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, November 07, 2014

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:
From CFZ-USA:

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: African lion may be protected by US Enda...
  • NEWSLINK: Thailand tiger park reopens despite tour...


  • NEWSLINK: The big cat running out of lives
  • NESSIENEWS (Caveat Lector)



    Nefarious Nessie plan surfaces amongst usual crop of odd and eccentric British tales
    Scheme to hunt Scottish Loch Ness monster down and mount beast's body in London makes headline news in official organ of St Petersburg ...

    THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN PREVARICATES A BIT

    The Gonzo Daily - Friday
     
    Being the editor of a weekly music magazine is a strange position to be in. I stopped reading Q magazine over ten years ago as I found it getting stodgy, self congratulatory and irritating as well as concentrating less and less on the sort of music that I personally liked and more on bands like Oasis and Kasabian that I found mildly irritating. The Word was much better, but was beginning to become smug when it ceased publishing some years back, and I never forgave them for their Tony Blair interview. I have been reading Mojo pretty much since it started, but this month I found myself wondering whether their editorial team and mine were actually living in the same universe. There are two recently released albums - Yusuf Islam, and Steve Ignorant's Slice of Life -  which I think are not only magnificent but worth serious discussion. I have given them extended essays in the forthcoming issue of Gonzo Weekly, whereas Mojo dismissed them with three stars and a cursory paragraph. A third, Neil Young's latest was also dismissed fairly peremptorily this issue whereas, I believe that considering its historical importance both stylistically and lyrically within Young's canon of work, and for its eco-concerns, deserves a bit more than the brief review it got in Mojo. Hmmmmmmmm.
     
     
     
    Steve Hillage, Supertramp, Jon Anderson, Yes, Joy Division,  Hawkwind, and Daevid Allen fans had better look out! The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#102) IS available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.
     
    It has Steve Hillage on the cover, and features an interview with him inside. But there's more! There is news about Daevid Allen, Doug Harr critiques the Supertramp live DVD, and people make wild speculations about a new Galahad side project. Xtul are still in the deep woods, and Corinna finds a brilliant board game from the Swinging Sixties. Jon muses on Peter Hook's recollections of Joy Division, and we send Carl 'Blue' Wise to a desert island and Jon is very rude about the third album by The Ting Tings. There are also new shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the massively talented Jaki and Tim are back with their submarine and Maisie the cow. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and turtles having a snooze (OK, no soporific chelonians, 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/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 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?

    MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A FLYING MAN OVER MACCLESFIELD: IS IT ME?!

    http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/news/bird-plane-no-its-superman-7965793

    Ladies and Gentlemen:,in June of this year a flying man was seen over  Macclesfield tho` the story has only just hit the air waves(Groan!!) and media. Was it Dr Devo advertising a remake of Devo`s song `Space Junk`? Was it Owlman? Who knows!

    The story also reached that dreadful Tory rag,sorry,that erudite organ The Daily Mail with 664 responses.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2798083/is-bird-plane-no-s-mystery-m
    an-flying-past-airbus-passengers-flew-macclesfield.html

    Dr Devo.

    BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



    Scottish Bigfoot is a Hoax Using Pictures From Another Hoax
    Declared a Bigfoot in Scotland, this was originally a Hoax in Pennsylvania. Obviously hoaxes are frowned upon, but how this single picture was able

    ThurstonTalk

    Find Bigfoot at Quinault's Sasquatch Summit
    Many know the Pacific Northwest has had numerous Bigfoot stories, but nowhere is as active as Grays Harbor. From the wilds of Wynoochee to the ...

    Bigfoot Investigator Captures Video of Unidentified Creature in New England
    N.H.– A Bigfoot investigator released footage early Thursday of an unidentified animal at an undisclosed lake in the New England region.

    Southeastern Ohio Society For Bigfoot Investigation Meeting
    Southeastern Ohio Society for Bigfoot Investigation will meet Saturday, November 8th @ 7:00pm at the Crossroads Branch Library, 63500 Byesville

    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.


    NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Friday

    ON THIS DAY IN 1989: Protests force out East German rulers
    East Germany's Communist-dominated government has resigned - the first time such an event has occurred in the country's 40-year history.