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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Friday, January 30, 2015

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.


HO FOR THE G-B-D-D-M

The Gonzo Daily - Friday/Saturday
 
I was 12 in 1971, and never saw A Clockwork Orange during the brief time that it was in the cinema. Even if it ever got as far as The Odeon in Bideford (long since closed and turned into a block of sheltered flats for old people) my parents would not have let me go, and my cultural interests at the time were more involved with reading Biggles books by Capt W E Johns, or the William books of Richmal Crompton (both of which I still read today, by the way) than investigating the ultraviolence that Alex and his Droogs perpetuated upon society.
 
I finally saw it one night fifteen years ago, when together with several friends and my then girlfriend I went to the cinema in Exeter for a special late night showing. The most disturbing bit of the film for me took place about two thirds of the way through the film. Over to Wikipedia:
 
“Two years into the sentence, the Minister of the Interior arrives at the prison looking for test subjects for the Ludovico technique, an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals within two weeks; Alex readily volunteers. The process involves drugging the subject, strapping him to a chair, propping his eyelids open, and forcing him to watch images of violence. Alex becomes nauseated due to the drugs.”
 
Today I became Alex. No. I did not disappear with some malchicks into Burgess’s terrifying Nadsat world. But I did sit in a chair whilst chemicals were put in my eyes, and I became mildly dizzy and queasy.
 
It was my annual diabetic eye screening, and when I came home after hanging around Bideford for three hours waiting for some medication, I was so tired and queasy I went to bed.
 
So an appypolly loggy lewdies and droogs. After having drencom in m’glazz, and a pain in m’gulliver I was forced to leave the blogs to this evening.
 
 
The Gonzo Weekly #115
www.gonzoweekly.com
 
Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream, John Lydon, Grateful Dead, Jon Anderson, Yes, Hawkwind, and Daevid Allen fans had better look out!
 
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#115) will soon be available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It has Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream on the front cover. As you may know he died about ten days ago. Inside there is a retrospective by Doug Harr and Rob Ayling remembers his relationship with the man who defined electronic music. I critique the extraordinary new John Lydon autobiography, and also burble on about The Grateful Dead. We have news about the Drones for Daevid concert in Brighton next week, and we send the legendary Roy Weard to a desert island. Xtul are on the road to Norwich, and there are shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the titular submarine dwellers are still lost at sea. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and southern dibblers wearing new shoes (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials in search of snazzy footwear, 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!!!
 

Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
 

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:
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/
 

* 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/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit
 
* 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?

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

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

From CFZ-USA:

NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Friday/Saturday

ON THIS DAY IN 1649 - England's King Charles I was beheaded. 

  • Postal strike ends boxed lizards’ lives - Herp Dig...
  • Florida 'zombie cat' crawls out of grave
  • Chimps with higher-ranking moms do better in fight...
  • Museum's 'Dippy' dinosaur makes way for blue whale...
  • England's beavers allowed to stay in the wild
  • More than 2300 turtles seized at Jakarta internati...
  • Too wet for frogs: changes in a tropical leaf litt...
  • Hadrosaurs would have run cross country in dino hi...

  • Why Wasps Massacre Each Other ... Over Figs

  • 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)