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...




Saturday, December 01, 2012

INAPPROPRIATE CORNER: Deliciously inappropriate

Got a sweet tooth that's led to you packing on the pounds? Until now there was no cure for that inexplicable chocolate craving a lot of us get. But after seeing these horrific lifesize baby headshand-crafted from white chocolate, there's a good chance you'll never want to touch the stuff again.
Created by Conjurer's Kitchen as a private commission for someone with a taste for the deliciously macabre, they could have at least gone and created a Rice Krispies treat body or something so they weren't so damn unsettling. Well, still unsettling, but at least it's not a beheaded baby.
White-Chocolate Baby Heads: The Cure for Chocaholics

Tokoloshe Research clip 1



This is the first clip from our script development research in Orange Farm for our up coming horror film "Blood Tokoloshi" Check out our crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo at http://igg.me/p/27493?a=124641&i=shlk

CFZ PEOPLE: Olivia McCarthy (my stepdaughter)


 

Happy birthday my dear

HAVE YOU NOTICED?

Have you noticed boys and girls that even financial disasters have trade names these days?  First of all we had the credit crunch, and now – apparently – the American economy is facing the financial fiscal cliff, which threatens to “plunge the world’s greatest economy into another bad recession”.  That makes me wonder whether there can be a good recession, eh culture lovers?  A fiscal cliff?  Hmmmmm. It’ll probably end up like its namesake born somewhere in the third world, trundling on for decades likes some sort of rock and roll Dorian Gray and then eventually whinging about its financial situation until it gets the law changed.   Goodness me.  

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES (CFZ)

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. So, after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo, Corinna has taken the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.


I'M YER GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN

And so it is saturday once again. My younger stepdaughter is 25 today and is currently sitting with her sister, boyfriend, mother and grandmother in the kitchen, while I toil over a hot keyboard. Today I shall be posting the second 'Gonzo Weekly' newsletter which will be completely different from how I had planned it because I haven't been able to do any interviews this week. I also have just put in an offer on a family of Chinese narrow mouthed frogs, and I hope to have good news on that front...
The news about Rick Wakeman's appearance at an arts festival in Gloucester next year, just gets better and better
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-news-about-rick-wakeman-in.html
The newly released second album by Atkins/May gets more and more fans
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/billing-itself-as-collision-between.html
Michael Des Barres has been nominated as having produced one of the coolest songs in the world this year. Go vote for him
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-coolest-songs-in-world-2012.html
Happy birthday to my lovely stepdaughter Olivia
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/happy-birthday-olivia.html
Yesterday Thom's poem was about the recent wave of self-immolations in China/Tibet, and it reminded me of a song on a similar theme by a fat hippy that you may have heard of
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/im-on-fire.html
Regular readers will have been following the ongoing debate about John and Yoko at the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus back in 1968. Now my brother-in-law joins the discussion
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/whole-lotta-yoko.html
And finally for today, our daily visit to Thom the World Poet
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/12/thom-world-poet-daily-poem.html
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 - imaginitavely - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html

Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures is an old hippy of 53 who - together with his orange cat - puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cat?

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today



On this day in 1761 Marie ‘Madame’ Tussaud was born. Tussaud started off her wax museums by taking casts of the heads of French nobility that the guillotine had recently made more mobile during the French revolution. From these gruesome beginnings formed the basis of what is Britain's most visited tourist attraction, seriously I kid you not, more people go to see a bunch of shop dummies with realistic faces than visit the Bakelite Museum, Barometer World, the Shoe Museum and the Gnome Reserve put together!

Madame Tussaud's is all well and good, but where can you go if you want to see unconvincing wax models of the cast of Coronation Street during the 70s, Bernard Manning, Jimmy Saville, Les Dennis and 'popular' 60's band The Vegans? Well, Louis Tussauds probably: