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...




Friday, December 20, 2013

DALE DRINNON: Almas, Frontiers of Anthropology, Benny's Blogs

These are the links as they stood before Blogger started eating my posts. I'll just have to see if anything sticks tomorrow. Benny has not had my problem with Blogger yet.

CARL MARSHALL'S HORNED HARE

After arranging the manufacture of Dr Karl Shuker's horned hare back in September I am now very pleased to announce that my very own example of this composite cryptid arrived this morning!

Known as a Jackolope in the US, the European horned hare actually has a rich history with many cryptozoological reports coming from the forests of Bavaria in Germany; and this atypical form, being so readily excepted by naturalists up until the late 18th century, was actually assigned its own parataxonomic name - Lepus cornutus, the Horned Hare, until various taxidermy specimens previously considered genuine were investigated more closely and conclusively proven to be fraudulent.   


This most recent horned hare was created utilising the remains of a mountain hare L. timidus and a roe deer Capreolus capreolus with neither animal being killed for the purpose of creating this cryptozoological curiosity.

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.



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:

NICK REDFERN: Weirdness of the Mothman Kind

moth

There can be very few researchers of the world of the unexplained who have not experienced, now and again, a sense that the phenomena they investigate sometimes manipulates them. For some people, it can be an exciting and illuminating experience. For others, it can be downright terrifying, and something which has led people to quit – forever – the world of the paranormal. I have experienced this sense of manipulation more than a few times, but last Saturday night things became downright crazy.

Right now, I’m working on a new book that includes a small overview of the Mothman mystery, which dominated the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 1960s. So, over the course of the last week, and even though I’m very clued-in on the subject, I have been doing a bit of additional research into the winged beast made most famous in John Keel’s classic study of the case, The Mothman Prophecies.

Well, as coincidence (or synchronicity) would have it, on the very same day that I began my research last week, I received in the mail a package of new books from Andy Colvin, the author of no less than five books (s0 far!) on Point Pleasant’s most famous monster. They are: The Mothman’s Photographer, The Mothman’s Photographer II, The Mothman’s Photographer III, The Mothman Speaks and The Mothman Shrieks.

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN GETS A LITTLE BIT FESTIVE (NO, THAT DOESN'T MEAN DRUNK)

The Gonzo Daily - Friday
 
Well, we survived it! Mother, Graham and I went Christmas shopping in Barnstaple yesterday and pretty well got everything that we set out to do. I am now sitting in the office typing away merrily, listening to Lou Reed and John Cale's 'Songs for Drella' slightly too loud, realising happily that I don't have to leave the village for the rest of the year. I am about to spend the rest of the day working on the Christmas issue of Gonzo Weekly - it's a particularly good 'un. Apart from that my Yuletide festivities will mainly involve playing with the dogs and reading Cold-War-era thrillers by the fire. A modicum of port may also be consumed. Yesterday in Lidl I found two sorts of cheese I had never heard of before, and buying those made me a happy fellow. As I get older my needs become far more simple.
 
Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/12/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_20.html
 
 
Richard Herring ponders what life would be like if Roy Wood got his wish and it really was Christmas every day
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/12/richard-herring-ponders-what-life-would.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?

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1946 Uri Geller was born. Geller is best known today for trying to sue Nintendo after they named a pokemon in his honour but in days gone by was known to bend spoons and fix clocks with what he claimed was a form of mind-power.
And now the news:

  • Seven Distinct African Crocodile Species, Not Just...
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  • Drivers warned not to run over Aberdyfi otters
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  • Now that Uri Geller doesn't bend spoons anymore this is our only defence against the spoon menace:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Dp2OfIT_M