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.
Today is Prudence's birthday, well actually it
isn't. It is the anniversdary of her coming to live with us aged five. It has
been four years, and so we mark the day from then. Actually, its not even that.
I thought it was the 4th November, Corinna thought it was the 3rd, so we have
reached a compromise. Like Her Majesty, and Paddington Bear, Prudence has two
bithdays, or rather one birthday that carries on for two days. But despite all
the confusion I would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to the sweetest and
nicest natured dog I have ever known, even if she does look more like a pygmy
hippo than a canid.
Steve Hillage, Supertramp, Jon Anderson, Yes, Joy Division, Hawkwind, and
Daevid Allen fans had better look out! The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#102)
IS available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.
It has Steve Hillage on the cover, and features an interview with him
inside. But there's more! There is news about Daevid Allen, Doug Harr critiques
the Supertramp live DVD, and people make wild speculations about a new Galahad
side project. Xtul are still in the deep woods, and Corinna finds a brilliant
board game from the Swinging Sixties. Jon muses on Peter Hook's recollections of
Joy Division, and we send Carl 'Blue' Wise to a desert island and Jon is very
rude about the third album by The Ting Tings. There are also new shows from the
multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night
Progressive, and the massively talented Jaki and Tim are back with their
submarine and Maisie the cow. There is also a collection of more news, reviews,
views, interviews and turtles having a snooze (OK, no soporific chelonians, 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!!!
All issues from #70 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. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power
chaps, we have to share it!
* 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 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat 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 infantile orange cat?
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.
The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, now extinct.Photograph: HC Richter/National Library of Australia
That old cliche “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” has a truly hollow ring when applied to Australian’s awareness of its lost mammals.
Most Australians are barely aware of the creatures that still inhabit their island and couldn’t tell the difference between a bettong (a shin-high kangaroo) and a wambenger (a small marsupial carnivore) if they got kicked in the eyes by one. A bettong that is. A wambenger would more likely target the jugular with its sharp little teeth.
It wasn’t always so. Early European settlers were keenly attuned to the foibles of bettongs. Native mammals were part of their daily lives, raiding gardens, stealing poultry, eating pasture, a source of fur, and more often than not of free meat, too. And it was into this world of abundant native mammals that John Gould arrived.
The Gonzo Daily - Tuesday
