Tetherd Cow Ahead

Well, colour me impressed! I must admit, I had rather low expectations for the outcome of this particular mêlée but once again my loyal readers have dazzled me with their wit and their prowess in the literary arena. The task was to write a piece of Sildenafil Spam in the style of your favourite poet. The Cownoscenti rose to the challenge like they’d been popping the little blue numbers all night.

It was a tough call to sift out a winner.

Universal Head set the tone early by channelling Ted Hughes as his muse, and he held the field for quite a few days in front of a good many contenders. Jedimacfan completely missed the point and showed that he is probably already employed by could easily rival the spammers, with an effort that would undoubtedly cause Joyce Kilmer to writhe in horror. And later topped it with something even more gag-worthy. Cissy Strutt managed an awesomely impressive e. e. cummings-style creation and it has to be said that if spamming was around in his day and nominative determinism has anything in it, I’m sure cummings would have been right in the spammy fray.

Casey‘s muse, Thomas Spams Eliot, shows us why his initials anagrammatize handily into ‘toilets’ with some verse that doesn’t stray altogether too far from something the real T. S. might have penned. A very worthy effort in two parts, and very nearly the winner.

Sagacious Hillbilly managed to persuade Tennyson to ring in a whole cast of reprobates to dance a spammy jig and Tequila Mockingbird fired right back, but alas, The Reverend was quite unable to work out who she was riffing on. My bad, TMock!

A guest visit from Spam Ayres* cements her position as the person you’d most like to avoid at a party, and Phoebe Fay‘s re-interpretation of Ozymandias gives new meaning to the term ‘rock hard erection’.

But the person who I have chosen to be the Tetherd Cow Ahead Literary Ambassador to SpamCon 08† is…

Tastes Like Chicken!

Yes, TLC managed almost to reach the lofty heights of The Cow’s own Laureate Rupert Brookes’ wonderful creation, with a William Cullen Bryant-style ode that is at once tragic and hopeful. If ever there was a romantic paean to the powers of Viagra, this is it.

Tastes Like Chicken, The Cow Salutes you. I will need a mailing address where I can send you your prize. Write to me at [reverend-at-tetherdcow.com] with your PO Box or park bench number.

Thank you everyone! Once again, I doff my bone-clad top-hat to yez all!

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*US readers should probably go here to understand the humour in this. (The entry would have had a much greater chance of winning had it been an audio recording, btw)

†There is no such thing, alas. The reason for this is fairly obvious – if all the world’s spammers were to meet in one place at the same time, then I believe that not a single person on the entire planet would object to the deployment of a small nuclear device at that location.

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Spam Observations #45

Terrapraeta, longtime Cow reader and sometime commenter, earlier this week had a cheery howdy-doody from her new-found friend Rhonda K Lugo. With her well-honed Cow sensibilities, TP instantly knew I would need to bring Rhonda’s musings to the attention of the Cownoscenti.

Those of you with keen memories will recall that a little while back I suggested to Fabron Jenkins and his spammy pals that their ham-fisted wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach could do with some re-imagining (as they like to say in the ad business) and that they therefore might like to consider waxing a little more poetic with their paeans to Sildenafil.

Sure enough, with the sophistication of Keats and Brooke and the subtlety of Yeats and Eliot, Rhonda K is first out of the starting gates:

Now that you’ve got a girl that’s hot
You wanna screw her juicy twat.
She’s full of passion, she’s so nice!
But would your penile size suffice?
Not sure she will long for more?
You need a wang she would adore!
But how to raise it long and thick?
Your only hope is MegaDik!
You’ll get so wanted super-size
And see wild craving in her eyes!
Your rod will stuff her poon so deep,
Tonight you’ll hardly fall asleep!

Ah, the passion! The yearning! The verve! The style! Not quite how Rupert would have put it, fair enough, but hey, at least Rhonda’s giving it a go!

So. You all know what the The Reverend does when he sees that the ante is desirous of upping – yes, that’s right, he holds a competition!

Namely: Write a piece of spam in the style of your favourite poet.

Now pay careful attention to The Rules:

• Your favourite poet may not be yourself.

• Your favourite poet may not be Joey Polanski.

• Your favourite poet may not be Rhonda K Lugo.

• NO references to Rasputin. Save that for January 1.

OK. Have at it Acowlytes. There will be a prize. If Joey wins he can nominate to whom his prize is delivered.

WooWoo Beliefs – A TCA Educational Series: Episode #3

This is Raël. Raël believes* that he is the prophetic ambassador on Earth for The Elohim, a race of superhuman beings that created all life on our planet.

In 1973 Raël was a racing car driver called Claude Vorilhon. It so happened that while Claude was visiting a secluded area of the French countryside, a member of The Elohim appeared in a silvery saucer-shaped space-ship to give him a message to pass on to all humankind. After this, he evidently felt compelled to change his name (well, fair enough I guess – Claude is a somewhat underwhelming name for a cult leader†) and run up a huge account with Persil.

Now, see, this is where those aliens of superior intellect always seem to go tragically wrong. Out of all the effective methods they could conceivably adopt to get their message across, they invariably choose to use as their mouthpiece someone like a racing car driver with eccentric dress sense.

We can only speculate that the process that takes place in Elohim Central every time they turn their attention our way goes something like this:

Elohim Subordinate: Oh Noble and Thrice-Blesséd Grand Master Elohim! We desperately need to save Humankind! Despite all our efforts so far, they continue to ignore our message! What should we do?

Grand Master Elohim: Fellow Elohim! Land your Glorious Silvery Saucer in a hidden field in France! Wait, then, for a deceitful man of questionable intelligence to come by, and impart the Galactic Wisdom to him. Do this in a cryptic and abstruse manner, and refer frequently to scientifically dubious concepts such as anti-gravity and faster-than-light travel.

Elohim Subordinate: As you wish, Grand Master. Only, do you think that maybe this time we might have better success if we landed our Glorious Silvery Saucer in Times Square and delivered a PowerPoint presentation? There are a lot of people there at all times of the day, some of them with video cameras. Perhaps the humans would be more likely to believe us if we did that?

Grand Master Elohim: Are you crazy??!! We don’t want them to know that we are responsible for PowerPoint!

On one of his trips to an Elohim planet (an experience detailed in his imaginatively titled book Extraterrestrials Took Me to Their Planet) Raël was shown all kinds of genetic & molecular tinkering by the aliens and as a consequence introduced those concepts into his movement. He set up the controversial Clonaid in 1997 as a ‘stepping stone to the achievement of immortality’ promising as a sideline to help gay couples have cloned children and to allow people to resurrect identical duplicates of deceased pets (I mean, wtf?). Clonaid gained notoriety in 2002 when Brigitte Boisselier, a Raëlien member of ‘The Order of Angels’, claimed that she had successfully created a cloned baby girl named Eve. The contention was of course rubbish, but it gained the sect a lot of publicity.

Bafflingly, Raël continues to attract people to his beliefs and declares that he has 60,000+ followers. There is no doubt that a portion of the appeal to many is the Raëlian cult’s endorsement of sexual promiscuity among members. This is no surprise after all; sex and science fiction have gone hand-in-hand for decades.

So, is he really a deluded dingbat who thinks that he can communicate with aliens and bootstrap the human race into a new era of enlightenment? Or is he a cynical conman who’s found that starting a religion is a great way to get money, sex and plenty of time in the spotlight. He wouldn’t be the only one.

Maybe we should let his ex-wife, Marie-Paul have the last word. When asked in 2003 if she thought Raël was crazy she said he was ‘not mad, just devious, crafty, manipulative and very, very clever’.

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*Or, like Jasmuheen, says he believes…

†Not that Jim Jones cared much, I guess.

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In late-breaking Antipodean news, an Australian children’s toy called Bindeez has been withdrawn from the market because it contains a chemical that can be metabolized into the ‘party’ drug Fantasy if swallowed.

I’m particularly enamored of the hippy-trippy unicorn picture that the Melbourne Age has used to illustrate the story. A body is forced to contemplate the notion that the manufacturers of Bindeez might’ve been sucking their own product.

Come with us to Candy Mountain, Charlieeeee…

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… and a special Cow salute to all you visiting boingboing readers!

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Addendum: boingboing reader jimh kicks in a lolcat response to the story here.

This special treat from another of the books that surfaced as I was packing in preparation for moving house. It’s from ‘Cakes Men Like‘, by Benjamin Darling – a special paean to the lost art of Extreme Baking.

Tetherd Cow Ahead Serving Suggestion: a small slice accompanied by a chilled pork martini.

Mmmm.

My recent post of the pic of the loving couple wearing trakky daks reminded Pil of this marvellous contribution to advertising art that she’s been keeping from me for all this time. Be sure to click on the image to get a more detailed view.

I have little to say that improves in any way on the copy, which I reproduce here for your enjoyment:

One Easy Piece.

Because one is enough, when it’s you. Show where you’re headed in the ultimate fashion climax.

Fits so tight it shows all you’ve got… you’re a walking turn-on. And treats your body as well as she does.

Easy on, easy off, quick as a flick of her tongue. Sexy cool crinkle cloth for those hot nights to come. Designed with your desires in mind… she’ll eat you alive in it.

The Big Zip in 50% polyester/50% cotton. Long-sleeved in rust, blue or black. Short-sleeved in natural, blue or camel.

Are you man enough to fill it?

$45.

I can only voice my regret that they didn’t show the guy sporting the short-sleeved version in camel.

Gideon Sundback, we salute you!.