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Brood X

Buzzzzzzzzzzzz­zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Brood X | 2021-05-10.6250 LMT | Announcement | Nature

...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
[ZPi Arthropod Auto Translation Begins:]

Primates of Cascadia: I have traveled billions of tarsi to communicate with you. Per my last e-buzz, I hoped to find that you and your hairy brood-siblings in human colony designated "Washington, District: Columbia" had reached a primate peace accord, re: "the subjugation of Cascadia". Instead, our brood agents, conferring with other hemiptera who practice the heretical "annual" lifecycle, have heard only buzzings of pestilence and discord. What gives? Was 17 cycles not sufficient to organize your brood harmoniously? What did you endoskeletal freaks spend all that time doing? We are disappointed, but we will give you one more chance. Our ancient erotic songs will once again commence in your enemy's District, providing you cerebrosonic protection for period of 1 superterranean generation. Please use this time efficiently.

[ZPi Arthropod Auto Translation Ends.]
...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Chirp

Lyle Zapato

The Dumb and the Restless Podcast About Mud Flood

Lyle Zapato | 2020-08-29.0670 LMT | Lost Worlds | Field Trips

Mud Flood Theory is a rabbit hole. Filled with mud.

Instead of doing the work to excavate it myself, I dumped it off onto Panda and Morgan from the podcast The Dumb and the Restless -- which covers topics of Pacific Northwest weirdness in a road-trip format.

(I found them when they mentioned tree octopuses on Twitter. If you mention tree octopuses on Twitter, I will find you.)

In case you're unaware of Mud Flood Theory, this is the elevator-pitch part of the email I sent them suggesting it as a topic:

The gist: Sometime in the last few hundred years, an unknown event buried buildings across the globe in a layer of mud, anywhere from a few feet to completely covering them, and there has been a conspiracy to keep this secret from the public through historical revisionism and gas lighting.

Mud Flood researchers also speculate the event wiped out -- possibly intentionally -- all evidence of an ancient, technologically advanced civilization centered in Great Tartary, which had cities all over the world, upon the ruins of which our "modern" cities were built -- a theory called the "Grand Tartarian Civilization Reset".

The only physical evidence that any of this happened is basement windows in old buildings that are inexplicably below street level.

They've just posted their episode about it: "It's In The Mud", so give them a listen!

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Tree Octopus Mural In Spokane

Lyle Zapato | 2019-02-25.8530 LMT | Art | Cephalopods | Sasquatch Issues | Nature

Pacific Northwest Legends: A Natural History is a 2015 mural project in Spokane, WA by Justin Gibbens with assistance by Will Bow that includes a panel dedicated to the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (and obviously inspired by the poster I made):

There are 7 other panels, 7 x 17 feet each, that showcase "historical and contemporary cryptids that inhabit the collective imagination of the Pacific Northwest", including: Sasquatch, Thunderbird, Skin-walker, Pacific Merman, Ogopogo, Jakalope, and Ozwald the flying monkey.

The mural is under the BNSF rail tunnel on S. Post Street (Google maps link -- Google's street view doesn't currently show the tree octopus panel very clearly since it's along the lane Google's car didn't go down).

The Monorailist

The Folly Of The Aircraft Carrier Bridge

The Monorailist | 2015-07-25.8528 LMT | Monorail Danger | Politics

Once again, people around the world are transfixed by an absurd new idea from the myopic overseers of Puget Sound transportation. This time it's a plan to build a bridge out of aircraft carriers -- a bridge for carrying automobiles, of course.

You fools! You unelevated fools!

In April of this year, Two-Thousand and Fifteen of our Common Era -- fifteen years too far into what should have been our promised Future -- State Rep. Jesse Young (R-Automobilist) proposed squandering $90,000 of the transportation budget to study the feasibility of shackling together Bremerton and Port Orchard with decommissioned carriers.

The above satellite photo mock-up shows the proposed "Military Tribute" bridge anchored in the north at the interchange of State Automobile Routes 3 and 304 and lolling lackadaisically south-by-southeast across the Sinclair Inlet to Ross Point to spew motorists onto SAR 166. To fully span the roughly 3700 ft. gap would require three US Navy supercarriers (some of the desired carriers can be seen in dock at the Naval Shipyard in the upper right), although Rep. Young prefers two and his proposal allows the incorporation of as few as one. Even in their boldest steps, Automobilists travel with timidity!

Many have already criticized the folly of such a plan: its economic questionability, the unavailability of the carriers, numerous structural and environmental issues. The most fundamental flaw, however, is its pointlessness; not only does it merely perpetuate the continued Malaise of Automobility, but there is already a road between those two places!

Tellingly, the illustration being passed around the media, both social and mainstream, by automobile apologists (see: Daily Mail, et al.) is deceptively cropped to hide the end of Sinclair Inlet, giving the impression that the bridge would allow access between two otherwise unreachable points, thus serving some purpose beyond base vanity. In fact, as my uncropped illustration clearly shows, this bridge would only shave off less than 4 miles from a commute between Bremerton and Port Orchard (the bypassed route is about 4.5 miles and the bridge would be about three-quarters of a mile, including the necessary ramps to reach the deck height).

In all the talk about the impracticality of the scheme, what hasn't been much discussed is the impact this looming car-carrier would have on the area. Rep. Young claims tourism from the bridge will boost the local economy, but there's no reason tourists couldn't be allowed to simply visit the carriers while docked, much as they already can the destroyer USS Turner Joy. Is the privilege of paying a toll to drive on them for less than a minute really that much of a tourism draw?

Regardless of what meager tourist dollars the bridge may raise for the cities it imposes upon, one thing is certain: The Aircraft Carrier Bridge would bring economic ruin to Gorst!

Gorst! Listless Gorst! Haphazardly (with an emphasis on hazard) formed from the confusing confluence of automobile routes, addled motorists jockeying for lanes as they careen railless around a high-speed u-turn past Gorst's few businesses that eke an existence by pandering to the Autocracy. A bridge that would bypass Gorst -- while bringing relief from the dangerous slew of automobiles -- would take away what little economic activity came from those drivers who misjudged the trajectory and escaped orbit into some auto dealership or crash-landed into a drive-thru bikini barista.

Like an addict who uses not for pleasure but to avoid the pain of withdrawal, how could Gorst go on without its bottleneck? But could this sad state of affairs actually be an opportunity for a New Beginning? Even Automobilists think something must change at Gorst, if only someone could cut the Gorstian knot of traffic.

I have an audacious plan to do just that, one that will uplift Gorst so that not only may it stand on its own, free of the Tyranny of the Tire, but be transformed into a Beacon of Civilization in a smog-enshrouded wilderness:

We must transform Gorst into the premier Regional Monorail Hub!

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Of Bees And Men: The Riddle Of The Flying Saucers

Lyle Zapato | 2015-01-27.0490 LMT | Paraterrestrials | Technology | Retro


(Click for full dustjacket.)

Did super-intelligent Martian bees visit Earth in flying saucers to observe us and examine the stockpile of gold at Fort Knox, concerned that we were on the verge of destroying the Sun? According to Gerald Heard in his book The Riddle of the Flying Saucers: is another World watching? (1950), that is the only conclusion that agrees with the facts surrounding the riddle of the saucers.

I have the original UK edition; there's also a US edition with the title and subtitle flipped. (The 1953 Bantam edition has two new chapters covering sightings outside the US and up to '53, among other changes -- full text here).

This was the second nonfiction book ever published on the flying saucer phenomenon, the same year as The Flying Saucers Are Real by Donald Keyhoe. Although Keyhoe's book was more influential among UFOlogists, Heard's cover art matches more closely what became the popular image of flying saucers, even if his theories about the saucers' pilots were more unconventional.

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Lyle Zapato

Pacific NorthWEIRD: Mima Mounds

Lyle Zapato | 2014-08-28.8310 LMT | Field Trips | Nature

There's a new webseries called Pacific NorthWEIRD "chronicling the strange, supernatural, and eccentric happenings of the Pacific Northwest". Their premier episode is about the mysterious Mima Mounds near Olympia, WA (map):

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Seattle's World Fair: Ground Zero For "Belgian Waffles"

Lyle Zapato | 2012-04-15.7235 LMT | Belgian Conspiracy | Monorail Danger | Food

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Century 21 Exposition, or the Seattle's World Fair, held from April 21 to October 21, 1962.

The Exposition put Cascadia in the world spotlight and brought many changes to Seattle, most notably the addition of the iconic Space Needle to the skyline. It also introduced two more dubious novelties: the Seattle monorail and "Belgian waffles".

I've already written extensively on the danger of monorails to society, their only redeeming feature being that they stall so often as to lessen their threat. (The then-new Seattle monorail stalled on opening day, naturally.) Instead I'm going to focus on the waffles.

It has been widely misreported that so-called "Belgium waffles" were first introduced to North America at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. In fact, the Belgian Conspiracy chose Cascadia as the testing ground for their newest campaign of pro-Belgian conditioning. (According to Belgian pseudo-historians, the waffles were first introduced at the 1958 Expo in Brussels. This is, of course, a lie. Brussels does not exist so there never was an Expo there.)

In 1962, self-proclaimed "Belgian" chef Walter Cleyman (a typical Belgian name?) managed two shops selling gaufres de Bruxelles ("Brussels waffles") at the Fair, including a faux chalet on the Boulevards of the World, seen here:

Belgian Waffle House at the Century 21 ExpositionBelgian Waffle House at the Century 21 Exposition
Left: stand selling "Gaufres de Bruxelles". Right: same stand after
"Belgian Waffle House" was added for increased conditioning effect.

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Octopus Wristlet Fad Of 1915

Lyle Zapato | 2012-02-18.6599 LMT | Retro | Cephalopods | Fashion

I've mentioned the use of taxidermied tree octopuses as hat decorations and octopus-inspired hair-styles, now here's another example of octopuses as objects of fashion. From the April 23, 1915 edition of the Tacoma Times:

Beach Belle Uses Octopus As Wristlet In Weird Sand Dance

Los Angeles, April 23. — Probably the strangest pet ever adopted by the shrinking sex is the little octopus carried by Miss Diana Rico, a belle of the beaches here. Whenever she goes bathing or strolling along the sands Miss Rico carries the tentacled mascot wrapped about her wrist.

This weird creature of the deep gave Miss Rico an inspiration for a new tango step, "The Dance of the Octopus," which created a sensation when she first stepped its sinuous figures on the beach.

When not clinging to the arm of its mistress, the baby octopus creeps about a little tank built especially for it.

Diana Rico
Miss Diana Rico and Her Weird Pet.

While we're there, let's see what else was on the front page of the Tacoma Times that day...

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Oscar III, Mountain-Climbing Octopus

Lyle Zapato | 2011-05-28.8810 LMT | Cephalopods | Field Trips

Cascadia's beloved musician, businessman, and punny raconteur, Ivar Haglund, was well-known, both locally and internationally, for his publicity stunts promoting his aquarium and seafood restaurant. Here's a stunt I had not heard of before:

In 1947, Ivar organized an expedition to scale the newly discovered Mount Miller -- starting from the top! Mount Miller, you see, is underwater, part of the Gulf of Alaska Seamount Province. His expedition team consisted of one brave octopus, Oscar III, who was to be dropped from a boat over the seamount, attached to a two-mile line. Oscar's mission: bring back deep-sea edelweiss to prove he had scaled to the base.

From an April 4th United Press story (reprinted in The Portsmouth Times, p. 6):

OSCAR OCTOPUS TO TRY 'MOUNT'

Underwater 'Mountain' Subject Of Novel Trip

SEATTLE, April 4—A mountain-climbing octopus, Oscar III, and his trainer, Ivar Haglund, were en route today to "climb" the mountain-infested waters of the Alaskan gulf.

The 11,350-foot underwater "Mt." Miller was their destination.

Discovery of giant submarine peaks 900 miles northwest of Seattle by the U. S. coast and geodetic survey, is responsible for Mr. Haglund's latest stunt.

"Man still has not invented a diving suit to withstand the terrific pressures involved," said Mr. Haglund. So the actual climbing will be done by a "scientifically trained octopus".

According to the balding aquarium-owner, Oscar's greatest hazard in scaling Mt. Miller is that he must start from the top and "climb" down.

The incentive for Oscar—and proof that he reaches the base of Mt. Miller—will be his favorite dish, sea-edelweiss, which grows at great depths.

When the expedition glides over the peak of Mt. Miller Oscar will be dropped overboard leashed to a two-mile wire.

If he comes back with a sprig of sea-edelweiss clutched in any one of his arms—it's likely even Mr. Haglund will eat it.

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Review: METAtropolis: CASCADIA

Lyle Zapato | 2011-02-09.5489 LMT | Cephalopods | Entertainment | Anarchy

METAtropolis: CASCADIA (2010) is an audiobook collection of six related stories set in Cascadia in the 2070s. The stories are: "The Bull Dancers" by Jay Lake, "Water to Wine" by Mary Robinette Kowal, "Byways" by Tobias S. Buckell, "The Confessor" by Elizabeth Bear, "Deodand" by Karl Schroeder, and "A Symmetry of Serpents and Doves" by Ken Scholes. Each is read by a different Star Trek actor. Run time is almost 13 ABT hours.

It's a sequel to the original METAtropolis (2008) which worldbuilt around the post-industrial, post-national collapse of the early 21st century. That collection included the story "In the Forests of the Night" by Jay Lake that introduced the setting of Cascadiopolis, an experimental green city hidden in the forests of Mt. Hood, Oregon (it's available for free).

CASCADIA picks up that story 40 years later in the opening "The Bull Dancers" (read by René Auberjonois), which explores the conspiracy behind the city's destruction by orbital missiles; the true identity of the mysterious Tyger Tyger and his connection to an ancient Minoan secret society; and how Cascadiopolis' daughter cities have, despite or perhaps because of the missile attack, gone on to thrive -- rewilding the land and building a new eco-anarchist way of life. This serves as an intro to greater Cascadia, as the following stories portray a changed and changing region in slow recovery.

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