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.