Tetherd Cow Ahead

…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 Judeo–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.

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.

Spam Observations #41

It’s not enough that I am constantly plagued by bad poetry by my readers here on The Cow. Now the spammers are at it. This missive from my new best feiend Pauline:

Gorgeous presents You may find,
Make this clear to your mind
Morning, noon or even night
Here’s the link that you want
http://www.crapwatches.com
Rolex, Cartie and much more
Hurry up, this is YOUR store!

Regards, Pauline

Now, I’ve replaced the URL that Pauline was kind enough to send, for the obvious reason that I don’t want to give these idiots any additional publicity, but I have not touched the scanning or the rhyme.

I draw your attention to the lines:

Morning, noon or even night
Here’s the link that you want
http://www.crapwatches.com

I mean, really. Not even a vague attempt at rhyming. ‘night’ and ‘want’? ‘want’ and ‘.com’? And scan? Forget it! Cheeze. You’d think Pauline could do better than that. After all, if you’re going to use crap poetry to spam people, it doesn’t actually matter what kind of nonsense you write so you could make it anything and still get the rhyme right at least. What about:

Here’s a link that is the bomb
http://www.crapwatches.com

Or maybe:

Morning, noon or even night
Here’s the link to set you right!

Not in the same league as my Mr Brooke, I know, but c’mon Pauline! Work with me!

___________________________________________________________________________

I sincerely hope that Pauline’s ‘poem’ doesn’t herald a new trend in spamming. I don’t think my delicate constitution can take it.

___________________________________________________________________________

OK, so I do stupid things from time to time. More so of late, it’s true, but I feel I can blame senescence for that.

Recently I strayed from my usual brand of shampoo. There was nothing wrong with it at all, it was perfectly OK. It’s just that some strange gremlin took over my shopping faculties and made me reach for a an exotic new thing on the supermarket shelf…

“You should try different products” the gremlin said, “Rather than just mindlessly use the same brand over and over…”

“Okey dokey gremlin,” said I, forgetting that gremlins are hardly ever up to any good.

I picked up a bottle of this Palmolive ‘Aromatherapy’ Lavender & Geranium scented stuff. Sounded reasonable. How bad can they get with a bottle of shampoo anyway?

The first time I used it I knew there was something wrong. The bottle was disturbingly thin… it felt kind of like it had already been squeezed in the middle… Erk. So weird.

OK. I guess. Some kind of fancy design thing. Can’t see the point myself. Didn’t they test this with a focus group? Surely someone would have pointed out how clumsy and stupid this design is…

Anyway, I used it for a while and the pre-squeezed thing became more and more irritating. Not only was it unwieldy in the shower and unstable on the bathroom shelf, it was really difficult to reliably measure out a set amount of… uh-oh. Yeah, right, now I get it.

The whole thing is a complete swindle. I looked at the bottle. OK. It’s wide and tall, and looks BIG on the shelf, but the thinness of the container makes the volume of shampoo inside about half what it appears to be. Combine this with the frustrating inability squeeze out just a sufficient amount of the contents and you have a perfect example of ripoff marketing.

I’m sure the Palmolive marketing people think they’re very clever coming up with this idea, but I honestly don’t understand how a company can believe that this is a decent way to treat their customers. Maybe I’m naive, but I like the old fashioned idea that if something is actually any good, people will buy it. This kind of money-grubbing contempt for the folks that keep you in business is shabby.

Personally I think it puts Palmolive in the same Circle of Hell as spammers.

☆February 8, 1987: The team from Xtrud-O Labs that bought you Fruit Rollups unveil their newest invention: ‘Tape Dispenser’ Chicken.