Archive for the ‘historical perspectives’ category

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Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance…”

September 4, 2025

Lady Gaga has given us all of us Halloween heads a great early gift for spooky season in The Dead Dance, a masterpiece of song and dance. It ranks up there with Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Wednesday’s dance from the Netflix series Wednesday. There are some Jacksonian moves to it, yet the production, directed by Tim Burton, is unique and distinctly Lady Gaga’s.

For one thing, the video incorporates the feeling of Mexico City’s Island of the Dolls, a place where aging, discolored, rotting, and dismembered dolls are strung up in trees and around the landscape. Such dolls are rather creepy, and appear right from the beginning of Lady Gaga’s video wheas such does not appear in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Lady Gaga’s zombified dead also seem to do a lot more twitching as they hover in that nether world between death and a recall to life…

Is there anything that Lady Gaga cannot do? She sings, dances, and writes songs, and The Dead Dance can easily be interpreted to represent recovery from romantic break-ups, depression, and other forms of mental illness and personal setbacks in life. Although its topic is dark and presented in terms of the paranormal, the video is both dazzling and yet uplifting…what a triumph! Enjoy, if this is your first viewing of the video…

Categories: bizarre, Brilliant but twisted, cool things, creature features, fantasy, historical perspectives, horror, Questionably creepy, spooky
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Election Day in America, 2024…

November 5, 2024

It’s Election Day at last in America, and I’m sure that many of us are disgusted, exhausted, and burnt-out by the carnival sh*t-show that we’ve been forced to painfully endure for too many months. I really thought that we had put this to rest with the 2020 election, but no, it’s simmered for four years, and here we are again at a crossroads for the country…

So once more into the fray, dear friends, once more…let’s do this…you get it…let’s take out the garbage, the nightmares of neo-fascism…if you haven’t already done so, VOTE!

…and just think…if we elect the first female president, imagine having someday the first furry president…I’d vote for him (or her)!

Categories: alternative realities, anthropomorphic, furry, historical perspectives, Off-topic
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The Tail of the Richmond Rat Boy!

May 29, 2023

It looks like Mickey Mouse got char-broiled, and has certainly seen better days…I’m referring, of course to the Richmond Rat Boy, a small, seemingly-mummified object anonymously donated to the Wayne County Historical Museum in Indiana. The Rat Boy appears to sport a rodent’s head atop a humanoid body that boasts details such as claws and teeth…

Now sadly, Rat Boy was never alive, but has been determined to have been crafted of plaster of Paris and clay over an armature. Animal claws, pointed teeth, and hair were added to lend a touch of realism to the figure. A note was left with the figure saying that it was found long ago in the basement of a local hospital, and once belonged to a circus-worker friend of the donor’s late grandfather…

Now Rat Boy is thought by museum staff to have been a gaff, a cryptid fabricated as a sideshow attraction in circuses that toured America in the 1910’s to the 1930’s. A more memorable example was the notorious Fiji Mermaid once exhibited by P.T. Barnum. They might have charged you a dime to a quarter to see such draws back in the day. Nowadays we can laugh at those gullible people of an earlier time, having reality television and conspiracy theories today…

So while Rat Boy may not be real, you can still buy your very own Rat Boy T-shirt to remember him by. “Be the first one on your block, every cat in the neighborhood will be in shock,” to recall the late great Soupy Sales in his song, Do the Mouse!

Categories: absurdities, anthropomorphic, Cabinet of Curiosities, cryptozoology, furry, furry interest, historical perspectives, retro cool, solved mysteries, twisted reality
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The Foxes of Easter…

April 9, 2023

Bunnies tend to take over at Easter, symbolic of spring and fertility. In some cultures and folklore, however, foxes have also registered an Easter presence.

Easter was originally a pagan festival dedicated to Eostre (Ostara), the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. Her consort was a hare, hence the Easter Bunny. Ostara’s consort (lover?) had previously been a bird, hence the ability to lay eggs! It gets freaky, and it’s best not to question notions of shape-shifting and cross-species relationships. This notion of an Easter Bunny was solidified by Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, who believed that the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara…

But in Germanic traditions extending up to the mid-20th century, an Easter Fox was held responsible for the Easter eggs, and children would prepare a cozy bed of hay and moss for der Osterfuchs. Yeah! Now we’re talkin’! German and Dutch settlers brought the tradition of the Easter fox to the U.S. in the 18th century, where rabbits gradually took over the Easter duties…

But for those of us who are fur-ious that a rabbit supplanted us, we await the restoration of the true Easter fox to his proper post of rightful honor… 🦊

Categories: animal presence, animals, anthropomorphic, furry, historical perspectives, holidays, seasonal
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My Politically-Incorrect Upbringing…

July 8, 2022

I was raised in what is today seen as a socially inappropriate background, with what are now considered ethnic and racial stereotypes foisted on me at home, school, and the media.

At school, I can well remember one spinster elementary teacher telling the boisterous and noisy class that we were behaving “like a bunch of wild Indians.” The underlying message here was that “Indians” were “wild,” hence uncivilized, and that this was bad. At no point, of course, were they referred to as Native Americans. In a 1941 cartoon, Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt, Bugs Bunny mocked and humiliated a Native American portrayed by Elmer Fudd.

Then in the early 1960’s there was The Dick Tracy Show, which curiously featured little of Dick Tracy, but rather his designated officers which included a stereotypic Mexican officer, Go-Go Gomez, and a martial arts adept Japanese man, Joe Jitsu.

Now Go-Go Gomez wore a sombrero, sandals, and a broad grin, and was actually modeled as being a human version of the Warner Bros. cartoon character, Speedy Gonzalez, who happened to be a mouse. Speedy, gratefully, has thus far largely escaped the cartoon purges, and is well-liked by many Latinos…

Joe Jitsu was portrayed with grossly exaggerated Asian features but was a cool little guy who was unfailingly polite as he used jujitsu to thrash criminals all the while apologizing “excuse prease” or “so solly” as he demonstrated profound mastery of his martial art on criminals…

Now I never knew that I was being poisoned, but rather thought that Joe Jitsu was a seriously cool dude who I fantasized as a kid about being. He was kind of a superhero to me who even drove an awesome car! Joe was polite, classy, in charge, and a positive role model. This did not stop both Go-Go and Joe from being condemned as racial stereotypes in spite of the fact that they were good guys, not to mention cartoon characters. Passage of the years and a changing society has just not been kind to them…

And of course, we have Disney’s Song of the South, reviled today and almost impossible to see because of its rather rosy portrayal of slavery in the antebellum South. I don’t think that Br’er Fox represents the best of my kind, either…

There are many other examples I could cite, but in spite of being given an upbringing amidst a plethora of ethnic, racial, and species stereotypes, I don’t think I emerged any worse than moderately warped, which can be an adaptive feature in the current times… 🦊

Categories: cartoons, controversial, furry, historical perspectives, television, Vintage
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American Horror Story’s “Death Valley” from “Double Feature”

October 20, 2021

The current Double Feature season of American Horror Story is exactly that, with the first Red Tide segments being about ghoulish vampires, and the second Death Valley feature centering on aliens. I’m only going to comment on Death Valley to keep things more contained, and frankly because I’m a bit tired of vampire themes, although admittedly Red Tide is innovative.

Now aliens I can really get my teeth into (with apologies to the vampires). What makes Death Valley a real hoot is the number of historical personalities portrayed, ranging from Eisenhower and Nixon (above) to JFK, Marilyn Monroe, and even an all-too brief appearance by Amelia Earhart, who without having aged in 20 years is delivered to the Eisenhower administration and pregnant with an alien child…yes, you heard that right! Well, a little later on Amelia has her alien baby and it’s a bad one, because it kills Amelia and the docs and nurses in the room until Ike and a couple of soldiers shoot it dead. This is wild stuff, and wildly entertaining!

Now you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Mamie Eisenhower possessed by an alien consciousness and levitating, with her eyes a milky white. The aliens communicate through possession of a human intermediary at times, and can cause the heads of opposing humans to explode by a wave of their hands, which is messy but compelling viewing. Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that?! Anyways, by possessing Mamie they gain emotional leverage over Ike so he agrees to allow the quiet abduction of several thousand people a year in exchange for alien technology. One of the goodies so obtained are cell phones, taken for granted now but unbelievable stuff during the Eisenhower years. Ike suffers angst over this, but hey, the aliens would simply have gone to the Russians had we not allowed them to abduct people, impregnate them, and breed hybrids so their race can survive on Earth.

Some of the alien genetic engineering projects fall short of the desired outcome, however, with disconcerting results like the humanoid above with one alien and one human eye…and the aliens can impregnate anyone and use them as a vessel, including males!

So catch Death Valley from Double Feature on the current season of American Horror Story. It unites so much of the mythic speculation on alien contacts and designs, with historical personages thrown in as you’ve never seen them before, very reminiscent of The X-Files and just as much fun… 🦊

Categories: aliens, alternative realities, Brilliant but twisted, historical perspectives, horror, Mythological, paranormal, sci fi, television
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The Tombstone Pterodactyl and Vintage Cryptids…

August 11, 2021

In the wild, weird west as well as in the present day, folks saw and reported strange beasties, such as the “Thunderbird” supposedly pictured here, reported by the Tombstone Epitaph in April 1890 which had reportedly been terrorizing Native American and local populations for some time. So a couple of good ole cowboys shot the sucker down, and are proudly posing with the carcass in the picture above, its wings extended to give you an idea of the critter’s size. It resembles a pterodactyl, which some contend never had become fully extinct, and which may upon rare occasion be seen from time to time

Trouble is, the newspaper in question lacked the capability of producing photos at that time, and the original of the photographic evidence has never been located. It is accordingly widely thought to be a vintage fake. Similar photos also exist of Civil War soldiers who supposedly also shot down a pterosaur or two.

So why, then, do such photos exist? The answer is simply that such stories sell newspapers, even if unaccompanied by a photo. They were simply meeting a public demand for the sensational while increasing their own profit margin. People tended to be a bit more gullible in the 1890’s, although there’s still no shortage of such folks today.

Now, I would dearly love to see Rodan grace the skies, but until we have scientific proof of the existence of such cryptids, we need to be skeptical of any and all such claims. If nothing else, they were entertaining then as now…and we want to believe!

Categories: anomalies, avian, controversial, cryptozoology, extinct species, furry, historical perspectives, legends and folklore, paranormal, prehistoric life, Vintage, weird
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My Daze As A Leopard…

February 27, 2021


I can’t really say that I was “seduced” by the furry fandom as I came willingly, nay, eagerly!  It was kind of like, “So a ‘furry’ is what I am?  All right, where do I sign, and do I get a membership card?”  

Perhaps it was the many hours I spent watching Warner Bros. cartoons as a kid, identifying with and relating to the characters I saw, liking them more than any human, and heck, wanting to be them!  I got to play a rooster in my second grade farm-themed class play, and I was like out of my mind with the part, although the teacher wouldn’t let me put my Foghorn Leghorn spin on the character.  Sadly, it wasn’t even a speaking part!  As Foghorn might have said, “Teacher, I say, oh Teacher!  You’re about to exceed the limitations of my medication!”  That could have been a breakout role for me, too…sad!

Then there were Halloween opportunities, when it was not only acceptable but required to role-play.  Forget skeletons, ghosts, and witches, too…I wanted to be an animal!  Back then, if your parents weren’t crafty enough to make you a costume, they’d pony up a few bucks, and you landed one of these Ben Cooper or Collegeville kid Halloween costumes.  The material of the body component might even be made of garbage-bag grade stuff, not even fabric, and I remember one tearing as I wore it.  The masks were thin brittle plastic, and it was almost impossible to breathe in them.  If unfortunate enough to wear glasses, they’d steam them up immediately, and you’d blunder around your neighborhood trick-or-treating with severely impaired vision.  Turns out, this was good practice for the COVID masks of today!  

Anyways, one year and the last that I went trick-or-treating, I wore a Ben Cooper leopard costume, identical as I remember it to the one pictured.  Although this was the world’s cheapest fursuit and looked it, I was in heaven…I mean, the costume even had a tail!  Thank God none of the other kids ripped my tail off, although a few grabbed me by it.  Nowadays, this would constitute harassment. And would you believe it?  The same vintage costume I’ve seen selling on eBay for $199, plus shipping.  Now I’m sure that my leopard suit wound up in the trash as I’d outgrown it and abandoned trick-or-treating by the following Halloween.  Maybe I should have said to my mother, “Hey, hang onto this!  It’ll be worth almost $200 in the future!”  But I didn’t know, and parents tend not to listen, anyways…they always know better, or think that they do!

It’s long gone, but I’ll always remember my leopard suit.  Then in a college production of Man of La Mancha, I got to play Don Quixote’s horse.  That had a much better full head mask to it, which unfortunately I was not allowed to keep, although the die was cast by that point. 

So hooray for Halloween, which unfortunately is rarely celebrated today as it was in days of yore.  If you’ve still got your old costumes, hang onto them…they might be worth some bucks today.  And as someone who’s worn the leopard suit, I can only conclude by saying…RAWRR!

 

 

 




 

 

 

Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry fandom, fursuits, historical perspectives, holidays
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“Real Vampires” on MonsterQuest…

November 6, 2020

 
We can’t all be vampires, much less Dracula…some of us are just children of the night, and I can live with that.  It’s not that I dislike vampires, it’s just that I’m much more of a werewolf guy! Besides, we children of the night have a hell of a band, being know for our music.  Alright, now we’re just a garage band, but watch for our breakout album…

…that being said, MonsterQuest recently aired a new episode titled, Real Vampires.  Now vampiric legends exist in 95% of human cultures, with the oldest originating thousands of years ago in China and India.  Kali the Hindu goddess was one such example.  A word of warning that some gruesome things covered in the episode follow…

Flashing forward to more modern times, we have the case of “JB,” who was buried in the 1800’s in Willington, Connecticut.   His remains were accidentally discovered in 1990, and his body exhumed due to its unusual condition, which included the remains being mutilated, with the corpse decapitated, the ribs broken, and the thighbones disarticulated and placed into an “X” formation on the chest…some people thought that they were destroying a vampire here.  Modern forensic investigations found that the poor soul had suffered tuberculosis, revealed in the thickening of his rib bones.  Terminal tuberculin victims cough up blood towards the end of the disease progression, which to the unenlightened may have suggested a blood feeder rather than a disease victim.

New England vampiric beliefs likely came from eastern Europe, where in Hungary in the 16th century, Countess Elizabeth Bathory,  the “Blood Countess,” was obsessed with maintaining her fading youth and lured young girls into her service over a twenty  year period of time, later torturing and killing them and bathing in and drinking their blood; she would be convicted of 80 counts of murder, and is thought to have been one of the most prolific female serial killers in history.  In 1784, the Johnson children were exhumed to presumably break a vampire curse, which often involved removing and burning or destroying internal organs of the deceased.  Years before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, a woman called Mercy Brown in 1892 was exhumed two months after her death due to suspected vampirism, and had her heart cut out, burned to ashes, and fed to her brother, the gruesome ritual failing to prevent his death from tuberculosis, then called “consumption.”

So what gives with these people?!  Mysterious plagues, superstition, and a lack of scientific understanding can drive people to do strange and horrendous things.  Disease processes and even human decomposition were poorly understood, with such things appearing paranormal to those unfamiliar with them.  Rigor mortis and then the subsequent relaxation of muscular tissue after death can cause corpses to move somewhat, with the gases of decomposition also causing bloating and at times the expulsion of bodily fluid through the mouth that can appear blood-like.  Subsequently, those looking for vampires could appear to find them through changes in the corpses of deceased individuals. – – Get the torches, pitchforks, and stakes ready, we got us an “undead” vamp here!

Even more recently, a “vampire clan” operating in Eustis, Florida in 1996 killed the parents of one of their disciples, their leader drinking small amounts of the blood of the victims.  “Clinical vampirism” has professionally been recognized as a delusion that the blood of others is needed to survive.

After examining this extensive but not exhaustive history, MonsterQuest last examined the phenomenon of psychic vampires, who reportedly feed off the life force of others and are not themselves “the undead.”  A psychic investigator shown on camera during the episode found that a so-called psychic vampire could slightly affect a measured electromagnetic field in an interaction with another person that they were “feeding” off.  I think that many of us know people who can drain the energy out of a room by entering it…

The legend of vampires is embedded in popular culture, and involves power over someone or something else.  Portrayed over the ages as anything from outsiders to dark heroes, vampires symbolize a deep human hunger…

 

 

Categories: controversial, creature features, historical perspectives, Mythology, paranormal, Questionably creepy, unexplained
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Krampus, and Having a Scary Little Christmas…

December 11, 2019


He just might be the perfect antidote for too much enforced Christmas sweetness…Krampus, that is, the nightmarish figure with goatish and demonic features  out of European folklore.  He’d be right at home pursued by paranormal or cryptic investigators as he’s usually portrayed with hooves, claw-like fingers, long spiraled horns, and covered with dark hair.  His tongue is long and protrusive, and his specialty is dealing with naughty children, beating them with birch switches and stuffing them in his sack for transport back to his lair, perhaps to become dinner…

The worst that Santa would do to you is put you on his “Naughty List,” or perhaps leave you a lump of coal. Santa’s a milquetoast compared to Krampus, who would terrorize you as kind of an anti-Santa.  In “Old World” Europe, fairy tales weren’t always for entertainment…they could be morality plays intended to scare children into good or at least compliant behavior.  Grimm’s fairy tales in the original could actually be pretty grim.

In Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, adults get involved in a chaotic Krampus tribute involving public drunkenness and men running through the streets dressed as devils, with Krampus Night traditionally December 5th.  In recent years, some people in the U.S. have begun throwing Krampus parties as a sort of twisted, anti-Christmas celebration. Krampus has enjoyed kind of a renaissance lately, and been featured in horror movies.  So be good, for goodness sake! – -Ahh,  I do so like Old World traditions… 🐺

 

Categories: anomalies, anthropomorphic, furry, historical perspectives, seasonal, strange, twisted reality
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