Wednesday, April 30, 2014

WEIRD WEEKEND 2014

Remember kids under 16 (no matter how much they consider themselves to be sophisticated adults, they’re still kids to me) get in for free

If you get there early enough there is free alcohol on my lawn on the Thursday night and because we are worried about childhood obesity we are doing our best to help; there is a cake eating competition for the kids on Saturday afternoon.

If you don’t take advantage of this fantastic offer you are even madder than I am...
All sorts of exciting things are happening at the Weird Weekend this year.  And whereas a lot of the things that you all enjoy will remain the same there have been some changes.  The first, and biggest, is that after having done the food almost since we started holding the event in Woolsery, and raised a lot of money for the village children’s charities, Sharon Bennett and her friends have stepped down.  This is nothing to do with the CFZ and we are all still friends, but is to do with internal village politics with which I have no intention of getting involved.

I hope that Sharon and Simon will still come to the cocktail party.  They have both sent their good wishes, not just for the event, but to all the people with whom they have made friends over the past years.

The food over the weekend is now being done by The Small School in Hartland.  The Small School has a long tradition of providing organic catering services.  The school itself is a charity, providing a unique independent education for 11-16 year olds, attracting many who have been failed by the mainstream education system or require an alternative approach to their learning.  The school thrives on creating a sense of community among all who are involved and has proved to be an extremely supportive environment for children and adults.

We also have the return of an old friend of us all, the legendary Hunt Emerson, probably Britain’s leading underground cartoonist of the last half century.  He has been to the Weird Weekend a couple of times, either as a punter or as my personal guest, but this time he is presenting an exhibition about Fortean themes in alternative comics. Remember, he has been Fortean Times’ house cartoonist for more years than I care to remember.

Another completely new attraction is live music from the inimitable Miss Crystal Grenade who channels the zeitgeist of her alter ego – an existentialist Victorian artist, and freak show performer with a peculiarly deformed hand…

The year is 1892, the place Victorian England. Dim gaslamps lend a cobwebbed ale house a sepia glow. The sound is dull murmurs from blunt mouths, the scent unwashed sweat and sawdust. In the back room of the bar, a strange performance is unfolding, one of horror and beauty as yet to come...
Singer, pianist, freak show personality and melancholic muse, Crystal is a woman wading through existentialist dreams whilst living hand to mouth.

Born with a rare hand deformity that statistically makes her one in a million and logistically means a life of peculiar charm, Crystal scrapes a living through song and chance. In a world where the past is revoked in all its putrid glory, she clings to piano keys with all seven lucky fingers whilst opening the emotional floodgates. A voice of gentle pain or unapologetic rage, her honesty shall ever prevail. Join her in the search for salvation.
 
Tickets for this year's Weird Weekend are now on sale. So far confirmed for this year's event are:

Nigel Mortimer: Opening Portals
Ronan Coghlan: Bogus Bibles
Lee Walker: Urban Legends of Liverpool
Lars Thomas: Tales from the CFZ Laboratory
Jon and Richard: Introduction to Cryptozoology
Nick Wadham: Alien Abductions
Tony Whitehead (RSPB): O.O.P birds
Carl Marshall: Out of Place animals at Stratford Butterfly Park
Judge Smith: Survival after death
John Higgs: Chaos, Magick, and the band who burned a million quid
Richard Freeman: Tasmania 2013 Expedition Report
Matt Salusbury: Baron Rothschild's Deinotherium caper
C.J. Stone: a MODERN King Arthur
Results of nature walk (Lars/Nick)
Ronan Coghlan: The Amphibians from Outer Space
Jon Downes: Keynote Speech

PLUS
Miss Crystal Grenade
The CFZ Awards
Silas Hawkins
Raffle
Kids Nature walk with Lars and Nick
Kids Mad Hatter's Tea Party
Speaker's Dinner at the Community Centre

and of course:
The Tunnel of Goats
The event takes place from the 15-17 August this year in North Devon. Find out more HERE.Tickets are available at a special discount price of £20/head for the whole weekend as long as you buy them in advance. Buy online HERE.
The tickets for this year's event are selling, slowly but surely. However, it would be much better for my blood pressure if they sold a little faster. So, ladies and gentlemen; do your bit to save my arteries...
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BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



Bigfoot HOAX In Pennsylvania? Tipster Says 'Two Bigfoots' Were Tree Stump
Hiker John Stoneman says he caught two Bigfoots -- or at least two massive creatures -- on camera in Pennsylvania several weeks ago. A tipster tells

Annual Bigfoot Convention in Ohio Attracts Hundreds of People
Bigfoot trackers and enthusiasts gathered at the annual Salt Fork Lodge & Convention Center for the 26th annual Ohio Bigfoot Convention over the ...

Sasquatch Week: Curse of Bigfoot - The Cinema Snob
04/28/2014. 15 Comments. Sasquatch Week has begun! Could things only go up from Curse of Bigfoot, or is the worst yet to come?

Willow Creek Gets DVD Release
Bigfoot horror Willow Creek is getting a DVD release on May 26th from Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment. Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (God Bless ...

Bigfoot Evidence: Stacy Brown Jr. Shows-Off Bigfoot DNA Dart Gun
Stacy Brown Jr. calls this the "show stopper". The winner of the SpikeTV $10 Million Bigfoot Bounty show thinks he has the ultimate tool to end the 

Sasquatch Lecture - Eyewitness Drawings of Bigfoot | Bigfoot Research News - Blogger
Wildlife Biologist John Bindernagel gives a presentation on the different eyewitness descriptions of Bigfoot. John has been studying the Sasquatch for ...

BIGFOOT'S bLOG: 04/29/14
The guy is lost in the woods and dreaming paranoid fantasies of massacres and flowing bloody streams with Bigfoot corpses piled high. Absurd.
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TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS


The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 


There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. 


The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking. 
  • NEWSLINK: Snow leopard too full to walk after eati...
  • NEWSLINK: Tiger-part adverts declining

    •
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    FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES


    What has Corinna's column of fortean bird news got to do with Cryptozoology?

     Well, everything actually!

     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. 
  • Turtle Dove Trap Found & Hunter threatens to kill ...
  • Eagle crashes into boat shrink wrap on Interstate
  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Approves $3.6 Milli...
  • Rise in discovery of dead raptors in the Highlands...
  • How to Stop Solar-Power Plants From Incinerating B...
  • Yurok tribe works to protect a raptor it reveres: ...
  • Long-extinct elephant bird comes alive in book

  • Conservation agents narrow search for goose killer...
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    IT'S THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN

    The Gonzo Daily - Wednesday
    I got up unfeasibly early (for me) today, and at 10:00 I telephone Patrick Campbell-Lyons of the original Nirvana at his home in Greece. We had a most enjoyable conversation, and the resulting interview will appear soon in Gonzo Weekly. But that's not all. I have been a busy little beaver over the last 24 hours, and also interviewed David and Adam from XNA, and Kev from The Groundhogs, all of whom are really sweet people and a pleasure to talk to. This week I am eagerly awaiting a clutch of eggs from Pleurodeles waltl (the Spanish sharp-ribbed newt), a species of which I intend to found a dynasty in our newly refurbished and rather swish looking conservatory. This afternoon mark Raines comes over again to tend the lawn, and I don my conceptual mortarboard and once again tutor Jessica for her English Lit GCSE. No peace for the wicked...
    Rick Wakeman review – swept up by sheer, ludicrous ambition
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/04/rick-wakeman-review-swept-up-by-sheer.html
    And just in case you missed it, the latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (which can be read at www.gonzoweekly.com), It features - amongst other things - Hawkwind's Hawkeaster weekend in exclusive words and pictures, interviews with Corky Laing of Mountain, and Gary Green of Gentle Giant, Steve Ignorant, the Dalai Lama, and more news, reviews, views, interviews and giant otter shrews (OK, no Central African insectivores which feed largely on freshwater crabs, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
    The full list of artists covered this time is: Hawkwind, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Libertines, Damon Albarn, Morrisey, Paul McCartney, Auburn, Liz Lenten, Barbara Dickson, Circulus, Iona, Merrell Fankhauser, Karnataka, Genre Peak, Steve Hackett, Steve Ignorant, Asia, Mick Abrahams, Clearlight, John Greaves, Hugh Hopper, Alain Blesing, Galahad, Rick Wakeman, Andy Colquhoun, The Prog Collective, Clepsydra, The Deviants, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Captain Beefheart, Pink Fairies, Corky Laing, Three Friends, Gentle Giant, Justin Beiber, One Direction, The Beatles, Jackson 5, Elvis Presley, Abba, Elegant Simplicity, Epica, The Fierce and the Dead, Generation Kill, Moonsorrow
    These issues (and the current one) can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
    To make sure that you don't miss your copy of future issues make an old hippy a happy chappy and subscribe
    http://eepurl.com/r-VTD

    *  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: www.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 an orange kitten named after a song by Frank Zappa 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 kitten?
    __________________________________
    Jonathan Downes,
    Director: Centre for Fortean Zoology
    Director: CFZ Publishing Group
    Editor: Animals & Men
    Editor: Gonzo Weekly magazine
    Editor: Still on the track
    Editor: CFZ Blog Network
    Editor: Gonzo Daily (Music and More)
    Presenter: On the Track (Of Unknown Animals)
    The Centre for Fortean Zoology,
    Myrtle Cottage,
    Woolfardisworthy,
    Bideford, North Devon
    EX39 5QR

    Telephone 01237 431413
    Fax+44 (0)7006-074-925
    eMail jon@eclipse.co.uk

    www.cfz.org.uk
    www.gonzoweekly.com
    http://www.youtube.com/user/cfztv
    www.weirdweekend.org
    www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com
    www.forteanzoology.blogspot.com/
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    OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

    Yesterday’s News Today
    http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

     On this day in 1943 a British submarine planted the body of a homeless man off the coast of Spain. The body had been dressed to look like a British Intelligence Officer and had documents on his person that, when decoded, stated that the Allies were planning to invade the continent in a completely different place than where they landed on D-Day. The Axis forces fell for the deception and led the bulk of their forces away from the Allies true landing place in Normandy, which saved thousands of lives on both sides.
    And now the news:
  • Chinese retailer removes ivory from its shelves
  • Naked mole rats and the secret to longevity
  • How the koala retrovirus genome evolved
  • Tiger-part adverts declining
  • 18 new species of molluscs identified
  • Support claimed for Scottish beaver reintroduction...
  • European Bison to Be Released into Wild
  • More coral babies staying at home on future reefs

  • Wildlife Aid provides free online resource for pri...
    • The film “The Man Who Never Was” was loosely based on the subterfuge (known by the codename “Operation Mincemeat”) here is the film's trailer:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXyFkINMcI8
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