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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Saturday, March 22, 2014

RockNess not going ahead this summer

RockNess
As Michael Eavis will tell you, it’s good to rest your festival from time to time, and I think poor old Nessie deserves one summer off from all that noisy new fangled pop music (indeed, if the Daily Mail is to be believed, eight years of the loch side music bash has possibly led to the lake’s famous monster fleeing).
So yes, organisers of Scotland’s RockNess festival have announced that the event will not go ahead this year, because apparently there’s far too much sport going on this summer for people to be heading north for some musical good times...

CRYPTOLINK: The Vagaries of Loch Ness Monster Journalism

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

Paul Cropper sent me an interesting article from 1934 on the Loch Ness Monster as it was covered abroad. Paul himself is focused on more antipodean cryptids such as the Yowie, but he occasionally sends me anything he finds of Nessie interest. So, thanks again, Paul.

The article itself is from the Californian Fresno Bee publication of March 4th 1934 and is a syndicated article from London.


I am not sure if you can read the article (click to enlarge) but the gist of it concerns a monster hunt, the Arthur Grant land sighting and a few more sightings. The man in the kilt is Lord Scone, Member of Parliament and son of the Earl of Mansfield. Since we are told that the Loch Ness Monster was the talk of the Upper Classes and Lord Scone was a Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society, he was the perfect man to cover as he headed north to seek out the monster for himself.

Read on...

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN MIGHT DO SOMETHING

The Gonzo Daily - Saturday
I am ridiculously stressed at the moment with all sorts of things on my plate. But I am afraid that this is the way it goes. I have always done too many things at once, and when you add to that my impending Grandfatherhood, the death of an old friend, and the fact that one of my nieflings is seriously ill with clinical depression and another close family member has a painful illness, I suppose this was not the best week to decide to come up with a completely new format for a 70pp magazine in just five days. And that is just the start. I have a whole lot more on my plate that I can't and won't talk about in public, so folks please be gentle on me. These are very exciting times both for the CFZ and the Gonzoverse, and indeed everything else with which I am involved. Give me another week and all sorts of groovy things are likely to have been revealed. So be patient ladies and gentlemen.
Dweezil Zappa Shelving 'Roxy' In Favor Of Experiencing Hendrix
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/03/dweezil-zappa-shelving-roxy-in-favor-of.html
Reverence festival, Portugal reveals line-up including Hawkwind
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/03/reverence-festival-portugal-reveals.html
We are working hard on the next issue of Gonzo Weekly, which - errors and omissions notwithsanding - will be out later today in a swish new format. It has interviews with Tim Blake, Craig High from the Psychedelic Warlords, Cyrille Verdeaux goes native, plus Acid Mothers Temple, Joey Molland rembers working with John, George and Ringo, Mice on Stilts, Steve Hillage and more news, reviews, views, interviews and and London Zoos (OK, no metropolitan menageries, 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!!! We are also relaunching with a brand new layout and format for our 70th issue. We hope that you like it.
To make sure that you don't miss your copy of this and future issues make an old hippy a happy chappy and subscribe
http://eepurl.com/r-VTD
PS: If you are already a subscriber but think that you haven't been receiving your copies please check your spam filters. For some reason known only to the Gods of the internet, some e-mail programmes automatically count the magazine as 'spam' probably because it comes from a mass mailer. Either that or they are just jealous of our peerless content
PPS: WARNING: If you are If you are a subscriber using Outlook, Hotmail or Outlook Express, this issue of the magazine may come out with formatting errors. I have been mucking around with this for hours trying to fix it to no avail. If you have problems reading it, please use this online version.

*  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 an orange kitten 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 orange kitten?

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. 

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  • 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. 





    BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



    Bigfoot Evidence: Gurney Productions Looking For Young Cryptozoologists and Paranormal ...
    Do you go out looking through the woods for bigfoot, or maybe tromping around through dark and creepy abandoned buildings looking for ghostly ...

    Bigfoot Evidence: Watch: Todd Standing Bigfoot video as seen in Survivorman Bigfoot show with ...
    Here's the Todd Standing footage from Sylvanic that was featured on Les Stroud's Survivorman Bigfoot episode 1. On the show, Les didn't sound all 

    Bigfoot Evidence: Check out this intense trailer for Bigfoot Wars
    Eric S Brown's novel, Bigfoot Wars has finally been turned into a frighteningly terrifying movie. Check out the movie's first trailer here: ...

    Bigfoot Hunt
    Eliza Wiley Independent Record - Bill Henne, owner of Lawdog's Saloon in Elliston, sets off a flare to signal the start of the legendary Bigfoot Hunt in


    OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

    Yesterday’s News Today
    http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

    On this day in 1947 the author James Patterson was born. Patterson is best known for his detective fiction series like Alex Cross, Private and the Women's Murder Club. Being brutally honest his books aren't the best but his short stories are much, much better crafted I wish he would do more of them.

    And now the news:

  • There's no place like home for Burmese pythons
  • HerpMapper: New App to Create new International He...
  • Oldest fossil evidence of modern African venomous ...
  • A family of hoolock gibbons are relocated to safet...
  • Amphibian Diseases Flow Through Animal Trade - via...
  • Passive acoustic monitoring reveals clues to minke...
  • Man Develops Rare Reaction to Spider Bite
  • World’s biggest online ivory and whale meat retail...
  • Domesticated Camels Came to Israel in 930 B.C., Ce...

  • State-owned Chinese retailer suspends ivory sales
  • Patterson is one of the crime fiction authors who has made several cameos in Castle:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiRbPScb-n8