Chupacabra Omens Erred with Bears at Superbowl XLI

The notorious Chupacabras may be back in the Everglades again reopening the debate over whether they are real, imagined, from outer space, heaven-sent harbingers of a New Covenant or did they augur an auspicious but erroneous omen for the Bears in Super Bowl XLI? At least one local astrologer thought so. In Amazing Updates, a Hong Kong electronics heir ditches a run for the US Congress in order to pursue Britney Spears and On this Date in Amazing History Edna Everage misses her first chance to meet the Queen.

Allegedly first sighted in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995, no rumored creature in recent memory has caused quite as much stir and media hyperventilation (in Latin markets at least) as the notorious Chupacabra or goat-sucking demon. Breathless reports about "beasts which drained the blood of goats", made by the San Juan tabloid El Vocero, were quickly followed by similar manifestations in Mexico, the Florida Everglades and even Brazil. The "creatures" were variously reported as walking on two-legs, having bat-like-wings and fearsome dentition or curved fangs. Further accounts mentioned reptilian skin, spines or quills on the back, muscular arms, hands with three fingers and a thumb tipped by thick sharp claws, large red eyes, many sharp teeth and a long tongue or extractor.

CHUPACABRA by Ricardo Pustanio

Low-budget Mexican and US filmmakers, always on the look-out for fast-buck monsters, lost no time in transferring the "terrifying" beasts to the cinema and video screen, churning out a total of eleven productions since 1995: Ataca el chupacabras (1996); El Chupacabras, (1996); Adventures Beyond: Chupacabra (1997); Guns of El Chupacabra (1997) aka "Chupacabra, El" - USA (working title); Legend of the Chupacabra (2000); Chupacabras (2000); El Chupacabra (2003); Bloodthirst: Legend of the Chupacabras (2003); Bloodthirst 2: Revenge of the Chupacabras (2005); Night of the Chupacabra (2005) Chupacabra Terror (2005) aka "Chupacabra: Dark Seas" - USA (TV title). In most depictions, excepting a 1997 "documentary," the chupas are clearly portrayed as a menace to humans, even slaughtering passengers on a ship. Yet in the "real-life" testimonies and evidence compiled to date, the chupa victims have all been livestock or household pets. Then again who would pay good money to watch a movie about a terrified goat or an imperiled parakeet?

In his latest foray into the case, psychic detective Herschel Gomez once again called in his distinguished relative, Dr. Domingo Dombrowski, widely noted for being the first scholar to receive an advanced degree in Chupacabrology from Puerto Rico's Instituto de Cryptozoologia de Caguas,1974 (formerly the Caguas College of Applied Phrenology). Dombrowski, who now resides near Orlando, FL is the same researcher who solved the celebrated 1960 "Bat Monsters of Bayamon" controversy (a hoax) and the sensational 1963 case of the "Cataño Fairy" (a runaway juvenile midget from the touring Nicaraguan side-show El Circo de Tacho). He claims the earliest "chupacabra" sightings actually date back to the 1600s when Taino Indians still lived on Puerto Rico. The name, he says, derives from a Spanish approximation of an Arawak dialect (aboriginal) appellation.


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Together Gomez and Dombrowski first visited a West Everglades site in 1996 where four eviscerated goats were discovered over the Easter Weekend. Dombrowski dismisses the notion that the chupacabras were either dogs (the opinion of local zoo officials) or creatures from outer space. Nor does he believe that they have recently migrated to Florida from Puerto Rico. "As stated in my 1974 work, The Chupacabra Chronicles of Las Casas, it is my firm opinion that these are hybrid creatures that have existed in the Caribbean basin since the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. The Chupacabra," affirms Dombrowski, " is probably a centuries-old cross between a now extinct species of South American lemur and a Malaysian flying fox (fruit bat) introduced to the region by Catalonian sailors previously stationed in the Philippines."

Elsewhere this past year, the first chupacabra sightings were reported in Central Russia where the creatures were said to be feeding on turkeys. In Turkey, where no chupas have turned up yet, turkeys are called hindi implying they come from India. Although there have been no chupas reported on the sub-continent, some researchers now think the 2001 case of the Monkey Man of New Delhi bears renewed examination.

Meanwhile, fresh reports of Everglades sightings have excited Reverend Emiliano Chong-McGillicuddie, a South American clergyman who eleven years ago first proclaimed sightings of the chupacabras to be " apparitions intimately connected with world changes and the spiritual reawakening foretold by so many visionaries including Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky." Chong-McGillicuddie, formerly Pastor of the Asemblea Espiritista Carismatica de Medellin, Colombia, had just announced that a new congregation--Iglesia Adventista Chupacabrista-- was formed in the port city of Barranquilla to propound a revised cosmology in which the "divine chupas" were the heavenly harbingers of a New Order "in which the Lion shall not only lie down with the Lamb but the Goat shall hang out with the Bat."

Chong-McGillicuddie spent three days in Virginia Beach in December 1995 pouring over the Cayce archives for possible references to the chupacabra apparitions. Based on his research--correlating certain Cayce readings with six key Nostradamus quatrains--the pastor had concluded that the chupacabra phenomenon signaled the New Advent of Planetary Salvation. Rev. Chong notes that the letters in "Chupacabrista" easily form "CabraChrista" (Christ-goat). He plans to lead a party of his followers to the Everglades later this Spring in hopes of a revelatory sighting.

Finally, Herschel Gomez's young nephew Hamish Gomez insists that the most recent chupa appearances were also an omen for the SuperBowl XLI being played in a stadium not far from the Everglades itself and where livestock-devouring creatures were first reported in 1996. "Look," says Hamish, an avid astrologer like his uncle, "the Bears secured their conference title earlier this month under Capricorn, the Sign of the Goat. Chicago is a city famous for its stockyards and it was once burned to the ground by a cow!" "Not only that", adds Hamish, " if you rearrange the letters of the Spanish word "Chupacabrismo" (meaning Chupacabra-ness more or less) you get "Chicapo B'ars". " Close enough, even for Nostradamus maybe. But not for Peyton Manning as it turned out much to young Hamish's considerable embarrassment. Uncle Herschel also pointed out that the Colts won their conference title under the Goat as well. The Chupacabras, for their part, have no comment. And those unfortunates who bet heavily on Chicago turned out to be the biggest suckers of all.

AMAZING UPDATES:

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Hong Kong Electronics scion Fu-Tze (Footsie) Feldman, a Fort Lauderdale tax attorney, has notified local Republican Party operatives that he will not contest freshman Democrat Ron Klein in a 2008 US Congressional race. "Call it the surge that broke the camel's back," he told friends recently. "The way this war is going, the GOP nomination won't be worth a pitcher of warm spit," he added, colorfully recalling the candor of a Depression Era vice-president.

For the present Feldman is in Hollywood (the West Coast one) hoping to wrangle a way to escort Britney Spears to the Academy Award Ceremonies later this month. "She'll forget all about K-Fed once she's exposed to the special aura of F-Foot," he said, though his friends admit that the family's $6-billion fortune might have some bearing on Ms. Spears outlook. If Feldman manages to take to the young pop-star to the Oscars then he'll also invite her to a Chinese New Year Gala at uncle Chuk Wam-Bang's sumptumous mansion in Malaysia the following weekend.


ON THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY:

Feb 3 1690
The first paper money in America is issued in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But the local Indians refuse to accept it. Nor, after hearing what happened in Manhattan, will they accept glass beads either.

Feb 3 1954
Millions greet Queen Elizabeth II in Sydney on her first royal
trip to Australia. Unable to attend, future honoree/housewife Edna Everage sends regrets from Moonee Ponds.

Feb 4 1889
Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, "the Sundance Kid." Upon seeing himself in the mirror for the first time after a long period of incarceration, the Kid is devastated to realize that he looks nothing like Robert Redford.

Young Edna
GREAT WIGS

Feb 4 1909
California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren, thereby extending to the Nipponese youngsters the same honor that Chinese pupils in the state have enjoyed for decades. Academic test scores for both groups soar while white kids in the Golden State go on to distinguish themselves in swimming, square dance and choir.

Feb 5 1900
The United States and Great Britain sign the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the US the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it. Nicaragua, a sovereign nation at the time, is not a signatory and the Americans later decide to stiff the British by building a canal in Panama instead.

Chicken Choke may rival Chicken Soup as Miracle Therapy

Hollywood Urologist/Psychic Mohammed Mahoney heads for Sydney (via Basra) to check the latest medical findings on wanking as cancer prevention while Aussie tour promoters anticipate a rise from the results. Plus Jesus is spotted on a tree in the Philippines, a Canadian schoolboy confesses and This Date in Amazing History.

Irish-Iraqi specialist Mohammed Mahoney (a board-certified physician with a thriving
urology practice in Hollywood, FL) informs us he will extend his biennial trip overseas this year to include a swing through Sydney after he visits Uncle Abdullah and other members of his mother's family in Basra this April. Mohammed wants to attend the Workshop on Confrontation, Confusion and Challenges in Oncosexology sponsored by ISSC (International Society for Sexuality and Cancer).



In particular Mahoney wants to hear the update on a sensational 2003 report by Australian researchers indicating that the vigorous practice of masturbation, especially in a man's younger years actually reduces the risk of prostate cancer in later life. The findings by medical investigators by Melbourne's La Trobe University were part of The Australian Study of Health and Relationships, the largest and most comprehensive survey of sexuality ever undertaken Down Under. Telephone interviewed 19,307 respondents between the ages of 16 and 59 years, a sample that consisted of 10,173 men and 9,134 women randomly selected from all states and territories of Australia.



Australian researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer and 1,250 who had not about their sexual habits. They found those who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to develop the cancer. The protective effect was greatest while the men were in their 20s. Men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life. The news was greeted with excitement and relief among millions of thankful “wankers” around the globe anxious to learn if the discovery will be confirmed by subsequent studies in other localities.


Up the coast in Brisbane, our friend Dr. Barry Corrigan reports that tour and hotel operators of Queensland’s tourism-dependent Gold Coast region aren’t waiting for further medical surveys to start cashing in on what they see as an unprecedented promotional bonanza. “It’s not clear yet what any follow-up studies may show,” says veteran tour guide Rolf Sickerdick,”but as far as people here concerned the case is made already..masturbating IN AUSTRALIA wards off cancer. And that’s what we’re going to be marketing.” Sickerdick’s firm is already packaging Great Barrier Reef sail trips aimed an expected surge of American visitors “Pleasure cruise takes on a whole new meaning aboard our state-of-the-art schooner the Wankee Trader!” proclaims one brochure. Two new uber-neon-studded beach-front dance palaces, The Choked Chicken and Monkey Spanker will open their doors to an anticipated clamoring clientele next month while certain restaurants plan to lure Canadian and Jamaican visitors with heavily advertised nightly “jerked chicken at your table” specials. And the local Warner-Brothers theme park is said to be exploring how to tastefully pander to the family trade with Woody Woodpecker.



Corrigan notes that plans have already been announced for an extravagant 900-seat cabaret-style nightspot that will be named Le Club sWANK and erected, appropriately, next to the world’s tallest residential building, the Q1 (“The Shaft”) perhaps now destined to be more emblematic of the city than ever. For his part, Mahoney will attend the Sydney ISSC conference with an eye to possibly getting funding for a similar prostate-link study underway here in Fort Lauderdale (a Sister City to Queensland’s Gold Coast). “There couldn’t be a more natural place in the US for such a survey,” says Mahoney. After all, everyone KNOWS what the peninsula state is shaped like.”

AMAZING STORY UPDATES…

Family sources report that owners of the Hong Kong-based Fong-Wam-Bang Electronics empire are having second thoughts about financing American-born grandson Fu-Tze (Footsie) Feldman in a 2008 US Congressional race. For one thing, they reason, the Democrats control Congress again so how effective could a freshman Republican like Feldman be even if he won? Another cause for concern is the prediction by psychic Herschel Gomez that Footsie will woo and subsequently marry pop-star Britney Spears later in the year. From Malaysia, uncle Chuk Wam-Bang says he thinks the reclusive grandparents reckon a showbiz marriage and a simultaneous political campaign would draw far too much inquisitive publicity for the family to handle… Just six days after we relayed the story from Cowpie Corral, Alberta concerning a miraculous papal visage on a schoolboy’s apple, some 2,000 people swarmed into the town of San Enrique in the Philippines on Christmas Day to view an image of Jesus Christ that seemed appear on the trunk of an acacia tree. There was some difference of opinion whether you had to be standing 10-feet away while light hits the trunk in a certain way and whether there was also an angel hovering behind the face. The San Enrique mayor guessed there might be a logical explanation for the appearance while a skeptical town pastor flatly proclaimed the apparition a hoax. Sadly, that’s the also the latest word from Cowpie Flats as well where eighth-grader Barton Gilhooley ultimately confessed to doctoring his Granny Smith apple with an emerald magic marker. He explained was trying for an image of Wayne Gretsky but wound up with something that witnesses said looked like a younger version of Pope Benedict instead. He was suspended from Meadow Muffin Middle for three days over the prank.

ON THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY…

15 JANUARY 1346 Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria bestows upon his wife Margaretha, Holland and the oft-contested, war-torn province of Zealand. He would have preferred to give her a New Zealand but it would take Dutch navigator Abel Tasman 400 years to show up and find one.

15 JANUARY 1535 Henry VIII declares himself head of the English Church and thereby replaces Pope Clement VII, in the hearts of his subjects, as the model for Christian rectitude and moral probity that the British Royals have upheld to the present day.

15 JANUARY 1920 Prohibition (the 18th Amendment or Dry Law) goes into effect in the United States driving “demon rum” underground where it flourishes and “speakeasies” sprout up in thousands of communities across America. Selling liquor and beer becomes illegal but not drinking so millions of Yanks encourage lawbreakers and organized crime hits the Big Time. The 18th Amendment is repealed in 1933 and brazen flouting of the law is once more largely confined to politicians.

15 JANUARY 1955 Nearly ten years after the shooting stopped, the USSR, moving with characteristic dispatch and deliberation ends its state of war with the German Federal Republic (West Germany). Six years afterward, the Russians build a wall across Berlin that will stand until the Soviet Union itself begins to fracture in the 1980s.

A Canadian Core of Belief

Mary on toast: Hollywood icon for sure?

About two years ago a woman who lives down the road from me, sold on E-bay what was purported to be an image of the Virgin Mary still visible on a decade-old toasted cheese sandwich. The Hollywood, Florida-made morsel fetched a tidy $28,000 when the bidding ended despite the fact that the iconic face resembled Toronto-born film star Mary Pickford more than any Holy Virgin of note.


Still, in age where cynicism and gloom are rampant, it is uplifting to note another faith-related event that took place last month in the Alberta township of Cowpie Corral, about 50 km southeast of Calgary. During the bus ride to Meadow Muffin Middle School, eighth-grader Barton Gilhooley opened his lunch box and discovered, staring back at him from the obverse side of his Granny Smith apple the discernible image of a youthful Pope Benedict XVI (!) as identified by bus driver Blanche Slocum.

The 12-year-old, not knowing whose image it was, promptly took the possibly miraculous fruit to the school office where stunned counselors and an assistant principal summoned a priest, a rabbi and an orthodontist to examine the object more closely. Upon closer inspection, the somewhat indistinct image was determined not to be the pope at all but, in fact, the controversial British patriot Benedict Arnold! At that point, the priest, New York-born Father Elvis Flanagan declared the apple to be possessed and telephoned the Archdiocese in nearby Moose Poop Flats to arrange an exorcism while Rabbi Sharon Shipperton and orthodontist Javier Kawasaki got into an argument over the proper pronunciation of the town name. Newcomers prefer the vaguely French-sounding “Ko-PAY Corral” to the earthier original. Old-timers say such trifling with tradition would only confuse the town with Tombstone, Arizona and a celebrated gunfight there.

Benedict or Arnold? We'll never learn the apple "apparition"

But before any of this could be satisfactorily resolved, a ravenous sixth-grader, Wendy McDonald, sent to the office for tardiness, grabbed the apple from the assistant principal’s desk and gnawed it to the core, utterly obliterating the image. And despite the frantic efforts of orthodontist Kawasaki to extract evidentiary fragments from the child’s braces, the apple apparition was irretrievably lost.

The most remarkable thing about the entire episode was that young Wendy later that day passed her first history quiz since third grade. It has to make you believe.

Are we there, Yeti?

Still in the Canadian hinterlands, we are greatly relieved that our sources report that those repeated sightings of a “Big Foot” or Susquatch in the Yukon Territory on two November weekends has turned out to be nothing more frightening than US Vice President Dick Cheney returning from previously undisclosed hunting forays in over-sized Wal-Mart sportswear. Though, the notion of “Robo-heart Richard” with any sort of weapon in hand is a bit scary.

Meanwhile, those who sought to connect the repeated “creature” sightings with a recent spate of cattle mutilations in Northwest Canada will have to look elsewhere for a culprit. Equally remarkable, none of the veep’s hunting companions were injured on this trip but an angry grizzly bear (whom the NRA life member missed by a mile) nearly advanced incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to within an unassisted heartbeat of the presidency until Secret Service agents and an off-duty Mountie rescued the surprisingly agile 65-year-old from the branches of a Whitebark Pine near the Alaska border.

Cheney: missed the bear by a mile but thankfully shot no humans

Perhaps the Moonwalker was really there

It may sound incredible but our intrepid psychic investigator Herschel Gomez of Miami confides that those Michael Jackson child molestation accusations of the 1980s and 90s have turned out to be absolute fabrications perpetrated by malicious extraterrestrials.

Gomez says he has been allowed to see compelling evidence that one of the purported 13-year-old “accusers” is actually an octogenarian alien named Merzunngthhh from the Crab Nebula and that poor Michael himself is the product of clumsy extraterrestrial experiments performed at a secret lunar base on an otherwise normal but talented black child briefly abducted from a concert tour with his brothers in 1977.

The ghastly pallor, disfigured nose and limp stringy hair were all produced by exposure to intergalactic isotopes that likewise rendered Jackson incapable of relating to beings his own age unless they are chimpanzees.

Rising Number One Son

Determined to rebound from 2006 Congressional losses, Florida Republican party stalwarts have just about persuaded dashing Fort Lauderdale tax attorney Fu-Tze Fong Feldman to make a race for the U.S. House in 2008 and win back the in the state’s 22nd district from freshman Democrat Ron Klein.

Should he secure the nomination it will be “Footsie” Feldman’s task to convince thousands of Northeastern retirees that they would not be losing a Jewish voice in Congress but gaining a Chinese mensch on Capitol Hill.

One thing is certain, a Feldman campaign wouldn’t be likely to run short of cash thanks to doting Hawaiian-Chinese grandparents controlling the multi-billion dollar Fong-Wam-Bang Electronics empire based in Hong Kong. Back in 1968, these folks spent $750,000 on Footsie’s bilingual (Hebrew-Cantonese) bar-mitzvah at the Honolulu Hilton which featured Jan Peerce, Don Ho and maternal uncle Senator Hiram Fong on the electric horse-headed fiddle.

Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of South Central Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. psychotropic engineering from the Comenius University of Bratislava, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and the introduction of Pizza Hut outlets to Antofagasta, Chile.