Tetherd Cow Ahead

I subscribe to one of those ‘wine clubs’ where every three months they deliver you a box of a dozen assorted bottles of wine: six red, six white. The club is good and it features wines from the various vineyard areas of Australia like Margaret River, Yarra Valley, Mudgee and so forth. The boxes arrive with tasting notes and other information about the wines. I like the idea – it gets me tasting wines that I might not otherwise buy in a shop and I’ve found a number of really good vineyards this way.

The boxes are delivered via courier, but since I’ve been in my new abode, not one has ever actually managed to arrive on my doorstep. Instead, each time a delivery is due I’ve been left one of those notes from the courier company saying that there was a problem with delivery and I would need to pick up the shipment personally from their depot.

On the courier’s note, under ‘Reason Unable to Deliver’ has always been scrawled the same explanation:

For Pete’s sake! This courier must be the only person on the planet to fall for the old beware-of-the-dog-sign ploy. Unbelievable. Burglars from here to Timbuktu superstitiously avoid houses that don’t have that sign.

Anyway, this morning I happen to glance out the living room window across the front garden and see the following two things happen:

1. A hand poke through the gate and experimentally wobble the latch, then withdraw.

2. Nothing else.

Puzzled, I open the front door and go out into the yard (our tall fence obscures the street so I can’t see anything outside). All is silent.

“Hello?” I call, craning my head over the fence. Well, you all know what I’m seeing: a courier van and a guy with a box of wine. He’s loading it back into the truck.

“Is that for me?” I ask, rhetorically.

He gives a little start. It turns out, apparently to his surprise, that it is! He stands there with the box, looking a little embarrassed. He glances at the sign on the gate and then back at me. There’s a slightly-too-long pause.

“You don’t have a dog, do you?”

“No,” I say.

“It’s just that I saw the sign and I thought…”

“Oh, that!” I laugh. “Well, that’s only there because they didn’t have a sign that says “Beware Of The Cat”!

“Hahahaha!” he says. “Hahaha! Right-o, so I’ll be perfectly safe to bring the deliveries in then!”

“Of course,” I say. “Perfectly safe”.

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

Well, enough of all that statistical probability jiggery-pokery. Instead, go read this article about which I ask, ‘What do they mean about black cats being bad luck?’

Sorry, I had to bump the Bride of Wildenstein further down the page so I wouldn’t have to look at her every time I glanced at my laptop screen. So here instead is a picture of a real cat.

This is the very cute Rusty, Glitch’s nemesis and the most talkative cat I’ve ever encountered.

Taped to poles at Melbourne University sometime this week:

The prevailing wisdom is that the posters were put up by a Japanese student who found the ‘cat’.

As Acowlyte Purple Dragon points out, the phone number on the poster is a 1900 number, which Telstra sells as a ‘Premium Rate’ number. This means that you are charged to ring the number.

I wonder how much they made from the scam…

In fact, it’s even funnier than I thought – I did a qualified search* on the number 1900 911 481 and found that it is a premium-rate number for the Australian Talking Clock! Hahaha! I bet those people are toasting their witticism at this very moment!

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Photo courtesy of Student Liaison, University of Melbourne, via my friend Ali.

*Yeah, well actually calling the number was my last option. I was only going to give them my dime as a last resort.

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My dear Acowlytes! I apologize for my somewhat lengthy absence of late. My excuse, I think, is a pretty good one – Violet Towne and I were married in a simple and, I like to think, moving ceremony a few weekends back. There was much carousing with friends and family and I believe that a good time was had by all (certainly from my perspective anyway). Since then there has been a bit of holidaying and not a lot of sitting at computers, and hence an almost complete lack of Cow.

Not that The Cow was ever far from my thoughts as we trekked around the southern coast of Victoria on our honeymoon. Simple Graphics Man was up to his old tricks at many of our stops, and there were some great photo opportunities which I’ll share with you in due course.

And there was Scientology. Yes, no matter where you go, the lunatics will find some way to reach into your life. I’ve been meaning to do a Scientology piece for a little while now, and whilst this will not be it, I must share with you my thoughts on the recent Tom Cruise embarrassment that managed to filter into my attention as I was waiting in the queue in a great little fish & chip shop in the coastal town of Apollo Bay.

If you didn’t manage to catch it, seriously, go take a look. The Tomster could have done no worse if he’d put on a clown suit and declared himself the reincarnation of Bozo.

It wasn’t till I arrived home and scrutinized the video on YouTube that I realised how much in the error of my ways I was. I think that I have been mistaken all this time… Tom Cruise, and Scientology itself, are actually in the service of The Cow! Scoff not, faithful Cowpokes! I didn’t spot it immediately either…

OMG!!! I immediately searched for other clues that Tom and his Thetan-zapping buddies might be doing the Work of the Church of the Tetherd Cow. Well, for a start, there is the excellent science-fiction art-direction…

…persuasive evidence in itself. But if there was truly any Cow agenda operating well it might manifest itself in, oh, a wedding ceremony, say. Is there, maybe, a Scientology Wedding ceremony?

Aha! There is! Scrolling down through the incomprehensible juvenile drivel lengthy ritual that Katie and Tom presumably endured when they got hitched, we uncover the following poignant observation:

Now, (groom’s name),
girls need clothes
And food and
Tender happiness and frills
A pan, a comb,
perhaps a cat
All caprice if you will
But still
They need them.
Do you then
Provide?
Do you?†

“Perhaps a cat”!!!!!???? Scientology requires the Groom to provide a cat? Whoa! Need I draw anyone a picture?! Violet Towne is such a lucky girl.

Tom Cruise, for actions undercover in the service of The Cow, we salute you!

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*“These are the times, now people. These are the times we will all remember.” You betcha Tom. We’ll all remember.

†I kid you not. This is really in the Scientology Wedding Ceremony.

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