Causes for ConCERN

To be honest, I never expected to be posting this blog. To be honest, I never expected to make it this far. I kind of figured that CERN creating a miniature black hole would cause the end of the world, or at the very least make it so we we're living in some sort of post-apocalyptic Mad Max type scenario. You know, just to spite me and all. Hell, I was even willing to entertain the notion that time and space would break down and prehistoric monsters would rampage through the streets.

But no... CERN has come and gone and nothing. Not even some sort of vaguely ominous clouds, or dramatic music, or anything like that.

Go figure.

Between my Burmese class and my Paleontology class, I've been kept fairly busy. Actually, in the course of doing research for my paper, I've found theres quite a bit of overlap between Burma and the Indian subcontinent... over in Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, the Chittagong Hill Tracts. That part of the world. Especially when you get into the British Colonial period. Burmese expansion into the west is largely what provoked the Anglo-Burmese Wars! Of course, by 1824 the British Empire controlled all of Burma...

But I'm kind of burned out on that for the moment, as fun as it is to talk about head hunters and dacoity.

I've also been thinking I want to get some sort of crazy new animal, especially if it was something that I could freely allow to roam around my room. Ever heard of giant coconut crabs (Birgus latro)? Biggest land arthropod in the world, weighing some 10 pounds or so and with a leg span of three feet! They live pretty much all through the Pacific and Indian Ocean, from about say... Tahiti all the way west to Madagascar, and on most of the islands. Its pretty much a scaled up hermit crab. They also apparently have a thing about stealing silverware. How lulzy is that? It seems that the Okinawans even keep them as pets, which sounds about right for the Japanese.



I SO want to get one.

I also caught a frog the other day. In a shoe box, in fact. Named him 'hoppy' in honor of the episode of Monk that was on that day. Turns out the flooding is really great for wildlife. Worms, water bugs, frogs, shrews, turtles, all sorts of stuff.



Also looks like Uzbek journalista and activist Umida Niazova was in the news again, being honored with an award from Human Rights Watch International for her work. It seems that what I've heard about reporters who become stories having a hard time getting out of the spotlight is true. Then again, her whole trial was a political thing, really. I've found myself reading alot more Uzbek and Welsh news media lately, especially when I'm waiting around between classes.

Of course, BBC (or, the Beeb, as those in the know call it) is fun in general. I'm absolutely in love with the show Primeval, which some of my friends in other parts of the Anglophone world had known about for years anyway. I WISH we had dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures roaming about through the streets... how awesome would that be to bring, say, a family of Australopithecines to my Paleontology class? I work under the assumption A. boisei would help me study for class.

Not going to Chicago World Music fest this year... Really, its alot of things. I don't have the money, most of my time is getting wasted on other things, and to be honest I disdain being associated with a crowd of uncouth pseudo-intellectual yuppies who don't appreciate the fine art of the maqam. I know for a fact I can't make tonight's show featuring Mamek Khadem and Gaida Hinnawi, which was pretty much the only thing I even wanted to bother seeing in the first place, and I suspect I won't go see Gaida Hinnawi's performance tomorrow with Amir el Saffar.

EDIT: Screw wallowing in self-pity. Screw all ther drama and feeling sorry for oneself and the pathetic whining. Yeah, it sucks that I didn't get to go to Chicago World Music Festival this year. Alot, but I can't sit around crying over the past. It's done and gone, so no more. There will be other shows, other artists, other places to go and things to do. Gaida Hinnawi has an upcoming show at the Arab American National Museum and Mamek Khadem... well, there aren't really any good venues for Persian art/culture here in the Midwest, beyond maybe the Iran House of Greater Chicagoland. But whatever. Live and learn.

And yes, the new episode of Primeval did rock, thank you very much!

He Seyz Itz a Bigfoot Youz Guyz

I must apologize to my loyal fans minions for not posting in my blog lately, but current events have unfortunately seen to it that my attentions are focused elsewhere at the moment. Not the least of these being Russia's bellicose neo-imperial ambitions at expansion into the Caucasus region, perhaps intent on reviving the Soviet Union at the expense of Georgia. Then again, the Russians have never gotten along well with their Caucasian neighbors in the south (witness Chechnya and Dagestan). But I shall speak more on that later. Right now, I feel like blogging about bigger things.

Well, bigger feet at any rate. No doubt those of you who know me by now were wondering why I hadn't posted about the newest bigfoot hoax making its way through our modern world's mass media machine. Well, now I am, so stop complaining.

Like so much Forteana in this Goblin Universe of ours, the story of a 'bigfoot corpse in a freezer' first came to my attention late one night while I was passing the idle hours listening to George Noorey on Coast to Coast AM. Good times those. My immediate first thought was that they were talking about the Minnesota Iceman, one of the legendary, holy grails of Cryptozoology. For those not in the know, the story has some striking similarities with this case. It began in 1968 in Minnesota, when one Frank Hansen displayed what looked for all intents and purposes to be an apeman frozen in a block of ice. Unfortunately, his contradictory claims about whether or not he owned it, that he had both a real one and a replica, and regarding its origin (either it was shot by hunters in the Midwest, smuggled out of Vietnam in a bodybag, or found by sailors in Siberia) did little for his credibility. But two legends of Cryptozoology, Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, bothed examined it and believed it to be an authentic latter-day Neanderthal from Asia.



How sad, then, that this new apeman has none of the panache of his infamous predecessor. Perhaps to make up for this, though, his current proprietors have certainly provided just as many contradictory stories as Hansen did before them. Through friends in the media, I've been able to hear the 'press conference' that these two yahoos chose to give about bigfoot. Of course, they didn't actually show us anything, nor have they allowed any actual scientists to see him, so it was more like a group of people standing around talking about something which may or may not have ever happened. In fact, thats exactly what it was. The fact that the DNA tests came back human, human and POSSUM(!) does little to bolster their case.



Of course, their photos of the alleged sasquatch (or 'wood ape') make it look more like a surprise grab bag of old Halloween costumes mixed with assorted bits of road kill, so I suppose my expectations shouldn't have been too high in the first place. Let me just say, their press conference managed to take it to a whole new level of surreal, almost from the moment that the president of the PR firm introduced them using terms like 'youz guys.' One assumes he must have been a 'businessman' *wink wink* who would break your legs (or perhaps feet in this case) in his previous line of work, if you get my drift. Sometime between that and announcing all of the .coms involved in this, the vast majority of the press (save perhaps the good folks at The Onion) got up and left. They didn't miss much, beyond the two of them talking about going out to the 'backwoods,' nudge nudge, and being surrounded by a group of bigfoots. Or something to that effect.

At this point, a lesser man would make some sort of joke about what they were doing in the backwoods, but thats beneath me.

Loren Coleman was a guest on Coast to Coast that night, but even he couldn't really add much to this. Thats why I propose that the entire thing - the story, the fake body, the press conference, all of it - is part of an elaborate conspiracy to cover up the truth, no doubt instigated by the Illuminati, the One World government, the military-industrial complex and a cabal of international bankers. The entire story is otherwise too ludicrous and surreal to be anything else. No doubt they want to make us internet bloggers look like conspiratorial lunatics rambling on about pseudo-scientific nonsense in order to discredit us.

Perhaps as part of the conspiracy, or perhaps to cash in on the current news, History Channel repeated the newest bigfoot episode of MonsterQuest, focusing in on Native American bigfoot stories. Specifically the Nations around California and the Pacific Northwest, such as the Miwok. I found it to be a very interesting episode, in no small part because so few cryptozoology shows have focused on the oral histories of indigenous peoples.



As you might have guessed, I naturally gravitated to the UFO Symposium 3 put on by the Illinois MUFON, or Mutual UFO Network, in Tinley Park this weekend. Stanton Friedman, who has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and the Roe Conn Show this past week, was a guest lecturer, along with Donald Schmitt, Ted Phillips and Sam Maranto. Very informative.

I've also been watching the American premiere of Primeval on the Beeb. I'd heard of the show from my friends, who had seen the first two seasons already (bloody Brits). Brilliant! Thats all I can say. The newest episode, Stateside at any rate, featured Arthropleura, which was re-imagined as a sort of gigantic centipede. And an angry giant centipede at that. Almost makes me want to tear down the walls of time and space, so that I could get some sort of gigantic prehistoric horrors to step into the modern era. Just to keep them as pets, you know? Who wouldn't want a Spinosaurus, Zeuglodon, Deinonychus, Andrewsarchus, Dimetrodon or Eurypterid? Better still, I could ride a freakin' Arsionotherium to work! Now THAT would be a fitting image for your God-King, no? Even Alexander didn't do that, though one could argue his beloved mount Bucephalus was a monster in his own right (if the legends of anthrophagus horses are to be believed).

That should be enough to keep you lot entertained until next week, when I give some insight into the latest round of Russian aggression in the Caucasus. Just remember not to tick off any hairy ape men (or women, if you believe the stories about Zhanna) and you should be fine until then.