CALL THIS A CROP CIRCLE?

I gotta tell you, neighbours, I like a good crop circle circle as well as the next humanoid. (So much so I'll risk repeating myself. Scroll back to last Friday.) And I would never act the skeptic. Quite the reverse. Given the right combination of drugs and alcohol, I’ll believe pretty much anything. Not only that, but I know the phenomenon folklore and will talk molecular-level stalk-bending well into the dawn. This is why I have serious problems with what might be wrong with the above picture, that appeared in London in the conservative Daily Telegraph (supplied by our own Elf Hellion), and came with a report so uninformative that it verged on vapid…

"The 400-foot design was discovered in a barley field in Yatesbury near Devizes and depicts the mythical phoenix reborn as it rises from the ashes. Investigators claim more formations are referencing the possibility of a cataclysmic event occurring on December 21, 2012, which coincides with the end of the ancient Mayan calendar. The Mayans believed civilisation exists within a series of earth cycles of 144,000 days each with the 13th expiring in December 2012, resulting in Armageddon. Crop circle enthusiast Karen Alexander, from Gosport, Hants, said: "The phoenix is a mythical creature which symbolises rebirth and a new era in many cultures across the world.
"Within the crop circle community many believe the designs are constantly referring to December 21 and its aftermath. "This could be interpreted as the human race or earth rising again after a monumental event.
"The patterns are becoming more intricate with every find and it is exciting to think how they are going to evolve by the time we get to 2012."
Recent crop circles have included giant jelly-fish and one image discovered in Wiltshire in June which experts dubbed the most 'mind boggling' they had ever come across.
The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi." (Click here to read more if you want to.)

My response was a disbelieving what the fuck? And where’s the pic of the circle defining pi? And what does a phoenix really have to do with 2012, and what is this thing anyway? It’s stylization is such a narrow, 20th century, neo-heraldic conformity that it seems hardly possible it is of either extraterrestrial or paranormal origin – even the wings of the Nazca bird image are more akin to alien art. And wouldn't it have taken days, if not very obvious weeks, for human hoaxers to create such an elaboration. Okay, so it looks like a phoenix. But it could also be the eagle of the US Federal government – begging all manner of weird-ass interpretation – or even a Nazi war eagle unfurling it’s wings, heralding the reincarnation of Hitler. It might also have been nice to have a reporter fly over the thing to give us all an idea of scale, and that it isn’t just Photoshop fakery. But no. (As John Belushi used to remark.) No wonder the mainstream media are going broke. They want to play in our strange, vacant-lot, junk-yard of a secret garden but they have neither clue nor education. (Nor the wallabies, for that matter.)

The secret word is Gullible