Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Today, Mexico is mostly known as a place you don’t want to vacation for fear of getting kidnapped, murdered, then chopped up and stuffed into a pinata for your little nephew to discover at his sixth birthday party.

If drug cartels ever actually use that technique, please accept out apologies in advance. Seriously. And tell your nephew we’re sorry in advance too. Also tell him that should this ever happen, you’ll be in a better place.

The point being – Mexico is a pretty strange place. It’s jam-packed with all sorts of paranormal mumbo-jumbo. The most recent we’ve learned about is called the Zone of Silence – and it’s complete with disappearing radio transmissions of all sorts and disappearing men in bright yellow slickers.

Paranormally speaking, Mexico is full of all kinds of awesome stuff. Remember the flying witch? What about the UFOs as documented by the Mexican Air Force? Throw Quatzequatel on top of that pile and you’ve really got something.

Well today we’re bringing you another story from the land of salsa and dirt. It’s about a place known as The Zone of Silence. The Zone of Silence is called that because it’s thought to suck up any sort of transmissions emitted – be they radio, cell phone or what have you.

As Mexicolesstraveled.com explains it:

“…in 1970 a faulty American Athena missile fired from the White Sands Missile Base in nearby New Mexico went off course inexplicably and crashed into the mysterious desert region and made the world aware of the unique and apparently unusual properties of the area. Subsequently a team of U.S. Air Force investigators, with Mexican government approval, journeyed to the crash site and made an unexpected discovery. Within an unspecified and sometimes shifting area within the Zone, radio signals fail to travel through the air, creating a type of dark zone. No television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals seem to penetrate this zone. The name, Zone of Silence, was quickly adopted, and researchers began flocking to the remote location shortly thereafter.”

Of course that’s not about the birth of the zone – just it’s discovery on a larger scale. One instance of the Mexican anomaly dates back to the 1930s. As AboveTopSecret tells us:

“One of the first known instances of “odd behavior” coming from this location…. comes from around the 1930′s…. from a pilot called Francisco Sarabia. Upon flying his aircraft over the mysterious site, he noticed that suddenly, and without any warning, his radio had completely stopped working. The rest of the instruments on the plane had seemingly either stopped working, or had gone completely wild also.”

That sounds quite a bit like the Bermuda Triangle. And although airplane gadgetry running amok is interesting and all – disappearing good Samaritans dressed like Paddington Bear bring everything to another level. This next bit is taken from Strangemag.com:

“On October 13, 1975, Ernesto and Josefina Diaz, an enterprising couple drove into the zone in a brand new Ford pickup to collect unusual rocks and fossils which can be found in great abundance. As they busied themselves in their activity, they noticed that a desert rainstorm was heading toward them. Hoping to avoid being caught in a flash flood, they wisely packed their vehicle up and sped off, but not fast enough to avoid the relentless rain: the track ahead of them turned into a swamp: the pickup was quickly trapped and began to sink in the soft terrain.

“While the couple struggled to keep their vehicle from submerging into the mud, two figures approached them, waving at them amid the torrential rain. Two extremely tall men in yellow raincoats and caps, with unusual but by no means alarming features, offered their assistance to help them get underway again. The men instructed the totally drenched couple to get inside the pickup again while they pushed. Before the couple realized, their vehicle had popped out of the hole and on to firmer ground. When the husband got out of the pickup once more to thank the two men, he realized they were gone. There were no footprints in evidence or any surface feature that could have concealed their departure.”

And there it is all laid out nice & neat. Mexico’s Zone of Silence is indeed a strange place. The government there has even set up some sort of scientific base right smack in the middle of it. They say it’s to study the plant life or something of that sort, but some believe it’s there for far more paranormal reasons.

Us – we think it’s a drug depot. After all – it’s Mexico.

You have to hand it to Britney Spears. She keeps punks like us in currency. Everything she does (or more importantly, ever rumour that swirls around that head of hers) is to be reported on, even if it doesn’t even resemble news.

The latest bit of gossip to be slapped across these pointless pages were that she was being beaten up by her current beau. That’s depressing on every level because she’s either being abused or someone is lying about it.

However, other mutterings are saying that this isn’t even remotely true and that she is in fact getting married!

That’s right. The word on the imagined street is that Britney is marrying Jason Trawick? Hell, the pair are currently on a romantic Mexican vacation and – get this – seem really happy. The logical conclusion is that they might slope off and have a secret wedding.

How dare they? hecklerspray still hasn’t been invited to one of Britney’s weddings. AND SHE’S HAD LOADS! This is an outrage.

Anyway, a nice wedding would be a nice distraction from the current wrangle that Spears is embroiled in. An old nanny, Ferial Zaltash, claims Spears owes her $35,000 for a single month’s work and the Plaintiff is also looking to get an extra $20k for penalties for her unpaid wages and overtime work.

Bloody Nora.

Still, Britney found time to refute the claims that her fella was hitting her, tweeting:

“Star Magazine, Radar Online, Jason Alexander and the rest of you liars, Ya’ll can kiss my lily white southern Louisiana ass!”

Britney’s rep provided a more eloquent denial

“The statements attributed to Jason Alexander are completely fabrication as Britney has not had any form of communication with Mr. Alexander in years.. This is just another example of the irresponsible nature of the tabloid media relying on shoddy sources and false information for the sole purpose of selling magazines, without regard to the truth and without regard to who they hurt in the process.”

And so, to escape the hideousness of scum like us, Britney and Jason have buggered off to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to put their feet up in a private villa. Apparently, Jason has already proposed to Spears in the past, but she said no. Could this Mexican trip be another attempt to get a ring on her finger?

It doesn’t really matter what the answer is because, if Jason is anything like Britney’s ex-husband, he can just record the whole thing and tamper with the recording to get whatever answer he prefers (allegedly, allegedly, allegedly).

We’ll run a story about it regardless.

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Awesome or Off-Puttingis a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

UFOs have been caught on tape an awful lot. A recent survey show’s them to be the third most common thing home-recorded – finishing behind home-videos of John Edwards boinking various non-wives, and home-videos of John Edwards smiling behind a basement-desk calling himself ‘Mr. President’ and signing a whole stack of important looking blank printer paper.

Well UFOs have been filmed again – this time swarming all over Acapulco.

Like we said before – UFOs caught on tape are becoming a fairly regular occurrence. For instance, there was this one where a black triangle was filmed for a grand total of 16 minutes. Also there’s the one where the unidentified objects are soaring over Washington DC, and this one where approximately 100 pub-goers saw (and several filmed) strange lights cruising above Shakespeare‘s home town.

And it’s not just drunken civilians catching this stuff on tape either – no it’s not! This one here was recorded by the Mexican air force – a military arm we’re told is quite powerful and definitely exists.

Today’s topic was also filmed in Mexico. The objects involved are flying incredibly high up in the sky, and although they appear only as white dots – there sure are a lot of them. They also appear to be giving off  light. There seems to be a faint luminescent aura around them. Really, they don’t look that different from the DC UFOs or the previous Mexican flying objects for that matter. Does that lend them credibility?

Keep in mind ‘UFO’ doesn’t necessarily mean spaceship – but what are they? If they are craft from space – perhaps one will have to crash for us all to know for sure. Oh wait a second – that’s already allegedly happened- and that was in Mexico too! We’re starting to suspect they’ve been hiding all this ‘alien activity’ underneath their sombreros.

But if memory serves correctly - that instance really didn’t turn out so well, did it?

Anyhow – here’s the most recent video, filmed on January 31, 2010:

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artefacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

The problems with monsters, ghosts and aliens is that, sure – people see them – but there usually are no pictures to prove it. Sometimes a few frames get snapped off – but the blurry image in the distant background is rarely convincing of anything.

Imagine then, how shocked modern scientists must be as they examine an actual ‘baby alien’ body that was drowned by a scared Mexican farmer in 2007.

Here’s what we know about extra-terrestrial contact so far: Lots of people claim to be abducted by them, they like to embed tiny devices under our skin, and if rowdy children playing soccer wander to close to them, they’ll reach out and touch them.

That is literally all we know though. It’s been like 50 years since Roswell, and still the alien mystery lingers strong. Sometime in the nineties a video was released showing what was supposed to be the dissection of an alien body by scientists. It was called “Alien Autopsy,’ and it blew minds until somebody realised a coiled phone cord in the background hadn’t been invented at the time the film was supposed to take place.

And with that mankind glumly accepted the fact that if aliens actually were visiting our sweet, blue planet, they were probably too smart to get into flying traffic accidents, or to let any co-workers get their skin peeled back by a species that used to sit around all day eating dead skin and bananas.

“Mexican TV revealed the almost unbelievable story – in 2007, a baby ‘alien’ was found alive by a farmer in Mexico. He drowned it in a ditch out of fear, and now two years later scientists have finally been able to announce the results of their tests on this sinister-looking carcass. At the end of last year the farmer, Marao Lopez, handed the corpse over to university scientists who carried out DNA tests and scans. He claimed that it took him three attempts to drown the creature and he had to hold it underwater for hours. Tests revealed a creature that is unknown to scientists – its skeleton has characteristics of a lizard, its teeth do not have any roots like humans and it can stay underwater for a long time.”

“According to the scientists’ report, the alien baby can stay underwater for a long time, has the skeleton of a lizard, and has rootless teeth which are totally unlike humans’ teeth. However, it does have some similar joints to human. The brain of the alien baby is huge, particularly the rear section, which makes the scientists believe that the creature had very high intelligence.”

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Every superhero has a weakness. Superman has kryptonite, Batman has young boys in capes and sexy leggings, and to beat Spider-Man all you really have to do is move your crime syndicate to a prairie. It really is that easy.

To defeat Wolverine, on the other hand, may take a little more work. After all, he’s got those steel fingers he always seems to cut things up with. How’s a person supposed to get around a weapon like that? The answer, of course, it that they can’t.

Pigs can though – especially Mexican pigs with runny noses and a burning fever.

Having already seen the film illegally over 10 times, we can say with a high degree of certainty that it would have been much better if the love-making scene between Wolverine and Magneto had just been limited to 20 minutes. Instead the writers and or producers thought it’d be a good idea to make that night-time romp the bulk of the plot. Sure, at first it seemed sexy enough, but a normal person can only tolerate Ian McKellen playfully choking on Hugh Jackman‘s chest hair so many times.

Seriously – how that thing avoided an R rating we’ll never know.

One thing it didn’t avoid, however, is the swine flu (it’s like the bird flu only better). If what we understand is true, then every single trained movie-house projectionist in Mexico has recently died or something, so the movie premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been seriously hampered.

Or as E! Online explains it:

“Wednesday’s all-star Mexico City premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been scrapped due to the region’s deadly swine-flu outbreak, 20th Century Fox confirmed today.”

If you ask us this is all just another example of Mexico’s unwieldy rudeness. First they clog our Home Depot parking lots, then turn all the money we give them for roads into a governor’s backyard swimming pool with a crazy Spanish colour-scheme, and now this?

No! No Mexico! We are putting our foot down. We have given you the best that we can give, that being in this case a pretty good opportunity for your cartels to put an unsuspecting Hugh Jackman in one of your fancy border-town body bags, and this is how you treat us? With an epidemic?

He doesn’t really have those claws you know. Is that what you thought Mexico? That those special effects were real? You’re so stupid Mexico! What do they teach you in those three-walled schools of yours!

And while we’re at it – you really should treat Paraguayans with respect!

They’re human beings Mexico!

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We thought Heidi Montag didn’t tell her family about her marriage to Spencer Pratt because of a deep sense of burning shame.

But we were wrong. It turns out that Heidi Montag didn’t tell her family about her marriage to Spencer Pratt because they didn’t actually get married. Apparently Heidi and Spencer did had a wedding ceremony in Mexico, but it doesn’t count because it was only a symbolic wedding and no official permits were filled in.

So Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were just attention seeking by getting married; something completely out of character for both of them. It’s hard to know how to react to this news, other than fighting the urge to hit both Spencer and Heidi in the nose with a symbolic cricket bat, then push them down a symbolic flight of stairs and then set some symbolic dogs on them. Remember, it doesn’t count if it’s symbolic.

We’ll admit to feeling a frisson of excitement when we heard Monday’s news that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt from The Hills had got married to each other in Mexico. It was like watching them admit defeat, an acknowledgment that nobody on the planet could ever put up with their constant overprivileged braying and galactic self-regard so they may as well just swallow their pride and stick with each other.

And it gave us hope for the future, too – not just for the clotheared punditry industry, but also because we knew that if Heidi Montag’s shrill, off-kilter sense of entitlement ever genetically mixed with Spencer Pratt’s sneering wankery and guff-coloured beard to form a baby, then at least it’d make everyone else’s kids seem less awful in comparison.

But guess what? It turns out that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt didn’t get married after all. You see, the rumour goes that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were drinking cocktails on the beach when all of a sudden they decided to get married. Within the hour rings were bought, vows were written and a team of reporters from US Weekly were in place to record the entire ceremony in extensive detail.

But the problem with that is that Americans getting married in Mexico have to go through a five-day process involving health and birth certificates being translated into Spanish and blood tests, and even then the state of California wouldn’t legally recognise it. So, long story short, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt aren’t even nearly married. AP reports:

The couple acknowledged Wednesday that their wedding ceremony  was symbolic, and not legally binding. “We had a beautiful ceremony here … officiated by a minister and photographed by the hotel photographer. We’ve never been happier,” said the couple in a statement provided by Us Weekly. “And, like other elopements that happen outside the country, we’ll take care of the legal details when we get home.”

A symbolic wedding. We don’t know about you, but that sounds like either compulsive attention-seeking of the very wost kind or a needlessly complicated way to get free cake.

But so what if this was all just a cynical attempt at keeping Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt in the headlines and that the last person to pull a ruse like this was Anna Nicole Smith and look what happened to her. The important thing here is to stay positive.

For instance, if the Heidi Montag/ Spencer Pratt wedding isn’t legal, then they’ll want to have another marriage ceremony to make it legal in the near future, and that gives us plenty of time to buy lots of confetti to throw at them. Well, OK, not confetti. Gravel. Razor sharp gravel. And clumps of salmonella. We want to throw gravel and salmonella at Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt.

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Now that Britney Spears is under the protective care of her parents again, hints about just how ill she was pre-hospitalisation have started to creep out.

And it's worse than it ever seemed – forget the string of public meltdowns, there's a chance that Britney Spears secretly got married to her paparazzo boyfriend Adnan Ghalib last month.

Of course, nobody knows the truth and the marriage is void anyway because Adnan's already married, but getting married to Adnan Ghalib? Britney's lucky she only got sectioned after that – we'd have held her down and lobotomised her there and then if we'd have caught wind of it.

You might not think so now, but history will define Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib as the purest example of overwhelming love in creation. People will look back on Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib and think to themselves "Why can't I find myself a much older, married, shit-bearded paparazzo to follow me about spending my money when I'm emotionally vulnerable to the point of disability?"

You see, Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib have it all – they're young (well, one of them is), they're happy (well, one of them is), they took naked pictures of each other that they tried to sell for a million dollars (well, one of them did) and they talk in preposterous British accents all the time (well… no, actually they both do that).

But there was one little blip last month where Britney Spears dumped Adnan Ghalib and he rushed off to do as many tawdry tell-all interviews as possible and then they got back together pretty much the next day when Adnan's wife filed for a divorce.

What kicked that off? Was it that Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib got married in secret in Mexico, only for Britney to realise that Adnan was already married, break it off with him, pay him to hurry through a divorce and then get back together with him again? Seems so, as OK! reports:

The couple allegedly secretly wed while in Mexico last month but sources are saying the ceremony was illegal as boyfriend Adnan is still married. Reports in the Daily Star have said the couple hired private jets and security in Hawaii, Las Vegas and New York in an attempt to trick photographers away from Mexico. The secret ceremony apparently took place on January 9th followed by a night at the Rosarito Beach Hotel.  A source said, "While in Mexico, they went through a quickie marriage ceremony."  Britney, 26, was said to be fuming when she realised Adnan was still married and broke it off before allegedly slipping him £125,000 to help with the divorce proceedings.

It wasn't long after this that Britney Spears was carted off to the loony bin, and with good reason. In fact, we'd even go so far as to suggest that anyone who sees Adnan Ghalib's straggly little beard-worm and feel anything other than furious rage probably needs locking up too.

Of course, this all happened in the past. And now that Britney's dad is tightly controlling his daughter's life, nobody knows what the exact status is between Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib. Although now that Sam Lutfi isn't around to mash drugs into Britney's food, we're guessing that she's probably gone off him a bit.

Read more:

Could Britney be Married Again?  – OK! 

His racist-seeming mouth may have got his TV show yanked off air, but at least Dog The Bounty Hunter is no longer a wanted man in Mexico, and how many of us can say that?

Well, all of us probably. Anyway, Dog The Bounty Hunter has lived with the threat of extradition to Mexico over his head for some time now, after an ill-advised bounty-hunting jaunt there in 2003, but now a Mexican court has dropped his charges.

Dog The Bounty Hunter's a free man again! Finally he'll be able to ditch that ridiculous disguise of his and live his life normally again.

That is a disguise, right? 

Ever since he was taped being all kinds of racist about his son's girlfriend, it's fair to say that Dog The Bounty's life has fallen to pieces. Not only did advertisers yank their commercials from his show faster than you can say "I'm not going to take any chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for 30 years because some fucking nigger heard us say nigger," but it made Dog The Bounty Hunter cry on TV, and that's upsetting in itself because each of Dog The Bounty Hunter's tears are big enough to wipe out a small village.

But let's look on the bright side. Luckily for Dog The Bounty Hunter, he has that bounty-hunting skill to fall back on – plus now his show isn't being televised any more, he longer has to worry about viewers complaining about his extreme hunting methods, so he can unleash some massively unethical weapons on his targets, like bear mace or, um… oh.

But the main piece of good news for Dog The Bounty Hunter is that the Mexicans no longer want him shipped to their country and locked up. You see, bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico, but that didn't stop Dog The Bounty Hunter going there to capture a serial rapist in 2003. Anyway, long story short, Mexico wanted Dog locked up, the US congress wouldn't hand him over and it all got a bit fraught.  

But today Dog The Bounty Hunter is a free man. The Associated Press reports:

Duane "Dog" Chapman cannot be extradited to Mexico to face criminal charges in his capture of serial rapist and fugitive Andrew Luster in 2003, a three-judge panel in Mexico has ruled. "He's a free man," Chapman's San Francisco-based attorney, James A. Quadra, said in a telephone interview late Tuesday. "They can't reinstate any criminal charges and as a result of that, there's no basis for them to then seek extradition."

That's wonderful, and we're sure that Dog The Bounty Hunter will be as sincerely contrite about breaking Mexican law as he was when he was taped being all racist and stuff. Since that episode, Dog The Bounty Hunter has clearly grown as a person, and is obviously more sensitive to what offends others. Right?

Quadra said Chapman and his crew could return to Mexico one day. "Dog loves what he does. He likes to capture the bad guy. If a bad guy is in Mexico, who knows what Dog will do in the future?"

OK, ignore everything we just said. Dog The Bounty Hunter's an idiot.

Read more:

Duane Chapman Free From Mexican Charges – Associated Press 

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

This week: Aliens/UFOs

In 1947 many would tell you a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico and ignited ET-mania across the globe. It was a major case in which hundreds of pieces of evidence – be they physical or otherwise – have been held up in an attempt to prove to the world that the crash really happened, and the government most definitely doesn't want you to know.

Well the United States isn't the only place where something like this happened. In Mexico, for instance, a civilian airplane is said to have collided with a UFO, sending both machines plummeting to the ground. A difference in this case though, is that according to a History Channel special on the event – all the Mexican military who were involved in retrieving and transporting the object died en-route.

Perhaps Wikipedia puts it best: 

"Coyame, Mexico is a small town not far from the US border. It's home to three thousand people and possibly the best-kept secret of all-time. In August of 1974, the USA military was tracking a mysterious object over Mexico; then suddenly it disappeared from radar near Coyame. At the same time a civilian plane headed in the opposite direction is reported missing. What follows next is the stuff Hollywood blockbusters are made of: a crash site, a spacecraft, dead bodies, a covert recovery mission, and a government cover-up."

The story goes that the US did see the UFO on radar, and they were monitoring Mexico's military transmissions to find out more. Once the ship was discovered by Mexico, radio silence was ordered and the US was left in the dark. America isn't fond of being kept out of the circle, so they sent in a handful of helicopters to get more information (and probably to steal what they could).

When the Americans got on the scene wearing their hazmat suits, they found all the Mexicans dead. The disc was choptered to the US, and the civilian plane, the Mexican military vehicles, and the bodies were all destroyed. No cause of death was determined.

From there the story dissolved into Mexican folklore. Nobody seriously investigated it until the nineties when there was an explosion of UFO sightings in the country – an explosion that continues to this day, if you recall.

Where the US allegedly took the saucer is unknown. What is known is that a lot of people claim to have evidence – even physical evidence – of the crash. So did it happen?

We have no idea. 

Read Watch More:

 [HST] UFO Files – Mexico's Roswell-2 – Youtube