WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Saturday, September 07, 2013

CORINNA: Bin Art...

I have never been a fan of modern art; unmade beds or a half-open, half-eaten can of baked beans in the middle of an empty room, with one sticky bean 'artistically' left where it dribbled down the side of the can to stick itself on the floor, don’t really rock my boat.  However, as can be seen from the photos, it does appear that we have an exponent of such artistic ‘talent’ here. Yes right here, in a kitchen in deepest, darkest North Devon

Read on

CRYPTOLINK: I'm With Stupid: On the Trail of Colorado's Cunning Cryptids

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.
There's a program on Animal Planet called Finding Bigfoot that really ought to be called "Looking for Bigfoot" for reasons that need no explanation. Regardless, Sasquatch has become so famous that he now has his own reality show despite the possibility that he actually may not be real.
Likewise, a million people visit Loch Ness each year to see if they can catch a glimpse of Nessie, the aquatic monster that purportedly lurks in its depths. Of course, none of them ever see anything, but it doesn't seem to matter. Real or not, Nessie is a bona fide celebrity.
Sasquatch and Nessie are the two most famous examples of what we smart people call cryptids, but there are plenty of others. The yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey devil, Champ; the list goes on and on. And if there's a monster, you can bet there's someone hard at work looking for it and trying to score his or her own reality show.
Now, regular readers of this column know that I love imaginary creatures, and I want my own reality show as much as anybody; it would seem that hunting for monsters would be a perfect fit, right? Unfortunately, it's gotten so crowded in the field of cryptozoology that it's become exceedingly difficult for me to find a monster of my own. I refuse to share one with someone else.

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From Nick Redfern's World of Whatever:

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN STOOPS TO CONQUER

The other day I posted what appeared to be an open letter from Greg Lake which appeared on a foreign blog. As I always do, I included a link to where I got it from. However, hidden in the original post there was a link where people could download illegal copies of Greg's new album. I had no idea about this, and as soon as it was brought to my attention I removed the post. But it only goes to show how careful you have to be, and I would like to apologise to everyone who I inadvertently wronged.
 
On another irritating note, as some of you may have noticed, visiting the homepage of this week's issue of The Gonzo Weekly flashes up an error message in Google Chrome. As far as I am aware this is completely spurious, and is a problem woth Chrome, rather than anything to do with us. The problem seems to be that one of the links in this week's issue is also linked to a video production company called www.massoutreach.com. I have never heard of them, and certainly not had any dealings with them, but it is THIS company that causes the error messages to be flashed up in Chrome. It doesn't do it in either Internet Explorer or Firefox. The Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page seems to imply that there is actually nothing wrong with massoutreach.com either.

If you have problems reading the newsletter in Chrome, I would suggest that you press the "proceed anyway" link, or just use another browser. I apologise for this blip, which is annoying because this week's issue is a particularly good one. Be assured that it does seem to be nothing to do with us, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
 
Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_7.html
 
 
Judyth Piazza interviews Guitar Icon Merrell Fankhauser on The American Perspective
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/judyth-piazza-interviews-guitar-icon.html
 
And you thought Robert Fripp had stopped live appearances
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/and-you-thought-robert-fripp-had.html
 
 
 

*  The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

*  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
 
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

*  Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 54 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange) puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cat?

DALE DRINNON: Frontiers of Anthropology, Benny's Blogs

New at the Frontiers of Anthropology:

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.







OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today


Yesterday’s News Today

On this day in 2003 Warren Zevon died. Zevon penned and preformed several songs with a Fortean flavour including Werewolves of London, Rowland the Headless Thompson Gunner (where a mercenary avenges his death from beyond the grave) and Gorilla You're a Desperado (where a gorilla forcibly swaps places with a man).
And now the news:
  • Water voles 'decline by a fifth'
  • West coast orca spotted off Scotland's east coast
  • Elephant killed former UCSD dean
  • Oldest Land-Living Animal from Gondwana Found
  • Genetic Similarities Between Bats and Dolphins Dis...
  • The African Fish That Lives Fast and Dies Young
  • What Is This? Mysterious Amazon Web Baffles Scient...
  • Slimy Suspects: How Millipedes Likely Caused a Tra...
  • Gators: Attacking the myths
  • Gonsalves: The Elephant Man walks
  • Testicle-eating fish could be headed to UK after b...
  • Hedgehog has lucky escape after run-in with badmin...
  • Invasive alien species threaten urban environments...
  • World's Only Hibernating Primate Has Strange Sleep...
  • Lobster Shell Disease Expanding North: One of Seve...
  • Rare tiny snail found at second site on Black Isle...

  • Gorilla You're a Desperado: