Tetherd Cow Ahead

Oh, please Spaghetti Monster! Let this one prophecy be accurate!

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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OK. Now from the get go I want to impress upon you that I’m not making any of this up. Y’know, I just couldn’t in my screwiest dreams. I opened the envelope and this is what I found:

A cotton glove, a vial of ‘anointing’ oil and a plastic baggie. I swear.

It’s not enough that Prophet Pete writes to me about his 5.30 am ‘powerful flowings’ whilst calling out my name – now he’s evidently hinting that I get in on the act as well.

Let me see. What does he say in his letter this time… life changing opportunity… all things are possible… God’s hand touches you… Aha! Here’s the nitty gritty:

Take the enclosed packet of Holy Oil and completely cover your hand and place your HAND into the HAND OF GOD GLOVE… letting the oil saturate your needs. THEN FOLD IT AND RETURN IT TO ME along with this page as soon as possible after you place the glove into the enclosed zip lock bag.*

Really, I totally swear I’m not making it up!

Before you put it into the zip lock bag… TUCK YOUR SEED GIFT OF $20.00 into the HAND OF GOD GLOVE… saying “I CONFESS BOLDLY, GOD’S PLAN IS TO PROSPER ME, ELEVATE ME, AND CAUSE HIS FAVOR TO SHINE UPON ME. AS I FOLLOW GOD’S PLAN TODAY, ALL THAT MY HANDS TOUCH WILL BE BLESSED, AND FAVORED OF GOD, THIS SEED DETERMINES MY GREAT HARVEST THAT GOD WILL RELEASE TO ME.”

Now, is it just me, or is all this talk of oiling up your hand, powerful flowings and tucking your seed becoming just a teeny bit disturbing…?

The letter goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages until shortly before signing off, Prophet Pete promises to send me yet another gift:

GOD HAS GIVEN ME 3 FAITH CONTACTS TO RETURN TO YOU… God told me to send you 3 sticks of gum.

I swear on the Noodly Appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I really am not making any of this up.

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*All emphasis exactly as it appears on the letter.

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A letter from Peter Popoff is always an unexpected surprise! Well, not really, since he sends them with unrelenting tenacity, but hey.

Like many of these Popoff Epistles, this one contains something, and I thought I might share the anticipation and excitement of the Glorious Gift with you all.

So. Guesses to what’s inside? (Whatever it is, it appears to be a few inches long, flattish and squishy).

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My mail redirection from the old house ends pretty soon and I’ll kind of miss old Prophet Pete’s dogged determination to get my money. NOT.

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While we’re on the subject of Peter Popoff, it will come as little surprise that Prophet Pete continues to pester me with his daft letters. I’m not so cruel that I would subject you, dear Acowlytes, to all his circumlocutious waffle even though there are many droll moments in his baffling epistles, but today’s offering is certainly Cow-worthy. It takes him less than a paragraph to get to the point (he’s obviously been tipped off to my usual technique of scanning the first page of his drivel and then chucking it straight in the bin):

You’d better prepare yourself and open up your heart and soul, because what I’m about to share with you comes (literally) from the very Throne Room of Heaven.

Literally from the very Throne Room of Heaven! Literally!

You’re imagining something like this, right?:

Wow, Prophet Pete is really connected! Are you scanning the picture to see what it could possibly be, this thing that comes literally from the Throne Room of Heaven. Well, on page 2 of the letter there’s a photograph…

Oooh. A sparkly gem in a ring! Directly from the Throne of Heaven! Maybe an old trinket that God has lost behind the couch or Mrs God has gotten a bit tired of! I rummage through the envelope…

Oh crap. Surely this can’t be it…

Come on! That’s just a bit of gravel in a bag. What gives Prophet Pete??? I speed-read through the letter: …very special object… will supercharge your faith… powerful ‘faith additive’ (wha?) … Aha! Here it is!

This extremely unusual green stone that I’ve sent you was formed as a result of a meteor shower. It comes directly from a very unique slab of anointed Moldavite from a large crater field in Eastern Europe.

So you say, Prophet Pete. It still looks like a bit of gravel to me. And I don’t know where you got this ‘green’ thing from. It’s a sort of grey. Gravel-coloured. Even under a greenish light. And, not to press a point or anything, you now seem to be talking not so much about a shiny gew-gaw from God’s jewellery drawer as pictured, as about an astronomical phenomenon with a fairly solid basis in science, which for reasons that are quite obscure to me are related to your ability to grant me Three Very Special Wishes. Maybe I misunderstand what you mean, and you’re saying that the Throne Room of Heaven is full of meteorites? Perhaps it’s set up somewhere in the Asteroid Belt? Once again I am two pages in and utterly confused.

Anyways, faithful Cowpokes, the letter rambles on with much impenetrable blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah which sheds no further light on the matter, eventually signing off with the usual Popoff farewell of ‘A-great-big-cheerio-and-can-you-send-me-twenty-seven-dollars’.

One thing you can say for Prophet Pete – he’s persistent. I now have no less than thirteen reply-paid envelopes from him, and I really, really want to make some use of them.

Acowlytes! Help me out here! What can I send back to Prophet Pete in return for his generous gifts of Miracle Water, holy wafers, paper leaves, shredded money, golden thread, Divine Fragrance* and Gravel from God?

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*I haven’t told you about the Divine Fragrance yet. I’m saving it.

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The thing about the internet being ubiquitous is that anyone can get their hands on it. Including dumb people. Since I started posting about my correspondences with the inimitable Peter Popoff, I have had a string of comments left on those posts by numerous (different) people who, for some reason, think that it’s Peter Popoff writing those posts. Like this one from ‘freerayder’:

I am here now. I might test your authenticity.

Or this from Arturo Trevino:

Rev,peterPopoff I am Arturo Trevino
I.see you in T.V.time 4.30.am.I have all.the letter that you seing me.I not in the hosue but can you pary.Ray.a laver and kneey paunch.hi is in mi state cecilio,need a lever to hi live in ut state can you pary me that harm will gat butter.thank you,Art.

There have been others but I deleted them before I realised that it was going to become some kind of trend. Now, I’m prepared to believe that some of these people (like Arturo) are just plain mad, but a couple (whose comments, as I say, I wish I’d kept for you) are just plain dumb. They are writing comments on my posts about Peter Popoff because they think I AM Peter Popoff. Usually (sadly) asking me to pray for them.

Let me just state it clearly: I am not, nor have I ever been, Prophet Peter Popoff.

So Arturo & friends: stop writing to me about your kneey paunch, because I’m not going to pary that harm will gat butter. Furthermore, don’t bother writing to Peter Popoff about it either, because he’ll achieve exactly the same result as I could except he’ll take all your money first.