I Want to Believe

Sorry about yesterday, everyone, but I had a lovely little sports post ready to go wherein I spent a lot of words insulting Notre Dame and their desperation to cling to football independence, but then the ugly step-children of the Big XII did a deal with the Longhorns and Pointy Tail of Texas in order to keep the conference "together", thus ruining my perfectly-placed rant about Notre Dame's high opinion of itself and how nearsighted it is. So, I didn't publish the post and didn't bother coming up with a replacement. Maybe another day.

So, today, I have this dandy for you.

Despite the fact that I'm a "Man of Science", I like to keep an open mind to all manner of paranormal phenomena. Mostly, it's fun to believe some of this shit that we've had passed down through our lore. Cold spot on the floor? Why, it must be a ghost. Odd not-quite-a-log looking shape in the water? Sea monster, hands down. Probably just basking in the sun. Or, more importantly, it's probably disguised as a log, to lure in unsuspecting prey. Like you or me.

Don't even try to convince me that there aren't mermaids out there. Beautiful women plying the waters topless! And their legs are mashed together into fins, so that the only port of entry is their mouths! Nubile young chesty things that can only give blow jobs? Don't you dare try and tell me they're not real!

Then, however, there are some things that scare the living shit out of me. The story behind the Amityville Horror house? That will keep me up at night for weeks. Tales of alien abduction--not the anal probe part, but the part where the aliens are walking through the motherfucking walls and have some sort of force field around the victim so they can't move? That shit's nightmare-inducing.

And then there's Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, if you must. Sassy is an idea that I like. The notion that there's an undiscovered North American ape species still around is, to me, awesome. The same goes for the Yeti (probably not the same species as Sasquatch), though since that's an Asian ape, it doesn't hold the same captivating keenness that Sasquatch does, at least for me.

However, I can see both sides of the argument with regards to Sasquatch. There have been so many people playing pranks and hoaxing others for years that every bit of Sasquatch evidence I see I view through a jaded lens. And while hair samples and footprints are nice and all, no one has found a body of one of these large American apes (yet, I hope), and to be honest, the body is the most compelling piece of evidence. Without it, there's too much doubt as to the existence of Sassy. No one believed in the mountain gorillas until a body was brought back, and that was fifty, sixty years ago! I suspect, however, that even with a body, there will still be skeptics.

Thanks to programs on both The History Channel and Discovery, and to a lesser degree on Syfy (Destination: Truth could be a good show, if they didn't try to pack so much stuff into one episode), it seems as though the study of and hunt for evidence of Sasquatch has taken a more mainstream track. This is good, because then maybe we can turn the tide of public opinion from Sasquatch being a children's tale of a forest-dwelling boogeyman into Sasquatch being a viable, scientifically-recognized species that we can protect and study.

But...for every step forward in the realm of cryptohominoidal study, there's...well, there's this guy:

...

Well, I guess it's good that Sasquatch has, apparently, mastered that lather, rinse, repeat cycle and took time to get some highlights done before visiting with Mr. Peeler and his dog...though I am disconcerted that Sassy can be driven off with a sharply barked "git!" and a stick.

It's not unprecedented to have Sasquatch reports in North Carolina or in Appalachia; most sightings, however, are reported in the Pacific Northwest and up into Canada, sure, but the sightings of a large, hairy hominid span coast-to-coast in this great nation of ours.

Wait. I'll bet he didn't see Sasquatch at all! I'll bet he saw...this guy!