Tetherd Cow Ahead

Reuters reports that Catholics on the Adriatic Coast in Italy are attempting to bring religion to beachgoing holidaymakers by using an inflatable church. Sunbathers can queue up to have their confession heard, and enjoy a five person choir singing hymns in the blow-up basilica.

Oh yeah! Now why don’t they bring that to a beach here somewhere? I’ve been itching for a chance to try out my new crossbow.

It hasn’t been all wine & crackers with the air-filled abbey though. The first attempt to launch it in Sardinia last month was aborted due to strong winds. Now really, if ever there was a Sign…

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Thanks to Kirke for this tidbit.

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Sometimes the level of idiocy in the world just brings me to a screeching stop. Atlas Cerise draws The Cow’s attention to this story hot off the Associated Press about an ‘activist’ prayer group in St Louis the US who have decided that the most productive method for getting petrol prices down is to pray to God to lower them. What’s more, because there has been some easing on the $US4-per-gallon prices over the last week, these feebleminded halfwits think that their prayers are actually working.

Now how many levels of stupid does this idea contain? I think I’ll go stick my finger in an electric pencil sharpener.

I keep promising to turn the scathing bovine eye of The Cow onto Scientology at some point but whenever attempt to pick up my quill on that particular subject my brain just turns to custard. It should be just like shooting fish in a barrel, but heck, it’s such a small barrel and there are so many big fish and if I wanted to do something futile and time-wasting I could just go play another level of BioShock and have a LOT more fun …

Anyways, Atlas Cerise brings my attention to this story in the Guardian about some recent antics involving the Church* of Scientology. To synopsize: a young man picketing the CoS headquarters in London as part of a peaceful demonstration by the anti-Scientology group Anonymous was arrested and is facing prosecution for calling Scientology a ‘cult’.

Let me make it quite clear what’s happening here, because it’s way more scary than the usual dumbo stuff that the Scientologists themselves manage to concoct: the CoS itself is not bringing this accusation against the teenager responsible; it’s the City of London Police who have charged the boy. He was told by an officer that the word ‘cult’ was ‘abusive and insulting’ and that he could not carry a placard which read ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’

This is how the Ask Oxford online dictionary defines the word ‘cult’:

cult • noun 1 a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object. 2 a small religious group regarded as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. 3 something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society.

Hands up who thinks the Bill are going to pull this one off?

What’s deeply worrying is that the best proper accusation that the UK Law can bring against this boy would appear to be that he was airing an opinion. If that kind of thing is encouraged, then Scientologists and all the other loonies like them will get a free ticket to legitimacy.

If you’re not scared about that, you should be.

UPDATE: Well, I don’t know why it surprises me to find out† that, in fact, it seems that the CoS was involved in the above incident. Not directly, but certainly implicitly. It turns out that for some time now the City of London Police have been, shall we say, receptive to offers of entertainment and donations from L. Ron’s flock. It appears that the laws under which the young man I mentioned above were detained are almost never actually acted upon, except, perhaps when you have friends in the right places.

Let there be no mistake: Dotty belief combined with money & influence always equals setbacks for the human species. Just look at the havoc the Catholic Church has managed in its time.

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*Even though I am in no way religiously inclined, something really grates on me having to refer to these loons as a ‘church’. They are no more a church than the entire fandom of Dungeons & Dragons is a church, only a lot less rooted in reality.

†Thanks to the Skeptical Rogues.

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Faithful Acowlytes,

Some shithead spammer has found a way to invade my posts, appending all kinds of rubbish to the actual post content (usually in the form of hundreds of smutty URLs). As near as I can tell, all the stuff is actually invisible to readers, although I can see it in the post edit code (they’ve evidently done this on purpose – the code renders all the smutty URLs unviewable). I haven’t the foggiest why they would do that, but then I have no inkling of the cretinous thought processes of spammers. In the process they have somehow also interfered with the commenting structure, so you may or may not be able to comment.The damage is vast and I need to investigate how this has happened but I don’t have the time just now. I’ll get onto it as soon as I can. Can I ask anyone who’s reading just to leave a comment so I can check that things are normal from your side? Also, if anything looks peculiar (well, more peculiar than usual) please let me know. I don’t know what these fuckwits have done, and I have no idea of the scope of the damage at this moment.

Man I hate these morons.

~Reverend.

UPDATE: I think I’ve rectified the problem and cleaned up most of the mess. I never lock Comments on my posts, so if any of you find that you can’t leave a comment on Cow posts, please email me [reverend-AT-tetherdcow.com] and let me know. I have no way of knowing if Comments are locked (other than investigating settings on individual posts) since for me the Comment field is always available in this particular scam (Mr Spam Shithead has been very crafty in this respect).

We now (hopefully) return to normal programming.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I’ve just encountered ‘the world’s first interactive natural spring water – H²Om Water with Intention‘ Yes, you heard right: H²Om, as in Ommmmmmmm…

You can visit the website if you’ve got the stomach, but I’ll save you the pain: these people are selling bottled water that has been infused with nothing other than (supposedly) positive energy. From their blurb:

H²Om water with intention has revolutionized the bottled water industry by creating the world’s first vibrationally charged, interactive bottled water.

Got that? The water is vibrationally charged. And, to reiterate, it’s also interactive. If your Bullshit Detector Meters haven’t pinned yet, allow me to elaborate: the concept behind this water appears to be that those who drink it think about positive things while they are doing so, and then this somehow makes the water better. It’s not explained exactly how this works, nor in exactly what way the water is better. It’s just better.

The H²Om people have trademarked the slogan Think It While You Drink It™ a catchphrase that simultaneously illuminates the stupidity of the Trademarking system and the brainlessness of anyone who believes that a witless motto such as this actually means anything.

H²Om’s Vibration Hydrationâ„¢ (Oh Spare Me!â„¢) comes in seven great vibrational ‘flavours’: Love, Perfect Health, Gratitude, Prosperity, Will Power, Joy and Peace (I swear I’m not making this up).

Now I want to emphasize here, in case you didn’t get it, that these ‘flavours’ aren’t actually anything, like, flavoursome. If you buy a bottle of, say, ‘Joy’, it’s going to taste exactly the same as ‘Prosperity’- it’s only the vibrations that will be different (shit, I’m laughing as I type this – it’s so much like a parody I can’t actually believe that these people are serious).

Best of all, if this water doesn’t unequivocally bring you Peace/Joy/Love/Pretzels, H²Om have the ultimate escape clause: the water is interactive you loser – if it’s not working it’s your fault!

Still not with me? Still giving them the benefit of the doubt? Not laughing as much as me yet? Then read on:

As an added bonus, once our water is in the bottle, we play a restorative compositions of music, frequencies, and spoken word to the water.

Spoken word? Wha?

Nice water. Nice joyful pretty water. I love you water. You are the best water in the universe. Pretty pretty water. Lovely watery joyful prosperous water.

Seriously. It’s going to be something just like that, right?

Yup. If there’s one thing this website doesn’t lack it’s pages of incomprehensible waffle:

There are several distinctive vibrational frequencies that are infused in each bottle of H2Om. The First is the vibrational frequency of the label. The use of words, symbols and colors on the label. Each bottle contains the symbol of the Absolute “Om”. It also contains the vibratory word “Love” or “Perfect Health” etc. written on the label in many of the world’s languages. A specific color vibration has also been chosen for each bottle, this color coordinates with the corresponding chakra.

Now I know what you’re going to say – this is all flimsy bollocks and no-one is going to fall for this claptrap without some kind of basis in fact! Well, it’s just about now that H²Om wheels out its supporting ‘evidence’ for their miraculous product, and it comes in the form of an endorsement from a personage who was slated to appear in a future edition of the TCA Educational Series ‘Woo Woo Beliefs‘, a minimally educated Japanese ‘doctor’* Masaru Emoto. Some of you may have seen Dr Emoto’s claims promoted in the risible What the Bleep do We Know, a film that is rooted in reality to about the same extent as, oh, your average Warner Brothers’ Roadrunner cartoon.

To encapsulate, Dr Emoto has formulated some ideas (it’s absurd to call them hypotheses, since he doesn’t even pretend to adopt any form of scientific protocol) that water crystallizes in certain ways according to its response to people’s thoughts and emotions. That’s all you need to know – I’ll examine Dr Emoto further at a later time. It is sufficient to note that the H²Om people are so besotted by Dr Emoto that they have made him a partner in their company and are in the process of launching a new line with his imprimatur.

And you know what? I just bet they have the box-office attendance figures for What the Bleep framed on the H²Om office wall, with all the zeros emphasized in fluorescent hi-lighter.

Given the size of that demographic, it’s evident that H²Om’s marketing is dead accurate in one respect anyway: it is very obviously water with intention. Oh yeah. Intention of the people who make it to get filthy rich by exploiting the gullibility of simpletons.

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*His ‘doctorate’ in Alternative Medicine was awarded by an uncredited pay-your-way ‘university’ in India. Make of that what you will.

Thanks Sean for bringing the H²Om website to my attention.

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Oh for Pete’s sake. Another nutcase has found ‘an image of the Virgin’ on a tortilla sandwich cinnamon bun fencepost pizza pan underpass pebble.

The Holy Pebble was found on a beach in New Zealand by a woman who had ‘an awesome run of luck’ after picking it up. Evidently the awesome run of luck wasn’t permanent since she’s put the Sacred Item up for online auction. Twice. The first time, the winning bid was a hoax. Dang. A hoax! Some people will do anything!

Unbelievably, for Round Two, there are as of this writing, already bids of many thousands of dollars.

A New Zealand Catholic Church spokesperson said the church was ‘cautious’ about responding to claims of holy images of the Virgin Mary, because many turned out to be fakes.

Smack me with a plank from the True Cross! Fakes? No way!

Thing is, you have to be pretty careful when it comes to seeing likenesses in patterns on pebbles. Look at it one way and some might see The Virgin but flip the picture upside down you’ll get an idea of exactly what kind of forces this woman is really messing with.