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...

Search This Blog

WATCH OUR WEEKLY WEBtv SHOW

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON
Click on this logo to find out more about helping CFZtv and getting some smashing rewards...

SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER



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...




Friday, October 11, 2013

KARL SHUKER: The Giant Rat of Sumatra


Karl Shuker tracks down one of Sherlock Holmes's greatest crypto-foes - the giant rat of Sumatra!

Read on...

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

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 took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.





DALE DRINNON: Updates

I have just had three week's time during which it was difficult or impossible for me to make up new blogs. This started out because I was arranging material for publication in book form. While I was doing this, however, I broke my reading glasses and was thereafter hampered in doing ANYTHING on the computer. Today I finally got my replacement glasses and I am going back to doing blogs on a limited basis (The idea of arranging material for a book is on the back burner for now)
 
Here are the most recent links for FOZ, a more complete list for activity during the hiatus will follow:
Releases of October 1
New at Cedar and Willow:
Releases as of October 7
New at the Frontiers of Zoology:
New Releases as of October 9
New at the Frontiers of  Zoology:

At which point the regular publication schedule was resumed
Other blog entries from that day will be posted later
Best Wishes, Dale D.

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN OWES US A LIVING

The Gonzo Daily - Friday
 
I am running ridiculously late today, and for once there is absolutely no excuse that I can give. I am just catching up with all sorts of things and working in a linear fashion today. I interviewed Steve Ignorant this lunchtime, and he was as charming and erudite as I had hoped. I last met him about thirty years ago and was horribly star struck. This time round we talked about various new and old projects of his and expressed a shared love for Joni Mitchell. A really nice bloke. Whilst on the subject of music, my new album 'The Man from Dystopia' is now out. If you decide to buy it that would be fantastic, but it is now up on Spotify. I hope you enjoy it. Expect news of Animals & Men #51 within the next few weeks, by the way.
 

Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/10/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_11.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 - 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 54 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange) 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 orange cat?

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

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

From Nick Redfern's World of Whatever:

INAPPROPRIATE CORNER: California court affirms prisoner's right to werewolf erotica



Pelican Bay State Prison
Pelican Bay State Prison, where an inmate won back a werewolf erotica novel that prison guards had confiscated from him. (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times / November 30, 1998)

First they came for the Playboy magazines, and I said nothing, as I do not read Playboy magazine. Then they came for my werewolf erotica, and I could stay silent no longer. Can’t a locked-up interspecies romance fan read a little?
After two years of appeals, an inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison won back a werewolf erotica novel that prison guards had taken from him. The decision is a loss for prison censorship but a victory for all inmates with a soft spot for illicit love and interspecies intercourse.
When Andres Martinez ordered a copy of "The Silver Crown," a novel by Mathilde Madden about a werewolf hunter who falls in love with her prey, prison guards searched the book for sex scenes and, finding no shortage, confiscated it. Martinez is a convicted attempted murderer and an associate of the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Guards called the book obscene and likely to incite violence.
Now, in a 30-page decision alternately sterile and steamy, a San Francisco appeals court has ruled that Martinez has a right to the book. The court’s analysis is equal parts 1st Amendment commentary and dirty book report. (“The sex is sometimes rough but always consensual,” Justice James Richman wrote. “Women are portrayed as frequently aggressive, always willing, and seemingly insatiable. Men are portrayed as frequently demanding, always ready, and seemingly inexhaustible.”)

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

Yesterday’s News Today

On this day in 1976 the actress Emily Deschanel was born. Deschanel is best known for playing Dr Temperance Brennan in the T.V. Detective series Bones. Over its run Bones has covered a number of Fortean subjects, including cryptozoology and ghosts.
And now the news:


  • Dangers of mercury in whale meat highlighted by ne...
  • Sex is matter of life, then death for male marsupi...
  • Revealed At Local Seminar: Turtles Talk To Each Ot...
  • Not just bats and frogs: snake fungal disease hits...
  • Dolphin burgers for park visitors
  • Part of Brain That Makes Humans and Primates Socia...
  • Tasmanian devils have new US home
  • Pig and bird virus now being found in dogs
  • Invasive Mussel Not Harmed by Toxins, Invades Fres...
  • Shoot elephant poachers on sight, says Tanzania's ...
  • Ancient microscopic animals thrive in Idaho lakes
  • Sumatran rhino confirmed in Kalimantan for the fir...
  • Exotic migrant butterflies colonise the UK
  • DNA Tests Unlock Secrets of Mysterious Bryde's Wha...
  • Badger cull extended as kills fall short of target...
  • Evolutionary Question Answered: Ants More Closely 


  • The trailer for the cryptozoology episode of Bones: