MEET THE NEW BOSS, THE SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

It appears from the news stories that, despite hopes to the contrary US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has announced that he will not rescind a “special rule” created by the Bush administration that sharply limits protections for the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

"For Salazar to adopt Bush's polar bear extinction plan is confirming the worst fears of his tenure as Secretary of the Interior," said Noah Greenwald, biodiversity program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Secretary Salazar would apparently prefer to please Sarah Palin than to protect polar bears."

Unless I am being really dense this is a cynical act by someone who has only one motive: to protect the status quo, and to preserve the capitalist hegemony at all costs.

I have been accused over the past few months of overly attacking American Republican Politicians. I hope that this post clatifies that. It is not Republican politicians that I despise, but all politicians who put financial considerations ahead of moral ones.

And people wonder why I am an anarchist!

TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC FISHTANKS: DRACULA FISH MAKE AN OLD PROG FAN RATHER HAPPY

I am a child of the 1970s. I may have been born in 1959, but my earliest memories aren't until disoined ones in about 1961 and 1962, and I don't really remember much in a linear form until about 1964. The young people of my acquaintaince, including those in my extended family all believe that because Corinna and I were alive through the 1960s that we hung out at Carnaby Street, and drove around in minis with Union Jacks painted on the roof.

Well, I certainly didn't and if my darling wife (who is only a couple of years older than me - three in fact) did such a thing, she certainly has never told me about it. Nope, both of us first became the people we are in the decade that taste forgot. One of the first things that attracted us to each other was that we both had listened to a lot of prog rock at one time (even if these days Corinna listens to Scandinavian folk metal, and I listen to the artier end of indie), and both of us remember the days when a poster showing the back cover of Roger Dean's illustration for the Yes album Tales from Topographic Oceans was the coolest thing that you could have on your bedroom wall.

I am listening to the album now. It is pretty cool if you like that sort of thing.
The lyrics are impenetrable bollocks which are allegedly based upon bits of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. They made no sense in 1974, and they make no sense now, even by the standards of Yes lyrics, but if you ignore the words and treat Jon Anderson's voice as an instrument in its own right, the album flows nicely and has many rewarding moments.

But the best thing about it is the cover, and the best thing about the cover is the back, which features a small shoal of strange fish that look like an unholy hybrid between perch and salmon swimming over a futuristic landscape (or planetscape). But jsut below them, peeking out of a rocky cave just like the oriental weatherfish in my Hong Kong coldwater biotope tank, is a placoderm - a strange armoured fish from a family which died out about 359 million years ago. One of the strangest thing about these primitive fish was that they had biting plates - pointed extensions of the jawbone that perform the function of teeth. They have not been seen in any vertyebrates since.
Until now, that is.

A month or so, all the crypto websites including us, carried the story of a new species of the danionella family which has just been discovered in Burma. Everyone, including us noted that it had strange, teethlike extensions to its jaws, giving it the specific name of D.dracula, but it wasn't until today I realised that my prog rock fantasies have come true....

Read all about it..

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the newspaper...

Thanks to our friend and colleague Geoff Ward at the Western Daily Press for being kind enough to commission this article....

CONFESSIONS OF AN ALL-ROUND GOOD EGG

Matty looking mean, moody and magnificent.

Unbelievably girls..he's still single!


Poor Matthew Osborne. He works harder than most people at CFZ business, and basically the poor chap ends up being lampooned mercilessly by me, both in writing, verbally, and in our monthly webTV show `On the Track`. However, he was an integral part of the caper last week that saw the intrepid boys of the CFZ go and pinch a decomposing seal skull, and when he saw that both Graham and Oll had written their bit about it, he demanded his say....

Matt (right) and Graham (left) looking furtive

As the mountain of Paperwork once again threatened to engulf our hero, the Hotline rang, “it is J here, mission for you, Body washed up on the beach, we need to deal with this in a suitable manor”, I politely reminded J that he no long had a manor and it would be easier to do it on the beach where it was.

J sighed and asked if I was free, I said I would be free if he sent the Limo to collect me. With the Call over I contacted Home to say I would be late for supper, grabbed Wellies, climbing harness and 2 types of saw, 2 hats, a fleece and a second pair of trousers. and tipped off S there was a mission afoot, and left for the rendezvous.

With in minutes the Mission Wagon Arrived, this was some shock as the last I had heard its engine was on a sunk ship that had been trying to get to Dover.

With the Team all prepared, HawkMan Driving, Super Welsh Boy Filming and me navigating we set off, and very quickly found a chip shop at which to stop, having filled up with chips we set off to the Secret Location, On arrival at Croyde we headed on to the beach, it was deserted apart from the people who were there!

HM and I took the shore line and SWB took pictures of us looking busy, and pointing at random nonexistent things as if we were to be in the next Next Directory.

I headed up to talk to the Group of Young Ladies at the top of the beach, having worked out they did not want to be chatted up I established they had not seen a body lying around, and left them to their Icicle smashing.

I met with HM and head back across the beach to SWB where upon the MatPhone rang
“M this is J, Body is known to be on the rock at Down End”

With which we 3 returned to the car and headed to the other end of the beach, on arriving there I was over heard by a person who knows me as the mild mannered First Aid Trainer Matthew and not as the Super hero Super MattMan, Mr L, who is a great bloke and does the best work for North Devon Tourism you will ever imagine.

HM headed to the sea line which was still going out and would be until 2100 SWB headed north and I headed South, on finding the body I summoned assistance and everyone did what they could do best, HM took pictures, SWB Videoed everything, and I rang my Friend Mr K so as to get my name in the papers again.

With miles of film and plenty of pictures we gained the required samples and headed back to the Wagon.

Wrapping the Sections of suppurating Piniped in Black polyethene we jumped in the Mission Wagon and headed back to Shamwickshire so as to collect the MatMobile.

All we could hope now was that HM and SWB could get the evidence to J and DragonHunter before the smell over came them…

All was well until, the Sun announced the Head STOLEN, I rang J and told him. He advised me to do just 3 things:

1 phone my Lawyer,

2 pack all the burn I could find

and

3 hope I was less pretty than Super Welsh Boy.

I was still doing 3 having failed to do 1 and 2 when the Hotline rang.

“ M, J here. The Police say keep it, you are not going to prison for accessory to decapitating a rotting mammal that no one wants”