Missing Link – Gone AWOL
We're breaking out the rum ration this week, as we are in a celebratory frame of mind. The reason? Your visual organs are currently consuming the 26th issue of 'Blather' - half a year old today. Now, on with the entertainment... In 'Baltic, Missing Links, Globs', Blather discussed news reports concerning the elusive Sumatran orang pendek, a primate which is alleged to have the ability to walk upright, a 'talent' previously only attributed to humans. What was especially curious about this spate of journalism was there seemed to be no good reason for the orang pendek to be in the news at this point in time - the report of Debbie Martyr's 1994 sighting seemed to be be a little late. . . which led Blather to wonder what all the fuss was about - and what sparked it all off. Author and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman was making similar enquiries,...
Bram Stoker: Stoking the Bonfire
Welcome, once again, to the literary crime sometimes referred to as 'Blather'. It has come to my attention, and of course, to the attention of many others, that a certain backlash has erupted against the works of Bram Stoker, author of 'Dracula', and the traditional celebration of Halloween, or 'Samhain'. Bram Stoker was born at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, Dublin on November 8th, 1847. Fifty years later, on May 26th 1897, the book with which he attained notoriety, 'Dracula', was published. He wrote a total of 18 books, most of which go unread these days, although several are on similar themes to his famous vampiric novel. Mild celebrations have taken place in Dublin this year, in commemoration of the two anniversaries. The Irish Film Centre had a weekend of vampire movies, the Bram Stoker Summer School took place in July and a stage version of Dracula was recently staged at...
The Smoking Cannon
Each Monday, I'm given to ponder on the content of each forthcoming 'Blather', often worrying there will be nothing particularly topical to discuss. Can a week go by without anything utterly bizarre happening? Fortunately, these fears are always rapidly put to rest, due to the Universe's unerring reliability in delivering some new fortean anomaly. A rather amusing, classically fortean story crashed onto the Blather newsdesk this week, in the shape of a cannonball. The 'civil war-type' missile tore through a window and two walls of Leonard and Kathy Mickelson's mobile home, in House Springs, Missouri, on Thursday night 16th of October, according to the Associated Press. Nobody was home when it happened, and the neighbours noticed nothing strange. Police are reportedly investigating the possible use of a small cannon, a weapon readily available for Civil War re-enactments. In an apparently unrelated incident reported by the Associated Press in Cincinnati, Ohio,...
Baltic, Missing Links, Globs
Welcome to Blather of the Baltic, playboy of the Skagerrak, who is now safely ensconced again in Blather HQ after some Scandinavian adventures, from which I returned relatively unscathed, save for the media exposure and arson accusations. Other points of note were the proliferation of mythical beasts adorning the beautiful architecture of Copenhagen (dragons with 12 breasts) and an odd column of black smokey stuff somewhere in the region of 10 degrees from the vertical, at about 35,000 feet (10,600 metres) above Jutland, seen from the window of the BlatherAir staff runabout. Some interesting news has been professed to me this week, first up is the somewhat disquieting news that Nicholas Cage and his production company Saturn Films, in conjunction with 20th Century Fox, are to making a movie entitled 'Tom Slick: Monster Hunter', a comedy adventure based on the oil tycoon who spent some of the 1950s and much...
Passports for Aliens?
Welcome to Blather, in particular all the people who signed up having found this weekly slippery soapbox through 'Cool Site of the Day' on Tuesday 7th October. In response to last week's defence of defamed marsupials, the Rev. Syd Jesus stepped in with an immortal Raymond Chandler quote, which was: 'as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket'. Also spotted was some delirious 1920's journalism mentioned in Bernard Heuvelman's 'On the Track of Unknown Animals' (ISBN: 0710304986), describing a brontosaurus which was apparently running riot in Africa (which prompted many expeditions to find the damned thing) as having a tail like a kangaroo. Quite a brontosaurus, especially when one realises that the sum of the description led one to believe that it looked more like a triceratops. With a kangaroo's tail. This week I'm afraid that I see fit to launch into a timely if somewhat hopeless...
Scapegoat or Spacething?
For many years now, I've noticed, with alarming regularity, the loyal sycophants and peasantry at Castle Blather tripping over their leg manacles and muttering such bizarre utterances as 'Huh, kangaroos, yeah, what next'. It was only last week that curiosity eventually got the better of me, and nothing would do but for me to whisk a collection of them off to the torture rooms for questioning. The shocking conclusion that I was appalled to reach, after they had been wheeled back to their cubicles and I had collated their wretched accounts, was that an alarmingly large quantity of reported anomalous animals had been described as 'kangaroo-like'. This puzzled me, since Captain Cook and his crew were reportedly the first Europeans to see kangaroos when their ship 'The Endeavour' reached Australia in 1770, which gave me to wonder, how did we describe the aforementioned mystery animals before this? As devil-like, or...
Irish UFOs: Beginning To See The Light
In last week's issue, 'Blather on Tour', I reported the strange chttp://www.westcork.comase of what could have been defined as an harassment by a UFO, which took place between Killarney and Mallow, in south west Ireland. But on Friday morning, as the Blather entourage arrived amidst the cheering populace to the gates of Blather HQ, we were greeted by a delegation despatched by the honourable Mr. Shane O'Sullivan, a native of the fair region referred to above. I commanded one of my sycophants to unfurl the scroll, and clutching my monocle with my highly developed eye-muscles, discovered that the document indeed carried information of not inconsiderable portent. Mr. O'Sullivan pointed out that a Killarney nightclub, 'The Dannyman' (Yes, that is the name), has an extremely powerful revolving light pointed in the easterly direction of Rathmore (the area of the apparent sighting). The UFO was seen at 1 a.m. on Saturday 30th...
Blather on Tour around Ireland
Even though last week's Blather popped into everyone's mailbox without incident, this Blatherskite was not actually at the helm -- yes, of course I did write it, but at the time of mailing, I was mountainbiking around Achill Island, in Co. Mayo, visiting Sraheens Lough, which made front page news in 1968 with a photograph of the alleged 'Achill Island Monster'. Unfortunately the only copy of the photograph that I've come across is in the National Library in Kildare St., Dublin, on the June 1968 microfilm for the Evening Herald, and it's totally useless when copied. My travels also took me to Sligo, where I met up with the honourable Joe Harte with whom I journeyed to the valley of Glenade in Co. Leitrim where I photographed the 'Dobhar-Chú' gravestone of a lady by the name of Grace (a.k.a. Grainne, pronounced Grawnya) McLoghlin, apparently killed by a 'master otter' in...
Giant Snakes in South America
In yet another amazing report from Reuters, a 'black boa constrictor the size of two passenger buses slithered by' the Peruvian village of Nuevo Tacna, deep in the Amazonian jungle. This creature was allegedly 40 metres long and about five metres in diameter, felled trees, and left 'a ditch wide enough to drive a tractor through'. There were five witnesses, and three hundred people felt its passing as it made for the river Napo. The reports were treated with skeptism by Peru's national radio stations, and it was suggested that heavy machinery was misidentified. This idea was dropped when the local authorities pointed out that the jungle in the area was far too dense for such mechanical goings on. The mayor of Mainas 170 miles (270 km) from Lima, Jorge Chavez reckons that 'there really is something to the villagers' versions' of the story. As far as I know, boas...
The Princess Diana Conspiracy
"If Christ Came Again He Would Die in a Car Crash' - J.G. Ballard" Are you fed up with the 'news' recently? Blather did really intend to ignore the death of Princess Diana, but due to a phenomenon which Blather diligently (honest!) examined in 'One of Our Bombers is Missing' , that is, the mushroom cloud of conspiracy which surrounds every high-profile death, I was compelled to start sorting through the insane plethora of conjecture and speculation. For instance, by Sunday morning, Irish time (famous worldwide for its elasticity), I got wind of the fact that a new newsgroup, alt.conspiracy.princess-diana had already been propagating around Usenet. So far, the Royal Family, MI5, the IRA, the CIA, the Vatican, the Freemasons, aliens, Elvis, JFK, the MIBs, Rupert Murdoch, Hillary Clinton, Iranian terrorists, and even the paparazzi have been blamed for the deaths of Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed. Other theories...