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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Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Wednesday, June 28, 2017

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN GETS CONFUSED

The Gonzo Daily: Wednesday
 
Wednesday morning is the day that I get up early in order to liaise with my amanuenses, the lovely Olivia. By early I mean several hours after most right thinking people have emerged from their pit, drunk their breakfast coffee and done whatever else there is that right thinking people do each morning. I, however, have never been guilty of being a right thinking anything, and so have no idea what Mr and Mrs Average do on a Wednesday morning. However, this morning, like every other Wednesday I should have got up bright and early. The fact is I did get up bright and early, but under the most difficult of circumstances. The other week one of my ridiculous dogs chewed up the dispenser in which Corinna lays out my medication each week, with the result that I had to buy a new one in Asda, and I haven’t got used to it yet. This means that last night I took my morning medicine instead of my evening medicine and had the Devil’s own time trying to get to sleep. And when I did get to sleep, my dreams were fairly surreal and tinged with episodes from ‘Beyond the Pinkerton Road’ by Mark Fisher; a peculiar book that I am currently reading and enjoying massively.
 
I have charged Miss Olivia with poking me with a sharp stick if I lose focus of what I’m supposed to be doing. Luckily she is in Norfolk and I am in Devonshire, and I doubt whether she will find a sharp stick quite that long. We shall see!
 
But now, here is the news:
 
THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: H. Purcell - The Fairy...
THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem
Al Atkins Interview | Judas Priest
NICO interview
ANNIE HASLAM IN THE NEWS
 
Gonzo Magazine Issue #240
THE SUMER IS ACUMEN IN ISSUE
 
We mark the Summer Solstice, with an issue including Alfredo Zitarossa and The Beatles, and an exclusive excerpt from Tony Klinger’s new book. Alan reviews The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon, Biffo looks at Video Games featuring Pop Stars, and Jeremy goes to see King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
 
Good ‘ere innit?
 
And there are radio shows from Mack Maloney, Strange Fruit, and the final episode of Jeremy Smith's Seven Deadly Sins, but Friday Night Progressive is on hiatus for a few weeks. We also have columns from all sorts of folk including Roy Weard, Mr Biffo, Neil Nixon and the irrepressible Corinna. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and pademelons outside zoos (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials who have escaped from captivity, 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!!!
 
This issue features:
 
Alfredo Zitarrosa, Queen, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Yoko Ono, Coldplay, Eno, Neil Hannon, The Divine Comedy, Barry Gibb, Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Strange Fruit, Jeremy Smith's Seven Deadly Sins, Mack Maloney's Mystery Hour, Albert Johnson "Prodigy", Brian Cant, Stephen Furst, Sheila Raye Charles, Byron Christopher Murrell, Belton Richard, Mary Hopkin, Steve Howe, Ashton Gardner and Dyke, Tony Klinger, Alan Dearling, Joanna Cannon, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Kev Rowland, Elephant Plaza, Wednesday 13, Witch Vomit, Flyinglow, The Ferrymen, Jim Jackson, Mr Biffo, Paradise9, Roy Weard, Hawkwind, Xtul, Martin Springett, The Beatles, Elvis, Motley Crew, Biz Markie, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Bob Marley, Neil Nixon, The Dope King’s Last Stand
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
Issue 239 (Miss Peach)
Issue 238 (Hawkwind)
Issue 237 (Hawkwind)
Issue 236 (Manchester)
Issue 235 (Jon Anderson)
Issue 234 (Al Atkins)
Issue 233 (Richard Strange)
Issue 232 (Roy Weard)
Issue 231 (Allan Holdsworth)
Issue 230 (Curtis Womack)
Issue 229 (Larry Wallis)
Issue 228 (Space Pharoahs)
 
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!
 
You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
 
SPECIAL NOTICE: If you, too, want to unleash the power of your inner rock journalist, and want to join a rapidly growing band of likewise minded weirdos please email me at jon@eclipse.co.uk The more the merrier really.
 
* 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.co.uk
 
* 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 57 who - together with a Jack Russell called Archie, an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa, and two half grown kittens, one totally coincidentally named after one of the Manson Family, purely because she squeaks, 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 Archie and the Cats?

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: Experts fear at least 150 black panthers...
  • NEWSLINK: Big drop in global cheetah numbers
  • NEWSLINK: Big Cat Rescue welcomes 3 new exotic res...

  • NEWSLINK: Anjanapura residents in fear after leopa...
  • NESSIENEWS (Caveat Lector)





    A sighting of the Loch Ness Monster near Urquhart Castle CASCADE/GETTY

    NESSIE FOUND? A photograph supposedly showing the Loch Ness Monster near Urquhart Castle
    Peter Jackson and Phillippa Wearne, from Sydney, Australia, were driving alongside Loch Ness when they saw something big and fast moving through the water.


    THE LOCH Ness Monster has been “caught on camera” by stunned holidaymakers – in the second sighting this year. Australian tourists Peter Jackson ...

    MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: The case of the entombed rat.

    I am familiar with entombed toads,frogs,bats,tortoise and lizards but this old story,from the Kalamazoo Gazette (Montana) of September 2nd 1837 is the first time I have come across an entombed rat.

    So read on...

    A LIVE RAT ENTOMBED IN STONE  ."Yesterday week, as two miners, of the name of Jonathan Thompson, and George Douglass, were occupied in blasting a drift, a strata of solid stone, called scar limestone, at Alson Moor,, six fathoms below the surface, they into a small cavity of the rock, out of which to their surprise sprang a full grown rat. The miners endeavoured to take the animal alive , but in their attempts to do so, it was killed. How long the rat had been embedded in its living grave, and in what manner it had contrived in such a situation to exist ( considering the organic formation of the animal,) are questions that must be left to conjecture. On examination, the strata around the cavity was found to be perfectly solid and close in every part." - Newcastle Journal

    There is an Alston Moor in Cumbria and also an Alson Moor.   

    BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF




    “A small neighbor of mine has just given me a demonstration of patriotism that brought tears to my eyes,” writes Carolyn Wager in a letter to the editor


    Possible Juvenile Bigfoot Shelter!
    Breaking Bigfoot News & Video ... Tagged in Possible Juvenile Bigfoot Shelter! ... Roaming Tallapoosa, Clay & De Kalb county For Bigfoot Alabama ...


    A “wood ape” is local Arkansas terminology for what's more commonly known as a Sasquatch or Bigfoot: A large, humanoid ape said to roam remote ...
    It all started when a couple from Crawford County in Pennsylvania contacted the "godfather" of all Bigfoot hunters to take a look at their property after ...

    Bigfoot Encounters Around Marble Mountain
    PacWest Bigfoot sits down with Bill to talk about his bigfoot experience while hiking and camping around Lillypad Lake in the Marble Mountains region ...

    NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Wednesday

    ON THIS DAY IN - 1838 Coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey, London
    And now some more recent news from the CFZ Newsdesk

  • Britain is among worst in the world for alien inva...
  • Salmon farmers ‘put wild fish at risk’ in fight to...
  • Marine expert warns of climate emergency as fish a...
  • Ratty returns: hundreds of water voles released in...
  • Two-headed Conjoined Porpoises Hauled Up from the ...
  • Rare Albino Dolphin Spotted Off California Coast
  • Worm Grows 2 Heads in Space, Surprising Scientists...
  • This Terrifying, Toothy 'Monster' Is the World's D...
  • Insect Walking Dead: How a Fungus Turns Beetles in...
  • Red and eastern wolves are probably not recent hyb...
  • Microbes give meerkat gangs their signature scents...
  • Bats are the major reservoir of coronaviruses worl...
  • Worldwide hotspots for alien plants and animals: I...
  • Cub photo raises hope for Europe’s rarest and larg...


  • AND TO WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK... (Music that may have some relevance to items also on this page, or may just reflect my mood on the day.)