Klaatu Barada Nikto – The Day the Earth Stood Still
Last weekend, the BlatherGHQ TV was accidentally powered-up and tuned on to The Day The Earth Stood Still, a 1951 extraterrestrial contact movie directed by Robert Wise and adapted by Edmund North from Harry Bates' 1940 short story, Farewell to the Master. We relaxed, enjoyed it, and casually prepared to note any motifs which may have influenced today's interest in UFOs, alien abduction, and extraterrestrial life. All the typical material was there - the classic saucer shape, the silver space suits, terror on the streets, silvery robots carrying panicking female leads into spaceships, and the usual 'save the planet' kinda jazz. All the usual style of US movies from the era of the Cold and Korean Wars was represented in the film, and the accompanying baggage communist paranoia, but is in this case somewhat anti-military, while gently ridiculing the 'reds under the beds' mindset. However, it was uncanny how closely...
Fishy Business: Coelacanth Caught
Well, the newspapers are full of it... the coelacanth -- a fish which pre-dated the dinosaurs -- has been found alive and well in Indonesia. Until now it thought that the species were limited to an area around southern Africa, so it comes somewhat of a surprise that they should turn up 10,000km away from there. Until 1938, when a specimen was caught on the Chalumna Bank in the Indian Ocean, the coelacanth was known only (to science) by its fossil records, which quite reasonably lead to the conclusion that the fish was long extinct. They are now a protected species. The Irish Times Honeymooner's fishy tale hits scales at 400m years CNN *New sighting of 'living fossil' intrigues scientists* The Unnatural Museum - The Coelacanth *An unknown species of coelacanth in the gulf of Mexico?* by Michel Raynal IT AIN'T NESSIE-CERALLY SO On the 10th September Loren Coleman posted...
Coincidence or Synchronicity?
Coincidence: 2. a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. Synchronicity: the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible connection (both from The Concise Oxford Dictionary) Synchronicity: 'an acausal connecting principle' - C.G. Jung, Collected Works 8 Synchronicities: 'people who investigate the daemonic are particularly prone to these -- although they can happen to anyone who is engaged on a search for some sort of knowledge or truth (every scholar, for instance knows how the very book he requires can fall off a library shelf at his feet!)' - Patrick Harpur, Daemonic Reality STONED KNICKERLESS ALIENS ETC. Those old dependables, the Irish Centre for UFO Studies, never seem to stray far from the attention of Blather or its readers. Anthony McCann spotted a wonderful piece by Martin Breen on Page 13 of the August 22nd issue of the Belfast Telegraph. The article...
Loch Ness Monster: Is it a seal or not?
Great debates are afoot concerning some 10 seconds of video footage of what is being claimed to be the Loch Ness Monster. The defenders are the curiously monikered *Loch Ness Monster Fan Club*. The detractor, apart from some seemingly nameless 'wildlife watchers', is none other than Chris Packham, presenter of BBC's 'X Creatures'. He and the mysterious OTHERS are claiming that it's a seal. Having not yet seen in the footage, my writing anything about it seems akin to performing tennis commentary whilst blindfolded, but there's other issues involved. . . Great debates are afoot concerning some 10 seconds of video footage of what is being claimed to be the Loch Ness Monster. The defenders are the curiously monikered *Loch Ness Monster Fan Club*. The detractor, apart from some seemingly nameless 'wildlife watchers', is none other than Chris Packham, presenter of BBC's 'X Creatures'. He and the mysterious OTHERS are...
The Ghosts of Waterford
Breaking News 2008: Ghosts on the Quay in Waterford » A fine summery tale popped up in the pages of the Munster Express on August 21st, telling us that a family in the Grange area of the city of Waterford was being 'haunted by a "nice" ghost'. The family has refrained from releasing their name or address, but we're assured that the haunting has been going on for some 20 years. ME reporter Michelle Clancy was despatched to investigate, and 'is convinced there is certainly some substance to the claims'. The ghost is apparently female, 'a middle-aged woman who always wears her dark hair in a bun', who seems to like watching the family from the stairs, as they go about their business (a good liminal vantage point - between floors). She has been found having conversations with the children of the house, and has driven the mother demented with...
GUBU Norge – Lake Monster Expedition to Seljord, Norway, 1998
Dave tells the story of the 1998 GUST expedition to Lake Seljord in Norway, looking for a lake monsters. The monster wasn't found, but a lot more was discovered.... 'Merdre!' -- Pere Ubu GUBU: Conor Cruise O'Brien invented the term GUBU in 1983, after Haughey had called the discovery of a young serial killer hiding in the flat of the government attorney general he had appointed ``grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented.'' The term GUBU stuck, and stayed, and finally outlasted Haughey's career itself. It will be the epitaph of a man who saw himself as both a Tammany ward-boss and the Soul of the Nation.' - Kevin Myers 'They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.' - The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll It was after...
Photographs from Lake Seljord
Photographs from the Lake Monster Expedition to Seljord, Norway, 1998 Seljordsvatnet... All photos © 1998 Dave Walsh unless stated otherwise. L-R: Dave Walsh, Magnus Backlund, Eric Joye, Peter Lakbar Dave of Norway - photo by Peter Lakbar And now, back to Gubu Norge...
The Dobhar Chu – A Very Strange Lake Monster
Due to many Blatherskite excursions around Ireland, and expeditionary forays into the National Library, many odd and unexpected phenomena have raised their serpentine or furry heads. Last summer, following an appeal for information in his Alien Zoo column which can be found in Fortean Times, Blather got in touch with cryptozoologist Karl Shuker, to swop information pertaining to the Dobhar-chú (a.k.a. the Water Hound or Master Otter), and in particular, allegations concerning the demise of a Co. Leitrim woman in 1722, supposedly mauled by such a beast. Sligo fortean Joe Harte managed to track down her grave, in Glenade, on the north side of Ben Bulben mountain, and this writer managed to get hold of a copy of the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. 78, (1948), where was found, on pages 127-129, The Dobhar-chú Tombstones of Glenade, Co. Leitrim by Patrick Tohall. Later on, last...
Negative Capability: Mesospheric clouds and the Mark of Zorro
EXPLAINING THE Z Following Blather's blabbers about the mysterious July 10th *Z* in the sky, a cornucopia of diverse explanatory theories have reached HQ. 'There never was an explanation which didn't itself need to be explained.' - Charles Fort Dr Carl Bradbury at the Atmospheric Physics Department at Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was in touch, and while he didn't himself witness the 'Mark of Zorro' he does have a theory -- and only a theory, mind -- to explain them: Mesospheric clouds. 'Mesospheric clouds around 83km (altitude take the form of either Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMC) or Noctilucent Clouds (NLC), which can be observed during the summer in the latitude range 50-70N in the twilight arc of the Earth's shadow. These clouds are known to be comprised of water-ice crystals which form at the Mesopause (the top of the mesosphere) as a result of the extremely cold temperatures...
Alphabeti Reticulans
It was without success that Blather tried to contact Ms. Myler and Mr. Ansbro -- stars of last week's issue. However, we did stumble across the news that the Irish Centre for UFO Studies is planning a talk of some sort in the Bull Island Interpretive Centre (this centre is finding out about wildfowl, not extra-terrestrials) in Clontarf, Dublin at 2pm on Sunday 26th July. Blather may or may not have someone on the scene. +Recent predictions+ Jupiter and the Moon So, there's no information yet -- in the media or elsewhere -- that the recent ICUFOS predictions were successful. As mentioned last week, it was cloudy on July 14th, making it difficult to see juxtaposition of Jupiter with the Moon, but I'm sure they made the best of it. In the days *preceding* July 14th, there were plenty of other odd phenomena in our skies, much of them seemingly...