I'm an Ape Man, I'm an Ape Ape Man, I'm an Ape Man

Monster Quest, a fun cryptozoology show on The History Channel, is running an episode this week focused on an alleged plan of Stalin's to create an army of ape men, which it turns out didn't really happen. However, the show is absolutely fascinating anyway, especially if you're not in the habit of keeping up with all the COMPLETELY INSANE things scientists have tried to do over the past century or so.

Here is the article that kick-started the "Stalin tried to create an army of ape-men" story, which was published in The New York Times and got picked up with some distortions by The Scotsman.

Here is a site devoted to ape-like cryptids, including the Alma, which are also discussed in this show.

The Monster Quest episode also covers other crazy stuff I wasn't aware of, including the doctor who semi-successfully performed a head transplant (the show includes very disturbing footage of this) and of course the Soviet scientist who really did try to cross-breed chimps and humans.

Anyway, this show is awesome. Watch it.

Game Designers: Steal My Idea!

Someone should make a black-and-white Universal monsters video game. You could play as any one of the major monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, or the Mummy) or as an angry villager or one of the heroic characters. When playing as a monster, your goal could be to avoid capture while fulfilling your monsterly needs (i.e., sucking blood, eating people, carrying out ancient curses, etc.). As a villager, you could hunt the monsters and start angry mobs. If I were designing the game, I'd make it so that you could play as anyone at any time rather than having to follow through in a linear fashion, but that may just reflect my own gaming biases.

Seriously, this could be the best game ever. The best part of Kingdom Hearts II was the black-and-white gameplay, after all. And I bet you could get money from Universal to do it, since they'd be milking an old stand-by. And who doesn't love Frankenstein and Dracula?

Get to work and steal my idea!

Where the Wild Things Are

A gorilla escaped from a zoo, which is bad.

But at least it wasn't a werewolf.

Or a deer man.