Tetherd Cow Ahead

Y’know, sometimes the modern world is just so bizarre that you really hope someone must be having a good ol’ chuckle at someone else’s expense.

Take the case of mobile phone manufacturer Mobiado, teaming up with perfume company Bissol to create Bissol No. 919 a ‘fragrance for the luxury mobile phone user‘.

WTF?

I don’t think I could have dreamed up that concept in my wildest moment of sarcastic surrealism.

Here, from the press release:

No. 919 is a clean, fresh, youthful scent with top notes of mandarin, juniper berry, elemi; middle notes of white musk, bamboo, oakmoss; and base notes of vanilla, cedarwood, sandalwood. (Mobiado Limited Edition) also has a special addition of Australian lime note, formulated for the elegant mobile phone user.

How is it that Australian Lime, whatever that might be*, bestows some extra power on elegant mobile phone users, whatever they might be?† What the hell is a ‘luxury mobile phone user’ anyway, for that matter?

There certainly is a very strong smell through all of this alright: something like a base-note of fish with a pungent lingering odour of bullshit…
___________________________________________________________________________

*Most likely, this is a species of Queensland lime called the ‘Gympie (pron: ‘gimpy’) Lime’ which possibly explains why Bissol has opted for the more general description ‘Australian’

†I guess from now on, at least, we’ll be able to spot them by their smell

It’s a miracle!

So, I was making toast in The Metropolis and when I took out the perfectly toasted slice, what did I see but an image of the Virgin praying! OMG!!!*

Oh, very well, yes, I admit, first of all I had stamped it with the Holy Toast Bread Stamp from ‘Fred’ so I wasn’t as surprised as all that.

But it does look good in the toast rack.

Now, what to spread on a piece of Virgin toast? Vegemite? Marmalade? Decisions, decisions.

___________________________________________________________________________

*Sister Veronica is helping me out with a few tips on making The Cow “really hot and ready to pa-a-a-r-t-y!!!“

Thanks go to Our Man in New York, Sarah, for the wonderful Holy Toast Stamp.

It has come to my attention that my readership numbers might be handicapped owing to the fact that I am not a cute twenty-year-old chicky-babe with a MySpace profile and nothing to say.

Now this may appear to be something of an obstacle for a forty-eight-year-old bloke who likes to shoot the breeze about the big topics like religion, science, net politics and accurate spelling, but as the Reverend of The Church of the Tetherd Cow I am ever-mindful that The Cow moves in mysterious ways.

Indeed, even as I was despairing that I may never see the likes of three or four hundred MySpace friends filling my life with inane platitudes and incomprehensible teenspeak, there was a knocking at the cloister door, and a destitute creature with no worldly possessions other than the clothes on her back stumbled in from the driving rain. As I towelled the poor wretch dry in front of the abbey fireplace, I knew that the solution to my increasingly barren Comment pages had been sent to me via a Divine Miracle.

So, faithful Acowlytes, let me introduce to you Sister Veronica* who will be popping by from time to time in order to help me make an unashamed grab for increased visitor numbers.

You can even write to her, for advice on personal matters or astrology, a field in which she tells me she is an expert.

___________________________________________________________________________
*Sister Veronica’s likeness appears courtesy of Scumbag Russian Spammersâ„¢ and Photoshop

Something very weird’s going on in cyberspace. I’ve been receiving a number of spams of the format:

Subject: 1545453
Date: 6 June 2006 6:33:59 PM
To: reverend@tetherdcow.com

969

That’s it. No spiel, no links, no products, no attachments. I know other people have been receiving these too.

What’s going on?

Well, let’s Google ‘1545453’ (I’m doing this as I write). The first hit that turns up, after hits referring to the spam itself, is a link to the NCBI database – a Center for Disease Control abstract for an influenza vaccine demonstration.

Hmmm.

Let’s try ‘969’:

The first hit, strangely enough, is a Sydney radio station, Nova 969. Then some links from Wikipedia for the year 969 then… ooooo… what’s this…? Another scientific abstract from the NCBI database. This time, a profile of gene CD69 (Homo Sapiens). It appears to be a gene active in the immune system.

Did the hairs just go up on your arms…

Searching for ‘1545453′ and ‘conspiracy’ returns its first hit to a blog that has gone dead.

But the Google cache is still active.

Keith Graham traces the origination of the email to a server in Australia.

More news as it comes to hand.

If The Cow goes AWOL, start worrying.

Ah yes. Well some of my more astute readers (thank you m) have jumped one step ahead (almost reading my mind in fact… hmmm… interesting to speculate about that) to remind me that today’s date begs for some kind of appropriate post.

As if that kind of thing would escape my attention.

The above photo was taken a couple of weeks back and I’ve been saving it for a… special… occasion. I draw your attention to the two key words.

I didn’t notice this until I uploaded the pic into iPhoto. Anybody require further proof?

(Click on the image for a more detailed version)

Another gargoyle from Sydney University (they’re made from sandstone, if you were wondering).

A few years back, two of the gargoyles from the university appeared for sale on eBay. The seller claimed that they had been legally removed due to superficial damage. I was skeptical but I bid on them anyway.

The reserve was not met and he removed the auction.

I like to think that not long after, the gargoyles came to life and devoured him.