When Aslan met Bagheera

 

From the X account Legendary Cryptids: "One of the only known cases of multiple cryptids being friends are the reports of black panthers and maned lions in America traveling together. A pair were spotted near the Illinois Indiana border in 1948 and in Arkansas in 1977."

They say Aslan and Bagheera are on the move...

Snakes in the sky

 

Kind of hard to believe, unless it´s a misidentified natural phenomenon of some sort. A skeptic suggestion at the time was that people in the Wild West were drinking too much moonshine!  

The sky serpents of 1873

Spooked by the light

 

An interesting episode of The Why Files, dealing with "ghost lights" and various explanations for this phenomenon, both skeptical and paranormal. Some kind of weird "natural" explanation seems to be the most likely take. Think ball lightning, electro-magnetism, that kind of stuff. 

Or it´s the fairies!

In Baphomet we trust

 

"Hail Satan?" is a 2019 documentary about the controversial activist group The Satanic Temple (TST) in the United States. Critics not featured in the docu claim that TST really are Satanists, or at the very least fascists, pretending to be a exotic but benign civil libertarian group. "Hail Satan?" takes a less critical approach, and essentially comes across as pro-TST. Make of that what you wish, but the production is still interesting. At the very least, it shows how TST *wants* to be seen, and as many of its individual supporters want to be seen. 

TST comes across as extremely eclectic, quite unlike the Church of Satan, which was obvioulsy a hedonistic and right wing libertarian group of provocateurs. By contrast, TST blend ACLU-like rhetoric with feminism, gay rights, street theater, sado-masochistic performance art, and more "typical" black masses. The SJW-ish tint looks strange on a supposedly Satanist group, and becomes even more weird when the members volunteer for community service at various venues! I also get the impression that the initial provocations get bogged down in legal red tape, while the group itself becomes more bureaucratized, and even starts expelling some of its members. The leader of an expelled chapter in Detroit brags about being too extreme even for The Satanic Temple, but in many ways, she is just a tiresome SJW with stereotypically "Satanist" paraphernalia (pig heads on pikes, and the like). 

The main activity of TST is to challenge a number of US states which has placed The Ten Commandments on capitol grounds, something civil libertarians argue is unconstitutional. To create commotion, TST demands that their statue of the horned "god" Baphomet (often seen as a depiction of Satan) should also be placed outside state capitols, a demand automatically withdrawn the moment the Ten Commandments are removed. At another point, TST demanded to read a Satanic invocation at a city council meeting where Christian prayers were regularly recited. The documentary shows how TST are challenged by Christian fundamentalists of various stripes (including the notorious "Tradition, Family, Property") whose understanding of the First Amendment is minimal at best. 

Interspersed throughout "Hail Satan?" are comments by scholars who argue that modern Satanism is trolling, or that the United States wasn´t founded as a so-called Christian nation. There is also some criticism of the so-called Satanic Panic of the 1980´s, and attacks by Christian fundamentalists on "Dungeons & Dragons" or heavy metal.

"Hail Satan?" does raise a number of questions. Can you LARP as a Satanist without *somehow* being influenced by the centuries-old Satanist "egregore", so to speak? Or has the egregore changed? Isn´t this kind of kitsch Satanism only possible in American suburbia, where there is relatively little obvious evil? Imagine showing up with a Baphomet statue in Mexico! And whoever heard of converged Satanists, anyway? 

Perhaps not the most objective look at the neo-Satanist problematique, but there you go. 

Pravda on the Potomac

Washington Post har visst misstolkat George Orwell på något sätt...  

Washington Post tror att "1984" var en instruktionsmanual

I stand with the cormorants

I love the way Senator Tom Cotton goes from writing "fascist" op-eds in the New York Times to balance Arkansas fish farmers and cormorants. He shouldn´t have caved to the woke mob by deleting his tweet! 

#I Stand With The Cormorants

Tom Cotton on the cormorants

Encounter at Ape Canyon

A review of "True Bigfoot Horror: The Apex Predator - Monster in the Woods" 

This is a collection of very short stories about violent or scary Bigfoot encounters. Like another reviewer, I have a faint memory that I've heard some of them before! But then, many Bigfoot tales are similar, so it's difficult to say without double-checking (I haven't).

The author writes under a pseudonym and tells us nothing about his own spooky Bigfoot encounter, but promises to do so in a future “second edition”. The stories he did include are from very different times and places, the oldest being a gory 19th century tale about a “war” between Choctaws and hungry Bigfoots in Arkansas. It's the only story I've seen which claims that Bigfoot abducts and eats children! The more recent tales were presumably related to the author by the eye witnesses themselves. However, since both Jeremy Kelly's true identity and those of his sources are unknown, the accounts are impossible to check. For all we know, they could be tall tales or pure fiction invented by Kelly himself.

If the stories have anything in common, it's the conviction that Bigfoot is dangerous and that we shouldn't enter the woods without a gun or enormous quantities of pepper spray. I admit that I didn't find them *that* interesting (except for the older tales, which are probably excerpted from other books), but if things squatchy is your thing, you might perhaps find them to be at least mildly entertaining. Another entertaining fact is that Kelly's book is currently the number one Kindle best seller in the “Primatology” category, something I'm sure will rub skeptics the wrong way…

Three stars.

He always travels the creeks

"The Legend of Boggy Creek" is a cult classic from the 1970's. It comes close to being a turkey movie, but somehow manages to stay clear from this questionable honour (just about).

Part documentary, part low-budget horror flick, "The Legend of Boggy Creek" confirms our most deep-seated prejudices about fly-over country. Set in the Deep South, in a small community where rodent-hunting, cow-ranching and bean-cultivation are the major pastimes (whenever the locals are brave enough to leave their trailers), the film tells the story of the Fouke Monster, a hairy giant roaming the swamps and scaring the living daylights out of pretty much everyone from teenage girls to stray cowboys. Country music plays in the background, while the narrator expresses his sympathies for the presumably lonely monster who simply wants some human company. Best lines: "Mary Beth, there's a draft on the baby" and "HE ALWAYS TRAVELS THE CREEKS".

All actors are amateurs from Fouke or Texarkana in Arkansas, and the film is based on real events, in the sense that a Bigfoot-like creature really was spotted in the area a few years earlier. Sightings have continued to this day, and the TV show "MonsterQuest" recently sent an expedition to track down the monster (unsuccessfully).

It seems the big guy got away. Hardly surprising, since he got three toes and is immune to hillbilly bullets!

I'm not sure how to rate this pop culture icon, but since I don't want to be followed by an armed posse of hooded cryptozoologists in the dead of night, I suppose I have to give it...five stars. :P

Science meets legend

In this episode of "MonsterQuest", the research team travels to Fouke in Arkansas, home of the legendary Swamp Stalker of Boggy Creek. The monster inspired the docudrama (or second rate horror movie) "The Legend of Boggy Creek", which is still something of a cult classic. Some of the people involved in the original events are interviewed by "MonsterQuest".

People still see the hairy intruder even today, so the TV show launches its own expedition into the swamps of southern Arkansas. As usual, they come up empty-handed. Jeff Meldrum (one of the few scientists who take Bigfoot seriously) believes that the weird three-toed footprints are hoaxes, and another set of prints seem to be human. However, the eye-witnesses stick to their stories, some of which are scarier than "The Legend of Boggy Creek"...

I admit that I didn't have time to watch the entire documentary (full title "MonsterQuest: Swamp Stalker"), so in the interests of fairness I give it three stars.

They're baaaaaack...

…and very little has changed. Unrepentant fans (not to mention “guilty pleasure” lurkers like myself) won't be disappointed. The team from the BFRO is still running around with thermo cameras in the middle of the night, shouting and screaming. The producer's ideas on how to get ratings up are just as absurd as usual: think Hawaiian luau + Bigfoot. And although the BFRO represents the “moderate” faction of Bigfooting, they believe the lot!

One episode features a couple in Florida claiming that the local Bigfeet are bringing them gifts, when they aren't busy pelting their house with rocks. Another episode report observations in the Santa Cruz Mountains, an area teeming with people. What would a flock of reclusive apes be doing *there*, I wonder? And how do they get away so easily after each dramatic encounter with tourists? Naturally, “Finding Bigfoot” also visits Boggy Creek…

The most recent episode (as of today) ends with the team actually getting a response to one of their calls, but a sudden thunder storm forces them to give up any further investigations. Damn. That was close! But then, anomalists of a more occultic breed have a ready explanation for such failures. The Trickster archetype, yes?

If you are a die hard sceptic, you will probably frown on “Finding Bigfoot”, but compared to many other series on American TV, I'd say this one is perfectly tolerable, with the possible exception of Bobo's anomalous friends at that barbecue mentioned earlier. Three stars.

BTW, these episodes are officially known as Season 4, not Season 5.

Previosuly posted as a review on Amazon. 

Macho dragonflies

(A review of the book "Dragonflies and damselflies of Texas and the South-Central United States" by John C Abbott) 

This is an extensive field guide to the odonates of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. It covers 263 species. Rather than illustrations, it features color photos of all species covered. I'm not sure if field guides with photos are better than the usual ones - I suspect they might actually be somewhat worse. But then, I don't commute to the Deep South looking for dragonflies...

Otherwise, the book contains the usual features of a field guide: checklists, keys, drawings of the appendages of similar species, etc. The species presentations include information on size, regional distribution (both the biotic province and watersheds), flight season, identification, similar species and references. The extensive list of references makes the book valuable for advanced students of entomology. Thus, it could function both as an identification guide and a reference work. There are also range maps. Both vernacular and scientific names of the various species have been included.

This is the only book on odonates I've seen which claims that dragonflies can actually hurt humans. The author claims that female dragonflies occasionally mistake the leg of a wader or river rafter for a plant when laying her eggs: "Though I have never experienced this first-hand, those that have confirm that having a dragonfly attempt to lay eggs in you is painful". Why haven't we been told this before? Are even the beautiful, sweet-looking, multi-colored dragonflies dangerous to our health?

Or are dragonflies in Texas particularly macho?

I'm not sure how to rate this book, since I haven't been anywhere near the Alamo, but I'm sure it's useful as a reference and general presentation of the species found in South-Central United States. For that reason, I give it four stars.