Tetherd Cow Ahead

It seems that somehow* despite my best efforts to the avoid him, Peter Popoff has tracked me down to my new address. So after a brief respite, I am again receiving his pearls of wisdom.† And his obsession with me, and the need to reveal the fluctuations of his every bodily function has, quite incredibly, become even worse.

So now it’s 2.00 am bowel rumblings in addition to his previously mentioned 5.30 am flowings. Show of hands: who thinks it’s demonic forces? OK, and who thinks it’s last night’s curry? Yeah, that’s what I figured. Seriously, getting a complete rundown of the biology of this guy’s early morning hours makes me feel extremely queasy.

Mysteriously, with this latest epistle Prophet Pete has included three coloured rubber bands.

I’m sure there is some hare-brained reason for this, but I gotta tell you people, this time the usual infinity-pages-long incoherent letter went straight to the trash. I’ve recently been reading‡ the pdfs of the Scientology Operating Thetan Levels I – VIII on Wikileaks and I’ve finally discovered that there’s a point beyond which** the human brain completely rejects the addition of any further ludicrous gibberish. Trying to read this junk is a lot like taking Valium: you know there’s stuff going on, but you simply don’t care. Only Valium is rather more pleasant.

My fuse for the tolerance of religious idiocy is becoming increasingly short lately, possibly in direct proportion to the escalating exposure these yo-yos seem to be getting and the seemingly almost endless capacity for people to be swindled by the most extraordinarily daft nonsense. I mean, I knew Scientology was brainless, but folks, the scrawlings of L. Ron make the ramblings of Prophet Pete look like Bertrand Russell.

With so many people evidently believing all this vapid twaddle, I suddenly see myself finding uses for last post’s gadgetry.

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*As if I didn’t know. But be warned: a secret alias will be no protection and since I have your address too, Prophet Pete might also be warming your bowels heart a little in the months to come.

†Well, pearls not so much. Pearls are dainty and pretty and subtly lustrous gems. If we were picking an analogy to some form of organically-produced petrified matter to describe Prophet Pete’s wisdom, a 4 kilo coprolite would be a better fit.

‡I say ‘reading’ with quite some scorn. The OT material, the Scientology ‘Bible’ as some have said, is simply utterly incomprehensible. And not incomprehensible in the way that, oh, Stephen Hawking’s writing about astrophysics is, where you know there’s some deep meaning going on there but your brain just doesn’t have the neuron power to grasp it. This is more the kind of incomprehensible you get where you’re wondering, between when you hit your thumb with a hammer and when the pain strikes, how the hell you were stupid enough to do that.

**It happened about one third the way down page one, if you anyone was curious.

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Oh yeah.

In a completely incredible New Flavour of Stupid, a company called Autoloc is selling kits that will allow you to turn your car into a flamethrower.† The basic idea is that you stick the ‘Autolocâ„¢ Advance Flame Control System’ up your exhaust pipe after which ‘this sizzling product can make up to 20 feet of flames shoot from your exhaust tips with a touch of a button!’

The Tetherd Cow Ahead Psychology Department suggests that this is the automotive equivalent of lighting your farts.‡

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†The Autolocâ„¢ website warns that the exhaust pipe flamethrower is ‘For Off Road Use Only!’ but the smell of snicker snicker snicker is at least as overpowering as the smell of napalm in the morning. Yeah, that car demonstrating the product really looks like an off-road vehicle…

‡I guess there’s your demographic right there.

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You might remember that I mentioned that NASA scientists had concluded that a white ‘speck’ on one of the first Phoenix lander photographs was ‘probably not a Polar Bear’. Well, the boffins at TCA Labs have had their digital photo enhancers on the case from the get-go (you know how these geeky types are!) and they tell me today that they beg to differ with the NASA boffins.

So here for your scrutiny is the latest hi-def enhancement from the NASA original, using the proprietary Tetherd Cow Ahead Laboratories ‘Deckard II’ Photographic Augmentation Scanner.*

C’mon NASA! Maybe the Cydonia ‘Face on Mars’ is just a rock formation (yeah, right!) but let’s see you deny this one!

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*TCA Labs has some very hush-hush high falutin’ technical wizardry out there in the barn…

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Yeah. Looks dead to me. Hang on, let me poke it with this stick…

Just for fun, blogging the NASA Phoenix Mars touchdown as it happens.

The NASA TV Stream is here. Phoenix has just successfully separated from its cruise stage and commenced its automatic landing sequence – that is, NASA is about to turn over the complicated descent process to the spacecraft’s onboard computers. Phoenix must complete dozens of tricky manoeuvres to get to the Mars surface in one piece – this is the part of the process that has seen disaster in many previous Mars missions.

The Odyssey Orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are both relaying Phoenix mission data back to Earth, the mission having been planned to take advantage of the positions of each of these craft.

• Phoenix is just about to enter Mars atmosphere.

• Heat shield has been deployed.

• Phoenix altitude information is being successfully relayed… 1600 metres….

• Phoenix has touched down successfully!

• Jesus H. Christ, Windows Media Viewer is a shitty piece of crap – NASA! Have you people never used Quicktime? Please let Apple handle the media broadcast next time!

• There is some short delay while Phoenix prepares to begin its own independent transmissions back to Earth. The mood in Mission Control is jubilant though, so all has gone exactly to plan. I wish I could have seen them at the moment of touchdown, but the piece of rubbish that is WMV dropped all the image out and I had to reboot Firefox to get it back.

• Waiting for Phoenix telemetry to come online. Phoenix is tilted at a mere quarter of one degree from the vertical, and the next part of the process involves the unfolding of the solar array which of course is Phoenix’s power plant.

• Phoenix is functional and sending back images.

For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars. I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement. ~ NASA Administrator Michael Griffin

Some points of interest:

• After the touchdown, the Phoenix team waited for over 15 minutes before deploying the solar panels, one of their concerns being that dust kicked up by the engines might cover the solar cells and reduce their effectiveness. In the event, there was no discernible trace of dust at all.

• Phoenix is at Mars’ North Pole and is looking for proof of extant water (most likely in the form of ice) on the planet. The Phoenix team agrees that a white object that has been seen in one of the first surface images is probably not a polar bear.

The First Phoenix Press Conference

Mission Earth Day 2:

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this astonishing image of the Phoenix descending to the surface of Mars on its guidance ‘chute:

Spam Observations #47

You may remember some suggestions previously here on The Cow for methods by which spammers might… hmmm… let’s say elevate… their craft, a concept inspired originally by a shining example from one of the Masters of Literature at how it could conceivably be done.

Well, this morning I had a communication from one Carmelo Butcher*, who is pitching what I assume to be some kind of health tonic in the following verse:

The more you think
The more stars blink
They are young today
But were elder yesterday
Want to live free and become a star
Get a good health and be the best by far

Oh someone pluck out mine eyes and feed them to the crows.

Carmelo manages, in one fell swoop, to demonstrate that he is challenged in literature, physics, philosophy and salesmanship.

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*Interestingly, a qualified Google search turns up only two results for a ‘Carmelo Butcher’ (and I suppose I’m adding another one with this post). One Carmelo appears to be a randomly generated name in something called ‘The Nashville Guide’ and the other a spammer.

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