Oh, the wonders of the internet! You never know what you might find, how far it might travel, and who might lay claim to it.
Recently a video has been making the rounds that shows some sort of blob-like, pulsating masses living in a sewer pipe. Whatever they are, they appear to be animal (although slime molds have not been completely ruled out yet) and despite their ability to move, they seem to be attached to the wall of the sewer pipes by some sort of mucous or film. In some portions of the recording you can see this mucillagenous layer floating in the water beneath the bulk of the mass. Early speculation at the Cryptoworld website ranged from bryozoan to freshwater jellyfish to tubifex worms. Although tubifex worms sometimes clump, they are an aquatic species and the blob shown on the video exists at least partially out of the water. Another popular explanation, bryozoans, typically create colonies of calcium structures, much like corals, however not all species do so. But while comments were still being posted and debates were raging about just what the video showed, a couple of television news sources surfaced, each identifiying the blob.
The only problem is, there are at least two different stations, from two different cities, in two very different parts of the country, both identifying the creatures as something found beneath their streets, and both offering different explanations of just what the blob is.
TV News 14, out of Raleigh, North Carolina is identifying the blob as a colony of tubifex worms found in a private sewer system by the Raleigh Public Utilities Department.
But Fox 31, out of Denver, Colorado went with the bryozoan explanation when they reported a similar story in January of last year, and quoted a water system worker who claimed this particular colony was actually residing in the Crestview Water System, in a pipe near the intersection of 76th and Pecos.
Although the images are surprisingly similar, it is defintiely possible that they are from two different colonies, filmed in two separate locations, on different dates. The images supposedly coming out of North Carolina, for instance, display a late April, 2009 time stamp. However, given superficial appearances and the habitat, its highly unlikely that they represent two separate organisms. Although I’m in no way an authority, or in any way qualified to make a defintive identification, based on what I have read about the life cycles and habits of tubifex and bryozoans, I’m leaning more toward the latter as an explanation for our mystery blobs.
Randomness, randomness, randomness is the order of the day today.
So, random ramblings and links.
CNN is reporting that Microsoft has announced they are giving a limited number of American consumers a limited opportunity to obtain cheap upgrade copies of Windows 7. After that date American consumers will have to pay full price for the OS that Vista should have been. As per usual, there will be a slight price break for those upgrading from the previous OS, and it looks as though they are extending this pricebreak to those who decided not to downgrade from the perfectly usable XP to the broken Vista. However holdouts using older versions of Microsofts Windows OS will need to pony up a little extra for the full version. Unless of course they are in Europe where, in order to comply with anti-monopoly statutes, Microsoft will provide browser free versions of the full software for the upgrade price.
Thanks for screwing your countrymen over during a recession Bill! We appreciate that! I mean, first you let us have Vista before its ready (at a princely sum, natch…) and now you’re gonna let us subsidize the bonus cash your losing for being forced to provide Europeans upgrades at a fair price. Thanks AGAIN! Capitalism rocks!
In other news, Michael Jackson may or may not be dead. TMZ (a source nearly as reliable as Vista is stable) has been reporting the King of Pop passed away last night after suffering a heart attack. Other news outlets refuse to confirm his death, but seem to have no problem leading off with headlines that read “Jackson Dead: according to unverified reports”.
We here at Anomaly won’t believe he is dead until we see the death certificate in news sources with just a touch more legitimacy than TMZ. But if it turns out reports are true, we are expecting a trend where Jackson death deniers claim he wanted to escape fame for obscurity, a la the King of Rock, and faked his death to that end. We’ll also expect reports of Jackson sightings to start pouring in from Las Vegas before the end of the month, (hopefully sharing fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches with the other King.)
*Update, CNN has confirmed that Jackson has indeed passed away. Our thoughts are with his family and children at this time.
Time now to go home, pull out the vinyl, put on “Off the Wall” and try to forget the controversies of the last two decades while the sheer unadulterated talent washes over us.
Max Klinger would have never stood for such nonsense!
On Thursday of last week we here at Anomaly Magazine commented on several odd run-ins with the law taking place in the state of Ohio. Not to be outdone, Toledo’s mayor has two odd stories in the news this week.
The first involves the 70 year old mayor, Carty Finkbeiner (and no, we didn’t make that name up, but we wish we had) breaking up a fight between teenagers in the park, even going as far as to call one kid back with “Come here fatso.”
The other story, one that we can’t believe we missed for the Thursday round up of “don’t Buckeye police have anything better to do”, involves the mayor and the city ticketing folks who parked in their own gravel driveways based on an odd law against parking on unpaved surfaces.
Not surprisingly the three term mayor is reportedly facing a special recall election in November.
This is what we think of your "community service", Buckeyes!
So, we missed the “because it’s Thursday” feature last week. Sorry about that. I had a whole thing on weird law enforcement planned, but I read Mack’s articles on the tasering of grandmothers and thought to myself “this is too serious an issue to dilute with frivolous arrest stories.”
But this week we’re back, and leading off with the neatest free, educational game I’ve seen in a while; Wolf Quest. I mean, where else are you going to find a game that encourages kids to “harass grizzly bears with your mate” and pee on things?
Now, on to the pre-empted police insanity; it seems that cops in Ohio really have too much time on their hands. I mean you’d think that with a failing economy, rising unemployment, and a prescription drug problem that had reached epidemic levels BEFORE the recession put everyone in crisis and desperation mode, they’d have bigger fish to fry. But not so. No, Ohio is intent on excercising all due dilligence to ensure that responsible citizens learn to stay in their place! And that place is apparently NOT contributing to the good of their communities.
First, we have the 81 year old Akron man, a retired construction worker, who dared share his experience with road crews and even give them a hand prepping a pothole in front of his house for patching. His reward? A charge for criminal damaging.
In the southern Ohio town of Reading, for example, the police are earning the citizen’s tax dollars by harassing business people over their decorations. Specifically a bikini clad mannequin that has the prudish elements of this Cincinnatti area enclave fuming. I suppose when you’re bitter that your gerrymandering to get rid of a popular Democrat Congressman not only doesn’t work, but that same Congressman leaves the House of Representatives and takes over the Governor’s seat, you got to get your kicks where you can*. Good on you Cincinnatti. Now you can be known for something besides your racism and disappointing sports franchises.
Finally, wrapping up our Ohio weirdness, we have a 90 year old widow from the Columbus area causing a stir when she attempted to donate a WWII artillery shell to the Motts Military Museum in Groveport. Although her husband had held it in their home as a souvenir, without incident, for over 60 years after receiving it in appreciation for his service during the war; her donation led to the bomb squad being called out until it was confirmed that the shell was safe.
Luckily for her, Ohio broke its pattern of punishing a sense of community and history and didn’t arrest her.
*For those from outside the state or region, there have been several attempts to kill the working class Democratic hold on the southeastern portion of the otherwise red state, usually from redistricting to dillute the strongly Democratic portions of the state by placing small swathes of them in largely Republican districts, as occured when the western part of Scioto County, where Strickland’s ancestral home stands, was moved from his Sixth District into the strongly Republican Second District of then Congressman Rob Portman.
Here at Anomaly Magazine, we’re learning to love our “Because it’s Thursday” features. We all hold down full time jobs. This is a labor of love for us. But because it isn’t our job, it’s easy to let it slide when things start getting hairy. The Thursday feature reminds us, at least once a week, that we’ve got this red-headed step child sitting over here waiting for some of our attention.
Plus, Thursdays have held a soft spot for me since college. My alma mater, Shawnee State University, was on the quarter system instead of the semester system. This meant they were always tweaking the scheduling, trying to find the most efficient arrangement. At one point classes were scheduled either on Mondays and Wednesdays, or Tuesdays and Thursdays, with lab and studio times available on Fridays. This essentially meant Thursday became our Friday, and a ritual of Thursday night drinking and debauchery ensued. When my group of small town co-conspirators decided our irregular poetry readings and open mic events needed to happen on a monthly basis, we continued our Thursday tradition, and the Third Thursday Open Mic for poets and musicians was born. As we got “real jobs” and founding performers started moving away, it became more difficult to maintain. But we still found time to dedicate one night a month to the celebration of Thursday, and, at last report, new generations of college students in small town southern Ohio are keeping our Third Thursday event alive and kicking.
It’s apparently not just me and my friends that have a soft spot for Thursday (or Thor’s Day). I have it on good authority that football fans love it because a lot of games are broadcast on Thursday. People start getting geeked for Friday. And in Austin, it’s not the alliterative Third Thursday, but the First Thursday of every month that brings celebrants into the street to experience art, music, and community.
And then there is this guy, 41 year old Peter Bielecke, who liked to rob banks on Thursdays.
To each his or her own I suppose. Me, I’ll stick with poetry and music. I don’t think I’m so keen to know what kind of Thursday rituals they practice in the prison system.
What kind of Thursday traditions do you practice or know about? Share them with us in the comments section or start a thread in the Anomaly Forums!
I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it. — Wilhelm Reich, father of the concept of orgone energy and inventor of the orgone accumulator
Reuters is reporting that Russian authorities have assumed custody of a five year old girl who has spent the majority of her life locked in an unheated flat in the Siberian city of Chita with a group of dogs and cats. The child, who authorities assume to be around five years old despite stunted growth that makes her appear to be around two years of age, is non-vocal and exhibits dog-like behavior, such as barking and jumping at doors whenever care takers leave the room. (More at Reuters.com)
The girl, who is being called “Natasha”, is far from the first documented feral child. While the mythic founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus (who legend claims were suckled by a she wolf after being saved from death by having their basket set in the Tiber River and washing ashore Moses style) are among the most famous of the feral children and Rudyard Kipling’s fictional Mowgli, from the Jungle Book, lends his name to the syndrome for children who adopt the characteristics of animals they grow up with; there are several documented cases of actual feral children. These cases include:
There are also a number of children who, while not technically “feral” in the sense of being raised by animals, have been abandoned due to mental incapacity and then had the feral child myth constructed around them (such as the famous Indian “wolf girls” Amala and Kamala) or otherwise held in isolation by their parents or care-givers. In addition there are a number of unsubstantiated or poorly documented stories out of African nations , especially those savaged by years of war such as Sierra Leone and Uganda, of children raised by apes or monkeys after losing their parents.
There are also the outright hoaxes, usually of the carnival side-show variety where a physical or mental deficiency was exploited for monetary gain, however there are enough verifiable accounts to make the phenomenon an intriguing study.
diorama from the American Museum of Natural History, in NYC
It’s long been believed that the bite of the Komodo dragon was lethal because of the potent stew of bacteria found living in their mouths. But, as it turns out, the dragon’s bite would prove lethal even if the beasties brushed, flossed, and rinsed daily. Australian researcher Brian Fry located the big lizard’s venom glands via magnetic resonance imaging, and then successfully extracted them from a terminally ill dragon at the Singapore Zoo. Although the poison elicits a variety of reactions, the deadly combo seems to be a drop in blood pressure and an anti-clotting agent that causes the victim to bleed out, resulting in a victim too lethargic to resist the dragon’s attacks.
As we start winding up (or down) for the weekend, let’s take a moment to indulge in a little monkey business, just because it’s Thursday.
Let’s start with this bit from Dallas, TX where a contractor doing lot work for a Montessori school uncovered an out of place primate skull that bears a bit of a resemblance to the skull of a small baboon.
Out of place monkeys are nothing new to Texas. A troupe of Japanese macaques, brought to the state from around Kyoto to protect them from extermination by angry merchants fed up with their thieving, had some folks concerned about the potential for wild breeding populations establishing themselves in parts of south Texas after they began wandering outside the sanctuary they were relocated to in 1972.
But how this skull came to be buried in a north Dallas suburb remains a mystery.
We’ve also recently heard news about an orangutan (well known escape artists) short circuiting a security fence to escape an Australian zoo, as well as news of female gorillas using hand claps to gain the attention of offspring and mates and of apes using sticks to procure honey (part four in the TBRC’s Great Ape Behavioral Parallel series).
Speaking of the Great Ape Behavioral Parallel, my co-author of part three, and the author of part four that we reference above, Michael C. Mayes, has his own excellent cryptid related blog, Texas Cryptid Hunter, that is worth checking out. Recent articles include an examination of the gorilla clapping, as well as a wonderful vignette describing Teddy Roosevelt’s post-presidency experiences on the Amazonian tributary known as the River of Doubt.
Cryptomundo, or course, is still most folks “go to” source for breaking cryptid news (author included) but another cryptozoologically themed website that might be worth adding to your RSS feed is Cryptoworld. This UK based cryptid site features intriguing, regularly updated links, and is becoming a favorite “quick click” site for my lunch break web surfing.
So there you have it. A little down and dirty monkey business to jump start your weekend. Enjoy the links. Have fun. And try not to throw any feces at the scofftics.
Dowsing Talks in Texas with Remote Viewer Paul Smith:
Folks–
Here’s a heads-up. I will be giving a presentation on dowsing in two different locations this coming week. The talk will be “The Remote Viewing/Dowsing Connection,” And I will be giving it on the following days at the following locations:
AUSTIN
Austin Metal Detecting Club
Thursday, 14 May 2009, 7 PM. Address:
Woodlawn Baptist Church
4600 Manchaca Blvd.
Austin, TX 78745
Posted July 2, 2009 
Comments(0) 
Here at Anomaly Magazine, we’re learning to love our “Because it’s Thursday” features. We all hold down full time jobs. This is a labor of love for us. But because it isn’t our job, it’s easy to let it slide when things start getting hairy. The Thursday feature reminds us, at least once a week, that we’ve got this red-headed step child sitting over here waiting for some of our attention.
I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it. — 
Dowsing Talks in Texas with Remote Viewer Paul Smith:
If you’re around, come on by!
