A BRIEF APOLOGY

You will probably have noticed that both On the Track and the Sunday videos from this year's Weird Weekend have not yet appeared. There has been a temporary setback.

We managed to blow our firewire card, which is necessary to transfer data from the video cameras to the main computer. Whilst this has now been replaced, it took a couple of days (even though it only cost fifteen quid) and we are now running several days behind schedule.

The situation was not helped by my recent illness, so whilst you can be assured that all these videos WILL appear, please be patient. Everything comes to those who wait!

INAPPROPRIATE CORNER: Peeping Tom fished out of septic tank

A man has been arrested on peeping tom charges, after being discovered inside a septic tank under a women's toilet.

Kenneth Enslow was arrested on Sunday after a horrified woman called police to White Water park just west of Tulsa in Oklahoma.

The mother had taken her seven-year-old daughter to the toilet and noticed a man looking up at her from below.

Ambra Reynolds and her daughter (Pic: KJRH-TV)

"He went in there, climbed down in the septic and was looking up at the people utilising that facility," Tulsa County Sheriff's Major Shannon Clark said.

Enslow, who was covered in human waste, was helped from the septic tank by members of the Keystone Fire Department.

They sprayed him off with a fire hose and then took him to hospital for a physical and mental evaluation.

"It's like he was just sitting down in the water just wading. It's not something you expect to see whenever you're wanting to go to the restroom," Ambra Reynolds told KJRH-TV.

"I screamed, grabbed my daughter, trampled my son on the way out scared to death. We ran out."

The 52-year-old suspect told police that his girlfriend, Angel, had hit him in the head with a tyre iron and dumped him in the toilet, according to the police report.

Read on...

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.

Rare sighting of marked spoon-billed sandpiper on ...

Rescued hen airlift costs $43 per bird

Birds Choose Sweet-Smelling Mates

Somerset's heaven for herons

• 
  

DALE DRINNON: Matamatas and Loch Ness Monsters, Benny's Blogs, Cedar and Willow

New at Frontiers of Zoology:

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2013/09/matamatas-and-loch-ness-monsters.html

 

New at Cedar and Willow:

http://cedar-and-willow.blogspot.com/2013/09/nylon-commandoes-2014-updated-edition.html

 

New at Benny's Blog for Thelma Todd:

http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2013/09/thelma-todds-cigarette-holder.html

http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2013/09/thelma-todd-monogrammed-towel.html

 

New at the Ominous Octopus Omnibus:

http://bennypdrinnon.blogspot.com/2013/09/superman-red-and-superman-blue.html

http://bennypdrinnon.blogspot.com/2013/09/editorial-cartoons.html

 

Best Wishes, Dale D.

RICHARD HOLLAND REVIEWS RICHARD FREEMAN'S NEW BOOK

Cryptozoologist Richard Freeman has suddenly launched himself on the world of weird fiction. Not only has he been able to showcase an extraordinary imagination he also been quite wonderfully prolific. Last year he published `Green, Unpleasant, Land', a collection of strange tales taking as their starting points the British countryside and its folklore, with knowing nods towards such masters of this genre as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. Now he has been inspired by his love of Japan and its own particularly peculiar legends.

``Hyakumonogatari' is the first in an ambitious series of volumes of short stories set in Japan and reflecting a Japanese tradition of storytelling in which 100 spooky yarns are told by a number of guests. The ritual is supposed to ultimately call up a ghost. This volume contains 25 stories and Freeman is intending to write the full 100 himself in three follow-ups over the next couple of years. Judging by this initial collection, there is little doubt he will succeed admirably.

Richard Freeman is an accepted British authority on the Yokai, the surreal menagerie of ghosts-cum-demons-cum-monsters that inhabit Japanese folklore. The Yokai have provided the author with splendid material for `Hyakumonogatari'. Here you will encounter a bewildering array of supernatural menaces, from demonic humanoids and bestial monsters through to polite little critters that will devour you as soon as bid you good day and cute little doggies that spell instant death should you so much as brush against them. Here too are such weirdies as animated metal skeletons, murderous strips of cloth and trees bearing fruit with the faces of men. Freeman's stories are set throughout the islands of Japan and in a number of different periods, from the times of the Shoguns through to the present day.

The stories are straightforwardly told, almost journalistic in tone at times. This, plus Freeman's undeniable knowledge and love of Japan, lends an authenticity essential considering the grotesque and bizarre nature of his protagonists. The style works especially well in my favourite story, `Brother On The Hill', which tells of primitive hominids encroaching on the domain of humans in a remote mountain forest in Hokkaido. In `Brother On The Hill', Freeman's expertise as zoological director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology lends further authenticity to a tense and thoroughly believable narrative.

`Hyakumonogatari' is a startling collection of more than two-dozen stories ideal for horror fans who are jaded by the endless round of vampires and werewolves (and vampires who fight or fall in love with werewolves). Any one of these yarns would have graced the pages of the old `Weird Tales'. Bring on the next 75, I say!

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS ELEVATED

Get ready to weep so grab the tissues

I was up all night with computer issues
or to be more specific with newsletter shite
cos it was claimed there was malware on the newsletter site

 

And was there? I can hear you moan,
of course not, but Google Chrome
flagged up as unsafe (and this is insane)
a cartoon I'd got from the Public Domian

 

And this is what really makes me sore,
I'd been using it for six months or more,
but the problem does now appear to be nixed
but I spent all night trying to get it fixed

 

But 'cos it is Sunday, it's also time
to do my Gonzo Blogs in rhyme
and its not like I do it for the money;
I do it, 'cos I find it funny

 

So let's start off now, (I think we'd better)
with issue 42 of the Gonzo Newsletter
which now is completely Malware free
you can be assured of that from me
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/newsletter-42.html

 

And now to get on with some work
the new album by Captain Kirk
is produced by Billy Sherwood who
says its really good WOOHOO!
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/its-got-unique-flow-to-it-billy.html

 

And on a related subject here's
a video which reduced me to tears
of laughter after that computer virus
here's Captain Kirk and Miley Cyrus
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/miley-cyrus-in-star-trek-universe.html

 

And now it's Merrell Fankhauser time
with a surname it's impossible to rhyme,
but his music's great I say to you
which is why I'm posting this review
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/merrell-fankhauser-review.html

 

Now here's a Jackson Webber song
its not too short and its not too long
but I can proudly shout WAYHAY!
It's today's Gonzo Track of the Day!
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-gonzo-track-of-day-jackson-webber.html

 

And finally (and I'm sure you know it)
some lines from Thom our own World Poet
who lives down south in Austin, Texas
from whence his rhymes will never vex us
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/09/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_8.html

 

AND WHILST ON THIS SUBJECT, THOM WRITES:
from my friend Po Witt
in reverence for your Sunday Edit

 

Some say it is
a crime to rhyme,
that we live
in a by-gone time

But what a time
it was to live,
for that and rhyme
we beg forgive.

 

And that's enough poetry for now
but we'll be back next week (and how!)

*  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. 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?

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1637 Robert Fludd died. Fludd was an ocultist and all round barmy sort of bloke. However, and let this be a lesson for anybody who might dismiss people with unusual interests off-hand and with a po-faced expression, he was a really good physician for his time and may have discovered the circulatory system alongside William Harvey and was almost certainly the first to support the idea in print.

And now the news:

• Second whale stranded in Firth of Forth is put dow...
• Sea Lion Escapes Enclosure At German Zoo To Swim W...
• Hoo: Tails and manes cut from ponies in latest att...
• Giant steel Dragon Bridge in Vietnam breathes fire...
• Brazilian Man to Marry Pet Goat in Devil’s Curch
• Swarms of 'angry' killer Asian hornets heading to ...
• Hunting Bigfoot: Squatching trip in Perry Canyon f...
• Police investigate 'big cat' sightings and sheep a...

The Flood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCHg5r6rFoI