Sad news on the sea monster front

Rampant menace to mariners since the ancientest of days, sea monsters seem to have fallen on hard times. Despite the largely unarguable facts that the ocean a) is the least explored (and hardest to explore) portion of the surface on the Earth, b) covers the better ¾ths of said surface area, and c) is host to a greater volume of surface traffic — that is to say, prospective human witnesses — than any point in history, sea monster sightings are at an all time low. Gone, it seems, are the days when giants rose from the deep to sink ships and test the mettle of seafaring adventurers. Their reign of fear over everyone from explorers to settlers, pirates to traders, fishermen to whalers began drawing to a close maybe as early as the civil war, as they slowly came to be replaced by the less natural hijinks of The Bermuda Triangle.

What happened to them? Did some shameful act of humanity drive them to extinction? Or perhaps simply drive them to deeper waters, where they warily avoid human contact? Or did they find means to hide themselves, and have assimilated into human society? Mysteries like this can only be answered with wild speculation.

Or so I thought — as would, I assume, any rational human being — until this popped up on Japanese TV in December, 2006:

Following suit with other bizarre, potentially horrifying Japanese movies, this one worked its way into English-speaking media some time later:

The sea monsters didn’t disappear, they just shrank. Sure, that’s a pretty big squid by Applebee’s appetizer menu standards, but it’s not really a sinking-the-Nautilus caliber monstrosity. Possibly anticipating this exact sort of disappointment, the reporters (well, the English-speaking reporter; I can’t vouch for the one speaking Japanese) casually mention that this squid is young, i.e., small, i.e., there are surely much larger squid out there far too crafty to be caught… some possibly as large as 1,000 pounds.

Which sounds mammothly, staggeringly huge, doesn’t it? 1,000 pounds, I imagine them imagining viewers thinking, that’s about as big as a full grown Brontosaurus, isn’t it? Because everything looks bigger in your imagination. Or Texas.

Well, it turns out that, as of yesterday, researchers in New Zealand can show you exactly what a 1,000 pound squid looks like:

That’s it? I’ve seen bigger seafood buffets, I found myself disappointedly thinking as I watched this story. Unless there’s a breed of super intelligent sharks big enough to eat a school bus hiding somewhere, I think all of the mystery of sea monsters has just about dissipated. I for one shed a tear for their passing.

Alien ‘light beings’ set up residence in Calgary

As reported by legitimate news source, NBC 10 in Philadelphia, this pair of perps has set up residence in an undisclosed neighborhood of Calgary (that’s in Alberta, for the geographically challenged (that’s in Canada, for the severely geographically challenged)):

While this may look like better-than-average work with a spray can, the fact that the figures move over the course of the afternoon and disappear when clouds pass overhead lead top scientists to speculate that they may in fact be a reflection from from the windows of the neighboring residence. At this point, this theory continues to be pure speculation.

Video you’ll have to click through to and above image courtesy of NBC10.com.

Artifact recovered from UFO incident in New Zealand

As reported by The Dominion Post, a resident of Hawke’s Bay, near Hastings, NZ, was fortunately in another room when this unidentified object crashed through the roof of their lounge (which I’m assuming is Kiwi for ‘living room’) yesterday:

Though the image caption on the site doesn’t specify, I believe the object in question is the one on the left. Says the report:

CAA spokesman Bill Sommers told NZPA an aeronautical engineer studied the part and found it was not from a plane.

“So we don’t know what it’s from.”

…

It would be “impractical” to consider that it had fallen out of the plane somehow, he said.

He also discounted the object coming from outer space.

“It’s not the kind of thing you’d want to put into space because it’s too heavy,” Mr Sommer said.

“So it’s a bit mysterious.”

• Unidentified? Check.
• Flying? Check.
• Object? Check.

Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you photographic proof of UFOs.

Argentine youths terrorized by… (wait, is this right?)

How many horror movies begin just like this?

A group of teenage boys.

Innocently hanging around, chatting.

About a recent fishing trip.

At one in the morning.

Scary as it may be for you, sitting in front of your computer in the safety of your home (or office if you’re slacking off at work). But for Jose Alvarez and his three amigos in General Guemes, Argentina, it was the beginning of a nightmare they could only find the strength to overcome by selling their footage to world-class British tabloid, The Sun.

Wait. That’s it?? How hard is it to keep your thumb on the record button while you’re either a) running like a sissie or b) having your entrails gnawed on by an illtempered, rock throwing leprechaun? Sheesh. Rookies.

Having done the bare minimum amount of clicking around the Internet that qualifies as ‘doing research’, it seems gnome sightings aren’t without precedent in Argentina or South America at large.

Says Cryptomundo, either by design or coincidence on March 17th, by the way:

South America, traditionally, has been populated by little hairy cryptids (Proto-Pygmies), as mentioned here. The 1950s’ reports of Latino ufonauts merge into beings who were often little and hairy. Does this gnome come out of this same background? It certainly seems like a hefty little one.

What I can figure out is why everyone’s singling out the gnomes as the prime suspects in this case? This is the worst case of stereotype profiling I’ve seen since, well… since the last time I was stopped by the MTA police in the subway (aka, last Tuesday) during rush hour so they could prove that they not only searched people who just look like terrorists, they also search bald white guys that sometimes wear ties, thereby proving that they couldn’t possibly be conducting racial profiling.

But that’s a rant for another day.

Back on topic, there are lots of people that wear pointy hats. Some are even short. Some walk with distinctive swaggers. So you see, it’s not just the gnomes, you backwater, gnomist hillbillies.

Campeche UFO sighting, four-year followup

It’s been four years since this UFO sighting by the Mexican Air Force made history as what the Mexican Defense Department (SEDNA) reported at the time as “the first time UFOs have had the backing of any country’s armed forces.” By which I assume they mean they support the people sighting the UFOs, not the extraterestrials on board, whose politics are still subject to debate.

This video’s a bit on the long side (6:36), but half of that is a reporter interviewing a UFO expert, and half is footage released by SEDNA. Note that while, true to form, the footage is blurry and low rez, the YouTubing process has taken it’s toll as well. Also note that, while many UFOs (or OVNI, in the language of the sighters) are simply flying objects that haven’t been identified, both reporter and expert are of the opinion these 11 objects are of intelligent extraterestrial origin:

Now, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s potentially-course-of-history-altering events that just go away. Dear Mexico: if you’re going to cry wolf, kindly take the time to either follow through and either release a plausible explanation of your flyboys’ honest mistake or put your recovered extraterestrial technology up on eBay. It’s common freakin’ courtesy.

After an initial flurry of reports (almost all recapping the AP release a few more digging out the press briefing with journalist Jaime Maussan, host of TV show Los Grandes Misterios del Tercer Milenio) this event just stepped back and disappeared into the fog. And while you’d expect a fair amount of skeptical rebuttal to a government-approved UFO, the only analytical analysis I could find was this detailed response by debunker.com author Robert Sheaffer.

To be fair, between them these sources cover both sides of the frosted mini wheat. Their reports collectively reveal that the objects weren’t visible to the naked eye, and that the footage was in fact thermal (aka FLIR), and that they didn’t show up on ground radar. Which explains the whole fuzzy-edged ball of light aspect. Maussan reports that the objects surrounded the jets in a ‘near circle formation’. Sheaffer explains the two brightest objects in the jets’ 8:00 position as flares from offshore oil platforms, and the remaining 9 as “probably trucks on the Yucatan highway.” Maussan’s account is sprinkled with words like “complete confusion and disconcert”, “out of control”, “mysterious” and “unknown”; Sheaffer’s has lots of citations and footnotes. Neither of which appears to have been compelling enough to prompt SEDNA t ofolow through.

Russians to offer cost effective vacation alternative to Area 51

As reported by trustworthy news source pravda.ru, the Russians are hard at work on the destination-vacation destination for UFO enthusiasts.

Situated a mere 125 miles from Perm — which appears to be the Eastern Bloc cultural equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle — the Spa at Molebka (my name, not theirs) will have all the amenities the discriminating UFO hunter seeks. Says Pravda:

UFO hunters will be placed in comfortable cottages for 20 – 40 dollars per person. Consider that 2 days in American UFO sanctuary “Zone 51”, NV, costs 500 dollars per person. Sanctuary administration plans to receive up to 500 tourists monthly.

So far, the Little A’le’inn hasn’t made public comment.

Objects in Space

So all of this ‘lunar eclipse’ business got me thinking. Let’s say you were scheduling a massive invasion of the Earth. Not one of those spontaneous invasions, like an interplanetary last minute vacation package, but one requiring a bit of planning and forethought.

Without getting into the specifics of such an invasion (Math and/or Science types, consider this your invitation to speculate wildly), I think we can agree on at least one point: invasions typically go better if you’re able to sneak up on your opponent. If you were sneaking up on the Earth, seems like the best way to do so would be to swing in from behind the closest heavenly body big enough to hide your invasion fleet, right? Don’t answer that — it was rhetorical. Now, if you were a truly anal retentive alien invasion planner, it’d make sense to schedule the actual event under cover of darkness, wouldn’t it? Sure, unless there were extenuating circumstances.

Possibly unrelated to any of this is this:

Coincidence? Or someone jumping the gun from the alien invasion start line? I leave it to you.

Tumbleweave sighted: Baltimore

Here we see a specimen of what, in Baltimore, is colloquially known as a ‘tumbleweave’: an artificial hair extension which has, through some happenstance or another, elected to make it’s own way, free of it’s host. This one, possibly originating continents away in a proto-religious Eurasian hairletting ritual, found itself hopelessly and aimlessly clinging to a patch of concrete in downtown Bowtimo. Possibly looking for a cameo on The Wire.

While undocumented before the 1980’s, sightings of wild tumbleweaves has grown rapidly in recent years; matching, perhaps coincidentally, a decrease in Bigfoot sightings over the same time period. Is there a indeed a connection? Sooner or later, science will surely have an explanation.