That can't be bigger that 1.25 square miles!

I hate to bag on the American Museum of Natural History, which is the greatest of all museums, but I was at the Mythic Creatures exhibit this weekend and the caption for the kraken stated that it was one of the largest of imaginary creatures at perhaps 1.5 square miles.

This is classic example museum speak in trying to exaggerate something to perk interest in it. How can you possibly scale imaginary creatures? It can't be verified. They exist in people's imaginations. And maybe one sailor was imagining a 1.75 square mile kraken while another was imaging a 1 square mile kraken. You know what? I just imagined a chupacabra three miles high. You think that's big? I'm imagining a kappa that carries the entire universe in the bowl of water on his head. My imaginary creatures dwarf the puny kraken!

Did sailors even try to put any kind of size descriptor on a kraken? I bet they said something like, "large enough to swallow this vessel whole" or "stretching from there to there."

I hate this sort of thing. If you can't get excited looking at the giant kraken model or realizing that explorers like Christopher Columbus and Henry Hudson believed in mermaids and sea monsters or by looking at beautiful old maps filled with pictures of krakens, sea serpents and other creatures some silly made up fact about how big a fake animal is won't do it for you.

Anyway, Mythic Creatures is a great exhibition and everyone should see it.

Happy Shemini Atzerat!

My daughter goes to Jewish pre-school and its closed tomorrow for Shemini Atzerat. It will be the third week since school started that she's off for two and a half days because of Jewish holidays.

Now, I know most of my readers aren't Jewish and I'd love to get you up to speed but I can't because I've never heard of Shemini Atzerat, either. Forty years of being Jewish and I've never had a day off for this holiday. No one has ever made my feel guilty about not going to Synagogue for it, nobody made fun of me for not knowing what it was in Hebrew School, nothing.

Here's the story from MyJewishLearning.com:

God grows nostalgic, as it were, and pensive. The people of Israel will not come together again in such numbers until Passover six months hence. God will soon miss the sounds of music and pleasure and the unity of the people. The Torah decreed, therefore, an eighth day of assembly, a final feast/holy day. … this day, Shemini Atzeret, is a reprise of the celebration of Sukkot but without any of the rituals. The message is that all the rituals and symbolic language are important but ultimately they remain just symbols.

If you can't read between the lines this is a holiday because there are so many freaking Jewish holidays this time of year. In other words, it's Holiday Day. Now, in Israel where they don't have time to screw around, Shemini Atzerat is merged into Simchat Torah (which is a legitimate holiday). But here in Brooklyn, not only is it a seperate holiday but Gwen's pre-school closes for Erav Shemini Atzerat aka Shemini Atzerat Eve aka Holiday Day Eve! Do Christians celebrate Chistmas Eve Eve? What about the month of pre-Ramadan for the Muslims?

Anyway, I'm outraged, as always.