The Cryptid Factor - 82: #082 The Just Not Great Issue

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

At last the world has a chance to hear Episode 82 - although will they really want to? Despite being filled to the brim with Bear faces on Mars, Mystery Sausages in mailboxes, Predictable Asparagus Fortune-tellers, an Eyewitness Account of a Mothman sighting (complete with homemade spooky music)... it's just... well, not great. You be the judge!

The Cryptid Factor with Rhys Darby and Dan Schreiber. From the depths of Atlantis, to the heights of ultra-space, to the beings that surround us and their threat to take our place, the wonders of the universe, of time and astro planes, creatures who are hidden and blurred within our frames. Who can warp reality and make sense of destiny? The answer lies but not in one, there can be only three. We are the Cryptid Factor and we're back! Very nice. Very heartfelt. Very heartfelt. That was like a war poem. There you go. There can be only three. And you also said there can button one, did you say?

Oh, the answer lies but not in one. Oh, but not in. You thought I said buttons. I thought it was button one, yeah. The answer lies and buttons. Listen carefully. The answer lies but not in one. There can be only three. That's just something I jotted down a couple of minutes ago and thought that'd be a nice start. We need a book of poetry from you. We've got your book of quotes that I'm working on, but the Darby poetry, we've got how many episodes worth of poems now? It's virtually a book. Yeah, there should be a few there if we put it all together. Not counting the episodes. I know who's going to make this.

Remember the episodes, Eric? How long did that go for? Well, you've now got a rap album. You've also got a book of poetry. It's incredible. People just think this is a podcast. This is actually creating a media empire. 100%. Yeah, the robot sci-fi ranges series. I mean, there's so many things. I get bored and I get creative and I just want to throw lots of stuff out there and I enjoy it. This is my favorite time of the month. I was going to say week, but let's be honest. Being able to get together and have a jam. And now it's 2023. This is it.

Yeah, the new series. This is our new series. This is our first Ep post Christmas, isn't it? Despite the Christmas episode of coming out this year. We managed to squeeze it in until January, the last minute. Yeah. Hey, guys, I got a belated Christmas present and it's one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given. And I know you guys have seen it because I posted it online, but I was gifted by a man named Cliff Smith. 300 copies of 14 times the finest magazine out there. What? I couldn't believe that.

I haven't seen this. I don't use. I don't go online anymore. Oh, man. Show the picture, Dan, of the mall spread out on your beard or whatever. Yeah, I've got pictures. I'm not sure where. 300 copies of the same. Of the same issue. No, of the magazine. 300 issues.

This is one of the issues. It was it was given to me by a guy called Cliff Smith, who very he messaged me saying, I've got sad news. I've I'm quite ill with cancer and I want to make sure that these go to a good home. And I know that you love the 14 times magazines. And I said, listen, you should keep them. But he said, no, I'd love to send them to you. And he sent them and the great news is he's gone into remission and he's traveling the world now. He's like, I'm going to go for it.

I'm going to see the world. So he sent me his copies and he's off in Australia somewhere. He's traveling the world to come and get his magazines back. He said, I'm in remission. I'm trying to get my magazines back. Sorry. Wait a minute. You should leave one copy of each edition in a different country or city in the world.

So he has to collect them all individually and therefore sees the world. There's a 14 in the common San Diego. Yeah. That's very expensive for me having to lead the trail around the world and 300 editions. Yeah. So this is issue number 79 and this would have come out in the 90s. I think about 1995. And if anyone listening doesn't know 14 times magazine, it's a it's the Journal of Strange Phenomena.

It is one of the greatest magazines that has ever existed. And they just do such cool things like look at this. As you open the front, there's a little ticket here and it says world about to end save 11 pounds 99. And what it is is a subscription. The ancient and mystical Zoho people of Central America have long monitored sacred stone calendars carved deep into the jungles of the Yucatan. Recent research shows that the calendars all end on a single date, the 1st of April 1997. So we at 14 Towers are making this special subscription offer to readers while there's still time. Take out a two year subscription now and we guarantee your supply of the magazine until doomsday.

It's just such great. And everything you go through these magazines. I found just a couple of things I wanted to read to you guys. There's like a collection of you can see there's a little box of collected articles here and they go through the newspapers of the world. This is called gotcha. Yeah. Here's a couple of stories from there. Pensioner Ron Tupper got his balls trapped between the slats of a patio chair after taking a shower at his home in Eastbourne.

The fire brigade tried to grease and other lubricants to finally free him after an hour by using cutting equipment to demolish the chair. That's just a and then the next one cricketer Mark Hubbard 29 from Seton and Devon slipped from a sight screen he was repairing and was left hanging painfully by his scrotum from a hook. He hold himself off and was driven to a health center. We had seven stitches. He saw said his wife Karen, but everything's in working order. Every story is just. Yeah. This guy took an early morning dip in a motel pool in Lakeland, Florida.

It was chapped in the shallow end for three hours after getting his penis stuck in a suction filter. The swollen penis was finally extricated from the filter by an ambulance crew using lubricant. Gold. The whole magazine. I have to say this is terrible. This is going to be giving people ideas of like I've always wanted a fire person to massage my scrotum. How can I do that? I know.

I'll get them stuck. People are going to be inventing ways of getting their private parts stuck in stuff to call the firing. I need a fireman. I need a hot fireman and some lube. I'm in the shower. No, I'm stuck in a tree at the moment. I was in the shower, but now I'm up a tree. I tried to climb out of the shower through the window and now I'm in a tree, but I still I need some lube.

I'm stuck. No, I'm stuck in a root. It's. Oh, well, I was naked. I was naked. Must be a fireman, please. The hat. Is Brian on duty at the moment?

No. No, he starts at three. Yeah. Okay. If you just don't send the fire truck until three o'clock when Brian's on duty because he's hot. Yeah. He's got soft hands. I'll just stay here in the tree.

I'll be fine. I'll be fine. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Well, 300. It's so good. 300. So how far does it go back?

Oh, God, it goes back into the early 90s and it covers everything from, you know, the stuff we talk about, sort of mysteries of the universe. It covers the cryptid world. It covers UFOs, everything. It collects. It's just a collection of repository of things that are odd and they're making sure it's all filed. Yeah. It's got the back.

I mean, here's this last thing I'll read you, but it's called strange deaths this section. I'll do this as a quiz. Chef Juan Riaz was stabbed through the heart in Mexico City. What stabbed him through the heart and he's a chef. And there was a, there was a storm that day. Oh, he vetted that now. Okay. Oh, I've, I've got an idea.

Yeah. What? Was it an asparagus spear? Oh, very nice. Very nice. That would have to be a very stiff one. It was very, very frozen. One would think, you know, a chef's knife would be the obvious answer there.

You think so, right? Yeah. He was stabbed through the heart with uncooked spaghetti strands. What? That were traveling at 150 miles an hour being carried in the winds during this storm at his restaurant. Wow. No. Outrageous.

That's what it says. Of course. You know how stiff those strands can be? Yeah. But surely that would be, they would just. You grab a bundle of those strands and then they can be quite a lucrative weapon. Yeah. If you were to fire them out of a cannon at 150 miles an hour.

Do you remember there's that Roald Dahl story where the murder weapon is like a chicken wing and then, or it's a, it's part of a cooked chicken. And then the woman who murders the man eats the chicken afterwards. So the evidence, the murder weapon is gone. Oh, brilliant. Same thing with the spaghetti. Yes. We've just discovered the perfect murder weapon.

Addable murder weapon. Spaghetti. And wind. Or an iced asparagus spear, guys. I mean. Possibly. Yeah, yeah. It would defrost and people would be like, there's no way an asparagus spear could have killed

him. Yeah. We should, we should get into writing cryptid Agatha Christie novels. Where do the how do the cryptids come into it? Agatha Crypti. Agatha Crypti. Agatha Crypti. Agatha Crypti.

Oh God. Okay. I will say this with the 40 in times I used to read them when I lived in London many years ago. I would get them religiously and was the only magazine I would read cover to cover every single piece of it. And I absolutely adored them. When I left the UK, they become very expensive to get here in America.

I'm not sure you can certainly get them, but in New Zealand they were like $18 a copy. Yeah. And also like a month or two like behind. So can't find them either. Hard to find as well. Yeah. But I love them. They're beautiful.

Anyway, thank you. Cliff Smith. What a gift. Yeah. Fantastic. What a Christmas gift. The one question I have is that I think we've made it quite clear in previous episodes that both Reese and I really love 40 in times as well.

I just would love to put it out to Chris, who's I'm so happy and remission and on his global trip. And just let us know why he chose you for all 300 copies. I mean, it could have been a hundred. I mean, I'm just saying. Yep. If you're out there, just, you know, maybe just a quick little apology email or something like that.

Just to Reese and I. Yeah. Quite nice. I think it's because he listens to my other podcast and that's what he's saying. All right. The non other podcast. Exactly. He doesn't even listen to this one.

So he's not listening. He's not going to apologize. Exactly. He's not going to hear it. He's not hearing any of this. Don't know why I gave him a shout out. I'm sure he would have. If he knew you boys were interested, I'm sure you would have got a third.

Well, I'm happy for you and I'm happy for your wife, who I know must be loving the fact that you have 300 copies of 40 in time. She hates Cliff Smith. He's now become a, he's become a word in the house instead of swearing around the children. Don't be such a Cliff Smith about it, Dan. You know, he's the, he's the buyer. I would love it if you use those magazines like in many different ways. So I use them as for you're putting your plates on your table, you know, table mats, use them

as coasters, use them as door stops, have them as like tie them together as curtains, literally your house is just covered in these magazines. Birthday cards, each birthday card from, from you and all three of your sons is actually in times magazine. And you've got to look through the magazine to try and find the birthday message. It's written in a very tiny so it's just to read the entire magazine to find the message. This will be the reason for the divorce. Cliff Smith will be cited in court.

Finally. Yeah. Hey Dan, also we were all lined up getting ready to record the other day and it was all cancelled at the last minute because you were once again in an ambulance with one of your children. Well, I took my first ever ambulance ride because usually my wife is the one who gets to ride exclusively in the ambulance with our children. Yeah.

It's an usual thing. Yeah. She's had three rides on her own without me. Is this like the fireman trying to get your nutsack message? Do you like, I really want to go in an ambulance. I had to trap my balls in a copy of 40 in times and call the fireman over. Finally get in. Can I come too?

My balls are stacked. All right, get in, get them in there. Yeah, no. My newborn, he fell out of his cram and we had an emergency ambulance come and collect him and I had to jump in. It's quite fun in the ambulance. He's all fine, which is great. It was very scary.

I mean, it's God is terrifying being a parent and that's the harder side of it. But he's all good, which is great. That's awesome. Yeah. Anyway, let's get back to the podcast. So we haven't actually got much time because I've got to go to Super Nintendo World. VIP opening. Oh, do you?

Sorry. Oh, yeah. So let's get this over and done with. Let's move on. Do you have to enter through a pipe? How do you get into it? Well, I will totally let you know. I'll be doing some little videos.

It's only just opened. It's a brand new feature here at Universal Studios. So I'm taking Theo along and we're going to try out all the new funny ideas. I really don't have any. I know there's some definitely it's very interactive. You bounce up and down on things and these blocks appear and all that kind of stuff. That's so cool. And there's their go cuts.

There better be go cuts. There has to be. Oh, there's got to be Mario cuts. There's got to be something like that. Yeah, sure. And Donkey Kong, he's got to make an appearance somewhere. Oh, yeah. Right.

Yeah. So that's what I'm looking forward to. Oh, that's good. Well, should we wrap this up now then? Let's go. That sounds way more important than doing a podcast to be quite honest. I've been rubbing. First show back 2023.

Let's kick off with everyone's favorite segment. It's weekly world. Weird news. Crazy, freaky. Watch out. Okay. I've got a story. I'll kick it off.

This is a New Zealand story, I believe. Oh. Waikiki. Do you know Waikiki? Waikiki, yeah. Yeah. Waikiki was just here the other day. Were you?

Yeah. I was just wondering if you would have been there during a crisis, a mystery that's been going on. Residents have been reporting, finding mystery sausages in their mailboxes. What? Yeah. There's been a flurry of mystery sausages and the sausage itself is not like, oh, what meat is that?

It's like, why is there a sausage in my letterbox? And it's driving, according to the article, the community to tear itself apart. There's so much trust being lost. Someone on the inside is posting mystery sausages to everyone in the community. That's amazing. Just a sausage on its own or actually in an envelope? It's actually, it's wrapped up in bread. So it's a bit more of like a bread hot dog, not in a classic hot dog bun.

But yeah, so someone is leaving single sausages, just one sausage wrapped in bread in the letterboxes of the residents of Waikiki. Well, that's the New Zealand way. That's how we have our sausages. We do wrap them in simple white bread with a bit of tomato sauce on it. Or ketchup, as you'd say in the States or England. But yeah, that's bizarre. Well, I did have a bunch of leftover sausages after doing a sausage sizzle there the other

day. And I was just, I didn't know what to do with them to be honest. I thought I'd just distribute them to a whole bunch of people and let them all have a sausage each. I don't know why they're so upset. You know, I was just trying to be kind. Okay. So that, that's that one solve.

Well, the interesting thing with Waikiki is that it's a little island just off Auckland, the, you know, the main city here in New Zealand. And it's about a 30 minute ferry ride away. And it's a beautiful island, lots of vineyards and 26 wineries on that one island. Wow. But it has historically up until maybe sort of 20 years ago been kind of a hippie alternative community. But of course, as land has got more and more scarce than Auckland and all of the wealthy

Aucklanders coming and buying up properties. And so you really feel it now. You go over there and there's like a crystal shop right next to like a five star restaurant. And so maybe it's a protest. Maybe it's a sausage protest by one of the alternative community. Interesting. Yes. Maybe they're sending a message.

There's some, there's a great character. We'll get to the story later. And I'm not going to pretend that there's more to the story. That was it. The headline, but there's, but there's a great interview with someone who just gives us more finds the juice in an already spent story. He's just, he really kicks it up the ass. So yeah, that's, that's my headline.

Buttons. Oh, that's not the story. Of course. I thought it was. No, that's just the headline. Oh, shacks. Okay. Well, I forgot we were doing that.

Let's roll. We can edit out your stuff. You've got one. Buttons. And I think you just said for the last three minutes, and then we just move on to your headline. What, what's your headline? Wow.

Let me tell you about why Hickey iron just quickly before I go into my head. It's actually kind of a very split community there. Can I ask for the one edit rule? The one edit rule. I was listening to the last episode and there was a bit that buttons kind of wanged on a bit more. There was one edit on this episode for the last episode. Can I edit?

Can I edit out something from a previous set? I think you can. I thought this is a bit flappy. This is a bit. You can use the next like 30 or 40 episodes worth of edits to edit me out of this episode entirely. Save up all your edits and use them all for this one on him. I mean, he was supposed to edit out my song or whatever it was at the beginning where

I did a better version of it. He used both. Well, then you can't. It's like it's hard because both of them were great and I thought the world needed to hear both of them. Right. Okay. That's tough.

Do your headline. Okay. Here's my headline. Woman uses asparagus. See. I wonder where you got that from. To kill a chef during a storm. Just come out now.

Breaking news. Yeah. No, this is a woman uses asparagus to predict the future and it's not looking good for the royals. Oh, I love this lady. Yeah. What's she called herself? The asparagus.

The asparagus. No. The mansor. The asparagus or something. Aspera Mansa. Yeah. She's very exciting. Aspera Mansa.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Oh, that's a good Netflix show. Darius, what's yours? Okay. Face of a teddy bear shows up in photograph of Martian's surface. I'm going to sleep over. That's exciting.

Who won that one? I think what was yours again, Dan? It's a mystery sausages in Waikiki. Oh, yeah. That's pretty good. I'll just give you the quick breakdown. So this is largely a story that was reported by a resident called Jacob. Jacob said that he found in his letterbox a white buttered bread sausage combo coated

in tomato sauce and it was just sitting there and he found it in his letterbox and he thought, ah, it looked barbecued. It looked like maybe someone drunkenly kind of just left it as they were going on. And then the next day happened again and then it happened again and it just kept happening. And so he thought, oh, I'm being targeted by a single prankster who's leaving these little sausages in my letterbox. He sent a picture. And they cook, right?

They're cooked. They're barbecued. Yeah. He said, I sent a picture to my friend group and some of them had been sausage as well. That's when we realized we had a cereal sausage on the island. And so, yeah. So as you said, Buttons, if it makes it into the show, it's a wealthy retreat this place. Got 30 roughly odd vineyards and this is becoming a bit of a problem because they're all turning

on each other and thinking maybe you're the sausage or maybe you're the sausage. And the article goes on to talk about this being kind of a thing that happens from time to time in 2016. Blenheim. Is that in New Zealand as well? Blenheim. Yeah. The residents receive what they thought were low-fat muesli bars in their letterbox only

to find that each wrapper contained a roll of cardboard that the packaging had been meticulously resealed with glue or sellotape by the cereal prankster, a cereal prankster in this case, which is a clever prankster to be, to do something serially. So anyway, as reports of the letterbox sausages continue to pour in, this guy, Jacob, who lives in the suburb of Surfdale, began investigating. And there's a local Facebook group, which has been all investigating the sausageing that's been going on and no one knows what it is. This is an ongoing case.

So the article ends. Do you know more about the Surfdale Sausager? And there's an email, Virginia.Fallen at stuff.co.nz. If you've got any information, anyone listening about this menace, then do get in contact with Virginia. Wow. This sounds like a case for Daniel Craig's glass onion. It really does.

Anyway, but listen, there are many mysteries in the world and it's quite exciting that this is a live mystery. You know, there's an email to get in contact. This is actually something you could solve too, Buttons. You're the closest. Yes. Get on a boat, get out to Waikiki and just get your binoculars and your notepad and just cruise around and just, and just suss out who's sausageing people.

The problem for me, though, is I'm going to be tracing them and find people putting them in the letterbox. Yeah. And I've got to be honest, I love a sausage and buttered white bread and I'm most likely going to be tempted to eat the evidence and then actually start a little kind of addiction. I'm going to be living over there on the island, just running around trying to find the sausages and I'm going to anger the sausageer because he's going to be trying to do his prank and I'm going to just be eating them all.

And I've got to say, I'm so encouraged to hear that the sausageer is buttering the white bread because there's nothing more frustrating than you get a sausage and a piece of white bread. And you have this, you go to the hardware store over here in New Zealand and they have fundraising groups outside the hardware store selling sausages and white bread. And you can say, would you like onions? They fry up onions. You can put onions on it, but they never have the option of buttering the white bread.

They just put it on a dry piece of white bread. Wow. That's, that's filthy. Oh, it's very basic. We should tell listeners here that that is our number one cash making scheme in New Zealand is the sausage sizzle, which is what we call it. And it is a simple grill outside a store where public are walking in and out. And we're basically, that's how we raise money for literally anything, even for the defense

force. So we buy a sausage and a bread for like a dollar, a gold coin. And then that money goes into a bucket and we send that bucket of gold coins to the prime minister. And she hopes to one day buy a boat and put a gun on it to protect the country. That's the kind of race. It sounds like Reese is making a joke. Actually, you do pull up outside and the defense forces out there, but they're full of military

uniforms and they're fatigued on. Yeah. It's just North Korea's threatened invasion. So we need to. Yeah. We're going to get the sausages out. That's the, the worlds of a volatile place at the moment. Wait, are those sausages Russian?

No, I can, I can guarantee that they're made in New Zealand. So how much do bullets cost these days? Actually, it's gone up the now two and a half sausages. It is the price of a bullet. Have you ever thought of making your guns big enough just to take the sausages? Yes. Now you're thinking. Just said that we've got a new plan.

The sausage gun. The sausage guns. You know, just to say very quickly, as part of this mystery, someone has had to come out and deny being the sausageer. And it's someone who you guys might know. I hadn't heard of, but he might be a local personality who's known. And it's someone who lives on the Waikiki and he's called the Mad Butcher. Oh my gosh.

Yes. He's very famous. So Peter Leach. Yeah. Yeah. So it just so happens. The Mad Butcher. I mean, it's a, it's a Jack the Ripper name.

He lives on this island. Yeah. And yeah, he's had to, he's had to come out and say he doesn't, you know, he doesn't own the national nationwide franchise. He's not that mad. He's mad, but he's not, he's not barking mad. Yeah. He's actually just angry.

But the other thing is, guys, is that if you're a vegan and you're getting delivered, I mean, do you get a vegan sausage or do you get incredibly upset because you're being sandwiched with a full meat sausage? Yeah. You know, it's, it could be, could be a terrifying experience for a vegan getting a full meat sausage in the mail. Wow. Guys, I keep thinking I've got to the end of this article and it just keeps going.

There is so much. You thought it was just a headline. Look at it. It's just giving and giving. I thought it was a headline. I mean, it's barely a headline to be honest. Yeah. But we've spent far too much time on it considering I've got to go to Super Nintendo World in

a few minutes. I think we should move on. Now, what was your flippin' waste of time button? So let's get to your bit. There's a psychologist that's on board. Really? He says it's definitely a male. What?

Only a male would put a sausage in a letterbox, he says. What? What? I mean, he's probably not wrong. No, but it's a bit sexist. I hope it's a female. That's a bit sexist. What?

There's a female sausageer out there right now going. See, I tell you, they don't, they don't take us female sausages. They'll never get me. Yeah. It's the perfect crowd. Only a male would put a sausage in a letterbox. Wow. That's got to be the great quote of 2023.

What a story. It's still going. I'm scrolling. It's still going. Jeez. I mean, there really is very little to do in New Zealand quite a lot. Yeah. What is it?

All right. Your story buttons. Okay. So my story, the headline once again is a woman uses asparagus to predict the future and it's not looking good for the royals. So this fortune teller, she tells the future by throwing down a handful of asparagus. And she claims to be able to read the asparagus as it falls. And it depends on how it falls.

I guess she's got a set of rules. Are they floppy or frozen instead? I think they have to be fresh, fresh and crispy. Her name is Demima Packington. She's 65 years old and she's from the UK. She claims to be able to know divine knowledge of the future by tossing spares into the air and interpreting how they land. Over the years, she's correctly predicted major events such as Brexit, as well as Harry and

Megan stepping down as senior members of the royal family. Several of her predictions for 2022, such as Croatia winning the World Cup and Boris Johnson cleaning on as prime minister have had less success. However, this year, she has predicted the lionesses will continue on their way on from the Euro 2022 win by bringing home the women's World Cup. Interesting. And that the conservators will hang on to government. But she calls herself the asparamancer.

Yeah, I like that. She's also said that she's very obviously a bit of a royalist because a lot of her predictions are all about the royal family. She says that Princess Anne that she's going to have a health scare, which is not great for Princess Anne. She also said that rationing may be considered due to food shortages and more people will return to growing their own foods. Which actually, funny enough, I have actually just been starting to build a vegetable patch at my house. So she got that one, right? So because I thought veggies are getting so expensive, why don't I start growing some? And then this article comes out.

Well, that's just a trend that's happening all over the world now. No, she's a asparagus lady letting anyone know. She's telling the futureies. It's pretty obvious, I mean, with the pandemic and everything and the price of fish at the moment. What are you growing, Buzzens? Well, asparagus for starters. Now, this is in Metro News, this Metro.co.uk. And I've got a full list of her predictions for 2023.

There will be a removal of royal titles. It's long. Consensus over climate change will be at the forefront once more. I mean, is this fortune telling or is this just news predictions? I could give this list. It's just a general prediction list of obvious things that are going to happen. Here we go. More Hollywood A-listers will come out as gay.

This will be quite shocking to the public in general. Who knew? Will be said. What's the list? She's not saying. She wants them to announce it. She doesn't want to blow the whistle. UK will not return to the EU.

That's a good prediction. Okay, now the obvious one. A tiny bit of defense for the asparamancer, the predictor of asparagus. Her prediction sounded quite boring, but if that's just what happens in the future. I guess we're half expecting her to be like, alien life will be discovered. But if it's not, she's just telling the basic boring next few months, right? She's like, I know it sucks, but that's just what's happening. That's all I've got.

A few people are coming out and a couple of titles are being taken away. I can't change the future. She's keeping it steady. Nothing too outlandish that might land her in the poo. She's a realist. But she could chuck in a teddy bear face found on Mars. She could chuck in a... And you know what?

I'm going to chuck that in now. Great segue, Dan. Well done. Good way to get off my shitty boring story. So, lo and behold, according to... What was her name? Asparamancer. I was going to call her the necromancer, but that's not right. Asparamancer.

A face... By the way, it's not according to her. I don't want people thinking, oh, really. It would have been hilarious if it was. But a face of a teddy bear has shown up in a photograph of the Martian surface. So, yeah, this news just in. This is also from Live Science. Image taken by an orbiting spacecraft shows a rather familiar visage

comprised of natural geological features. From doors and giant crabs to the faces of President Obama and Beaker from the Muppets. There have certainly been a lot of strange sightings on the surface of Mars over the years. And now we have a teddy bear. The latest example which comes courtesy of researchers at the University of Arizona was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and shows what appears to be the face of you. A teddy bear, which I think is quite cute.

Oh, yeah. I can't wait for you to see this. Just put teddy bear on Mars. It comes up straight away. You'll see the face. Okay. It's so shit. Oh, that's brilliant. Oh, my God, that is so cute.

Oh, that's amazing. Oh, wow. That's beautiful. Do you know what? Yeah. I've been trying to decide what my first tattoo will be. That's a hot contender. I think you found it.

Wow. It says underneath the image that I've got here, it says, a cracked hillside on Mars looks just like the face of a teddy bear. That's so, I just, I wasn't expecting that. So for those that can't see it, obviously, there's like a circle, almost like a perfect circle of a cracked circle. Yeah. So it's just like, almost like there's a flying saucer hidden under there

and all the ground's fallen away and it's left a perfect circle. And it's sort of loosely where a couple of eyes would be for a teddy bear. There's like little circles. Perfect. Like little craters. They're two craters. Yeah. But they're in the exact spot.

There's only two of them. There's only two of them. Yeah, it's perfect. But then the hillside, there's like a little hillside, which is a different color. It's a little bit whiter, just like a teddy bear's nozzle would be. And then it's like the nose and it's got like a grimacing mouth and everything.

It's perfect. It's almost got like a little tooth in there as well. If you zoom in. It does have a tooth. It's a little tooth. Yeah, it does. Oh my God. It's baby bear.

It's stunning. It's so cool. I think that's your tattoo, dude. That's right. That's the best tattoo. Yeah. That's one of your tattoos. That's one of the tattoos.

I think we need to find things like this. And these are going to be the tattoos we go for. Just really bizarre, unique, little cute weird things like that. And by the way, the first cryptid night that gets this tattoo, we will, we'll chuck it out on the internet. Not the tattoo. We'll put the photo up. We'll promote it.

We'll promote it. I can't believe I'm promoting. I'm now telling people to get tattooed. Teddy bears. Someone will. But look, if they're silly enough to do it, go on them. Yeah. You know, these kids in their 20s are like.

Well, that'll be me. I'm going to race out and get the tattoo and be the one that gets promoted. It's a good silly tattoo. Definitely. The great thing is the person who is reporting this finding is Nessa themselves. The article that I've got is Nessa Spice Martian Rock.

Somebody at Nessa has trained their satellite on and gone, guys, quick. Yeah. What have you found? What have you found? A teddy bear. But you've got to look at it and think someone's having a laugh here. Is this real?

Because if it is, is there some creatures up there that are doing this just to sort of like take the piss out of us? And because there must be so bored with human activity, they're like, come on. All right, let's, let's see what they make of this. Yeah. This is one of their favorite little things. It's like a teddy bear.

Sphinx is one thing, right? Because there's the face of the sphinx that they found a long time ago that was all blurry. Oh, yeah, yeah. But then the funny thing with that is, right, is that when it was a blurry image, when the satellites weren't good enough, it looked exactly like the face of the sphinx. And then as the technology got better and better and more and more

resolution came and go, actually, no, that's not a sphinx. It was like the blurriness had actually helped create the actual, the look of it. That's stunning. That's a very high resolution image. Yeah. It's high res. It is what it is.

And I don't know. It's just fun. In the world right now, it's cool to think that NASA are looking at the moon going, oh, there's a teddy bear. Hey, speaking of art and tattoos, on our last episode, we focused a lot on the AI art. Yes. And it's interesting.

It started a massive conversation in and around the AI machine stealing the intellectual property and plagiarizing actual artists art. And I've actually now seen the other little news update I've got on that is that there is now the first ever copyright lawsuit being filed against the companies that are using AI to generate this art. Oh, really? Because they're using derivatives artwork off this original art, which is really exciting because really, we're at the forefront of technology,

but still, people are having their artwork stolen, which is terrible. And it led me to go back and look over all of the fan art that has been done for us over the years and comparing the two, the AI art and the fan art, and every single time, I was like, if I had to have a tattoo, it's the fan art every time. Well, it looks more like you. It looks more like us. That's the thing.

Those other three guys are like, who are they? Save me. I mean, they're a bit of looking these new guys. Yeah. Also, Buttons, what's all the tattoo chat? Are you having a bit of a life crisis? What's going on? Shit's going down.

I say tattoo, but I'm also trying to work out what art I paint on the fuel tank of my Harley Davidson that I want to buy as well. So, you know, that's, I don't know. Is that saying something? I'm not sure. No, it's just, I do want a tattoo. I want to be brave. I'm almost nearly 50 years old.

I can't wait for you to pull up in a Harley at my place. With a painted picture on the tank of us three from a fan. Knowing me, I'll be turning up on a little 50cc moped with a henna tattoo that lasts two weeks. I'll be like, nah, I've done my midlife crisis. Not too sure about it. Not too sure about it. The crisis is just about over.

So, I do want it to come off at some point. I'll just just buy Porsche 911s when they're 55. And then when they get over their crisis, they hand them back in, you know, a couple of years later. Yeah, I've given that a good run. It was woo. It was out of control. But yeah, I've gone back to the wife and kids now.

I think that's exactly what it was. Yeah. But what I was thinking with the AI artwork, what I want to do is put a brief out there to two or three cryptid knights that have done some fan art and to one of these AI engines. And then we have an art competition. Same brief. Same everything.

Give the AI one shot. Oh, nice. And then the winner gets a tattoo on somewhere on my body. Okay, cool. What? Really? Yeah. Why not?

Wow. That's huge. That's a huge competition. Right next to the teddy bear face on Mars. So... You get to be Button's second tattoo. Yeah, that's it. Speaking of the moon, I'm going to go straight into this now.

Oh, no. Damn it. What? No, that's my story as well. How did you know? I haven't even said it yet. I know, but I just predicted. I've got my asparagus laid out here.

I've seen where you're going. Asparagus just fell in Reese's favor. He got to it first. The asparagus will always fall in my favor, you guys. Never forget that. That's the second great quote of 2023. The asparagus will always fall in my favor. That was the rejected quote from Hunger Games, wasn't it?

The asparagus always fall in your favor. That's my third tattoo. There is to be a big foot statue placed on the moon. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Dan will be able to tell you all about this. That was my news as well, guys. But the problem was the only article I could find you had to pay for the subscription.

So I could only read about three paragraphs and then not read any more. Poor bugger. Well, this is why, you know, I've almost gone bankrupt, but man, my news is worthy. I've signed up to so many papers. No. So one small step for man, one giant step for big foot. Fremont artists, Sasquatch sculpture to be archived on the moon. Yeah.

So Dan is named Dan. Dan Chudzinski's sculpture titled Evasive Species will be archived on microfilm in a time capsule and sent to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex project. The statue itself. It's fantastic, actually, this amazing thing he's built. Look at him. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very brutal. Very, very brutal. It's got like massive fangs and has like a massive handlebar moustache. Yeah. Kind of like Hulk Hogan kind of. Hulk Hogan. Yeah. Basically.

Yeah. Hulk. Big foot Hogan. Yeah. It's the attention to detail in it. It looks like it reminds me of something from sort of the Weta workshop. Yeah. You know, it's really, really awesome.

Okay, a photograph is a record. Cunningham says it carries information. It carries memories. So to have one of those on the moon, who knows who is going to see it in subsequent decades, years, centuries. Chalinsky said he is humbled by the honor and hopes his accomplishments as a local artist can inspire future artists in Northwest Ohio. I thought it was going to say on the moon, but particularly in Northwest Ohio.

It must be where he's from. You want to create something that outlasts you. Well, you know, this is, this is exactly it. It's the amazing dream come true for an artist to get their product and get a footprint of it up on the moon. A big footprint. A launch window to send the microfilm with the image to the moon is slated for the fall of winter of this year during NASA's Griffin lunar lander mission in partnership with SpaceX.

So there we have it. It's very exciting. I think actually we've talked about Dan Chudzinski before. I remember the name because it's very similar to Anna on my podcast. It's called Anna Chudzinski. And so I remembered it. He put on an exhibition of models of cryptids and he ran it as like an exhibition where you could see Mothman and you could see Bigfoot.

So I think he's featured. I think he's a friend of the podcast from a long time ago. I wonder though, if you put a statue of Bigfoot on the moon, whether or not anyone would see it because I wonder if Bigfoot naturally as an image is something that our brains just don't naturally see. Even if it's staring at us right in front of us, we don't see it. For example, for about the last 20 minutes, I've been holding a Bigfoot statue in shot and neither of you guys have seen that Bigfoot.

It's been here this entire time. Oh my God. That is amazing. Wow. When did that come into show? He appeared halfway through the show. No. No one noticed.

I didn't really see it, but I can now see it quite clearly. It's like an upside down. Has he got a handlebar moustache as well? Oh, there he is. He's stepping on it. He's stepping on it. That's cool. Where did you get that from?

Was that a Christmas present? It was when I had my book party to launch my book, my in-laws gave me this as a present. Beautiful present. Look at his face. That was the one that Finn really wanted you to put up on the mental piece. She's still not talking to her parents. Her and Cliff Smith. Her parents and Cliff Smith are in the bad books.

Wow. That is beautiful. That's not the one that's going on the moon, is it? This is not. Aliens will find that and go, guys, we're not going down at Earth. Have you seen what they do to garden gnomes? It's insane. They're very hairy.

They look like a pro wrestler. And they strut on garden gnomes. It's terrible. We're not going down there. They look like Hulk Hogan. Hey, but the thing that I loved about that news article, the amount of technological advances we've had in ways to store media and material and words and stuff. I mean, there's memory sticks for starters. There's all manner of computers and hard drives and disks and all that kind of stuff.

And the way that they are deciding to send this information to the moon is on micro fish. Microfilm. Like that went out in the 1970s. I remember being a kid at school. And it was like using this thing like it was time for those that don't know what it is. You can basically have an entire newspaper printed onto something like about the half the size of an A4 sheet of paper. And it's all tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny photographs all onto one photographic piece of film. And you put it into this like enlarger machine, which shines a little camera up through it.

And it projects and you move this sheet around trying to find the piece of the piece of information you want, which takes forever because you're sliding and sliding. And it's such antiquated technology that I don't think you can even find. I don't know when was the last time any of you saw a micro fish reader. So my question is, are they sending this micro fish up to the moon with a micro fish reader? Like what is it? The people are going to find it in the future and go, they left us this tiny shitty piece of photograph of like dots and dashes. Yeah, but this is an advanced civilization that's traveled the cosmos to get to us. I don't think they would arrive on the moon and be like, oh, an audio cassette. No, we're on at least CDs onwards.

What are we going to do with this? Oh, no, they've got a USB one stick. We're up to USB three. Has anybody got an old computer around? Anybody? The mouse has got a wire to plug in. We're on wireless. Come on guys, what are you going to do here?

Turn around. Let's head back to Beetlejuice. These guys are clearly crazy. I think, yeah. Do you know that I want, so with my other podcast, we bought space on a mission that was going to the moon and we made an episode specifically that was going to be sent to the moon. So it was going to be sucked into a crater. Yeah. And then the mission, they raised a million dollars, I think, for the mission.

And then they said, sorry, we're canceling the mission. No. Because we failed to raise something like the other 99 million that we needed for it. And so I got stuck. I was really annoyed because my other podcast is obviously a factual podcast. And one of the facts was this episode is going to the moon. So I looked to find other missions to the moon, couldn't find one. So what I ended up doing was discovering that there's a town in Pennsylvania called Moon.

And I called them up and I got in touch with the local mayor. I got the mayor to officially accept the episode in moon, Pennsylvania. And there's a photo of them listening to the episode with a picture of the episode on headphones. And then I discovered that moon, Pennsylvania, was sending a payload to the moon. What? So I said to them, oh my God, can you take our episode and put it on your payload and send it to the moon? And they said, no way. Absolutely not.

That's crazy. But what we'll do and which has happened is they sent the picture of their mayor listening to the episode of our moon episode to the moon. Oh my God. That's hilarious. So there's a picture of the mayor of moon listening to an episode of no such thing as fish that was meant to go to the moon on the moon. And I gotta say, this other podcast of yours sounds really great. I like that. Listening to it sometimes.

Really great. We had a great special guest recently called Ree Starvey. Yeah, absolutely nailed. That one's really worth listening to. Are you just trying to slowly take over the cryptid factor and basically make it part of your other podcast so you only have to do one podcast a week? When his numbers are low, they get me on to bump the numbers. We bring the big gun. Yeah.

And when they're too high, this is what I'm hoping for that one day when they're really high and they want to bring them down a little bit. That's when I'll finally get my invitation. Guys, guys, we're trending. We've been number one for seven weeks in a row now. This can't continue. Gotta give everyone us a fighting chance here. Well, we should be thinking about the fact that this is our first podcast back since Christmas. Since I did the fish one too a week or so ago.

And so this is going to be our most listened to episode in a long time and it's just not great. So we should quickly... We're rusty when we have been away for a long time and we have been, we've been, you know, dealing with whatever's going on. It's just not great. It is just not great. I mean, what have we got? We've got sausages and mailboxes. We've got somebody with asparagus predicting very predictable events.

We've got... Teddy bears on the moon. Teddy bear on the moon. What's wrong with that? That's fantastic. Well, I'm trying to save it. I'm trying to save it. Okay.

I've got a big foot statue and a microfilm on the moon. Now Dan's just promoting his other show and how brilliant the innovative ideas of that one are. Let's at least finish on a cryptid story before the bloody audience bugger off. Okay. Mothman sighting. Let's play the segment. Oh, he saved it. Okay.

Cryptid Buns. Here it is. Attention. All personnel. This week's cryptid. Help me. All right. So this, I found this, you know.

Actually, just before you start. Yeah. I think we should just leave it there because I'm worried that the news article is actually going to be terrible. We should just leave it on that title. Okay. That's it. Mothman sighting.

That'll do. Let's leave it there and we'll really look forward to the next show and we'll make this Mothman article just the tag. So once the... Even though once people have gone through this shitty episode, they'll go like, no, I'm not listening anymore. That said, I've had it with the cryptid factor. Shitty episode.

Oh, hang on. Mothman sighting. Oh, I've got to listen next week. I'll give it one more shot. I'll give it one more shot next week. No, let's do the article as a piece after the theme song at the end. Oh, okay. Yes.

Wow. Okay. See you next week, everyone. Okay. Bye. Bye Bye. Bye

Bye Bye Bye Bye Bye Bye Bye Bye

I don't know how this is gonna help us having the news article after the music, but let's give it a go. Let's give it a go. This is really breaking the genre here. It's innovative. It's up there with those fish ideas, you know. Yeah. Okay.

Singular40and.com. So Anonymous Chicago firefighter reports sighting of red-eyed winged Batman at O'Hare International Airport, which of course is their famous airport, which is in which city? Chicago. Yep. Thank you. So I'm gonna go straight into the nuts and bolts of the sighting. You ready?

Okay. Put some haunting music on. Okay. No, please. Actually, it might be good if you guys do the haunting music. Let's see if that works. Do your own interpretation. Okay, here we go.

I was in the middle of my shift, and as usual, I would bring my laptop with me to watch movies and play games on. I was setting up my laptop when I realized that I had left my charging cord and my pickup. So I got up and ran outside to go and grab it. Then I headed back in. As I got my cord, I heard what sounded like a chirping sound. That wasn't the chirping sound. That was my phone.

I pushed the mute on my phone, followed by the chirping sound. There was a shuffling coming from nearby. Shuffle, shuffle. I looked around, and that's when I, by the way, your spooky noise is just like some dodgy dude in the garden going, no, it's spooky. All right. It's dodgy. Oh, Dan's is good, the whistling's good.

Okay. Where was I? The sound, shuffling from nearby. I look around, and that's when I hear the clicking coming from across the street. What's that? I looked up and standing on the edge of the HVAC plant was a very tall, thin, human-like creature with huge wings that were spread out. This creature was looking directly at me with a pair of large red eyes that had the

intensity of a pair of tail lights or one of the lights on the engine. It just stood there and looked at me and made this rapid clicking sound. I was in complete shock at what I was seeing and just how large this creature was and how enormous its wings were. They had to be close to 15 feet from tip to tip, and it had to be at least seven feet in height. The body was thin and its limbs were very thin and long. They looked like they would be unable to support.

What are you doing, Dan? Dan's just crying with laughter. He's very, very sorry. Stop ruining it. Buttons, you're ruining it. I'm not. I'm not. I'm just breaking music.

15 feet from tip to tip, seven feet in height. The body was thin and its limbs were very thin and long. They looked like they would be unable to support such a tall body, but apparently looks can be deceiving. From what I was looking at, we stared at each other for about six to seven seconds, possibly eight, before this thing flapped its wings and silently took to the air. Within a few seconds, it disappeared. I stood out there for at least a minute before coming to my senses and realizing I should

get inside. There it is. Wow. I was expecting to do spooky music for a lot shorter than that. That was a very long eye-witness account to do spooky music for. And to be honest, I didn't hear a word you said because it's too busy. Didn't hear anything. I look forward to hearing the episode to find out what the hell you just said.

That'll force you to listen to it. Okay. It's worth listening to. Enjoy your time. I've got to go to Super Mario World. See you guys. Remember kids, only a male. I'm getting some evil red eyes from a flappy object over in the lounge.

I've got to go. Have fun. Take lots of photos, send us videos. I will. Good to be back. Oh, great to be back. It's honestly, that has got to be one of the worst episodes that we've ever done. What?

It's great. It's fantastic. That was wonderful. Now, what do I play the theme tune again now? No. No. It's done. Maybe play the intro theme tune.

That can be for next episode, so people have already started listening to next episode. Yeah. Here's a teaser of next week's episode, and then just the theme tune. Wow. Catch you later, Elegance. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Haha.