Tetherd Cow Ahead

If, in your idle moments, you have the desire to just throw caution to the wind and experience the bizarreness of the web, there are lots of sites on the net like Uroulette that allow you to go tripping off to random destinations.

I just figured out something even better though. I call it the Birthday Image Search (BISâ„¢). Here’s how it works:

You go to Google Image search, and enter your birthdate as a string of numbers like this 110785… This will give you a whole host of result sites that are related only by this number string.

My #1 hit was this interesting montage of a Japanese woman casually, and one must presume titillatingly, exposing her underwear. Other featured sites for my birthday were:

★A site selling a sleeping bag with removable pillow

★A Santa Claus toys site

★A Newswire article about Shakira†

★A Japanese site with a picture of a very unhappy-looking Japanese man

★A Hello Kitty games site

★An online hardware shop page for a drill chuck-key

Anybody do any better?

†This is particularly intriguing because at the Apple iTunes Shop, people who bought my CD ‘Houdini’ also bought CDs by Shakira. Shakira has never been in my interest sphere until now, and from what I read about her music, it’s hard to make a link to my stuff. Is the universe telling me something?

In Australia, our risible government has just announced the genesis of a personal identification card for the citizenry, something this conservative party has been trying to instigate for over two decades. It has never been popular, but since this government seems to believe it is invincible (and indeed, I am beginning to wonder if the Australian populace has had a sudden plunge in IQ, fulfilling this belief), it has just issued an edict that the card will be so, and that, apparently, is that.

I don’t want to dwell on the implications of infringements of personal freedoms here – I’m sure the smart readers of The Cow are already aware of such perils – but instead highlight some of the continuing idiocy that seems rife when it comes to modern technology.

Specifically this claim: The card would have the Highest Levels of Security and that it would be Completely Safe.

Now. Politicians and other people who think we are still living in the 1950s hear me: NOTHING IS ‘SAFE‘ IN THE DIGITAL WORLD. NOTHING!

This pig-headed, arrogant and stupid belief is based on the supposition that all the smartest people out there are:

a: Employed by friendly government or legitimate business interests, and/or

b: Honest

This is demonstrably not so, and as we become more and more reliant on the digital world for our data storage, the risk becomes proportionately greater. At the moment things hang together because the ad hoc system is diffuse and evolving and new, and the exploiters are by and large amateurish and not organised. But slowly that’s changing, and as the recent Citibank frauds have shown the execution can be novel and simple and devastating.

If you trust your valuable data to the online world unaware of the risk, you are a fool. An incidence of massive online fraud of some kind is inevitable and imminent.

Aside from intentional criminal manipulation for actual monetary gain, the other commodity that has value in the digital world is information. I have exactly zero faith that a government like ours, which has demonstrated time and time again its complete failure to grok the online world, would have even the remotest chance of protecting valuable personal data from someone who really wanted it. Or, that once such data is accumulated, it will not be used for purposes other than those for which it was collected.

I believe a ‘Smart Card’, for that is what they are calling it, is a very dumb idea.

I have fewer Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking at the door these days.

(I swear – I just snap the shots and this is the way they turn out).

Spam Observations #24

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been getting an enormous influx of porn spam that I can make a good guess comes from some country where English is not the first language. The spam itself is unremarkable but the subject lines are suitably mirth inducing:

Subject: Group jolly Gay hardcore!

I dunno. This just paints a picture of a college afternoon of picnicking and punting on the Cam… “What ho, old chap, let’s have another glass of ginger beer and a game of Pass the Parcel!”

Subject: jolly Teens doing fine blowjob!

And again, a smashingly fun romp in the hedge maze. ‘Jolly’ is such an evocative word, don’t you think?

Subject: Young Sluts so tasteful and graceful!

Here, two qualities not usually attributed to sluts.

Subject: attractive Schoolgirls doing tasteful sucking.

I try very hard to imagine schoolgirls and ‘tasteful sucking’ but no matter which way I conjure it, I’m coming up with smut. Y’know, maybe they’re in a nicely decorated conservatory with billowing gauze curtains hiding the rude bits… still…

Subject: Dad fucking fascinating daughter!

Is ‘fascinating’ the right word here? Really? Maybe this is better:

Subject: Dad fucking goluptious daughter!

Or maybe not. ‘Goluptious’? They didn’t even use a dictionary for that one.

Then there is:

Subject: exquisite Woman doing radiant blowjob!

Now, I have quite a hankering to see this, because a radiant blowjob just sounds so spectacular. Done by a suitably exquisite woman, this might not be so bad.

And in a similar vein, it’s nice to see some long-overdue artistry coming into play in porn:

Subject: fine-looking Gay and innocent little esthetical pussies!

Esthetical pussies! I’m sure Plato would approve.

Last, but not least, the enigmatic:

Subject: refined incest Scenes!

Yep, there is incest, and then there is refined incest. A better class of incest for the connoisseur!

It all sounds so *quaint. Maybe I’m getting porn spam from the past from Victorian England?

This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald ran a front page story on a murder that appears to be the result of a dispute between two Sydney biker gangs. Police believe that Russell Merrick Oldham fired three shots at Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monk at close range, and then fled the scene.

The paragraph that caught my eye, though, came further down in the article where Russell Merrick Oldham is described:

“Oldham is the Bandidos’ former sergeant-at-arms (he lost the post when he went to jail for five years for the manslaughter of two men at Bankstown in 1998)… He has a passion for astronomy and a history of violence.”*

Ha! My coffee went through my nose and all over the crossword. I wish I’d been scanning police radio last night…

“All cars are advised to be on the lookout for Russell Merrick Oldham, wanted in connection with a fatal shooting in Central Sydney. When approached, suspect may attempt to engage in debate over the existence of zero-point radiation at black hole event-horizons and whether NASA should spend money on repairing the Hubble telescope’s failing gyroscopes. He is believed to be armed, violent and highly philosophical. Advise extreme caution.”

The history behind the nickname of Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monk is unfortunately not covered in the article.†

___________________________________________________________________________

*Not that I’m supposing that a biker, or anyone, shouldn’t have a variety of hobbies and interests. It’s just the juxtoposition with his other hobby…

† I wish it had’ve been spelt ‘Hookes’ and then we might have speculated that Rodney’s hobby was microbiology. That would give us the unparalleled opportunity to suppose that the disagreement between Rodney and Russell was over some point of scientific procedure. Oh, the joy!

I am a little disappointed to see that Russell Merrick Oldham doesn’t have a nickname.‡ If ever there was a bike gang member that deserves one, it has to be Russell. Maybe I’ll run a competition and we can send it to him in the slammer.

‡Unless he is named after Joseph Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man‘, and I really don’t want to think too deeply about that…

My first love.

Marina, Aqua Marina,
What are these strange enchantments that start whenever you’re near? †

Thanks for reminding me Chickie!

†Thanks Earthstation for the music. You guys go buy something from them and assuage my conscience…