 2007, the miraculous occurs. YOUR GREATEST PRAYER SHALL BE ANSWERED AND YOUR GREATEST WISH SHALL COME TO BE…

Hot diggedy dog! Now there’s the kinda predictin’ I like!

Oh, but hang on a bit, unsurprisingly there’s the fine print: …hindering spirit… puts me in the wrong time at the wrong place to take advantage of the miracle… yadda yadda yadda.

Oh dangnabbit Prophet Pete! Is there anything I can do to make SURE that my greatest wish will come true???

(Whack me with a broom pole there’s a lot of writing in this letter… instructions, instructions, more instructions…chaos in my life… someone who is about to cause fear… 7 Secret Prophetic Events…)

Aha! Here we have it:

There are 3 more IMPORTANT prophetic events that are yet to be revealed…However…I must obey God in this. YOUR OBEDIENCE IS THE KEY! I CAN ONLY REVEAL THEM TO YOU IN MY ANSWER…OBEY GOD IN THIS!

Now, in Jesus’ Name open the first envelope that has the Miracle Spring Water in it.

The First Envelope

Egad! The tension is too much! As you can see, the envelope contains the Miracle Water Packet and also a Prophecy & Holy Ghost Instructions. A completely dry ENVELOPE FULL OF WATER! That must be a miracle in itself.

This is TOO BIG A STORY for ONE POST, dear ACOWLYTES! Picture me if you will as I unholster my letter opener in the diminishing light of my near-exhausted flickering candle and prepare to reveal the contents of Envelope #1…

… and tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion to this rapturous tale!

Sun 20 May 2007

Convolution

Posted by anaglyph under Art, Mathematics
[12] Comments

I have been working with some really interesting generative functions in my artwork and I thought you might like to see some of the results.

(Click on the image and type ‘N’ for Next or ‘P’ for Previous)

The kinds of mathematical systems I’m using for these systems are deeply fascinating. All the images you can see in the above slideshow are closely related, even though they might look substantially different. They seem to resemble complicated organic lifeforms and yet the maths that describes them is remarkably simple.

It works something like this: I outline a basic element, let’s say a small lozenge shape and a circle. Then I tell the maths to do a very simple thing – make a two copies of those shapes in the next generation, displace them in space and rotate them a little. Each subsequent generation executes the same instructions.

This simple set of rules gives rise to a branching structure like you might see in a tree. If I add a few more basic commands (a little random variation in the shapes, some colour change over generations) an astonishing piece of magic happens – the resulting images look organic – even like creatures you might find in the real world. All kinds of phenomena that I don’t specifically code (such as asymmetry and textural effects) appear spontaneously.

I’ve only begun to experiment with these concepts and I fully expect to see some truly wonderful results from this work.

Sat 19 May 2007

I Live In a Stupid Country…

Posted by anaglyph under Australiana, Politics, Stupidity
[16] Comments

The National Flower

…and I apologize to the world on behalf of many of us who are embarrassed at the behaviour of the intellectual vacuum that is our government.

This week the Australian Federal Minister for Immigration, Kevin Andrews, formally announced the introduction of the Australian Citizenship Test, colloquially known as the Aussie Values Test. I’ve spoken about it before on The Cow, but I had hoped that it would just evaporate back into the Formless Void of Moronic Ideas from whence it originally came.

Not so it seems.

Basically it works like this: soon, if you apply for citizenship in Australia, you will be asked a set of 20 questions (chosen from a possible list of 200) that define the proper values you would need to embrace to be accepted into this country.

This whole idea is odious and small-minded and speaks right to the undercurrent of racism that flows just beneath the surface of uneducated Australia. It says, to put it into simple language: “We don’t want you here unless you’re like us, and hold the same ideas as us”.

But who is this ‘us’? Yes, you guessed it, ‘us’ is White, middle-class, Judeo-Christian, heterosexual, television-watching consumers.

I submit for your consideration some of the questions that ‘might’ be asked in this test, according to Minister Andrews:

1. What sports are played in Australia

2. Are Australian values based on the Koran, the Judeoâ€“Christian tradition, Catholicism or secularism?

3. Which of the following are Australian values? A: Men and women are equal; B: A fair go; C: Mateship; D: All of the above

4. Who was the first Prime Minister of Australia?

5. What is Australia’s national flower?

6. Who is Australia’s Head of State?

7. How long have the indigenous aboriginal population lived on the Australian continent?

These questions can be roughly divided into three categories: Irksome, Stupid and Irrelevant.

Few people would know or understand why the answer to question 6 is: ‘Queen Elizabeth II of England’, and how this has relevance to Australian citizenship. Question 1 and 5 are plainly daft and prove nothing at all, and question 2 is just offensive (it may as well say ‘Don’t bring your foreign religions here Sajid’). I doubt that ninety percent of fourth generation Australians would know the answer to question 4.

And question 3. I cringe. The answer is, if you didn’t get it, ‘All of the above’, but the question is so banal, mindless and hypocritical that I really want to biff the person who made it up. And biffing would have to constitute a fairly well-held Aussie Value.

Men and women are equal? Then why does the major religious organization of Australia, the Roman Catholic Church, deny women the right to participate equally with men in all aspects of the church?

A ‘fair go’? Not if you’re an immigrant seeking political asylum, or a disenchanted and exploited worker. Or a telco trying to compete with the monopoly of Telstra over the Australian telecommunication infrastructure. Or a customer trying to get service, for that matter.

Mateship? Not if it’s politically or ethically difficult.

And speaking of hypocritical… what, exactly, is the point of question 7? If it’s to emphasize that the Aboriginal people have been here longer than us, then why does the current government repeatedly and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the rights of those people?

This country is full of dumb greedy people getting dumber and greedier.

Here are some questions I guarantee won’t be in the Aussie Values test:

1. Name one Australian scientist.

2. How much water does it take to maintain an average Australian suburban lawn?

3. Out of 171 states, territories and countries around the world, only two have not ratified the Kyoto protocol. One is the USA. Who is the other?

4. Name any Australian play.

5. Which country in the world produces more carbon dioxide per capita than any other?

6. President George Bush is Prime Minister Howard’s: A: Best Buddy; B: Intellectual equal; C: Favourite dinner party conversation topic; D: All of the above.

7. Australian troops went to fight a war in Iraq because: A: The majority of Australians wanted it; B: John Howard ‘took an executive decision’ and overruled all the tenets of a democracy because he knows what’s good for us; C: They had nothing else to do; D: the political situation in the Middle East was critically and significantly important to a minor country on the other side of the world.

Thu 17 May 2007

A Millionaire and His Wife?

Posted by anaglyph under Internet Winnings!, Spam Observations
[11] Comments

Spam Observations #42

An anonymous feiend of MR JAMES wrote to me today to let me know that I have won $200,000 dollars (USD) for my ‘prompt claims’ of a cheque to this amount.

As Cow readers are no doubt aware from my rapidly accumulating Internet Fortune (see counter in the sidebar), this is really small potatoes given the grand scope of my past lottery windfalls. But this one could be quite handily reimbursed, so I know you will be all interested in what MR JAMES’ representative has to say:

CONGRATULATIONS

We are hereby happy to inform you that you emerge as one of the winners in the lucky pick of email address on the web. The cheque won is used as a compensation to the numerous internet users, and gotten from the non-claims of winning check of last years lotto winners in the UK lottery international promotions.

Wha? Sorry MR JAMES’ Friend (do you mind if I call you, oh, Mr Oyinbolowo?), but this is utterly incomprehensible. What on earth do you mean by ‘compensation to the numerous internet users…’? Compensation? For what? Compensation for using the internet?

God knows, we could all certainly use some compensation for putting up with idiots like yourself.

To that effect, We had to organise a lucky dip of all e-mail addresses on the web and sectioned them into zones such as the europe, asia, america, africa and the rest.

Ah the ol’ ‘lucky dip’. Such a quaint and somehow provincial term. Not so much something we might expect from the UK Lottery department as from, say, a church fete. May I suggest you change the term to something a little more sophisticated such as… hmmm… chocolate wheel, perhaps.

And what is this ‘and sectioned them into zones such as the europe, asia, america, africa and the rest’? I can visualize the map on your wall right now: Europe, Asia, America and Africa marked with nice printed names and then everything else just ‘the rest’ scrawled in biro. And curious that Africa makes a big appearance there among the named zones. Not that I’m inferring anything by that.

Did you ever see Gilligan’s Island, Mr Oyinbolowo? It was a television show about people marooned on a tropical island. The theme song originally featured these words:

The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
The millionaire and his wife,
The movie star
And the rest
Here on Gilligan’s Island.

Did you notice the ‘and the rest’ in there, Mr O? The Professor and Maryanne didn’t take to kindly to being just lumped together as ‘and the rest’, and eventually the theme song was altered (at the great cost of the proper scanning of the lyrics) to include their names. I think you should learn a lesson from that. In fact, I suggest that you could learn quite a number of valuable Life Lessons from sitting down and watching Gilligan’s Island. At the very least it would fill up some of the time that you might otherwise use to annoy me.

Under these zones are the regions e.g under europe, we have london ireland, scotland, holland and e.t.c. same applies to every other zone

Uh-huh. So ‘and the rest’ would include a pretty long list of other regions, I guess.

So to that effect, your winning fell under the african zone and west african region.

Completely illogical, but go on…

So therefore, your winning had been sent down to the compensation agent in charge of that region in the person of Mr JAMES. You will have to make contact with him, and follow due procedures to effect the claims of your package which contains a winning check of $200,000dollars(USD) for your prompt claims.

OK, so presumably MR JAMES is in Africa, which, while completely failing to surprise me, is inconvenient because I don’t really want to have to travel to Africa to get this all sorted out. And you know how it is dealing with this kind of stuff over the internet. There are a lot of fraudsters out there Mr Oyinbolowo, and I really would rather do this kind of transaction in person, even if it is for such a paltry sum.

At the moment, I am very busy at Sydney,Australia because of numerous
assignments which I have to carry out. To that effect, I dont think you will have the opprtunity of communicating with me anymore. All you need do is reach the compensation agent Mr JAMES through this e-mail

Wait! Mr Oyinbolowo! Au contraire! What a serendipitous piece of fortune! I LIVE in Sydney Australia, so your schedule has made our meeting almost too easy! Name your place Mr O, and I will be there to pick up my cheque (and maybe I could slip you a little something for your trouble, eh? MR JAMES need never know ;-)

– Mr Oyinbolowo goes on to give me some more advice, mostly about how important it is that I get in touch with MR JAMES as soon as possible because MR JAMES is about to go on leave for a long holiday. MR JAMES evidently hasn’t had a break in three years and does a lot of overtime… Mr O’s concern with MR JAMES’ wellbeing is heartwarming bordering on toadying. He eventually signs off…

My sincere advice to you as a christian is that you should endeavour to pay your tithe to a bible believing church when you get winning check .

Mr Oyinbolowo, my sincere promise to you as an atheist is that I will do everything in my power to see that not only a tithe, but the entire sum of my winnings will go to a Church! Now you can’t ask for fairer than that!

So, I look forward to your contact while you’re in town. I hope you’re enjoying the lovely weather and that your numerous assignments aren’t keeping you from regular attendance at prayer meetings.

Tue 15 May 2007