Is the Earth Quarantined???

Check this out, it's a bit far fetched but interesting nonetheless:
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Why haven't we met aliens yet? And why aren't we sending rockets all over the solar system? There is only one plausible explanation. Earth is being quarantined! A combination of higher alien civilizations and our own Earth-based military forces are working together to keep the Earth contained and neutralized. The reasons why they would do this are obvious, but where is the evidence? Below, we've got enough truly true facts to get your conspiracy engines revved up to maximum.

1. We have been located in a backwater part of the galactic rim.
To keep Earth inhabitants away from the rest of the universe community, our planet was stuck way out in the boondocks at the rim of a second-rate galaxy. Obviously only a higher alien intelligence could have done this, to prevent humans from leaking out everywhere and finding all the cool shit in the universe.

2. Space debris is a shield to keep us from hearing alien broadcasts.
You've heard that there are thousands of pieces of space junk orbiting Earth, posing a danger to orbiting spacecraft and creating a haze of garbage around the planet. Recently the Chinese government created infinitely more space trash by shooting one of its satellites, scattering its shattered body into orbit. What could be the possible reason for leaving all this junk in orbit, instead of cleaning it up? Obviously, our governments are using the junk as a deflection shield to prevent alien messages and craft from getting through. And this suits the aliens just fine, since they're quarantining us anyway.

3. Space-based weapons prevent aliens from wanting to bond with us.
According to Alfred Webre, a Canadian futurist and author of the recent book Exopolitics:

Star Wars and the militarization of space is part of the information war against the integration with Universe society. Star Wars is an "inside code word" for this war among the military planners. The issue is whether our space technology will be in accord with Universal principles, or controlled by a military empire. The USA will ultimately suffer ignominious defeat by Universe society should it persist as a space military power.

Well, that pretty much covers it.

4. JPL scientists who are in on the quarantine efforts helped perpetuate the myths that were reported in Wired about how we could "never achieve interstellar travel."
Why don't they want us to believe in interstellar travel? Why? These are space scientists, dammit — doesn't it strike you as odd that they are saying we shouldn't go to space?

5. NASA's launch of a suborbital rocket fails.
Today NASA launched a suborbital rocket, but had to shoot it out of the sky due to alleged "launch failure." Really? Could this actually be an effort to discourage suborbital rockets, which might break through the space debris and catch sight of the Universe society? As one blogger points out, NASA already knows about aliens. Thus, they're the perfect organization to make it seem as if there were "problems" on a rocket that was about to run into alien vessels.



6. Large Hadron Collider.
Seriously — need we say more? Any alien civilization worth its salt would know that when we start beaming subatomic particles through that giant, Swiss magnetic loop that the Terrible Events are about to begin. Stay the hell away from Earth when that happens.

7. Project Bluebook closed.
In the 1950s and 60s, the Air Force created Project Bluebook, an investigative project to figure out what all those UFOs were. Despite the fact that people continue to see UFOs every day, the project was shut down in 1969. Why? Was that the year that the government learned about the Quarantine and decided to pull the wool over our eyes?

8. Twelve missions to Mars failed en route to the planet.
Sure we have some satellites orbiting Mars now, and three robots on the surface doing measurements. But they're only in the quarantined areas. Whenever a satellite or spacecraft has tried to go near certain off-limits parts of the planet, they've mysteriously disappeared. Traces of them are never found again, even by the satellites that are supposedly photographing the planet in such minute detail that they can see this hunk of ice.

9. Global warming makes planet more comfortable for everybody.
Little-discussed fact about global warming: It will make all the least-inhabitable regions of the planet into a tropical paradise. Climate change is basically a massive, multinational conspiracy to get everyone so comfy on Earth that they never want to go to ultra-cold Mars or the even colder reaches of deep space. It's good when people believe they actually CHOSE to be quarantined, isn't it?

10. Fly Me to the Moon
This movie about flies stowing away on a moon rocket was actually a government-sponsored plot to make traveling offworld seem so awful that nobody would ever want to do it again.

In the face of such compelling evidence, you cannot deny the TRUTH. Somebody — or something — doesn't want us to leave the planet. We're being . . . quarantined!!!

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Sex for stuff

While she was studying in Brazil during college, the one thing Stephanie Gerson longed to do before leaving was spend time in the thick of the Amazon rain forest. Unfortunately, she couldn't find a tour that would take her past the forest's edge.
Survey at college finds 27 percent of men and 14 percent of women willing to trade favors or gifts for sex.

Survey at college finds 27 percent of men and 14 percent of women willing to trade favors or gifts for sex.

So, when a college-aged busboy at a resort she was visiting began flirting with her, she asked him if he thought a tourist could survive alone in the jungle.

"He laughed and told me I was nuts," says Gerson, 27, who works part-time in online marketing for a chocolate company in San Francisco.

Then he told her that he'd grown up in the jungle in a nearby indigenous community. That was all Gerson needed to hear. Although she wasn't attracted to the guy, Gerson flirted right back in the hopes that he would be her jungle tour guide. It worked. The busboy wormed his way out of work, and the two headed into the rain forest.

"It was amazing," Gerson says of her adventure in 2000. "We built our homes out of palm leaves, I saw animals I'd never seen before, he taught me the medicinal properties of all the plants, we picked fruit off the trees, we swam with and ate piranhas. And, of course, we had sex ... for almost two weeks."

Body currency system

Gerson never felt sleazy or uncomfortable with her unspoken arrangement with the busboy.

"It was a good barter both ways," she says. "I got to stay in the jungle, and he got to have sex with a cute, young American girl."

Such trades aren't so unusual. Throughout history, humans have used their bodies to get what they want -- from ancient Egyptian ruler Cleopatra, who cemented her power through liaisons with Roman rulers Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, to the man and woman who were arrested at a Fort Wright, Kentucky, motel in late June for allegedly swapping sex for gasoline. Regardless of our motivation, scientists say we're hardwired to use our bodies as a bargaining chip.

A recent study of 475 University of Michigan undergraduates ages 17 to 26 found that 27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren't in a committed relationship had offered someone favors or gifts -- help prepping for a test, laundry washing, tickets to a college football game -- in exchange for sex. On the flip side, 5 percent of the men surveyed and 9 percent of the women said they'd attempted to trade sex for such freebies.

And although they weren't hard up for resources, the students surveyed "recognized the value of this socioeconomic currency system," says Daniel Kruger, research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, who published his findings in the April issue of "Evolutionary Psychology."

"It's more about getting what you want than getting what you need," he says. "Unless you think everyone needs a $200 Louis Vuitton bag."

The handyman hookup

But unattached coeds aren't the only ones who barter with their bodies. Some professionals will attest that their skills are, well, sexy.

"Women are turned on just by the simple idea of their guy getting off his ass and doing something for them," says Rocky Fino, author of "Will Cook for Sex: A Guy's Guide to Cooking."

It works both ways, he adds.

"Give it to me first thing in the morning, and I'll play [handyman] all day," says Fino, a 39-year-old father of two and part-time construction worker.

Ben Corbett, a 39-year-old contractor from Boulder, Colorado, credits his tool belt with prompting the barrage of come-ons he fields from female clients -- most of them married -- on a regular basis.

"It starts with the flirting, and it just progresses," says Corbett, who has run a construction and remodeling business for 20 years. "They'll touch my hand, and there's all this physical contact. Or they'll run around in their pajamas."

"Once," he says, "I was painting the hallway right outside a client's bedroom, and she was lying on her bed like a girl at a slumber party with her legs up and her arms crossed and her head resting on them, asking me if I had a girlfriend.

"It's all about the fantasy of being taken by the rough-hewn construction guy," muses Corbett, who, despite the temptation, has avoided getting sexually involved with his clientele for fear of jeopardizing his business.

It's the biology, stupid

Call it crass, sexist or gender stereotyping all you want, but there are thousands of years of biological programming at work here, says Dr. Chris Fariello, director of the Institute for Sex Therapy at the Council for Relationships, a nonprofit relationship-counseling group based in Philadelphia.

Plain and simple, a partner who provides more resources -- wealth, shelter, home repairs -- is seen as more attractive and stands to reap more sexual rewards.

Or, as Fariello puts it, "I don't get anybody in my office who says, 'My husband sits on the couch all day and eats bonbons, and I want to have sex with him all the time.'"

2012: The end times ?

I'm not an alarmist. Though it is obvious that the world is coming to a head in terms of what it can handle socially, environmentally, and spiritually, I always focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. Trouble is, the tunnel seems to be lengthening these days, especially with the amount of attention and fervor people are giving to December 21st 2012 and its interpretation. Never mind that the Mayans themselves never prophesied an end to the world on December 21st, or that apocalyptic videos are everywhere on the Internet. Mostly it's people who have just learned about it that are making all the noise. People who have been studying it for a while are sitting back and watching the show.

I think most of us can agree that the last 25,000 years upon the Earth has been an extremely dark era. Yes, we have survived and thrived despite the trials afflicted upon us (by either Mother Nature or ourselves), but for the most part it has been by the skin of our behinds. One need only look at how frequently the entire world has been brought to nearly DEFCON 5 states of alert, where all it would has taken to reduce us to rubble is the simple twisting of a key and the pushing of a little red button.

So. The End Times. What are they? Well, first of all, having an "end" to time implies that there was once the beginning of time. And as far as I know, the only way that time can exist at all is via the rotation of our Earth on its axis and its subsequent revolution around the Sun. Time as we know it is measured by the hours separating light and darkness - by sunset and sunrise. Therefore, anything directly affecting the existence or our perception of sunrise and sunset (and therefore, the Earth's rotation itself) must directly affect time, thereby bringing about its End" (or our perception of it). Hmmm. Food for thought.

December 21st is also the darkest day of the year in terms of how short the days are in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, the darkest day at the end of a dark 25,000 year period symbolizes the tail end of something that has plagued us for millennia. And after its passing by into memory, what next? I think it is the return of something good. Something akin to Light. The return of Christ or a Christ consciousness? Mass extraterrestrial craft sightings and landings around the world? Whether one follows the Book of Revelations, the Mayan culture, or current New Age ideology, December 21st, 2012 has something to offer everyone, including Hollywood.

Consider that Roland Emmerich, an internationally well-known film director, is currently setting his chess peices across the board with studio execs to create his latest masterpiece; a 2012 movie with severe apocalyptic undertones.

In fact, this upcoming movie promises to occupy one spot behind The Titanic in terms of production costs, making it the second most expensive movie in history. And whether it's out of curiosity or boredom, like everyone else, I'll be curious as to what Emmerich and his team managed to come up with once it hits the box office in summer 2009. If almost as much money was spent on this than The Titanic, then it's bound to be good - computer CGI dramatizations aside. Hopefully there will be a good story.

The growing frenzy taking place around the 2012 phenomena does have a small island of stability: it isn't here yet.

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Portal to mythical Mayan underworld found

Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld. Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula. Archeologists say Mayans believed the underground complex of water-filled caves leading into dry chambers — including an underground road stretching some 330 feet — was the path to a mythical underworld, known as Xibalba. According to an ancient Mayan scripture, the Popol Vuh, the route was filled with obstacles, including rivers filled with scorpions, blood and pus and houses shrouded in darkness or swarming with shrieking bats, Guillermo de Anda, one of the lead investigators at the site, said on Thursday. The souls of the dead followed a mythical dog who could see at night, de Anda said. Excavations over the past five months in the Yucatan caves revealed stone carvings and pottery left for the dead. "They believed that this place was the entrance to Xibalba. That is why we have found the offerings there," de Anda said. The Mayans built soaring pyramids and elaborate palaces in Central America and southern Mexico before mysteriously abandoning their cities around 900 A.D. They described the torturous journey to Xibalba in the Popul Vuh sacred text, originally written in hieroglyphic script on long scrolls and later transcribed by Spanish conquerors.




"It is very likely this area was protected as a sacred depository for the dead or for the passage of their souls," said de Anda, whose team has found ceramic offerings along with bones in some temples. Different Mayan groups who inhabited southern Mexico and northern Guatemala and Belize had their own entrances to the underworld which archeologists have discovered at other sites, almost always in cave systems buried deep in the jungle.

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We may be aliens!

Genetic material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may well have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth, according to a study to be published Sunday. European and US scientists have proved for the first time that two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial. Previous studies had suggested that the space rocks, which hit Earth some 40 years ago, might have been contaminated upon impact. Both of the molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA," said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is another key part of the genetic coding that makes up our bodies. These molecules would also have been essential to the still-mysterious alchemy that somehow gave rise, some four billion years ago, to life itself. "We know that meteorites very similar to the Murchison meteorite, which is the one we analysed, were delivering the building blocks of life to Earth 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago," Martins told AFP in an interview. Competing theories suggest that nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Martins counters that the atmospheric conditions of early Earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible. A team of European and US scientists showed that the two types of molecules in the Australian meteorite contained a heavy form of carbon -- carbon 13 -- which could only have been formed in space. "We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoric fragments for use in genetic coding, enabling them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations," Martins said.

If so, this would have been the start of an evolutionary process leading over billions of years to all the flora and fauna -- including human beings -- in existence today. The study, published in Earth Planetary Science Letters, also has implications for life on other planets. "Because meteorities represent leftover materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components of life -- including nucleobases -- could be widespread in the cosmos," said co-author Mark Sephton, also at Imperial College London.

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Google streetcam catches drunken man on his lawn.

I have often done this, but never been caught, poor guy!
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A man who fell asleep in a drunken stupor on the grass outside his home was horrified to find his embarrassment posted on the internet.

He had been drowning his sorrows over the death of a friend and collapsed after climbing out of a taxi.

As he slept off his excesses, a car-mounted video camera passed by to record pictures of the street for Google's StreetView website.

Within days a photographic record of the neighbourhood and its unusual presence was available for worldwide viewing.

The new Google service has been at the centre of controversy over claims it represents a breach of privacy.

But the latest victim, who gave his name only as 'Bill', is not planning an official complaint.

'I'm not too happy about it' said Bill.

'I mean, I wouldn't have been there in the state that I was in, but I wasn't really thinking there would be someone driving by with a video camera on the roof filming me, either,' Bill, 36, said from northern Australia, where he is working with a fishing company.

'What do you do when you lose a mate like that?' he said of his pal, with whom he had been planning a motorbike holiday around the island of Tasmania.

'I know what he would have done if I left - he would have partied, too. That's what I would've wanted him to do so that's what I did with some friends.'

Bill said he accepted he could not expect to have complete privacy in a public street, but he questioned whether his embarrassing moment should be broadcast over the internet.

Street View was launched in Australia last week and since then there have been a number of complaints about what has been captured on the video camera.

One woman who wrote to a Sydney newspaper said she was mortified after logging onto the site.

'Both my parents were pictured outside their house, but my dad passed away a month ago,' said Janice Creenaune.

'While recognising that Google-time is never real-time, the image renews the raw loss,' she said.

Another letter writer, Elizabeth Maher was, however, delighted.

'While others may have legitimate complaints about Google publishing pictures of their house, I was delighted to view ours, with me pictured hard at work in the garden, complete with broom and bucket, thereby dispelling any uncertainty as to who is the gardener in the family.'

A spokesman for Google Australia, Mr Rob Shilkin, said the company had taken significant steps to protect the privacy of individuals, including face-blurring and tools for people to flag sensitive imagery for removal.

Since Bill's case became known to Google Australia, his embarrassing sleep-in has been removed from the site.

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Drugs, rats and memory erasing.

Hey if they can make rats forget their drug problems then maybe they can help me forget who I am so I can start a new life as a supermodel! I'd probably get addicted to crack anyways and they'd have do it again.

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Memory is one of the main reasons why drug addicts who have gone sober suddenly find themselves jumping off the wagon. Environmental cues like visiting a place where you were high can make you remember the drug and weaken your resistance to taking it again. But now researchers have discovered a way to selectively erase "drug-associated memories" and make it easier for you to just say no to the needle, pill, or pipe. It all has to do with interrupting the brain's process of "reconsolidation," or memory retrieval.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge cut down on the drug-seeking behavior of cocaine-addicted rats by giving them a chemical that blocked NMDA-type receptors in the brain. First, they gave the rats a bunch of coke while flashing a light. Later, when they flashed the same light, they inspired the rats to look really frantically for drugs and engage in behaviors that had gotten them coke before. And yet when the scientists administered a chemical that blocked the rats' NMDA receptors, the rats who saw the flashing light didn't start trying to get drugs.

NMDA receptors are associated with learning and memory. Researchers speculate that interfering with them affects with memory retrieval, blocking or changing the memories significantly. According to the Society for Neuroscience:

Several NMDA receptor inhibitors are already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including the cough suppressant dextramethorphan and the Alzheimer's disease drug memantine.

"This is an example of hypothesis-driven basic research that can be readily translated to the treatment of cocaine addiction in humans," said Yavin Shaham, PhD, at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an expert uninvolved in the study.

So drug addicts may be given the real-life equivalent of the memory-erasing technique we saw in The Manchurian Candidate. What I want to know is what exactly it feels like to have your memories tampered with so much that you no longer recall wanting to do a drug you've been addicted to. Do you literally forget taking the drug? Or do you just forget that it felt good?

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Getting Jiggy with Jesus!

Haha, this is just hilarious! Whats next, a low up Mosque? But seriously, what going on folks?

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This is so moronic but, then again, so endearing to my implacable love of kitsch. You and your boo can now get hitched in an inflatable church. Perfect for those English, Belgian, Dutch and Spanish couples who won't be celebrating Earth Month and assembled by the European promotional structure manufacturers Innovations Xtreme Inflatables, this monstrosity is also a 2004 Guinness Book inductee for being (according to the incredibly vague search engine synopsis) "...the world's largest inflatable church in the world". The damn organ is even inflated and they airbrushed the stained glass windows. Could lazy be any more as lazy does?

How cataclysmic it would be for the bride's heels to snap in half and collapse from being forced to walk to the chapel or (God effin' forbid) squeeze into the back seat of the limo and bend the heels because she had to sit with her feet on the floor mat sideways. And how disheartening it would be for the groom to waste a perfectly good handkercheif because it got up to 68 today.



Were any of you not pondering eloping to Belgium to get hitched, you do know you can have it transported to where you've designated you wish to get married, don't ya? Just write out a check for $50,000 and you can say "I do"--inside a ball pool. Mazel tov!

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Ghosts!

Check this out, it's scary! (if you believe it that is)

A photograph, which has captured a dark figure taken in the foreboding underground Crypt at Oxford Castle Unlocked, has revealed the paranormal does exist and confirms beliefs that the Castle is haunted. The photograph was taken on Friday 16 May by a member of the public at a ghost hunt organised by Fright Nights, the UK's leading ghost hunt specialist. The brave ghost hunter, who was alone in the Crypt at the time, took the photograph with his digital camera. Keiron Brown from Alton in Hampshire was astonished to see the dark shadow of a figure at the end of the corridor leading into the Crypt when he looked at the images on his computer after the event. The astounding photograph has since been analysed by experts at Fright Nights and at Oxford Castle Unlocked. Martin Jeffrey, Director of Fright Nights stated We were amazed by this photograph. Our analysts have shown that the figure is jet black and unusually not lit up by the flash, whereas the side walls and the wall behind it have visible lighting caused by the flash. We can also confirm that the figure is facing the camera and seems to have some form of hood, head dress or blindfold. We know that the Crypt was used for the storing of criminals especially those waiting execution, so the figure fits perfectly within the history of the Castle�. Fright Nights were granted exclusive use of Oxford Castle Unlocked in which to hold overnight paranormal investigations for the public since early 2007. The visitor attraction is thought to be one of the most haunted buildings in the country.

Throughout its dark history, the Castle has served time as a royal residence, a centre of justice and as the county Gaol, hidden from public view behind impenetrable 5 metre high stones walls until its closure in 1996. Martin continued, This photograph tops off a fantastic eighteen months of ghost hunting events at Oxford Castle Unlocked. We have had continual paranormal activity throughout the Castle that has inspired attendees to return over and over again.



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The Montauk Monster returns

There can be little doubt that the Montauk Monster is a media phenomenon this summer, and is even outstripping Obama, Morgan Freeman and Heath Ledger in gaining widespread short term attention. It überschwemmte (swamped, deluged) Cryptomundo and about every other site too.


While people like Gawker threw around casually the words “demon beast” or “monster,” as the first report surfaced, when I posted early on Tuesday, July 29th, and labeled this thing the “Montauk Monster,” magic happened. It reminds me of how, on a whim, I called the Massachusetts creature seen in April 1977, the “Dover Demon” and then saw it become history.

The Montauk Monster has generated more interest than people could have ever imagined.

Cryptomundo, which averages about 25,000-35,000 regular hits a day, when things are quiet, started showing increased traffic last Wednesday and Thursday, after I propelled the story to a broader audience on Tuesday. Cryptomundo got 1,210,695 hits on Wednesday, July 30th, and 1,519,624 on Thursday, July 31st, probably thanks to so many sites linking to the stories here.

Newsday has now related that their website crashed on Friday, August 1st, due to the interest their Montauk Monster story got on that day. Boing Boing, Rense, C2C, The Anomalist, and all the usual suspect blogs got more hits than expected by such a minor little story about a body on a beach.

It seemed to be the photos that did it. This despite our saying this was probably a raccoon on Wednesday, and pointing out animachina.com’s excellent photo analysis on Friday.

Looking at the Cryptomundo, I see the site got a whopping 3,390,024 hits on Friday. It seems to have been more than the host server could take, and the site crashed from early A.M. on Saturday until Sunday P.M., when it came back online. Were the almost 3.4 million hits just too much? (The intake capacity has since been increased.)

Did the Montauk Monster take down Cryptomundo? It would seem so.

Meanwhile, some comedians online just can’t get enough of the Montauk Monster jokes.

News Blaze guy Robert Paul Reyes’ “Top 10 Reasons Why Montauk Monster Should Be John McCain’s Vice-President” is, well, sort of funny.

“Only a dead person or a dead monster has less charisma than McCain. The senior senator from Arizona doesn’t have to worry about the monster upstaging him on the stump,” writes Reyes.

To be fair, I tried to upload a story that was headlined “Montauk Monster Fist-Bumps Obama” but it was being too slow and unresponsive, so I bet it’s getting too many hits. Maybe its a dead-link (pun intended).

Fox News summarized some of these happenings on Monday, August 4th, noting, for example, that “Animal Planet” wildlife expert Jeff Corwin proclaimed on FOX News Channel that “we’re all suckers.”

“What you think is a beak is actually the canine teeth,” Corwin told Fox. “What we have is an incredibly rare” — dramatic pause — “raccoon.”

Would there be any DNA tests to show definite results? New York magazine contacted the East Hampton Department of Environmental Analysis, which denied the town’s animal-control unit had disposed of the beast.




“It’s a raccoon,” DEA’s Margaret Carry-Smyth told the magazine.

Later in the day, the three women who said they’d come across the purplish flotsam a few weeks ago showed off a second snapshot of it on a digital camera.

“It exists,” Rachel Goldberg, Courtney Fruin and Jenna Hewitt asserted on local cable channel Plum TV (see video above), denying suspicions that they’d Photoshopped a picture of a dead dog.

But pressed by interviewer Nick Leighton about where the animal was now, what Fox News described as “the semi-glamorous trio” suddenly got cranky, repeating what they had, in essence, told several media outlets by then.



“It decomposed in our friend’s back yard,” said Goldberg. “It’s been since removed … by friends of ours.”

“You’re a little shady with the details,” observed Leighton. “You planning to write a book about this?”

Goldberg only shrugged and nodded with a faint smile.

“We’re hoping to have scientists contact us to find out what it is,” she conceded. “It’s in a box.”

Then an elusive friend of the trio’s popped up on one of FOX News Channel’s rivals, where reporter Jeanne Moos played a video she’d gotten from a young surfer-dude type who said the carnivorous corpse was in his back yard.

“We’re gonna try to have some experts analyze it,” Davis said as his buddies used a stick to hold up what looked like bones with skin still attached. “It’s a really cool beast.”

Meanwhile, Fox News mentioned, as you know already, the marketing team for a new energy drink called Venom threw up a blog offering a lifetime supply of their product for anyone who captured a live Montauk Monster.



Fox News today, even points to Cryptomundo to show the angle to prove the dead animal is, or was, quite male. They further mention, as you already have read here, that it is also clear from an examination of the decomposed head that it looks awfully like that of - pause, melodrama builds - a dead raccoon.

www.crytomundo.com

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The Montauk Monster and Christians!

Oh my god, it's more news on THE MONTAUK MONSTER!!! There's new photo's (of the same critter??) and more speculation. Hey it makes for an interesting read, but in the end that's all it is so far, speculation. I think it's a real monster and fuck me stupid and call me a moron if it's a fake! I choose to believe in these things, does that make me stupid? No stupider than the average Christian, haha!!! And at least I don't touch children(did I just say that, a little on the nose don't you think?).
In the end it'll probably be aliens who come down to save us from ourselves, not Jesus. Actually I saw a movie yesterday called 'The Mist', and there;s this character whos a crazy fanatical christian who you just hate so much. Anyways, she manages to rile up all the simple minded peoples against the main character and his friends, and they're about to get lynched when she get shot in the head. I almost jumped off the couch screaming 'YEAH BITCH, WHERE"S YOUR MESIAH NOW!!!'.

I don't hate Christians, I just don't like being told I'm going to hell for living my life the way I want to. Amen and a halleluyah to that brother!!!

Now for that monster!!!
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The Montauk Monster has created an Internet sensation. It is today’s #1 Yahoo search. It’s been on Cryptomundo, Boing Boing, and The Anomalist for days. It reminds me of the “Maine Mutant.” Sometimes these kinds of things have a life of their own, so to speak, especially if there is a compelling image.


Now we are seeing everyone under the sun piggyback (pun-intended) on the Montauk Monster. That’s okay. We’ve been here before. It is a cryptid, an unknown animal, until it is identified, of course, and that makes for a great story for the mainstream media, when they have a photo or even a few.



Of course, Cryptomundo carried news of this as soon as we heard about it three days ago, and, no doubt, contributed to spreading the news. Then we became positively involved through commenting on the Venom search for the “monster.”

The response has been generally good-humored and filled with crypto-intrigue regarding the fact Dr. Pepper/Snapple’s Venom Energy Drink would offer a bounty for the live capture of the Montauk


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Fight the Power, NZ style!

It's stuff like this that makes me proud to be a Kiwi. Good on you chaps for standing up where others would lie down. We did it with the Springboks, then in the 80's with our firm Anti Nuclear stance and now with this. I went to a few student protests at Uni, I know wht it's like, good on ya mates!! A small country that stands defiant, god bless my homeland!

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Fugitive Rice makes narrow escape in Auckland

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a narrow escape from justice, with the assistance of the New Zealand Police, in Auckland on Saturday 26 July. The police can now consider themselves accessories to war crimes. Rice met with government leaders in Auckland but was chased by 150 protesters spurred on by a bounty of $10,000. They called for her arrest, under the Geneva Convention, for war crimes and for her role in authorising the use of torture.

There was chanting, speeches and an impressive US flag burning outside Government House where Rice was meeting with prime minister Helen Clark and foreign affairs minister Winston Peters. The speeches focused on Rice's support for the illegal and immoral war in Iraq, as well as the wider and more nonsensical 'War on Terror'; her sanctioning of torture and instrumental role in setting up Guantanamo Bay; and on what a bad idea a free trade agreement with the US would be. Then the crowd relocated to the Langham Hotel, where Rice met with leader of the parliamentary opposition, John Key.

Auckland University Students Association had to withdraw the bounty it placed on the head of Condoleezza Rice two days earlier, under threat of legal action. However, the students association at Victoria University in Wellington doubled the price, offering $10,000 for a successful citizen's arrest. Although several people turned up to the demo with handcuffs, the chance to nab Rice didn't present itself. Police refused to cooperate in the arrest of this war criminal, giving the irrelevant excuse that she is a visiting dignitary.



Police had planned to limit protest at the Langham hotel by keeping protesters on the opposite side of the road, behind shiny new barricades that had obviously been bought specially for the occasion. What they hadn't planned for was a busload of protesters being dropped off at the bus stop outside the hotel. After fifteen minutes of chanting and yelling by protestors, the police claimed that standing on the public footpath outside the hotel, was a 'safety risk.' When protesters refused to leave, the police violently forced them off the sidewalk and out onto the road. Protesters were shoved, punched and thrown to the street and pain compliance holds used on several protesters to get them to move. Several were punched in the face, including veteran activist John Minto who was shoved to the ground by several officers, smashing and breaking the megaphone he was chanting through. Two protesters were arrested and one man was left bleeding from the neck and wrist.



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And here's what some jerkass wrote in reply:

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Good for the police

Jeremy(jsvanport@yahoo.com) 03.Aug.2008 07:36

A couple of points.
A: The police were right in chasing of the protesters. They were in front of private property.
B: If they had erm lets say detained Mrs. Rice they would have been charged with kidnapping.
C: Many would have died when her secret services(yes she has them) opened fire to protect.
D: If and once more big if, they had got her they would have been attaced by U.S troops.

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What an asehole! Here's someones reply which I quite enjoyed:

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Bad for all good people

sysiphus 03.Aug.2008 14:41

After placing Jeremy on the list of insignificant ignorant supporters of the war criminals, we must turn our attention to the courage, initiative and plain raw cunning and intelligence shown by the protesters. Thanks New Zealand!! You regain pride for humanity by your brave actions!! Next time maybe the psychobitch will not be as lucky and we can make the world safer for democracy by placing her in jail or under it...




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When will the killing end?

I've been keeping track of news regarding the murder and subsequent beheading in Canada last week. The nature of the crime is indeed horrible and gruesome, and I am truly sorry for the family and what they've had to suffer. I guess what I'm struggling with now is the 'why?' behind it all. It's so hard to gather the right info from news sources though so I'll not make myself look even more ignorant than I already am regarding matters of law and simply not speculate. It could have been cultural pressure, 'automatism', or he could just be a complete psycho. Who knows...

What I will say though is this, I am truly sorry for anyone who winessed it as I'm sure it will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Human beings kill each other alot, is there ever going to be an end to it?

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What's a Hipster???

I never knew what a 'Hipster' was, does that make me unhip? I think I have a slightly better idea now though, thanks to this article from Adbusters...
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Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

Take a stroll down the street in any major North American or European city and you’ll be sure to see a speckle of fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings, fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh – initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory.

The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.
This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.

Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.

Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.

“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”

Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.

***

“He’s 17 and he lives for the scene!” a girl whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He’s got a flipped-out, do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee and some popping high tops.

“Shoot me,” he demands, walking up, cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I show him the results.

“Rad, thanks,” he says, re-focusing on the music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.

The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.

Perhaps the true motivation behind this deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks, flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone worth momentarily immortalizing.

Noticing a few flickers of light splash out from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It’s all grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches, “You’re not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!” – which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.

In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary, they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.

What they may or may not know is that “cool-hunters” will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.
***

“If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck!” chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.

Dawn breaks and the last of the after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs, while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a nearby condo development.

The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new

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The Montauk Monster

More on the Montauk monster. Is it real? I'd like to think so, as scary as it may be. Though it's probably just a dog or something.

There's still more information to report on the mysterious decomposed creature that washed ashore on Long Island recently, if not any definitive answers. A slew of clues come from some actual, you know, reporting done by New York magazine, which somehow tracked down our original tipster, who again denied the photo is part of any PR campaign and said it came from "my girlfriend's sister was there with her friends and one of them took the picture." Then they talked to an eyewitness!

"I saw the monster," says Michael Meehan, a 22-year-old waiter at the Surfside Inn, which sits above the beach where the monster washed up. "I just came walking down the beach and everyone was looking at it. No one knew what it was. It kind of looked like a dog, but it had this crazy-looking beak. I mean, I would freak out if something like that popped up next to me in the water."

Animal control was called but apparently never came and an old guy carted the corpse away to "mount on my wall." Ugh! Someone has OUR monster!!

We also received any number of interesting emails, including this note from a creative director:



Monsterfakerevealed

"I saved the monster image and pulled it into photoshop. When you zoom into thepicture, the head/face is a different resolution than the body. The head/face is smoother and the body is pixelized. Also right at the top of the head where it attaches to the body, the image of the body and the head were not connected. If you look close you can see definite lines. I attached a pic of the monster head section enlarged with a square around the area in question. Notice the definite line where the two images were not fully filled in".

But for this to be a Photoshop hoax several people would have to be lying, including that friendly waiter fella, so let's move on.

We can safely eliminate the possibility of a marketing campaign by the Cartoon Network for Cryptids because a rep for the network wrote in to say "I can assure you it isn’t Cartoon Network." OK then!

We also heard from the blogger who posted the photo last week. He wrote: "I was given this picture back a couple weeks ago on the 18th. I met a girl at a party who said her friend actually found this thing and took a picture." This girl at the party was probably the sister of the girlfriend of the original tipster or whatever? Presumably.

But some people ae STILL not convinced this is anything other than viral marketing. Wrote one:

"The Montauk Project was/is a conspiracy theory favorite regarding everything from war-era attempts at mind control to open 'portals' that alien creatures come to earth via. There is a great deal of effort to make some tie in to the Philadelphia Experiment conspiracies. Considering the PE films I'm certain we'll soon be seeing the Montauk Monster in clever situations everywhere. Consider the Cloverfield campaign. That was advertising at it's best. False reportings of monsters in other contries,fake web sites devoted to making false things seem very real".

So, to recap, here's a quick rundown of the various theories, some of which we can eliminate:

* It's a viral marketing campaign for Cartoon Network: Officially denied.
* It's some other viral marketing: Only if that 22-year-old waiter is lying, as is the original discoverer when she goes on PlumTV tomorrow to talk about it. This would probably also mean our original tipster, who is now named in the New York piece, was probably in on the scheme and is thus lying.
* Gawker invented it: Someone mentioned this in the comments. Like we convinced all these people to go along with it? Just for some pageviews? That's wayyy too much work. It would be much easier to just have Blakeley do another mashup of TV news bloopers and so forth. Of course I can only speak definitively for myself.
* It's a turtle without the shell: Apparently this doesn't work because of the teeth. Or so say the comments!
* It's a dog that decomposed in the water: Still the most likely explanation. See especially the comments linked from Update 3 here.
* It can't be a dog because of the way it decomposed and/or because it has a "beak": The "beak" could be the result of cartilage worn away by the elements, no? And keep in mind that if a garbage bag or similar were placed over the dog before it went into the water, different parts of the body could decompose at different rates.
* It's a nutria: Interesting!
* You can't tell the size of the thing because the photo has no scale: Sorta true, but maybe this will help: The full resolution version of the photo makes it clear that the black dot-looking thing on the corpse's upper back is a mosquito. So this thing looks fairly small.

I have a feeling we'll soon all settle on it being a dog and feel terrible about staring at the corpse and so forth. But instead of getting depressed and returning to more mundane matters, like awful icky WORK, everyone will probably spin conspiracy theories about the MONSTER for a few more days because, hey, weird dead thing!

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