The title will tell you what I’m doing today. For those who don’t know any Jews, Yom Kippur is one of the High Holy Days. It is when we stop eating at sundown and don’t eat again until sundown the next day. So, the holiday started last night and I can’t eat until sundown today. Of course, I can if I start feeling sick since the goal isn’t to put myself in the hospital. At least I have two days to try and recover because my guts have given me a little trouble afterwards.
This week was busier than I expected with appointments, meetings, and the weather dropping to a point where my sinuses were in agony. Some unexpected encounters occurred to add to my stress as well. All of them happened in late afternoon and evening too, so I couldn’t destress much before bed. This led to several nights of restless sleep and then a morning where my body could barely move for a few minutes because it was just done with existence. Still not 100%, but I always sleep in on Yom Kippur to delay thinking about food.
I have my son for the holiday, but I wasn’t going to try to edit anyway. We’re seeing a movie this morning and then there’s a Pokemon Go event in the park. Not the brightest thing to do when one is fasting, but the movie won’t take energy and the park is something I promised months ago. Don’t want to break my promise, so I’ll be bringing a few protein bars and water in case I can’t go any further. With any luck, I can make it through everything and get home to watch cartoons or let him play video games while I wait for dinner.
Since my son goes back to his mom’s tonight, I’ll be able to work on Darwin & the Demon Game for two days. I only got a few pages in because things kept happening without warning. Might try to finish chapter 5 tonight and then pull off 2 chapters per day on Sunday and Monday. No big Pokemon events, so I won’t be going out much except for fresh air and exercise. Friends recommended watching this Netflix documentary on Vince McMahon, which could work for background noise. Used to watch WWE a lot in college and afterwards, so a lot of what’s going to be reported is stuff I kind of already knew even from slightly keeping up.
Almost done with the last of the Lego sets too. That was only things I could really do in the 20-30 minutes I had between ending my day and sleeping. It’s this 2-in-1 Deku Tree from ‘Legend of Zelda’. It’s fun, but you can only build one of the two Deku Trees. This means I have to choose one and will have a container filled with pieces that I can’t use. Size is different than what I read too, so I can’t put all of the sections together. Not a bad thing, but rather frustrating. Think it’s a sign that I should go back to jigsaw puzzles for a while, especially since they’re slightly cheaper. Think I have 16-18 of those left.
Can’t think of much else that happened and next week isn’t going to be that different. A bunch of appointments with bad timing as well as work and parenting. Keep being left exhausted by 8 PM and needing to crawl into bed by 9:30 PM in order to get enough sleep to recover. So, this is what my life is these days. With the mornings getting cold and dark, I might not be able to take a walk in the park before work. So, I might be able to get a little editing in before the day starts. Probably should take what I can get considering how bad this year has been with time management.
Nothing else to really talk about. Wish I had more as usual, but I’m simply drained and ready to make it through a day of fasting. My stomach has been hurting at times this week, so we’ll see what happens. Seems to only happen if I eat really hot (temp-wise) food or get stressed out. It’s a dull pain with a few sharp blips as if something is both stuck and randomly trying to push through my gut for a couple seconds. Been happening on and off ever since my third bout with Covid in late April too. Can’t wait to see which body system gets messed up when I catch it a fourth time. Brain and lungs got weakened by the first round and the general endurance took a major hit after the second. Why can’t a disease give me mutant powers instead of chronic issues?
So, goals of the week:
Make it through fasting.
Enjoy time with my son since I don’t get much until next weekend.
Chessie (1986 Coloring Book made by U.S. Fish and Wildlife)
For some reason, all the best pictures of this cryptid seem to be cartoons with no life-like ones. Maybe just my bad luck. As you can tell, we have another water monster, which seem to be really common around the world. So, what is Chessie?
Reports say this is a sea creature, which is about 30 feet long and as thick as a telephone pole. It has passed by swimmers and fishermen with no signs of aggression. In 1943, it was said to have a football/horse-like head that it could turn nearly all the way around. Chessie was recorded in 1982 and was seen as a brown ‘creature’ slithering through the water like a snake. Finally, it appeared 5 feet away from a car on the shore in 2014 as was said to be black in color with no fins and a football-shaped head. So, the sightings tend to keep the head shape and serpentine body.
An interesting twist on Chessie is that it became an environmental icon in the 1980’s. A push for maintaining the Chesapeake Bay’s health had this cryptid as the mascot. Part of it was because sightings had it be friendly and non-threatening. Maryland even made a state law in 1985 to protect Chessie even though nobody could prove it actually existed. As silly as it sounds, this got a lot of people into protecting the environment, especially the water, which was difficult in the wake of ‘Jaws’ coming out.
Now, there was one picture taken of Chessie, but it didn’t match the rest of the sightings because it wasn’t a serpent. In 1980, a picture was taken of a creature in Chesapeake Bay (Maryland) and it ended up being a manatee from Florida. It’s an unusual discovery, but apparently manatees will occasionally swim all the way up the eastern coast. Another manatee was rescued in 1994 and named ‘Chessie’ before being returned to Florida. It has returned to the area several times between 1994 and 2011.
So, not a ton of lore on Chessie, but certainly a bunch of interesting stories.
Let’s be honest. You know who this is and where he’s from.
(Spiraling into darkness and insanity. Yeah . . . I don’t know how many of these poems I have, but it’s certainly a common theme. That being said, it would be terrifying to be trapped in your own mind and unable to do anything about it.)
There is some debate on if ghosts should count as cryptids. I’m going with yes with this one because nobody is sure if these are ghosts. They’re certainly creepy and unnerving if you see them. Nobody knows what they are, so could be anything from ghosts to trick of the light to a local family of cannibals living in the wilderness.
Found in California’s Saint Lucia Mountains, these beings have been around since the 1700’s. They are tall (10 feet tall) figures wearing hats and capes. Usually described as shadowy men, they appear on mountaintops at twilight or dawn when the light isn’t very strong. The stories say nobody has seem them up close and those that have approach would disappear.
Much of the Dark Watchers come from fiction though. John Steinbeck wrote of them briefly and his son claimed to have seen them as a child. John’s mother also believed in them and claimed to trade gifts, but not with any actual contact. Poet Robinson Jeffers also mentioned them, but gave them a physical description while most sightings have them as featureless figures. So, it’s clear the fiction plays around with these beings, which remain unknown.
The reality probably isn’t as interesting. Tricks of the light is a possibility. Pareidolia is another one because it is when our brains seek out familiar shapes and patterns in our environment. It’s the same thing that has people seeing Jesus in things or the Man in the Moon. A third option is people are suffering from lack of oxygen from the high elevations as well as exhaustion. Finally, it could simply be that a person or animal happened to be standing there at an angle that made them appear huge. You know, like Bigfoot just hanging around at twilight and being mistaken for something else.
Actually, there is another option called the ‘Brocken Specter’, which I think is pretty cool. This is an optical illusion that makes the viewer’s shadow bigger on the clouds or mist ahead of them. It happens when the sun is behind a person who is looking into a misty area. Their shadow is projected forward in a triangular, inhuman distortion to make it appear larger. The only issue I see is that the person supposedly has to be looking down into the misty area while the Dark Watchers are said to be seen from above or possibly on level ground. Maybe people just have the angle wrong?
Here’s another excerpt from Quest of the Brokenhearted and it’s the introduction of a fun supporting character. Lacarsis was a monster-making playground for me and I needed to think of a great way to start the tournament. For some reason, this scenario kept playing out in my head. Enjoy.
Legends of Windemere 