Pop Culture

Never Stop Asking Nessie Questions

Before this bit of news gets too old, I want to mention the seemingly funny media mentions last week about tourists in Scotland asking silly questions. The media had a bit of laughter over some questions from visitors, and, of course, Nessie was right up there at the top. According to a Travel Connect article entitled “Tourists Ponder Loch Ness Monster’s Feeding Times,” the tourism agency VisitBritain compiled “some rather puzzling queries from befuddled travellers.” As the headline to their article gives away, one inquiry they highlight dealt directly with the topic: One such visitor was evidently unfamiliar with the [...]

“Crypto Zoologists” Don’t Exist

Theeggfarm has many poems on their site, here and there and all around. Allow me to share, if I might, which I much appreciate, one just found: Untitled #8 (For Crypto Zoologists) by hybrid If every creature Rumored but Unproven By Crypto Zoologists Were given a stewin’ I’d hazard a guess that my favorite meat Would be tender morsels Of mermaid feet In reply and in the same tone, let me pen my very own: Mermaids Have No Feet (Untitled #1) by Loren Coleman Eggfarm No harm You made us two Words as the who But we are together Which [...]

“Yeti” Photographed

The famed coelacanth researcher and dinofish.com site author Jerome Hamlin sends along the above photographs. Hamlin writes: Here’s a picture of a “Yeti” that approached our car at a gas station in India last April! I thought of you when I snapped it. I was quite impressed by the outfit and in the heat. I think his idea was to approach tourist cars for money. He’s worth it. I have him on video as well, making hissing growls. I was also surprised by the cultural influence. Many of these far away places have learned to parody themselves in situ! Our [...]

Wunderkammer

Musei Wormiani Historia, the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm’s 17th Century cabinet of curiosities. Boing Boing co-editor and Cryptomundo correspondent David Pescovitz wrote a wonderful piece speaking of the chambers of wonders, the cabinets of curiosities, to wit, der Wunderkammer, which was published on New Year’s Day. As Xeni Jardin notes, his response was to the question: “What are you optimistic about?” David’s essay’s wonder-filled title is “We’re Recognizing That the World Is a Wunderkammer“, and some extracts from his thoughts spell out what I consider happening at Cryptomundo, The Anomalist, Boing Boing, and similar websites. David [...]

Footprints

This year is starting off with a bang regarding the Skunk Ape. First, I wondered aloud if it was time to ponder the Myakka case anew (please note, not "Port Myakka" as given below), and now this (first published overnight with a different headline, since updated here, as it appears in today’s paper): January 02, 2007 Miami Herald "Kids armed with cameras chase after the Skunk Ape" by Curtis Morgan The scene: the Everglades, mysterious in the darkness. Four college kids, armed only with a night-vision camera, trudge through palmetto thicket, guided by a snake-booted man who claims to have [...]

Maine Mutant #6 in 2006

An automobile travels the sparsely used Route 4 through the Turner, Maine, area, little knowing what it will meet around the next corner. It wasn’t a Stephen King novel, but a real-life incident that captured the media, first in Maine, then more globally last summer, into early fall. Lewiston, Maine’s Sun Journal published their 2006 year-in-review on the first day of the new year. Route 4′s “Mystery Animal” (a/k/a “Maine Mutant”) was on their list. Monday, January 1, 2007 Top stories of 2006 Tragedies dominated the tri-county news in 2006, with young people dying in car accidents, plane crashes, the [...]