Mars has Flowing Oceans? .....I Doubt it!

Remember the blood moon/eclipse last week?  My wife and daughter were glued to NASA's web site to watch it.  Unfortunately, NASA's site went down.  Quickly they found the eclipse on sites of good citizens, unattached to the government.  NASA....an overly funded government agency that can't stand up a web cam to watch an eclipse.  Oh...by the way...NASA says there are flowing oceans on Mars.

The proof?  Well....they say so.  Never mind that NASA at one time told us global warming eliminated all the oceans on Mars.  Instead of a scientific agency, NASA has reduced itself to pushing over-rated Hollywood films.  No science necessary, as long as they have an opportunity to push "The Martian" which opens this fall, NASA puts out a pipe dream.

In the 1960s, President Kennedy told NASA to put men on the moon.  What did we get?  Men landing on the moon before the decade ended.  In 2009, President Obama told NASA to aggressively pursue a Muslim outreach.  What did we get?  The birth of ISIS, and non-scientific findings about flowing oceans on Mars. We've had Martian probes....no water.  Indication of frozen liquid on the polar caps, but no flowing oceans.  NASA needs to get out of the business of promoting the latest Hollywood films, and do what they were created to do.

Uncatalogued Species of Indonesia

Over the past four years, I have visited Indonesia twice.  On top of mountains in West Java, on the highways, in the tea fields, and in urban Jakarta....I've seen much of this beautiful country.  While there, having put on my cryptozoologist hat, I took the liberty of sketching some neat organisms unseen by most of the civilized world.  Sit back and enjoy the wonderment of these four of God's creatures that walk just beyond the shadows. The following sketches are direct from my travel journal.

1. Ngeri Laba-Laba

This creature grows to 50 centimeters in length.  The Ngeri Laba-Laba traps rats and small children in it's web, and drinks their blood.  Usually found in damp, dark caves, our small friend has never been photographed.

2. Menjerit Bintang

Grows to 100 centimeters tall and has been spotted in the sewers of Jakarta.  Usually a pale yellow in color, however, immediately after feeding, turns light red.   This star shaped being eats small animals and municipal employees who maintain Jakarta's sewer system.  Never photographed.

3.  Hijau Sea Serpent

Grows to 15 meters in length.  This long enigma lives in the seas near Java, but has been sighted in the South China Sea.  The Hijau Sea Serpent (known as Hiya to Jakarta school children) feeds on dolphins and SCUBA divers, and is known to sink small row boats.  More than 10,000 deaths have been attributed to attacks by this creature since 2005.  Never photographed.

4.  Sumatran Sacalog

This fellow is a simian-type being which can grow to four and a half feet tall.  This carnivore smells like a skunk and lives in caves.  The Sumatran Sacalog feasts on dogs, birds, and small children.  This species, though never photographed, has been sighted in Sumatra, West Java, and Munich, Germany.

Storsjoodjuret, Sweden's Sea Monster

In November of 2005, Sweden removed Storsjoodjuret (The Great Lake Monster) from their endangered species list.  A curious move, as it is safe to say this fine country isn't experiencing a Lake Monster infestation.  Perhaps Storsjoodjurer admirers belong to the wrong political party and this was an act of aggression by an arrogant ruling party.  Who knows?  This aquatic reptile with a dog's head, living in 300 feet of water in Lake Storsjon (near Ostersund) was first seen in 1635. This Swedish enigma is said to have fins across it's back and measure almost 20 feet in length. Some claim the fins are actually humps....I prefer the fin description.

Just before the 20th Century rolled around, King Oscar supported an expedition to capture our elusive friend.  It failed.  Ambiguous photographs and films have been shot over the years extending the debate as to..does the Storsjoodjuret really exist?  The creature was even etched on an ancient 11th Century Swedish stone (Froso Runestone), and that figure matches the witness descriptions which began in 1635.

Man's ability to compile a complete catalog of Earth's species is woeful.  Thousands of new species have been classified in the past couple of decades.  Who knows....perhaps someday Stockholm will be devoured by Storsjoodjuret just as Copenhagen was destroyed by Reptilicus in the 1960s.

The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

The luxury steam ship Wilhelm Gustloff was Christened by Hitler in 1937.  At 680 feet this ship would transition from a luxury liner to a transport for wounded soldiers a few years later. After 1943 the war began to turn on Germany.  More and more bombing missions succeeded over German industrial cities killing tens of thousands.  Then in 1945 the Red Army entered Germany.  Reports of what the Soviets were doing to German women and children spread through Berlin and other cities. Fearing for their lives, over 10,000 Germans...mostly women and children, boarded the now rescue ship, Wilhelm Gustloff.  The horrified Germans sought to escape the coming Soviet atrocities.

 On January 30, 1945, with temperatures plunging to negative 18 Celsius, as Hitler addressed Germany on radio, three Soviet torpedoes hit the Gustloff north of Gdansk.  The doomed ship was headed to Kiel, from Gdansk. Originally built to take high ranking Nazis on Mediterranean cruises, the Gustloff would be a victim of the horrors of the coming war. The German navy was so depleted as 1945 arrived that no protective convoy escorted this rescue operation.  9,000 Germans died on the ship or in the icy water, only 1,252 survived.  In a macro sense, the rescue of Germans from Soviet madness was an overall success.  2.5 million Germans were evacuated from the eastern provinces, thus avoiding God knows what.

A few months after the sinking, Hitler would commit suicide in a Berlin bunker.  Admiral Karl Donitz would succeed Hitler as chancellor.  Unlike Hitler, Donitz came into the chancellor position with some heroic military experience.  Ironically. as Hitler Christened the Gustloff, Donitz would command the rescue operation, which hauled over a thousand women and children out of the icy drink.  Eventually the Gustloff would rest on the ocean floor, about 200 feet below the surface. The victors pen the history...and Germany lost the war.  Calling the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff a war crime is a plea that will fall on deaf ears.  

The Chelyabinsk Meteor, Vladimir Putin misses an Opportunity

Founded in 1736, Chelyabinsk, Russia has eluded the headlines.  But for a fateful day on February 15, 2013, they still claim anonymity on the world stage.  At 9:20am, an object brighter than the sun raced across the southwestern Russian sky, but did not maintain elevation, eventually bursting into flames still 20 miles up. The exploded meteorite produced a huge shock wave and sent small fragments of alien rock raining onto Chelyabinsk. This explosion far surpassed the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima by President Franklin Roosevelt. Oh yes...all those scientific detection devices used to warn us against alien attacks we see in films? Useless.  The Russian peeps were taken totally by surprise.  1,500 were injured, most from glass broken by the shock wave, and eventually a rock hit the ground with a radius over 60 feet (see middle picture...kinda reminds you of "John Carpenter's The Thing"). NASA?  Useless.  Our government funded space agency was clueless.  They happily reported on the event after the fact.

Most of the injuries were minor.  Scores were temporarily blinded (a la "Day of the Triffids"), one woman suffered a broken spine, and Mr. Putin reported skin flakiness several days after examining the damage.  An hour after impact, Chelyabinsk residents began smelling a burning odor.  As the world stock markets begin to collapse, and oil prices plummet, Russia is in for some very tough times.  The Chelyabinsk meteor is, perhaps, a metaphor for those rapidly approaching difficult times.  If any nation can endure a grim period...it is Russia, as we have seen throughout history. However damaging the meteor was....no one died, and the city residents went back to work shortly after the boom.  No teddy bear memorials or national days of prayer, or blue ribbon commissions...just real people going to work to make society function.  A lost concept, nowadays.  

Now for some Monday morning quarterbacking.  Would it not have been great if Russia's propaganda system decided to have some fun with an all too tight world community?  For example...I would have loved if the media in Chelyabinsk put out sketchy reports that corpses in hospitals and morgues seemed to re-animate. Oh yes...here's one.  Russia's Minister of Defense should have relayed to the U.N. that all contact had been lost with an internationally manned weather station near the crash site (no matter that this station doesn't exist).  The reaction of the  Unites States' all too inept State Department would have been classic.  I would have payed for Wikileaks to intercept those emails Washington would have sent to our ambassador in Moscow (...does anyone even know who that is?). Finally, law enforcement entities in Chelyabinsk should have reported some unusual rioting and looting in which perpetrators seemed to be biting other residents and police.

My hat is off to the residents of Chelyabinsk.  Hard working regular people with no need for a world remembrance day every February.  In a world community heaping sickeningly sweet admiration on anyone claiming to be a victim, our Russian friends hold themselves out as adults.  They look up, when others look down.  They go to work, when others call in sick.  They walk forward, when others hide.  In the coming economic malaise, the spirit of Chelyabinsk should be emulated.

Delvecchio's Fulcrum, Excerpt from my upcoming SciFi book

After publishing a book on horror poetry ("Escaping from the Institute"), it is time to move onto my next project.  In addition to horror, I have a love for science fiction...especially if it includes elements of horror.  I am in the preliminary stages of writing a book which will include short stories and a few poems.  I expect the book will be scary, humorous at times, and thought provoking.  Enjoy the following excerpt of a story I am writing, "Delvecchio's Fulcrum."  Incidentally, if you have a subject you would like to read a short story about, send it to me at christopherzisi@gmail.com .  I will, if you wish, credit you in the book as the inspiration of that story.

Like 10,000 unfortunate creatures before him, R.C. Krug's last words, uttered before a tortuous demise, were "What's the Delvecchio Fulcrum."  Now a rotting corpse, leaking and spurting various bodily fluids, R.C. a victim of life's miserable sense of humor.  The celestial navigators needed to work fast.  One of those higher beings grabbed the end of the fulcrum....another yelled "Delvecchio!," and the third hollered "Pull!"  The fulcrum now yanked loose from the late Krug's cranium, the beings departed with the blood-soaked curious device.  As the sirens from the approaching sheriff's department cruisers neared, Delvecchio's Fulcrum returns to it's proper astral dimension. 

My book of horror poetry can be found on Amazon.com, as well as the Amazon Kindle edition.  

 

Pluto, NASA goofs!

Exotic ices, nitrogen lakes, an atmosphere....sounds like a planet to me.  Most unceremoniously, NASA declared Pluto was no longer going to be considered a planet.  Typical government balderdash! The New Horizons spacecraft, launched when NASA was still a space agency, proves what many of us outside the government already know....Pluto is a planet.  When I was in school, America's space program inspired and fascinated us school kids.  We landed men on the moon, and we all knew Mars was not far behind.

Today...most of us know the U.S. will never land man on Mars (...or a woman).  We spent decades with the shuttle program sending 3rd grade experiments into space.  Do tomato plants grow in space? WHO CARES?!?  The scaling down of the space program was deliberate and intentional.  Can anyone name three achievements of the shuttle missions?  Our generation, our kids, and perhaps their kids will be mired in low expectations.  Perhaps someday, imagination, achievement, and dreams will guide our space program once more.  

The Ohio River Ghost Ship

A luxury yacht built in 1902 is our example today of the adage, "All glory is fleeting." This ship has a heroic history as it was used during WW1.  During the war, it was knows as the USS Sachem and would outrun U-Boats in order to supply the UK with supplies. Even Ben Franklin enjoyed this one-time symbol of the good life for his experiments in communication and technology . In the 1980s, Madonna used this yacht in her music video "Papa Don't Preach."  Kayakers near Cincinnati are it's only modern day visitors.  The ship was originally known as The Celt,

In WW2, it was used to train sailors, and known as the USS Phenakite.  The last stop, before being abandoned, was New York City where it was used to ferry tourists as late as the early 1990s.  It may have graced New York, London, and Long Island but it will spend the rest of eternity in a remote area of Ohio. Are there ghosts on board......what do you think?    

Escaping From the Institute by Christopher Zisi

My new book is out!  It is available on Amazon.com and Createspace.com.  Not since Edgar Allan Poe has such a collection of horror poetry been put in book form.  Zombies...Mutants...Vampires...Weird neighbors...Serial killer....Psychopaths, and much more.  Order today, only $6.99 and $3.49 on Amazon Kindle, and let me know what you think.....

                                        

These poems were inspired by my love for horror (movies and literature) and my travels as an FBI agent for the past 25 years. Get a copy (soft cover or Kindle) today http://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Institute-Christopher-Zisi-ebook/dp/B011K52DHQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444060439&sr=1-1&keywords=christopher+zisi

The Loch Ness Monster, Disappointment # 18

Sometimes it is better to let the myth live than to kill it with the truth.  In Scotland, the Loch Ness Monster has, on occasion, been a symbol of national identity.  As if William Wallace was not enough, this creature (...which may be a myth) is easier to grasp than a man's passion for freedom.

Welcome to Thule Station

The paranormal....unusual phenomenon......monsters....UFOs....and other really weird subjects are what this blog is going to be about.  In the coming posts, I'll chat about ghosts, visitors from other planets, monsters, and some horror and science fiction.  I'll also discuss books, sometimes movies, and interesting people.  Please comment freely, and if you have an idea of something you'd like to see on Thule Station....reach me on Twitter ( @cjzisi ).
Oh yes!  Thule Station?  If you remember correctly, before Outpost 31 was overrun by the creature in "John Carpenter's The Thing," the Norwegian base was decimated by the same creature.  That Norwegian base...Thule Station.

-Christopher Zisi
also see my companion blog Zisi Emporium for B Movies ( zisiemporium.blogspot.com )