{"id":1259,"date":"2012-04-13T12:04:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T16:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2012-04-13T12:04:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T16:04:12","slug":"why-i-dont-go-in-the-water-lake-monster-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/2012\/04\/13\/why-i-dont-go-in-the-water-lake-monster-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Don&#8217;t Go in the Water: lake monster edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To be honest with you, ever since the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.i-mockery.com\/halloween\/greatest\/pics\/creepshow2d.gif\">black slime monster<\/a> in Creepshow 2 as a young lad, I&#8217;ve been as equally ill at ease with lakes and fishing ponds (particularly those weird round ones with a swimming platform you sometimes see on farms in rural PA) as I have been with the ocean, as a whole. <\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nj.com\/entertainment\/index.ssf\/2012\/04\/creepy_new_jersey_the_stuff_of.html\">Star-Ledger fluff piece on local urban legends<\/a> actually has done me a favor:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sussex sea serpent<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lkhopatcong.com\/\">Lake Hopatcong<\/a> boaters, swimmers and anglers share the water with a sea monster nicknamed Hoppie. Although the creature is regarded as a friendly inhabitant, there was a panic in 1894, when fishermen first noticed something lurking in the lake. The monster was described as 40 feet long, with the head of a canine and the body of a snake, &#8220;as thick as a man&#8217;s leg.&#8221; The archived news story includes quotes from doubters who suggested that the behemoth was probably a floating beer keg.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have little fear of monsters and even less fear of beer kegs, so I think I&#8217;m alright here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To be honest with you, ever since the black slime monster in Creepshow 2 as a young lad, I&#8217;ve been as equally ill at ease with lakes and fishing ponds (particularly those weird round ones with a swimming platform you sometimes see on farms in rural PA) as I have been with the ocean, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dont-go-in-the-water","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7V2xo-kj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}