Tetherd Cow Ahead

In a product endorsement that must surely attract the status of Super Amusive, this pillow boasts a pedigree that is similar to damning with faint praise.

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Once again thanks go to the ever-intrepid Pil, who should surely start a blog of her own.

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Edgar Allan Poe is 200 years old today (but still doesn’t look a day over 40!). So break out the Amontillado and raise a glass at midnight to one of the Great Dark Geniuses of our age.

One of the great pleasures I enjoy while travelling is spying products on supermarket shelves that challenge my sense of reality. This happens mostly in non-English speaking countries, where the translations into The Mother Tongue throw up all kinds of novelty (you may recall my adventures in Vietnam), but there are also treasures to be found in countries that actually call English their main language.

The ol’ US of A is a case in point. Exhibit A, to the left here, must surely be the cause of great confusion among the sleep-deprived.

Of course, it all makes sense when you spy the word ‘homeopathic’ under the Hylands name – like all homeopathic remedies it makes a bet each way, simultaneously declaring to be completely effective while also claiming to have no unwanted effects. The product name itself is a masterpiece in doublespeak: Calms Forté: ‘strong calm’ – the implication being that it’s an extra-strength version of the usual formula ‘Calms’. Well, since we know that homeopathy works in reverse to normal logic, this must mean that Calms Forté has even less than the usual ‘active’ ingredient* of standard Calms…

And in our kitchen at work, a product which should surely be walking off the shelves (jumping, even), especially at this time of year.

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*It can’t be chamomile. Chamomile contains substances that are actually known to promote sleep (and drowsiness) when taken in appropriate quantities and homeopathic remedies never have an ‘active’ ingredient that makes any sense.

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I will be serving the following appealing snacks at the Shriek of the Mutilated film evening as a treat for all my friends:

These are much more peculiar tasting than the inferior “PRAWN” BRAND PARROT CRACKERS, which tend to suffer badly if they become gamp or limp. I know you will all appreciate my indulgence in the extra expense.

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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I’ve been lurking over at Reasons You Will Hate Me for a bit these last couple of weeks. Ms Fits, who is the proprietor, is funny I think, and can spell and use punctuation, which does make for a more readable experience than many.

Unlike myself, Ms Fits is famous in the blogging world. My observations of RYWHM suggest that this has advantages and disadvantages:

Advantage: Lots of people read and comment.
Disadvantage: Lots of stupid people read and comment.

But I digress from the point of this post. Her recent post on bad texting in the face of calamity is amusing. It refers to this story about a ‘school machete rampage*’ in which five youths went on a spree through a Sydney highschool wielding baseball bats, swords, machetes and other sporting equipment.

Ms Fits tells us that she feels that a text message sent to the outside world even under such duress should be spelled correctly (in contrast to the one that the newspaper intercepted), and it will come as no surprise to you, dear Acowlytes, to hear that I agree with her on this matter. She then proposes that the predictive texting on phones should be updated to include abbreviated messages that can be sent quickly in times of peril. She gives an example, viz:

SND HLP GNMN/OMG BMB/TWN TWRS :(

This got me to thinking. In the great moments of our past, what would the shapers of human history have texted, if the technology had been available? I have offered you one such example here on The Cow.

Keep your suggestions short. You get charged more after 160 characters.

(Extra points if you show off yr mad Photoshopping skilz).

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*There’s another one o’ them thar Zombie Words.

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