Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey came out three weeks ago. I haven’t seen or even read the Odyssey. I have seen the Simpson’s, so I do know a little about the author, Homer Simpson. I know that he is yellow, that he has a wife Marge, and three kids, Lisa, Bart, and Maggie, and in addition to being the author of one of histories greatest stories, he is a pretty incompetent worker at a nuclear facility. All of this is to say, that if an incompetent nuclear plant worker can write an epic, surely a paid ads managers at a supplement company could.

Even though I’ve never read the Odyssey, or seen the movie, I know the premise of the story. It’s called the Odyssey, because the main character is named Odysseus. Pretty original. Odysseus takes 10 years to make it home after he is finished with the war. In other words, he had the world’s worst travel agent. I’ve been all the way to Scotland from America and it only took me 8 hours to get home. Troy to Ithica, even as a slow boat ride should have only taken 24 hours to sail. Even if you are sailing with some kids that need frequent bathroom stops, or time to slay a few monsters, it should only take you two days tops.

The fact that it took him 10 years feels like maybe he was kinddd of avoiding coming home on purpose. I think he was just really dreading the growing list of honeydo’s Penelope had for him when he got home. He probably had a splitting headache imaging all the nagging about how he’s always traveling, or accusations about him cheating with sirens. He was definitely going to hear about how she had to deal with the screaming kids for 10 years while he was out galivanting with his friends on a grand adventures. While she was at home holding down the fort, and “holding off a bunch of suitors”.

In the meantime, he’s was out there building wooden horses, battling one-eyed Cyclops, trying not to eat his crew that got turned into bacon, and you know, facing the underworld. Nothing much.

Odysseus’s excuse for not coming home sooner was that he was facing Mythical creatures. Over the years as a video game and movie enthusiast, mythical creatures were a big part of the stories I watched and played. In addition to the mythical creatures Odysseus faced, a lot of popular franchises features a number of mythical creatures. In Pokemon, there are Mythical Pokemon like Mew, Darkrai, Cresselia, and Arceaus. In Harry Potter, there are Basilisk’s, Dragons, Werewolves, and Duddly Dursley.

It’s easy to think that Mythical Creatures only exist in the fictional stories, and that is mostly true, but did you know that mythical creatures actually exist in our world right now? Here are a few that I’ve discovered in my years as a modern day mythical creature magizoologist.

Construction Coordinators: These mythical creatures are so rare, that many claim they don’t exist. They have an almost godly like vision for how to coordinate multiple construction projects that don’t completely ruin that lives of everyone but the construction crew. The one that works in neighborhood is anti-CC, the bitter rival of the mythical CC. The anti-CC in our neighborhood found a way to slowly and torturously shut down any way for us to get out of our neighborhood. They started by creating a big perimeter, by shutting down the main street I use to get out. Then, the closed the perimeter smaller and smaller, to the point where there was only one way from my neighborhood to the outside world. Then, just as I thought it couldn’t get worse, this week, they shut down my neighborhood, to the point where we couldn’t even get out of our houses. The anti-mythical CC has the ability to view us like rats in a maze using drone technology. to see how soon one or more of us will go postal. Everyone in the world is experiencing this right now, except for the one neighborhood the Mythical CC is supervising right now. If you spot that CC, I would love to see a picture of them.

The Mythical Joint: I don’t know if this one exists, but it is a tiny bendy part inside my body that isn’t sore, tired, or broken. Amongst the knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, ankles, and neck, I believe a joint inside my body is not sore. Unfortunately, every single joint that I know of is causing me anywhere from an 8 to a 10 on the medical scale of when a doctor asks you how much pain you are in right now. The anti-mythical joints gang up on the mythical joint so much, that it makes it almost impossible to identify where this possibly non-existent mythical joint is. I pray to the gods everyday that there joint will make itself known someday.

The One True GigaChad: The One True GigaChad may exist in legends, (or in romance fantasy novels). The one True Chad is the man that 90% of single ladies are looking for right now, the one they are holding off all other men for. Similar to a griffin, The One True Chad is the rare combination of everything all ladies think is ready to sweep them off their feet. In reality, The One True Chad, stands at at least 6’4, is muscular, but not overly muscular, has a chiseled jaw, makes at least $10 million a year, works hard, but is available at the drop of a hat, cooks, cleans, takes her shopping at only the finest stores, allows her to be the passenger princess, except when she wants to drive, is always good in bed, but only when she wants it, gives her a nightly massage and foot rub, wakes her up with a hot beverage and breakfast every morning, gets her snacks and water at midnight, protects her from bears, fire alarms, and warning lights, changes her oil, pays for everything and, and…. Sorry, I got tired from typing all these things. In order to complete the full list of all the qualities of The One True Chad, there will be a 50 part series chronicling the rest of his attributes as well as the icks he doesn’t have.

There are several other mythical creatures, but let me leave with my last example of a mythical creature.

The Mythical Honest Politician: Similar to Harvey Dent’s proclamation in The Dark Knight, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain,” politicians either quit politics with their ethics intact or they serve in politics long enough to become corrupt, liars or both. It has been said that there is an honest politician, who has never accepted a bribe, used taxes to persuade local businesses to give them kickbacks and actually did what their constituents voted for them to do, but I’ve never seen one. I think someone wrote about one once, but I’ve never ever read a story about one in a book. Maybe this one is just a myth.

Mythical creatures are often based on things that really happened in the world. Maybe someone in Scotland actually did see some sort of really big fish in Loch Ness. Maybe there was a really big bird that looked like a dragon once. Maybe there was a construction coordinator that actually sat down and at least thought of doing construction in a way that was a benefit of a driver. Until we see one of those things in the wild and they are documented, they will remain myths locked inside our imaginations and fictional stories.

While you continue to scan the skies for dragons or the dating apps for the One True Chad, make sure you peruse the Bitter Friday Giftures…

The Odyssey is a story about…get this…

Though I’ve never read or seen the Odyssey…

Meaning if an incompetent nuclear worker can write an epic…

It makes me wonder how in the world it took Odysseus 10 years…

Maybe he didn’t want to go home…

His excuse is that that the gods had a bunch of mythical creatures…

Many think that there are no modern day mythical creatures…

For instance…

Or the Mythical Joint…

All the single ladies…

While some imagine the Mythical Honest Politician exist…

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Mythical Creatures Ben