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.

What do you think?

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?

You can check out the promotional video here.

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.

Not to be outdone by their colleagues in Akron, Sandusky police arrested a man for mowing the grass in a public park after the cash strapped city had to cut back on seasonal maintenance. But while those charges may be dropped, the state still isn’t done embarassing itself or its citizens.

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.

Update on the Travis County Taser Story:

Sgt. Major Gary Griffin, Travis County Constable’s Office Precinct 3, applauded Deputy Chris Bieze’s actions by saying he “didn’t break nothin’.” (LINK)

You got that? Bieze didn’t break nothin’. That’s good. I’m glad he didn’t break nothin’. We’re all glad. Would’ve been too bad if he’d broke somethin’.

When Griffin said this, he was making the point that the woman should be glad Bieze used a Taser instead of a nightstick. People get hurt by nightsticks, you see, whereas it don’t hurt people none at all to get hit by a Taser. Don’t break nothin’.

It is revealed in the same story that Bieze is the Taser instructor for Precinct 3. Presumably, then, as the precinct’s resident authority on Tasers, he is aware of the potentially harmful effect of sending 50,000 volts of electricity into the neck of an elderly woman, to say nothing of the injury she might have suffered falling to the ground.

Yet he did it anyway!

You will recall that, earlier in the confrontation, Bieze shoved the woman—shoved her so hard it knocked her backwards a step or two, and could have easily knocked her down and broke somethin’. This was done for her safety, Bieze later said, to get her away from the traffic.

Which sounds dubious to me. Is this how you would have ushered an elderly woman away from traffic. Take the test below to compare your handling of the situation to the way Deputy Bieze handled it. It’s multiple choice, so it should be easy …

(1) You’re a cop. You’re trained to deal with the public. You pull over an elderly woman for speeding. She’s upset, refuses to sign the ticket. You order her out of the car. Once she’s out of the car, you realize you need to usher her away from the traffic for her safety. You have three choices. You can: (1) calmly explain why she needs to move and gently place your hand on her shoulder, (2) scream in her face and punch her violently in the shoulder, or (3) stick your thumb up your butt, waddle back to the squad car, and cram another donut into your fat swinish face.

(2) You’re a cop dealing with an upset elderly woman. You’ve just made the situation worse by screaming at her and shoving her. You’re also the precinct’s Taser instructor. You know that Tasering an elderly woman could cause cardiac arrest or that she could hurt herself and break somethin’ in the fall. Faced with the dilemma of how to get her to comply with an order, you have four choices. You can: (1) Taser her anyway and hope she don’t break nothin’, (2) use your nightstick and hope she don’t break nothin’, (3) stop barking orders and try using the calm tone of voice one usually uses when dealing with agitated, elderly, or infirm persons, or (4) radio headquarters with your immediate resignation and get a job more suited to your abilities, such as shoveling shit at the dog pound.

(3) You’re a cop. You have just Tasered a 72-year-old grandmother. All the bad choices in your miserable, worthless, futile, pointless, rotten life have led up to this unfortunate moment. What can you do now to redeem yourself? You have three choices. You can: (1) render aid to the screaming injured woman who for all you know, might’ve broke somethin’ when she fell, (2) continue to bark orders and threaten her with more Taserings even though it is now impossible for her to move, or (3) take out your Taser, pull down your pants, and shoot yourself in the ass, you fucking idiot.

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!

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

Website:  www.amdconline.com/Meetings.htm
______________________

HOUSTON
Lone Star Dowsers Dowsing Conference
Friday, 15 May 2009, 1:30 PM .  Address:

Days Hotel at 500 N. Sam Houston Parkway, Houston, Tx.  77060
Website:  www.dowsersmayconference.com

If you’re around, come on by!

Best wishes,

Paul
(Paul H. Smith)
www.rviewer.com

(a “because its Thursday” special)

So, Oprah Winfrey recently ended her “21 day vegan challenge” and decided to cap it all off by buying everyone chicken from KFC.

I’m not even going to point out the obvious “WTF?” factor in this action. I’m not vegan by a long shot. As a dedicated omnivore, I’ve no intention of giving up my cheese or the occasional hamburger. But my girlfriend is a vegan chef, and a very talented one at that (food photos here, NOM NOM), and so eating vegan at most of my meals is not only NOT a big deal, I frankly don’t “miss” anything. And I’m sure someone of Oprah’s resources had the best of ingredients at her disposal as well. Maybe she really was craving chicken after her 3 meat-free weeks (again, for me the biggest challenge would be cheese, as there are very few cheese substitutes that can emulate the taste and mouth feel of real cheese, but I digress.) However her publicity stunt crowded mind has launched a ship that’s sinking fast.

See, Oprah didn’t just want you to participate in her self-imposed vegan flogging (that is totally what I see her short flirtation with veganism as), she also wanted you to revel in your inner cave-man right along with her… haunch of flesh gripped between your greasy mitts while teeth tear through gristle and tendon. So, she decided to buy everyone in America a piece of chicken. (But grilled skinless chicken, because grilled fast-food chicken is somehow healthier than fried chicken maybe?)

The stunt, I’m sure something both Oprah and Kentucky Fried Chicken parent company Yum Brands thought was genius, has turned into a fiasco of epic proportions with customer’s rioting at understocked stores, and even staging sit-ins.  That is, its been a fiasco for those customers who could get the coupon for free chicken to print.

Remember that back in 1928, during the run up to that other economic crisis Herbert Hoover promised a “chicken in every pot”, and we all know how well that worked for him.

Maybe the next volume Oprah reads for her book club should be some kind of a history book?

The latest issue of the cryptozoologically themed Image Comics title Proof (issue # 18, on stands now) features a short interview with Sean Whitley, the writer/director of the forthcoming documentary Southern Fried Bigfoot, which discusses sightings of the Skunk Ape, Honey Island Swamp Monster, the Fouke Monster, and other southern hominids.

Keep your eyes peeled for an AnomalyMagazine.com review of Southern Fried Bigfoot as the premiere date approaches.

Proof # 18 is in stores now

Southern Fried Bigfoot premiers April 13, on The Documentary Channel

Bigfoot’s discovery is TBA

(For Parts 1 and 2 please visit the TBRC website at www.texasbigfoot.org)

by Michael C. Mayes and Jeremy D. Wells

A widely publicized study, authored by Mathias Osvath, a Ph.D. candidate at Lund University, seems to indicate some startling information about the intellectual capacities of the chimpanzee. In particular, Osvath studied the territorial displays of a captive chimpanzee named Santino. The observed behaviors of this particular chimpanzee seem to prove that apes are very much aware of the future and can plan ahead for it just as humans do.

According to a report on Osvath’s work in the journal Current Biology, Santino, a chimpanzee residing at Sweden’s Furuvik Zoo, collected a stash of rocks during periods of calm, stashed them away, and then hurled them at unsuspecting zoo visitors who gawked and laughed at his daily territorial displays. Because the enclosure is relatively rock free, and many of the stones Santino launched at visitors were covered in algae, it was inferred that he initially collected many of his stones from the waters of the moat surrounding his enclosure. However, in looking to supplement his arsenal, Santino went so far as to probe the artificial concrete “boulders” in his enclosure seeking weak spots. Once located, the chimp knocked off chunks of the material to add to his weapons cache. If the collected concrete was too large to easily toss, Santino worked at breaking it into more manageably sized pieces. Even more impressive is that Santino did all of his collecting in the morning hours before the zoo opened and waited until midday before raining down his collection upon zoo patrons.

MORE

Next Thursday, February 12, marks the 200^th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Few figures (if any) have had a greater impact on the course of scientific discourse and understanding, religious dialogue, and continuing public controversy.

This includes the controversy surrounding cryptids.

For some people, Darwinian theories are “proof” that certain cryptids are “impossible”. Ignoring (or misrepresenting) available evidence, they argue that certain animals simply can not exist because the design described by eye-witnesses doesn’t seem, in their mind, adapted to the environment where it was sighted. Ironically, some on the other end of the spectrum balk at the idea of cryptids because they are unwilling to confront their insecurities about where these creatures may have come from, or how they might have evolved to fill certain ecological niches.

It’s curious to me how people with conflicting ideas about a fundamental world-view can come to the exact same conclusion, from those different perspectives, based on nothing more than sheer stubborn insistence that their pre-conceived notions have explained everything there is to be explained.

It’s curious to the TBRC’s Alton Higgins too, who has given us permission to run his essay, “Bird Beaks, Bible Belt Biology, and Bigfoot” here at AnomalyMagazine.com.

I’m sure, were he still alive, Mr. Darwin would find it curious as well.

Bird Beaks, Bible Belt Biology, and Bigfoot

On February 12, 2009, the world observes the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. By any accounting, Darwin must be included with the most influential thinkers in the history of science. The young naturalist’s five-year voyage on HMS Beagle gave him an extraordinary opportunity to examine rich fossil beds and explore the diversity of life on many distant shores. Upon his return to England, Darwin spent the next forty-plus years contemplating his observations and writing books on a variety of subjects, including a four-volume set based on his eight-year study of the natural history and classification of barnacles, sessile marine crustaceans living in shallow water. In 1859 he published his landmark work, often abbreviated as “On the Origin of Species.” Contrary to popular opinion, the seminal premise presented in his book was not the concept or theory of evolution; the idea of descent with modification had been discussed for centuries. Darwin proposed a process, natural selection, by which populations might change. It continues to represent a central tenet of biology.

As almost any schoolchild can relate, variation in the beaks of Darwin’s finches, birds living on the Galápagos Islands, is one of the most prominently portrayed examples illustrating the influence of natural selection. Interestingly, at the time of his visit to the islands, Darwin was not overly concerned with the birds

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