MICHAEL PHELPS: SASQUATCH

Could anything be more obvious? Apropos of our previous post, Bigfeet walk the world in the guise of regular humans, exhibiting certain glaring traits that make it clear that they're not all they seem. In the case of Olympic water-splasher Michael Phelps, who this past weekend won the world record for most gold medals at a single Olympics (answer: eight or so), the signs could not be clearer. The freakish metabolism, the lanky, newly clean-shaven frame, the outsized ears that could give someone a black eye if they're standing next to him when he removes his swim cap: these are all telltale signs of the Sasquatch. The so-called corpse touted by Georgian crackpots may have been a hoax, but the living thing was more triumphant than ever before as it was broadcast via every possible medium to a worldwide audience.

If the physical characteristics are not enough to convince a hardened skeptic, we would merely like to point out the savage beating administered by Phelps to the former world's record holder, Marc Spits, during a celebratory U.S. Swim Team event in Beijing on Sunday. While most commentators used the occasion to refer to Phelps as a "sore winner," they were merely ignorant of the ancient Sasquatch tradition of respectfully bloodying a vanquished enemy in honor of a nobly fought battle. Though most latter-day Bigfeet find private or largely symbolic ways to embody this ritual, some occasionally fail to keep their ancestral spirit under wraps - just witness Edward R. Murrow's berserk 1954 attack on Joseph McCarthy, in which the Senator from Wisconsin fractured a leg, lost part of his left ear, and had his appendix forcibly removed by Murrow's subtly clawed hand.

This of course begs a question that has haunted Apocryphists for many generations: what if Bigfeet were to rise up as one to overthrow the governments of the world? On this front we are happy to set the reader's mind at ease - unlike their evil counterparts in hidden pervasiveness, the Vikings, Bigfeet are largely peaceful creatures who want nothing more than to excel in a human's world. They are not leaders by nature, but rather mavericks that prefer using their free time to retreat into the nature from which they arose and uprooting trees for use as backscratchers, rather than planning any kind of power grab or coup.

However, this brings up a far more intriguing possibility: what if the Bigfeet were to rise up against the Vikings in a subterranean war of strange proportions? Could this secret battle be waged beneath our noses even today, in the guise of world political events? Were there any Vikings working behind the scenes in Beijing to undermine Phelps' record streak of wins? And will Phelps and his fellow Sasquatches band together to enact bloody revenge for this attempted slight?

Only time will tell. But until then, the answer is: almost certainly yes.

BIGFOOT-IN-MOUTH

The latest kerfuffling about a so-called Bigfoot corpse has us closing our eyes and sighing in a way that better befits a parent who has just been informed that their misbehaving child has set yet another neighborhood dog on fire. This is a road we've traveled before, and we know that it leads only to disappointment, reprimand, and the grim certainty that we'll be traveling it again before long.

Alleged Bigfoot corpses have been touted and debunked more or less weekly since the signing of the Constitution of Independence. Without exception these have been hoaxes, frauds, and misidentifications by really stupid people who don't have the wherewithal to recognize a dead bear. But the main reason the whole Bigfoot-corpse game deserves to be chucked into the folly bin is that Bigfeet are not remotely rare at all. Unlike its unfortunate cousin the Neanderthal, destroyed by early homo sapiens over misunderstandings about interspecies dating etiquette, the Bigfoot aka the Sasquatch aka the Western Yeti aka the Northern Ape aka the Cryptohuman has managed to maintain a robust existence in the modern industrialized world by joining civilization rather than attempting to beat it. They walk among us, with swollen shoe sizes and shaven faces

Being native to the North American continent, Bigfeet do not figure in Asian or European history. (For an essay on the Yetis of the Himilayas, please refer to this future post [link not yet enabled]). Seeing how the native Indian population was being slaughtered by the smiling genocidists of Manifest Destiny, 19th-century Bigfeet thought fast, created fictional European ancestries, bought some smart suits, and hit the pavement in search of a living wage. No bloviating about "the sacred land of our people" for them! Plus, being pretty pale under the fur, it wasn't too difficult to pass for white.

Herefore is a list describing Notable Individuals Who Have Secretly Been Bigfeet:

• Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States, 1889-1893
• Jimmy Kimmel, comedic badboy and Late-Night Talk Host
• Chyna, once-popular WWF wrestling pinup
• Harrison Ford, Hollywood actor (Bigfeet like the name "Harrison")
• Andrew Carnegie, steel tycoon and namer of Halls, Delis, and Mellons
• Edward R. Murrow, hard-hitting TV chain-smoker
• Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, an urban settlement for Secret Sasquatch Women
• Two-thirds of the folk-singing trio Peter, Paul and Mary
• Ernest Hemingway, author who popularized the use of terse Bigfoot patois in high literature

There are, of course, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many other Bigfeet currently at large in the United States and beyond. It is best not to make fun of them in public, because they will hear you, and they will say mean things about you behind your back. What's more, you will provoke the ire of the weblog Cryptomundo, which is not considered wise under any circumstance.

DANGEROUS HOOKY

It's shocking to see the lengths to which truant officers will go to make sure the children under their thumbs have appeared on time for school. This footage of a Pittsburgh elementary school shows that extraterrestrial technology is being employed to take a DNA scan of all students, parents, and teachers entering the building before classes. Will the government's increasingly baroque invasions of our privacy ever come to an end?

Let it be stated that The Apocryphist is a product of neither the public school system nor the nefarious underground network of private schools that dot the educational landscape like so many measles on a sickly child's face. Our stunning insightfulness and savage independence of spirit stem from the fact that we were home-schooled. By whom (or what) we are not naive enough to say out loud on the Labyrosphere (which, if you need reminding, is our preferred neologism for the Internet). Suffice it to say, saying what we've said should suffice.

HELLAS IN A HANDBASKET

If you start digging a hole through the earth, and dig it super-fast, and avoid any magma creatures intent on disrupting your journey, and avoid making a right turn at Albuquerque, and successfully make it to the other side, chances are you'll break through in Peking's Bird's Nest Stadium, named after the popular Chinese soup of the same name. But be careful: your newly emerged head will probably be crushed by the cleats of a passing javelinist, for the Olympics will be in full swing.

Like many other important inventions - the catheter, the toaster oven, the League of Nations - the Olympic Games are of ancient Greek provenance. Though in their modern incarnation the Olympics are a regularly recurring opportunity for the nations of the world to come together in a paper-thin display of temporary bohomie, affixed to the restless machinery of geopolitics by the tenuous clear-drying glue of sports, it was not always thus. During the height of classical Hellenic civilization, the Olympics were a chaotic, anarchic bloodbath, to be feared rather than televised.

Like the Marathon, so called after a soldier of the same name who ran 26.whatever miles to deliver a message to the king of Sparta, only to have his head chopped off for his effort, the Olympics are named after actual figures from Greek history. Most of the time they were normal men who walked the streets of Athens and Corinth pursuing their humble careers - milking goats, writing tragedies, forging the science of philosophy and so forth. At intervals, however, these men were afflicted with a disease unique to polytheistic cultures: with little or no warning they suddenly believed themselves to be gods, and ran amok throwing things at people, chasing them as fast as they could, doing flips over them, and embarking upon all manner of exertions in order to prove their divine provenance.

These so-called Olympiacs played havoc on the emerging city-states of the Peloponnesian peninsula until a young go-getter by the name of Plato, annoyed at being constantly interrupted in his wine-drinking and boy-shtupping by this form of mass calisthenic hysteria, developed a plan. He told the city leaders of Athens to build a giant holding pen on the outskirts of the city, which would eventually be called a "stadium" (from the Greek "sta-" or "stay," and "deus" or "god"). Happy for any opportunity to get Plato to shut up, the city leaders immediately complied.

Once all the spear-chucking, ball-swinging, back-stroking loonies were quarantined, however, a strange thing began to happen. Over a period of a few weeks, they would begin to organize into groups and compete directly with each other in order to prove who was the most godlike. The losers would be bludgeoned to death by the winners with cudgels made of whatever mineral was near at hand - in the case of the wealthy city of Athens, this tended to be gold, silver, and bronze. The victors would wear their cudgels around their necks as trophies. Once all of the losers were extinguished, the remaining competitors would become placid and docile, and long to return to their goat-milking or socratic dialoguing or what have you. Until, of course, about four years later, when the competitive spirit, pent up in common life, would return for another outbreak of this strange mental illness. The four-year schedule on which this happens was discovered by Archimedes, with the help of his Antikytheras Mechanism.

The popular Olympic delusion still exists, but for the most part it is sublimated within the strictures of the modern Games themselves. Every once in a while, though, a flavor of the ancient spirit sneaks through. After witnessing a crowd of Chinese dancers riding roughshod over a scale model of the earth, is it any surprise that a jealous Russian government sent tanks into the peach-growing nation of Georgia to make a big noise over the pisspot backwater of South Ossuary? Nowadays it's not the individuals but the nations who believe that they're gods.

NEVER TRUST A NUMBER THAT LOOKS THE SAME UPSIDE-DOWN AS IT DOES RIGHT-SIDE-UP

On June 6, 2006, the world trembled in fear as it awaited for the Lord of Darkness to make a horrifying reappearance on the world stage, possibly as a guest judge on the American Idol program. Less weeping and shrieking accompanied July 7, 2007, the luckiest day of the millennium, and even less has accompanied today, August 8, 2008. Why, we ask, is mankind not filled with dread at the possibility of a giant octopus rising from the sea and crushing civilization with slimy, suctionful tentacles? For if 666 is the Mark of the Beast, then 888 is the Mark of the Mollusk.

It's no accident that today is the opening ceremony of the Olympics, which are being held in the seafood-loving country of China. It's hoped that, if such a sick-making behemoth were to attack this mass gathering of people (because such behemoths rarely use secluded beaches in Alaska or Tierra del Fuego for their dramatic entrances), the billion-plus Chinese population would pounce as one, chopsticks at the ready, atop such a tasty beast, devouring it in a matter of minutes.

But is such cephalopodian savagery the only thing we have to worry about today? The number Eight, after all, is infinity lying down. Here are eight other eights for us to watch out for on this strange, topsy-turvy day.

CRAZY EIGHTS - Invented in the 19th Century by physicians at London's squalid Bedlam asylum as a method of keeping inmates insane enough to stick around and keep paying the exorbitant rents, this card game has been known to make normal men mad if they play it for 72 hours at a stretch without sleeping. Don't let it happen to you!

OCTOROON - In early Americana, an octoroon was an individual that had one great-grandparent of African descent, thereby making their blood one eighth African. As a racist term it was flung around as an insult to people who considered their bloodlines to be pure; a short-lived later attempt to use it as a compliment implying that you are not a completely inbred redneck was met with much head-scratching. If you attempt to use the term today, few people will understand what you mean, and confusion can be dangerous - especially when the confused person is a pilot steering a jet plane full of innocent people at a deadly height.

OCTOMAROON - An octomaroon is an octoroon of less than average intelligence. People of less than average intelligence are to be avoided.

EIGHT IS ENOUGH - A short-lived 1970s sitcom starring aging musical-comedy star Dick Van Powell as the father of three boys, who married another aging musical-comedy star, Ruby Buckley, who had three daughters of her own, creating a family that fit the title. Teen heartthrob Scott Baio got his start in this show as the family's pool flunky, Chichi, and that is reason enough to consider it inauspicious.

STOP SIGNS - It's a little-known fact that stop signs are octagonal, meaning they have eight sides. But don't try to count them or you'll get a lineup of impatient automobiles honking behind you, and nobody needs that!

OCTOBER - When Augustus Caesar was planning his famous war against the Gauls, he decided to play a trick on them by completely reconfiguring the Roman calendar. He told the Gauls his army would show up for the war in October (literally, "eighth month"), but then changed the calendar around so October was actually the TENTH month. The Gauls were already to fight in the month of August (the etymology of which is shrouded in mystery), and so when Augustus didn't show up after a while, they were like, fucking Romans, let's just go home and eat a primitive version of cheese. And so come October, when the Gauls were all snug in their huts, Augustus led his army to Gaulia and slaughtered them. This is also one of the origins of Halloween.

"EIGHT DAYS A WEEK" - If you listen to this 1964 Beetles hit on an eight-track player today, your hair will set on fire and your heart will explode and you'll lose all your money and you'll come down with diabetes and you'll get a toothache and your spouse will leave you and you'll crash your car and a tree will fall on your house and the world will end and you'll die.

V8 - This exotic blend of tomato juice and Colonel Sanders' special blend of seven herbs and spices was named after the V8 engine, which was originally designed to run on a similar organic blend before being shut down by Big Oil. If you drink V8 while listening to "Eight Days a Week" on eight-track while watching Eight is Enough on DVD and playing Crazy Eights with an Octoroon (and/or Octomaroon) while sitting in a car at a stop sign, and your birthday is in October, strangely, nothing is likely to happen, because all of these elements will cancel themselves out. If you are an octopus, however, you will grow to massive proportions and attempt to conquer the world. Just to be safe, though, you shouldn't do it.

FROM BAD TO NORSE

The dearth of recent news stories on the subject of Vikings is a troubling trend that we feel obligated to address. Most people consider Vikings to be little more than a bygone race of Scandinavian sea pirates that roamed Western Europe a thousand or so years ago before their reign of sack and pillage was brought to an end by the mass embrace of Christianity in their home region. These people are dangerously deluded, in dire need of being smacked around, shouted at, and quite possibly spat upon.

One of the primary misconceptions of the modern world is that the Viking menace is past. The truth is that there is a direct line of descent between Vikings and modern terrorists. Bereft of their dragon-hulled battleships, many of them migrated inland. Some wound up in Middle East, where they have stoked havoc for nearly a millennium. Others sat around in Central Europe scratching their asses until the circumstances were promising for Fascism. Still others wrote operas about Vikings, in which Viking stories were sung in Viking costume by Viking singers. But despite the fatness and femininity of some of these performers, their singing did not spell the end of the Viking era. In fact, Vikings continue, in their guises of regular, everyday people, to have a profound impact on the workings of recent history.

As such, please study, memorize, and tremble in fear of this list of "Five Events in Recent History That Were Actually Caused By Vikings - Yes, Vikings!"

1. THE BOER WAR - When a group of Edwardian Vikings decided that they wanted to terrorize the Southern Hemisphere for a change, they went straight to South Africa and subjugate the British, who were in turn subjugating the Dutch Boers, who were in turn subjugating the Zulus, who were in turn subjugating the lions, who were in turn subjugating the giraffes, who were in turn subjugating the the mimosa trees, who were in turn pretty much screwed. There were no victors.

2. COMMUNISM - Originally a shiny, happy philosophical system of shared resources and equality devised by the world's first hippie, Carl Marks, Communism could very well have served as a solution to the world's ills were it not for the Vikings who secretly overthrew the Russian Revolution and decided that it would be a lot more fun to kill millions of people and turn the verdant greenlands of Siberia into a crappy prison camp.

3. THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL - Vikings have a known propensity to disguise themselves as corrupt politicians and sabotage the system from within. During the reign of President Harden G. Warning, whose cabinet was lousy with them, Vikings accepted millions of dollars in kickbacks from the tea lobby in exchange for the promise to affix a giant handle and spout to the Capitol building in Washington, DC. (In a planned double-cross, these accoutrements would, at the final moment, be replaced with classic Viking horns that would cast their pointy shadows across the Mall for generations to come.) When the scheme was discovered, the Vikings were unceremoniously kicked out of Washington until the next President was sworn in.

4. ISHTAR - Unhappy about their portrayal in such historical films as Erik the Red-Faced, Kill All the Vikings! and Wild Strawberries, the Vikings decided to strike Hollywood in its most tender part: the money. Infiltrating the studio establishment, secret Viking producers created a bizarre proposal for a buddy comedy starring the aging comedy duo of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who play songwriters at the ancient temple of the Babylonian Goddess of Love and War, Ishtar. Though the film fared poorly at the box office, it failed to destroy the entertainment-industrial complex of the United States, as originally intended.

5. 9/11 - What were those deadly airplanes if not Viking vessels of fearmongering and attempted conquerment? Sure, they didn't have dragons emblazoned on the front, but that was merely practical - the Viking-descended members of Al-Qaeda would have loved nothing more than to paint some scary teeth onto the noses of those jets, only by doing so they would have been caught before liftoff.

And what are they up to right now? It is believed that a group of Vikings has joined the Steampunkerism movement's attempts to revive the corpse of Queen Victoria, in the hopes that a new British Empire would give them something more interesting to conquer than the amateur crap being thrown down by the current United States government. Of course, the Viking scourge has grown so diffuse in the generations since its acme that it is difficult to imagine them banding together and traumatizing the world en masse. Still, Viking sleeper cells are present in every nation of the world, and it is only a matter of time before one of them dons their ceremonial helmets, drinks an assload of grog, and starts swinging a battle-axe at your friends and relations. Look sharp!

MONSTER OUR ASS

One word for the so-called Montauk Monster (okay, a word and a skeptical inflection.) : seriously? (And repeated for good measure: ) Seriously? Of all the different entertaining, amusing, terrifying, serpentine, slime-ridden, scale-infested, befanged, paradoxical, prehistoric, reptilian, cetacean, romantical, eye-popping forms a sea monster could take, you chose this one? Who do you think you’re impressing, Montauk Monster (pictured here as the dork it is)?

We suppose this is what one should expect from a sea monster washing up on the prosaic shores of Long Island. Yes, Montauk may be known for its mansion culture, nautical past and late-night beachside blood rituals, but it represents the dullest America has to offer – it’s only a stone’s throw from Rhode Island, for christ’s sake. And what would a Rhode Island sea monster look like – a fish? With, like, a weird tooth or something?

We encourage the populace to return its attention to the more hellacious sea monsters that still roam our oceans with sinister freedom. We mean, of course, the scyllas, the charibdae, the humpacked hydras, the zombie sirens, the baleened leviathans, the were- turtles, the saltwater Nessies, the great white pleiosaurs, the vampire dolphins, the house-sized electric clams, the seahorses-of-hell, the superintelligent Portuguese Men o’ War, the Moby-Dicks that shoot lasers from their eyes, the flying eels, the maimrays, the krakens – the bloody krakens!!! We must kill them before they kill us – and have a thoroughly awesome maritime adventure in the bargain.

Dear readers, please share with us information about your ideal sea monster. Pull no punches – the grotesquer the better. We want to hear about things that will make us shit our pants the next time we see an oil painting of a lighthouse.