Tetherd Cow Ahead

♫ Everybody’s talks about a new world in the morning… new world in the morning so they say-ee-ay-ay… ♫ I myself don’t talk about a new world… Hey! WTF! What are you all doing here? Weren’t you killed by the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the asteroids? Goddamnit! Do you mean to say that I spent all that money on a Vivos Underground Fallout Shelter for nothing? You’re not going to tell me that noted astrologer Richard Nolle, who predicted apocalyptic events as the FULL moon approached perigee, and who was quoted on Space.com, ((Who, I hope, are still sitting in the corner with their dunce cap on…)) was wrong? Son of a bitch!

Yes loyal Cowpokes, it’s true. Once again, the unhinged blathering of a woo personage turns out to be categorically and unequivocally wrong. I’ll just say that again:



WRONG.

You can read about Space.com’s embarrassing article (which tries to pretend it’s not really quoting an astrologer), here, but for the real meat of this sandwich you need to read what Mr Nolle said, in his own waffly words:

Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity. Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires. ((Gee, care to add anything else to that, Mr Nolle? Just in case that wide net misses something?))

No doubt Mr Nolle will do what all purveyors of this kind of nonsense do when they are shown to be WRONG, and start claiming everything in the vicinity as an endorsement of his prediction, including the recent tragic Japanese tsunami.

That makes this [the date of the ‘extreme supermoon’] a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.

Geez. Even when he hedges his bets with the dates, he’s WRONG. ((I’m posting this on March 20, Australian time, so there are are still three more fudge days to go, but you know what? I’m saying here and now that in those three days nothing at all of any geophysical significance will happen. I’m sure Mr Nolle is well on his way, though, to claiming that what he REALLY meant by his predictions was that the UN would endorse military strikes on Libya. That’s the way this stuff invariably works…)) The Japanese tsunami occurred on March 11. Of course, that won’t stop him!

The March 19 SuperMoon is by far the most significant storm and seismic indicator this month, but it’s not the only one. Lesser geocosmic shock windows also up the ante for unusually strong storms ((‘Unusually strong’ could mean anything more than a bit of blustery wind.)) and moderate to severe seismic activity ((Moderate to severe? That’s really narrowing it down.)) (including ((Including??? There’s a weasel term if ever I heard one – the addition of ‘including’ actually means that this sentence says in effect: “Any earth movements of any kind”)) magnitude 5+ earthquakes, subsequent tsunami, and volcanic eruptions). These lesser windows include March 1-7 (surrounding the new moon on the 4th), March 23-26 (bracketing the lunar south declination peak on the 25th), and from late on the 31st on into early April. ((Into early April…? When’s ‘early’? April 5th? April 10th? Fuck me.))

Hahaha. Look at all that risible equivocating (I’ve enumerated all the hedging for you in the footnotes). That covers just about every possible day in March and every possible earthquake above a magnitude 5. Since the planet experiences more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and above every year (divide that by 12 months and you get over 125 magnitude 5+ earthquakes somewhere in the world every month) Nolle can make a prediction like this with complete impunity. When you include his dates for the Super Moon, Nolle has every day in March covered except March 8 – 15 and March 27 – 30! That’s predicting 20 whole days of March might possibly have an earthquake of magnitude 5+ somewhere in the world! And he still missed March 11! Whoopsy. I guess a fucking ginormous earthquake that causes massive tidal surges and kills thousands of people is easy to overlook with that extreme spike in electrical storms and amongst all the floods and volcanic eruptions. Oh wait. None of those happened on March 19 either. ((I’ll just note here for the sake of amusement, the introduction to Mr Nolle’s pages which says in part “If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo word salad.” Got that? No mumbo-jumbo in this town, no way!))

So, let’s just see what scientists predicted for the approach of the Super Moon. John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey:

Practically speaking, you’ll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It’s somewhere between ‘It has no effect’ and ‘It’s so small you don’t see any effect.’

Oh, lookit that. Once again, science is…



RIGHT.

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Earthquake chart purloined from IRIS with thanks. I’m pretty sure that, in the interests of proper science, they will be OK with it.

Acowlytes! The End of the World is nigh! Really! OK, yes, I know I’ve said it before, but this time it’s going to happen! I swear! And a full year before the Mayans said it would! ((Dammit. I haven’t got my End TImes accomodation organized yet! I thought I had another whole year.))

On May 21st, 2011, according to a Christian broadcasting ministry called Family Radio, God is going to finally wipe the slate clean and remove from the face of the planet the festering disease that is humanity. ‘Judgment Day May 21, 2011. The Bible guarantees it!’ they holler – it’s written in no uncertain terms in Ezekiel 33:3!

Let’s just dial that up, shall we?

If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people.

Er… hmm. No May 21 date there, as near as I can tell. Just more of the same ol’ same ol’ as far as ‘end times’ prophecy goes. But Family Radio claims they have Infallible Proof of the date and they’ve set it all out here. ((Really, don’t bother. Your brain will just collapse in on itself.)) There you go. Judgment day written in stone for May 21, 2011.

Mark the day in your diary, because you can be sure we’ll be visiting them to get their explanation for the no show of God and his Heavenly Hosts. Will it be a mathematical error? Will it be a misinterpretation of the biblical prophecy? Or will it be that God has just given the lot of us away as a bunch of no-hoper losers?

Stay tuned to Tetherd Cow Ahead End Times Radio for the Countdown to Apocalypse!

(Seriously, I wonder how these people, many of whom have given up their entire former lives to ‘spread the word’, are going to cope when Judgment Day doesn’t happen. How does a brain resolve an absolute prediction like that not coming true?)

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Big thanks to Atlas for the find.

If you’re a purveyor of teh Woo looking to make yourself a few dollars at the expense of gullible people with damaged lives, what could be better than selling them water that does nothing, plastic cards that do nothing or plastic bracelets that do nothing?

Croation ‘mystic’ and healer, Braco, has discovered the answer to that question: you bypass the costly manufacture process entirely and sell 100% unadulterated nothing at all to your credulous victims .

This is how it works. Braco (pronounced ‘braht-zoh’) merely walks into a room full of people and stares ((Or ‘gazes’, as his followers say…)) at them. To understand the true magnitude of the vacuousness of this, you might like to watch Braco in action:

This kind of thing just makes me want to throw up my hands in despair. ((Or just plain throw up.)) Just take look at that audience of predominately white, affluent middle-aged women who probably owe everything they have to modern science, and wonder how it is that they have quite so comprehensively dropped their brains on the floor.

Braco’s website is a treasure-trove of idiocy and banality:

Experts are impressed that Braco has been able to have such a strong impact on his visitor, and began his work at the extraordinarily young age of 26

He began staring at people at the age of 26. Yep, that sounds like an extraordinary achievement. Why, I didn’t master the art of staring at things until last week!

Braco does not take any money for his help, he does not accept donations and the sessions are always free at his Center in Zagreb.

Can I have a job where I get flown all around the world and fêted at other peoples’ expense in exchange for doing nothing at all? Oh, and all those books and CDs I see advertised on the site. They’re free too, right?

“We all carry a seed inside, which can become a beautiful fruit one day.” – Braco.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anything quite so profound. I wonder if Braco came up with that all by himself, or if he has a team of writers?

Journalists and scientists who have studied Braco and his energy have been impressed by him and by the impact of his work

Braco’s website fails to give the names of any scientists so impressed. I think we can suppose that when they use the term ‘scientist’ they mean someone like ‘Doctor’ Charlene Werner or ‘Professor’ William Nelson. And as for journalists… yeah, they’re really known for their perspicacity.

Braco is a conduit for the Source energy that is not governed by linear time and space, and it instead unifies us beyond the constructs of the mind.

Or, to put it another way: ‘Baffling phrase appended to vacuous nonsense followed by equivocal waffling equals meaningless conclusion’.

And best of all, from the FAQ:

Children may be overburdened by the energy, so it is required that an individual be 18 years of age or over to attend a gazing session.

I wonder if they would explode?

Braco’s special thirteen-ray gold sun pendant (also sun earrings and rings) are ONLY available at live Braco events.

Oooh. I’d like one of those free pendants! They are free, right? ‘Cos, like, I know that Braco doesn’t make any money out of what he does… What’s that you say? $290??? But…

Braco himself does not explain the energy and the great healing and transformative effect this energy can have upon people.

It’s much easier that way. Provide a whole bunch of nothing at all and then avoid explaining why it works! The homeopathy crowd could really take a leaf from Braco’s book. All they need to do is dispense with all that tricky science stuff – things would be so much simpler!

Braco’s power is so strong that it can be lethal over the internet. Or something.

Whatever you do, don’t edit any of those Braco staring sequences into segments longer than seven seconds. Who knows what kind of chaos could be unleashed!

I leave you with this last fact from the Braco blog:

Special Travel Notice: Braco was officially granted an Extraordinary Talent Visa by the U.S. Immigration Department in October 2010. The approval of this specific Visa recognizes the importance of Braco’s work, and enables him to freely enter the U.S.A.

I want you to contemplate this deeply. The US Department of Immigration has given a highly sort-after ‘O’ class visa to some guy who does nothing more than stand on a stage and stare at the audience. That’s defined as an ‘extraordinary’ talent

Elsewhere, Braco’s power is explained as a phenomenon of ‘non local reality’. I think that’s another way of spelling ‘horse shit’.

Speaking of alternate universes…

A YouTube video by Pleiadian spokesperson Colleen Thomas, in which we learn that US President Barack Obama is one of the lizard people, that the Reticulans are preparing to ‘ennhilate’ us with an electromagnetic pulse that will immobilize ‘all electronics on this planet all the way down to the central core’ and that the US will be attacked with ‘dirty bombs’ that will be ‘detonated and let loose’ on the 8th of November. ((I apologize if I got any of the details wrong – whenever I try and watch this video, my mind is clouded over by the Reticulans and Colleen’s words just sound like one long stream of incomprehensible gibberish.))

8th of November? Wasn’t that yesterday?

It’s just a jump to the left…

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Thanks to Headspectre for digging this one up…

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It doesn’t matter what kind of goofiness you can imagine in your wildest flights of fantasy – there is always some woo-monger who can out-goofy you.

Dear oh dear. Where to start? OK, you may know that the current attempts to explain the quirky mathematical conundrums that are thrown up by modern physics lead to all kinds of unusual and counter-intuitive conjectures of how our actual reality manifests itself. One of these hypotheses calls for a situation where every conceivable possible consequence of every possible event is quite literally executed in one of an infinite number of alternate universes. I want to emphasize that this is just a mathematical speculation and there is no actual reason to think it’s anything more than an abstract concept. One thing is for certain – our feeble human brains don’t cope very well with strange ideas like this.

The problem is, Faithful Acowlytes, that even feebler human brains than yours or mine think they can understand this kind of thing. Or, at least, they want to convince other feeble-minded people that they do. Not only that, they also claim that they can somehow communicate with these multiple universes and by doing so fix things up for themselves in our own universe.

This useful trick is achieved using the technique of Quantum Jumping, the discovery of ‘The American Monk’ – one Burt Goldman, an 82 year old man who seems to have no real credentials other than as a purveyor of other different, but equally silly, flavours of flim-flam. Visiting the Quantum Jumping website is a frustrating and mind-numbing experience. It takes you several links to find out that the website itself is never going to give you any real indication of how the technique is supposed to work – but you do (naturally) have numerous opportunities to divest yourself of money. For your edification, as near as I can make out, this is Quantum Jumping in a nutshell:

1: Scientists ‘have proved’ that there are multiple universes.

2: In those multiple universes there are copies of you that are more successful/attractive/wealthy/happy than you are in this universe.

3: Somehow ((There’s no real detail ANYWHERE about how this is achieved. You have to pay for the DVDs/books to get this information. Numerous commenters on Burt Goldman’s websites claim that you don’t even get it when you pay, which doesn’t surprise me.)) you can get in touch with these ‘better’ versions of you, and, for reasons that are exceptionally unclear, they will reveal to you the secrets of their wonderful lives.

Of course, the real sleight-of-hand here comes underneath the term ‘quantum’; quantum stuff is weird, and therefore all bets are off and anything is possible. Never mind that the ‘logic’ of this concept leads to all kinds of unhappy paradoxes (One of these is that if it’s possible to alter this reality for the better, then it’s also equally possible to alter this reality for the worse. For every reality where there is a helpful ‘other self’ there’s one that’s malign and has every intention of doing you harm. How are you EVER going to tell the difference, eh?)

Mr Goldman claims that after employing the technique of Quantum Jumping he was able to accomplish the following feats:

•Started fine art painting (‘My artwork hangs in a museum to prove it’)

•Achieved status as a photographer (I got my photographs shown in multiple galleries throughout the US, Europe and Asia)

•Became a writer (Claims several books including Goodbye April Moon)

•Started a Million Dollar Online Business

Here is an example of Mr Goldman’s painting:

One has to speculate that the museum that it hangs in is, perhaps, in another universe. A universe where talentless artists get their work hung in museums.

Elsewhere you can read an excerpt of Mr Goldman’s book Goodbye April Moon, which is of a similar calibre, except with words. It seems like an awful shame to me that given the infinite number of possible universes and unlimited iterations of doppelgänger Burt Goldmans, the Miracle of Quantum Jumping could only manage to put him in contact with versions of himself that have aspired to achievements of monumental mediocrity. ((Of course it is possible that Burt Goldman is revered as an absolute GENIUS in another universe… this multiple universe thing is so damn convenient!)) His last claim to have ‘started a million dollar online business’ is possibly valid – it’s the business that gets people to fork out money for stupid and completely unfeasible self-improvement schemes like Quantum Jumping.

And, as is too often the case, Burt Goldman has a convenient disclaimer if Quantum Jumping doesn’t deliver the promised results. This, in his own words in a reply on his site:

No proof is necessary! Brilliant! He’s selling you something that may or may not work, and, if it doesn’t, he doesn’t have to explain why it should. It just doesn’t! Man, I wish I had his chutzpah.

One thing that was striking about trawling through Burt Goldman’s various sites is that the experience is eerily familiar. The endless screeds of utter twaddle, interspersed with blocks of exhortations in capital letters and promises that lead to more promises and deliver nothing at all, reminds me vividly of none other than our old friend Prophet Peter Popoff. Burt Goldman is like Peter Popoff without the God factor. An ‘alternate universe’ Peter Popoff, you might say. Unfortunately BOTH of them are in this universe.

I’ll end this post with one of the many stories that Mr Goldman tells on his site, and with a video from him on how you can improve your life simply by ‘tapping’. Yes, that’s right, tapping. Tapping on things. Ping.

I meditated until I was satisfied I was in alpha and then jumped into a parallel and got an impression of my alternate self. He obviously knew what I was there for and handed me a [propeller] beanie hat. I looked at the hat and asked what is it for. “Healing,” my twin self said. “Put it on and spin the propeller when you want to heal someone.”

The image of Mr Goldman wearing a propeller beanie seems somehow astonishingly apposite. Imagine him wearing it throughout the following clip for best effect.

Happy tapping Cowpokes! I’m off to find the universe where people properly understand the words ‘quantum’ and ‘fractal’, and where Burt Goldman, Peter Popoff and Melissa Rogers are nothing more than characters in a fictional daytime soap opera. It has to be out there somewhere.

The Guardian reports today the shock horror story of the decade – if you’re a dedicated ‘horrorcore’ hip-hop fan, anyway.

It turns out that the Insane Clown Posse – those rapper doyens of the crass, the violent and the sexist – known for such moving lyrics as:

I stab people, 4, 5 people everyday
I tried to see a shrink to stop that shit but it ain’t no FUCKing way

…and:

I grabbed her by her neck
And I bounced her off the walls
She said it was an accident and then apologized
But I still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes

…and:

If I was a king all bitches would blow me
Big bag piles of jewels for my homies
We would go to war and take everybody’s land
No clothes allowed for female citizens

…have, all this time, been Evangelical Christians.

My mind flip-flops between being flabbergasted and entirely unsurprised. Flabbergasted because I find it hard to believe that people who call themselves Christians can write these kinds of things, and then unsurprised because I guess I can. And it’s not that the Juggalo ringleaders have suddenly had a Road to Damascus moment, either – they say that they’ve been Christians all along.

Apparently, their music is all just an act, cunningly crafted to sneak up on all those unsuspecting fans of theirs and deliver the message of God under the cover of necrophilia, dismemberment, rape and murder. Not since the Spanish Inquisition has morality been so deeply confused. ((My observation here is that if this is true, then they are treating the people that buy their music with the utmost disrespect – firstly, they are trading on being something that they are not in order to disseminate some dubious moral agenda, and secondly they think their audience is stupid. Which may be true, but doesn’t that just smack of cynical exploitation?!))

This is how Violent J (Joseph Bruce), one of the two figureheads of ICP, puts it:

To get attention, you have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you’re one of them. You’re a person from the street and speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them God has helped me out like this and it might transfer over instead of just come straight out and just speak straight out of religion.

This was the same Violent J who was arrested on an aggravated battery charge after allegedly striking an audience member thirty times with his microphone at a concert in New Mexico. Apparently you need to physically show ‘them’ that you’re ‘one of them’ as well. That’s a slippery slope for which I wouldn’t want to attempt to mount a moral defense.

Recently, as part of their overt ‘coming out’ the Clowns released this video of their song Miracles, in which they apparently find everything miraculous, including UFOs, fog, and the Pyramids: ((How magnets, the Pyramids, UFOs and ghosts fall into the category of Miracles Wrought By God is kinda hard to fathom…))

It appears that they use the term miraculous here in a religious sense, rather than as hyperbole. In other words, they are rapping about all these ‘miracles’ as literal Works of God. The clue is the part of the lyric that says:

Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed

Yep, it’s those evil scientists at it again. As one science blogger has put it, the video

…is not only dumb, but enthusiastically dumb, endorsing a ferocious breed of ignorance that can only be described as militant. The entire song is practically a tribute to not knowing things.

Indeed, in 1998 Spin magazine said that ICP were offensive “not for their obscenity, but for their stupidity” and after reading the Guardian interview I linked above, I am inclined to agree (there are some real clangers, but I’ll leave them for you to discover). In a manner that is the modus operandi of all the most blinkered fundamentalists, the ICP eschews any level of intellectuality or reason or knowledge in favour of simplistic, slack-jawed religious naiveté. What’s more, they seem baffled by the torrents of criticism they have received from the science community over their silly song. Violent J:

I figured most people would say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.’ But instead it’s, ‘ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of idiots.’

Yeah, see, the problem is, Violent J, that your observations aren’t so much deep as breathtakingly banal…

Plant a little seed and nature grows
Niagara falls and the pyramids
Everything you believed in as kids
Fucking rainbows after it rains
there’s enough miracles here to blow your brains

… and, to be frank, it’s terrible music to boot – the rap in this song is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard. Take away the trademark in-your-face offensiveness and Insane Clown Posse just have nothing at all to offer.

As it stands, for all their ghetto posturing and murderous carnival grotesquerie, I say that the Insane Clown Posse are nothing more than Insipid Clown Pussies. It takes guts to look the universe squarely in the face and endure all the uncomfortable consequences of the realization of the measure of your insignificance. ((Conversely, it takes no guts at all to beat up a woman, and it follows that to write a ‘song’ about doing so is the work of a very tiny soul indeed. Don’t spin me your ‘whatever it takes to get the Lord’s message through’ bullshit, you hypocrites.)) Religion, especially the brains-on-the-floor flavour of religion offered by Evangelical Christianity, is the ultimate avoidance of facing up to reality. It says, in no uncertain terms, that if you trust everything to God, all will be hunky dory. It’s the easiest of cop-outs for a difficult challenge. In this respect, ((…and possibly others, it has to be said – pardon my cynicism.)) then, it is less confronting to discover that the members of the Insane Clown Posse are Christians, than it would have been to have heard they were philosophers, atheists or scientists.

The cognitive dissonance is deeply disturbing.