Tetherd Cow Ahead

The musings about dreams over at Jill Writes got me to thinking about my dreams and the one recurring dream that I have.

It’s not so much a recurring dream, as a recurring circumstance, because the details of the dream always vary, but the basic structure is always the same:

I’m in a room with a group of people. It’s always a sunny, open room, with big windows on one side. Sometimes it seems like a classroom, sometimes the beautiful home of some friends. Once it was a lighthouse. There’s often a lot of wood – wooden floors, wooden window frames. Everyone is chatting, happy. I am happy too. Sometimes we are eating or drinking, like a party. Then, something passes in front of the sun and the shadow darkens the room. An awful fear falls upon me. I turn to see an enormous tidal wave, huge, towering over us, coming slowly towards us. I know with utter certainty that it will fall on us and crush us and drown us all, and that this is the end and nothing can be done about it.

And that’s it. I always wake up. I’ve had this dream many times, perhaps a dozen, and I can’t relate it to anything in my waking life.

Spam Observations #17

It has been a while since I have made a New Best Friend but today Louis Broussard wrote to me with an account of some of his recent jolly japes. I reproduce it here for you unedited:

Hi,

Two years ago I tried one for a laugh and was impressed. It cost me $35 a tablet, girl said take one hour before activity and only need to take half but I took the whole thing. Sure enough after one hour it worked I was sitting in a bar playing a game with a girl and wasn’t even thinking about it (well maybe only 10% of the brain was). I couldn’t get up and walk away as jeans were tight and it was pretty obvious to any one looking that I must be a real sick puppy walking around like that. Ended up getting a mates jacket to hang over it. I took a girl back to the hotel and in the morning she said “you go long time many times”, the wonder of it strikes again!

You can try it now too, don’t loose you chance!

Berkleef Raymos
Thomas Gaultier Hacker
Garcia Augustin Berkan Meredith

Now a version which reflects my thought processes as I read it for the first time:

Two years ago I tried one for a laugh and was impressed.

What? What? What are you talking about Louis? Tried what? Where’s the subject of your sentence…

It cost me $35 a tablet,

Oh, there we go. A tablet. For what? Laughing? A laughing tablet? What?

girl said take one hour before activity

Before activity? Take an hour before the activity? An hour off or something? What? Oh I see – take the tablet one hour before the activity. But what activity? Attending a comedy festival? Surfing? A prayer meeting?

only need to take half but I took the whole thing

Well that’s hardly wise is it, for some kind of medication you’ve never taken before? Especially a laughing tablet. That could get you into real trouble. Like, you could start laughing at puns or something.

Sure enough after one hour it worked I was sitting in a bar playing a game with a girl

Yes, but how do you know it was the tablet? The girl might have been very funny. Or maybe it was the game. I’ve played some hysterical games of Flip the Coaster in my time.

and wasn’t even thinking about it (well maybe only 10% of the brain was)

10% of the brain was thinking about what? The game? The girl? The tablet? Laughing? Maybe thinking about what the other 90% of an obviously fairly under-resourced brain was doing?

I couldn’t get up and walk away as jeans were tight and it was pretty obvious to any one looking that I must be a real sick puppy walking around like that.

With jeans that were too tight to walk around in? Yep, I gotta say Louis, I’ve seen some pretty ugly sights in the tight jeans department. You should have thought of that on your way in. Most people in this joint would have already had you pegged as a sick puppy. I’m surprised you could find a girl to play games with. She must have had a good sense of humour. You really have to watch yourself with tight jeans. Aside from looking like a real dickhead, what if you got an erection or something? You could do some serious damage. Thank god for the laughing tablet, eh? I guess that, and the excruciating crushing of your testicles would have taken your mind off other things, if you get my meaning.

Ended up getting a mates jacket to hang over it.

OK, now you lost me. Mates… jacket… to… hang… over… it… Let me just read back there… OH! It’s one of those kinds of tablets. Not a laughing tablet at all! Mind you, I can imagine that the sight of you in your tight jeans with a friend’s jacket waggling in the air before your groin was bringing laughter to many people that night, without the need of any further medication on their part. I wish I’d been there.

I took a girl back to the hotel and in the morning she said “you go long time many times”

Yeah, well I’m not surprised. You sound like you had quite a bit to drink my man.

the wonder of it strikes again!

Louis, believe me when I tell you that the wonder of it strikes me every time I read your email.

Berkleef Raymos
Thomas Gaultier Hacker
Garcia Augustin Berkan Meredith

Ah, me. Again we see that like so many other spammers Louis suffers from the apparently epidemic affliction of Spammer Identity Confusion. I am beginning to formulate an hypothesis that it could just be that this is a side-effect of taking all these pills, for laughter or otherwise.

Whatever. I’m not going to loose any sleep over it.

Tetherd Cow Ahead Advisory: Geek Alert! Yabbering about pointless fun with technology follows…

My friend Simon was given, as a birthday present from his partner Kerry, some tickets for a tour of the Sydney Olympic Park on Segways. Simon was kind enough to invite a couple of us along with him this morning for some geek fun.

The Segway tour of the park consists of a brief training session and then a fairly lengthy ride (or maybe I should say ‘roll’ because it is most unlike riding) around some of the facilities and gardens.

Here is Simon getting his balance:

It really doesn’t take long to get the hang of these uncanny devices. Two motors, one in each wheel, are controlled by microprocessors which constantly calculate the centre of gravity of the rider. To go forward you simply shift your centre of gravity forward; to go back, just transfer it back. When you first climb on, there is momentary hesitation because it’s certainly not intuitive to just lean forward without thinking you’ll fall flat on your face. But it takes only a couple of minutes to get the hang of the thing and it soon feels very natural.

I expected riding on a Segway would be cool. I didn’t expect it to be quite as cool as it was. The Segways are very responsive and the motors deliver serious torque. You can roll forwards and backwards, spin in tight circles, go up and down fairly steep grades and travel mostly anywhere a person could walk (even through doorways, which we did).

It wasn’t so much a tour as a bunch of nerds tooling around on a hi-tech toy. And didn’t we love every minute of it.

I’d like to believe that the Segway was going to revolutionize personalized transport, but I have to say I think, for the moment anyway, that its appeal is generally one of the oddness of controlling a vehicle by what almost feels like mental power. Because you don’t actually do anything, except shift your weight slightly, it seems just like you’re moving by simply thinking about it. It’s a real buzz. As a two-wheeled device for efficiently and quickly traversing the city with a low environmental impact, though… well, we already have one of those. It’s called a bicycle.

One of the surprises of the morning was to discover that Simple Graphics Man, ever the intrepid adventurer, had already been there ahead of us. As we have come to expect, his experience was not uneventful…

At least he was sensible enough to wear a helmet this time.

The Spitzer Space Telescope, which was put into orbit in 2003, is returning the most marvellous of images. This one, dubbed ‘The Mountains of Creation’ shows embryonic stars forming in the constellation of Cassiopeia, 7000 light years from Earth.

Tetherd Cow Ahead Assignment for November 11, 2005: tonight ask a friend around, pour yourselves a glass of good wine and go outside and drink a toast to the wonders of the Universe.

Yes folks, we can reveal that after a lengthy and heated correspondence between Mr Brown and the Tetherd Cow Ahead History Department the author has acknowledged that his other book missed the mark by a country mile.

He has agreed to amend the numerous philosophical and historical errors in that previous work and tell the story the way it really happened.

In line with an agreement hammered out between TCAâ„¢ and Mr Brown’s publisher, all copies of that previous book are be taken from the shelves and replaced by even weightier volumes of The DaVinci Cow*.

What breathtaking secret does Mr Brown reveal in this new and controversial work? Well, all I can say is, that as Christmas approaches you would be well advised to note the Nativity scene and just who else was in that manger on that fateful night…

*The Cow is indebted to jedimacfan for using his considerable influence to obtain for us, at great personal risk, a sneak preview of the cover…

UPDATE: From around the globe, fragments in the puzzle that is The DaVinci Cow are already starting to come to light:

Fragment 1
Fragment 2
Fragment 3

UPDATE (2011): All the above links are now non functional. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.

Attentive readers of The Cow will remember how Gould’s Book Arcade played a pivotal and somewhat spooky part in my quest to create a musical work based on Electronic Voice Phenomena.

Although I mentioned that Gould’s is one of my favourite places in Sydney, I glossed over it a little in the EVP post since it had a small part to play in that already lengthy story. But this wonderful literary landmark definitely deserves some dedicated Cow ruminations.

Gould’s is a great sprawling collection of secondhand books, records and magazines that is about five minutes walk from where I live. In my opinion it should be deemed one of Sydney’s National Treasures. The narrow aisles are quite literally crammed with books and it is easy to spend a Sunday morning rifling through the stacks.

In addition to the Raudive Breakthrough which I mentioned in my EVP post, I’ve found some great stuff here over the years. I have no doubt that in among the nooks and crannies of the shelves, pushed to the back and way up high, there are many fabulous gems to be found. Like all buried treasure, you’ll have to work hard for it though – there is a loose cataloguing system in place, but it is less Dewey Decimal than ‘oh, somewhere over there in the back corner’.

The people at Gould’s also understand the magical affinity between books and cats, and whilst the books are important, as is the proper order of the universe, cats have the upper hand.

Bob Gould tells me that he gets lots of tourists that come just to marvel at the massive collection, which approaches nearly a million books. Sadly, he says, most marvel but don’t buy. This is an unfathomable concept for me. If I want to avoid buying a book, that necessarily means avoiding even entering a bookshop.

Gould’s also has an online catalogue, accessible through their website or at Abebooks. But as instant-gratification as that might be, it’s nothing compared to spending a few hours among the shelves.

And for Cow’s sake, buy something!

Gould’s Book Arcade
32 King St
Newtown
Australia

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore? ~ Henry Ward Beecher