Cryptids--earth's elusive mammals, reptiles, marsupials, crustaceans?!

Today, I'm 23, but years ago I was just another little kid exploring. On a trip to Morro Bay with my family once, my sister and I stumbled upon this unrecognizable mass that had washed up on the shore. Something white and blubbery, about the size of the tire on a car, shaped like a horseshoe crab, but much too large and not crab-like at all. We poked at it with sticks, turned it over, did dances around it, and drew pictures in the sand depicting its life as whatever creature we decided it was, but we never knew exactly what it was. And at the end of the day we all got back in the truck and went home to forget about it.
Likely, it was some bit of a whale or other sea creature, but it could have been a "globster," a term coined for an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of the ocean or any other body of water. The nature of globsters remains a mystery even as the tissues from them are often tested and identified by scientists. Many of these monsters that have been found have been identified, but often globsters lack apparent bone structures, tentacles, flippers, or eyes, making it difficult to determine the species if it is a known one. Some globsters that have been thought to be plesiosaurs were in reality the rotting carcasses of basking sharks. Globsters of all shapes and sizes have been sighted, examined, photographed, and reported since the St. Augustine Monster of 1896, which ended up being a mass of blubber from a sperm whale. The "Montauk Monster," one such globster that never was identified, washed up on a beach near Montauk, New York in July of 2008. By its dental patterns and front paws, it was speculated to be a raccoon, yet it had what appeared to be a beak and the legs seemed too long in proportion to its body.
These monsters and globsters can also become known as "cryptids," creatures whose existence has been suggested but unrecognized by the scientific community, or regarded as highly unlikely. The most famous of these cryptids are of course, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Chupacabra. But hey, there's a whole field of study dedicated to the study of these alleged animals, although no scientist has ever been employed to study it--cryptozoology. People are either afraid of, intrigued by, or skeptical of the unknown, and we always will be.

Old people rule

I don't have much to say except to show you this:

One of the cutest fucking things I've ever seen in my life. I guess they have been married 62 years, and the man is about to be 90. I love that they still touch each other's bums when they switch over. I hope I am that cool when I am old.

Denmark's starling ballet

This morning as I drove toward my friend's house, I was stopped at an intersection where a flock of birds were swooping back and forth over the street. A few miles away there are two gas stations across the street from each other, and all day, a flock of pigeons will do that and it's mesmerizing, just like watching fire or the ocean--where it is constantly moving yet always staying the same.
In the marshlands of southwestern Denmark, I guess a similar thing occurs every spring and autumn as groups of starlings migrate between winter grounds in south Europe and summer breeding grounds in Scandinavia. They gather in flocks of thousands, and up to a million birds during the hours just after sunset and make huge formations in the sky before settling on where to roost for the night. It's quite a dance and sometimes the birds are so numerous that they seem to block out the sun, hence the name for the phenomenon--"sort sol" which translates to "black sun" in Danish. The flocks make incredible, fluid shapes in the air and apparently do so for hours before roosting. I see videos about things like this, or read about them, or even just see that flock this morning--and sometimes there's so much amazing shit in this world that I just can't take it.

To explore the infinite abyss

Today I went with a couple friends to Una Lake--what's known locally as the "bottomless lake" of Palmdale, California. It goes relatively unnoticed near Palmdale Lake which is a popular fishing and hunting location in the area. Turning north on Sierra Highway from Avenue S, it's not even a half mile down on the left side. It's all fenced off and adorned with No Trespassing signs, but does that ever stop anyone? The lake is one of several along the San Andreas fault line which may be why it's said to be bottomless. Local folklore tells stories about cars that have driven off the road into the water and never been found, scuba teams that have gone in trying to find the bottom and been lost, and swimmers that have disappeared. People also claim to have seen glowing lights or bubbling on the surface of the water, strange animals, fish with legs or without eyes, or a bat-like sea monster similar to the one said to be seen at nearby Lake Elizabeth, another lake along the fault some twenty miles away. These "lakes" are really what's known as "sag ponds"--depressions caused by fault movement stretching the land and filling with water. From Una Lake westward it goes Palmdale Lake, Lake Elizabeth, Lake Hughes, and Munz Lake, all bodies of water caused by seismic activity along the fault line. Is it really bottomless? Do the ghost stories and disappearances have any truth? Who knows, but it is a beautiful place. With a marsh stretching out east into a field with the snowy San Bernadinos in the background, the cool breeze of impending spring, and the sound of the train pumping past--being next to an abyss, while a little eerie--was peaceful.

Bra-ttention, please.

We've seen picket, wrought iron, chain link, and barbed wire fences...but ever see one of underwear?
A public road reserve in Central Otago, New Zealand, once boasted what became known as the Cardrona Bra Fence, a rural fence that one day in early 1999 sported four women's bras, for no apparent reason. By the end of February, it had accumulated about sixty, when they were anonymously removed. At this point the story reached the New Zealand media, causing more bras to appear. By October 2000, the bras had amassed again to about 200 when the fence was cleared once again. By early 2006, nearly 800 bras had been attached to the fence and the story spread as far as Europe. Some locals welcomed the fence as a quirky tourist attraction but others thought it was distasteful and even insulting. Although it became the most photographed place in the area, and most of the letters regarding the fence were positive, the city council ruled to remove the fence in April 2006.

Homelessness is such a strange career.

Last night this homeless man in a wheelchair was hit by a car and killed crossing a major intersection right by the starbucks where I work. My best friend told me about it--she was sent home from work early because of it, the "disturbance" slowed down business.
A coworker had made a joke about it but someone just died, she said.
The world is so fucked up, he was just trying to live, but now he's gone and life goes on and nobody cares. I was listening to this mix you gave me and this really dark song with cello came on and I felt nauseous, she said.
I didn't remember then but tonight I realized I'd met him. Last week as I went to see a movie with a couple friends I gave him a few dollars. He asked me about my beetle, and he just wanted to talk. Tonight it hit me too. Hit me that he's just gone. She said once, "Homelessness is such a strange career. Depending on the compassion of other human beings to survive."
And here I sit in my house, typing about him on my laptop. I'm drinking some tea and I just took a shower. I'm not hungry. The heater is on to keep the cold at bay. I'm healthy, warm, full, I have a home, I'm listening to my favourite band, and relaxing after work. No one has taken away my dog because I can't afford the license to have him. No one is hauling me off in a cop car for standing in front of a store pleading of strangers to help me be able to eat. I sleep behind a closed door, and my clothes are clean and whole. I'm known by the government as a string of nine numbers, I'm known to my job as a string of seven, my existence is marked in digits if not by family and friends. I survive, working a part time job and seeking another, going to school, and functioning in society.
Anything I ever have to complain about having to endure seems so incredibly whiny, selfish, and completely unimportant. I know I will forget how I feel now and grumble about having to buy gas, pay rent, go to work, do homework, but I fucking have a car, a place to live, a job, and an education. There are a thousand tiny things I think about and complain about in a day and I pray to God I never forget or take advantage of what a privileged, spoiled brat I am. What lucky sons and daughters of hungry beasts we are when we're all going to be ghosts one day.

Old school wanderlust

Gypsy caravans! I guess RVs are just a modernized version of what they had going on, but no Komfort or Winnebago can compare to traditional "vardos" as they're called, no matter how many comforts and features. How COOL and unique would it be to live in and travel around in one of those elaborate wagons? "Gypsies" refer to the English Romani people, an ethnic group of Europeans whose origins go back to medieval India. According to history, the caravans were originally used in 1810 by circus performers in France, and it wasn't until later in the century that British Romanichals started building wagons with their own characteristic style of decoration. The Romani vardos were elaborately painted and hand carved with symbols depicting their lifestyle, often including birds, lions, griffins, horses, flowers, and vines. They often reflected the individual makers by their particular designs, and it was a custom in their culture in the event of a death to burn the owner's wagon and belongings as a funeral rite.

Did you hear that?

How many things are we able to perceive yet not able to understand? Several times during the summer of 1997, an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound known as the "Bloop" was detected in the south Pacific Ocean by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Having ruled out several possible origins, including man-made sounds such as submarines or bombs, and geological sounds such as volcanoes and earthquakes, the source of the sound remains unknown. Since it was several times louder than the loudest known biological sound (that of the blue whale), it is also unlikely to have been made by a living creature.
A similar sound, known as "Slow Down" was also recorded in 1997 in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, and has been picked up several times each year since then. It is so named because it decreases in frequency over about seven minutes. One hypothesis of the sound is that of ice moving over land in Antarctica, but again the source of the sound is unknown for certain.
"The Hum" is a generic term for the phenomena involving low-frequency humming noises that occur in various geographic locations and are not audible to all people. Low-frequency sounds of this nature are difficult to detect with microphones which is most likely why they are so hard to study and identify. Tinnitus, spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (sounds created by our own ears), and colliding ocean waves have been offered as explanations of hums, but as of yet nothing has been proven conclusively to determine the sources.
The sea is probably one of the most mysterious and unknown areas on the planet...too bad that area accounts for 71% of the earth, huh?

Sailing Stones of Death Valley

There's all sorts of people who go out investigating haunted houses and abandoned mental asylums to hunt down and record weird unexplainable things like objects apparently moving on their own, mysterious and usually creepy noises, and disembodied lights or figures.
But there are plenty of places that demand no such attention but are equally and maybe even more mysterious and intriguing, without all the skeptical and often fabricated nonsense.
Death Valley, a desert located in southern California, exhibits a dry lake known as the Racetrack Playa--the stage for the geological phenomenon known as the sailing stones, or moving rocks. Over years, rocks sizing from pebbles to boulders have carved their own trails across the playa without human or animal intervention. The force behind their movement is debated, and theories include strong winds and ice floes in conjunction with a saturated valley floor.
The tracks made by the stones are often inconsistent and variable--some rocks may start out next to each other moving in parallel lines before one abruptly changes direction. The speed in which the rocks move is also unknown, since they move only every two to three years and no one has ever witnessed their movements.
Most of the rocks originate from a dolomite hillside at the south end of the playa. The tracks can be hundreds of feet long, up to a foot wide, and usually less than an inch deep.
Several studies and monitoring programs have taken place over the years, but none have conclusively explained the motion of the mysterious sliding rocks. I bet God's just having fun with us.