Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Bigfoot in Your Mouth

Posted by Garrick Garcia

In the past couple of months, there’s been a lot of buzz in the world of Bigfoot sightings and urban myth. Two figureheads in the quest to find Bigfoot, Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer, announced on YouTube in July that a full carcass of a species known as the legendary Bigfoot was discovered, encased in a block of ice.

“Everyone who has talked down to us is going to eat their words," Whitton said at the time.

Just days ago, the supposed “evidence” for Bigfoot was thawed out, revealing that it was nothing more than a rubber gorilla suit. I haven’t heard of any comment from Whitton or Dyer about the failed discovery of a Bigfoot.

This raises more eyebrows about the search for such urban legend and modern mythological creatures. There’s been none or such little scientific evidence for the existence of such creatures like Bigfoot, Loch Ness, and others, and still many people are so intrigued with the idea and so adamant about discovering their existence.

These kinds of things grasp our imagination and our quest for discovery. Unfortunately, because they’ve come close to things we already know, human ancestors and dinosaurs respectively, Bigfoot and Loch Ness come close to being real. Close, but not enough to be. Our minds love to make interesting things out of nothing, compelling us to see what we want. Loch Ness turned out to be a piece of driftwood, or flock of birds. Bigfoot turned out to be a man in a hairy costume, or a frozen gorilla suit.

I really don’t see why they’re that interesting in the first place. They’re cool ideas I guess, but the world and universe we already know is much more fascinating! These urban legends might’ve more interesting if they actually had some substantial evidence, but after all these attempts, none has shown up.

What’s really interesting here, are those who dedicate their lives to chasing after fairy tales. It really is quite sad and desperate, and I’d be a little more sympathetic if I weren’t snickering at how ridiculous it all is.

A rubber gorilla suit, hahaha!

Credited article to Time.

2 comments:

Garrick Garcia said...

I forgot to add that just days before the carcass was revealed to be just a rubber suit, the Bigfoot hunters sent samples of the creature's DNA to be analyzed at the University of Minnesota.

The samples matched a mixture of both human and American opossum DNA. When asked about the samples, one of the hunters claimed that it was likely that the creature ate an oppossum and did not comment on why he'd taken a sample from the stomach.

Anyway, the whole time they were claiming to have found the Bigfoot, they kept hiding the body from the public and attempted to ward off investigators and avoid actual study of the specimen. It was your textbook example of hoax behavior.

They kept avoiding to produce the body, and once they did, it was just someone's Halloween costume. Classic. I just can't believe they thought it would work.

Many do this just to collect the money off poor on-lookers and the un-skeptical.

Fenisargon said...

Reading this blog reminded me of the UFO topic. In my Writing 50 Politics class we watched a rather unconvincing documentary about the possibility of aliens visiting Earth. Now, considering how vast the universe is, I'm sure there is other life out there, but are aliens visiting our planet? I doubt it. I found this article today on the Loughborough Echo:

More UFO sightings reported

Aug 21 2008 By Isaac Ashe

UFOS? Or a load of hot air? The Echo has this week been alerted to a spate of UFO sightings, as well as being contacted by several sceptics.

Last week the Echo reported on an orb spotted silently hovering in the skies above East Leake by a number of residents on August 4, at around 10pm.

More East Leake residents have contacted us to confirm the sighting, bringing the total of people who saw the UFO to at least seven, and residents in Mountsorrel, Barrow-upon-Soar, Birstall and Loughborough have made contact to say they have seen similar orbs in their areas this month.

Ten "flickering" lights were seen, again moving west to east, were seen over Mountsorrel by residents around 10.45pm on August 1.

Resident Derek Morrish said: "As the two lights came over it was noticeable that they were making no sound at all.

"We watched them pass over the house flying towards Sileby but they had not gone far before they disappeared."

And on August 4, the same night as the East Leake apparition, lights were seen over Barrow.

One resident said: "At 10.30pm I saw 10 of the orbs travelling from an easterly direction, then turning northerly, at about two minute intervals."

And four Birstall villagers saw an orb over Watermead Park at 9.50pm on August 9: "It wasn't making a sound. It was large and orange, we didn't know what it was."

However a Loughborough sighting was rubbished by Neil Gibson, who saw an orb in Loughborough on August 17 near to Churchgate: "I could not identify the object. After 10 minutes of research on the internet I pretty much confirmed it was a fire balloon."

And East Leake resident John McLean also contacted the Echo with an explanation for the phenomenon.

He said: "I was going for a walk at the time and I watched three of these things lift off from the ground.

"Someone had either made or bought some lanterns with candles in that acted as miniature hot air balloons.

"Because it was clear when it was high up in the sky it did appear to be a UFO.

"Personally I do believe there are UFOs, and I have seen some peculiar things in the sky, but you've got to sort the wheat from the chaff."

u Are the orbs lanterns, or something out of this world? Have you seen any other UFOs? If you can help, contact reporter Isaac Ashe on Isaac_Ashe@MRN.co.uk, or have your say on the www.loughboroughecho.net forums - the truth is on there!

I especially like the ending: "The truth is out there!" Now just because something is called a UFO doesn't automatically make it an alien spacecraft. There are thousands of objects flying around that NASA or other agencies can't identify - there are just too many. However, like Garrick said, our minds love to make interesting things out of nothing, compelling us to see what we want. Until some real evidence is presented, alien UFOs visiting planet Earth should be put into that category with Big Foot and Nessie.

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