MVT – Justin LaVigne of Edgartown has discovered that the joys of beachcombing are many and varied, even in winter. His most recent find will help scientists to understand the vagaries of ocean currents.

“I really had to work to open it,” he said. “I wanted to keep the bottle intact.” He decided to use a corkscrew and chopsticks rather than a hammer. His strategy was successful.

The message inside the bottle, dated Sept. 19, 1959, requested that the finder return the card inside to the “Coast and Geodetic Survey,” known now as part of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Woods Hole.

So I was halfway through writing about this when I was struck by deja vu. Sure enough after a search I found that we had already written about these same bottles. These things are everywhere, here is what we had to say about it the last time…

BOSTON — It was April 1956, and the No. 1 song was Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, scientist Dean Bumpus was busy releasing glass bottles in a large stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.
Nearly 58 years later, a biologist studying grey seals off Nova Scotia found one of the bottles in a pile of debris on a beach, 300 miles from where it was released.

“It was almost like finding treasure in a way,” Warren Joyce said Friday.

The drift bottle was among thousands dumped in the Atlantic Ocean between 1956 and 1972 as part of Bumpus’ study of surface and bottom currents. About 10 percent of the 300,000 bottles have been found over the years.

This is a cute story right up until you read the part about this scientist throwing 300,000 bottles into the ocean. Dude, that’s not science, that’s fucking LITTERING. Imagine what else scientists were doing in 1956 if they were dumping massive amounts of garbage in the ocean to study tides?

I’ve always wondered how the ocean could be so huge yet still contain so much sea glass. It just never seemed to add up to me. Well here is the answer folks. Most likely that sea glass collection you’ve got going isn’t from random bottles, they’re from an ill advised 50’s era science experiment. You might as well be collecting vials of DDT or making balloon animals with chlorofluorocarbons.

This is quite the reminder of how much the world has changed. If you were caught dumping 300,000 glass bottles into the ocean today you would be put in jail for the rest of your life. They’d probably give you the electric chair if you did it within 200 yards of a Piping Plover School Zone.

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CBS – A Boston man was arrested on Cape Cod after police say he unsuccessfully attempted to distract officers from searching for him by placing a 911 call for a fake shooting.

Barnstable police officers were called to Friendly’s on Lyannough Road in Hyannis in Friday just before 2:30 a.m. and found that the restaurant had been broken into.

A K-9 unit was called to the area. The dog located a scent and found Kurry Sutton, 38, of Boston hiding in the bushes nearby.

Police said that while they were searching the area, 911 dispatch received a call saying a person had been shot in the area of Route 28 in Hyannis.

Officers later found that Sutton allegedly made the call in an effort to “lure officers away” from their search.

Ah, the old call in a shooting to get the police off your scent after breaking into a Friendly’s trick. Who hasn’t tried that at least once, right? What’s a guy supposed to do when he get’s the urge for a Fribble at 2:30 a.m.? Just ignore it? Fuck that, Fribbles are delicious.

The only problem with this dudes plan is that he forgot one very minor detail. What he failed to account for is that there is, in fact, more than one police officer in Barnstable. This isn’t the old west. There isn’t one patrolman that has to abandon his search for you because a shooting trumps a stolen gallon of mint chocolate chip. Other than that it’s a rock solid plan though.

P.S. 1827 called and it wants its getaway plan back.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

Facebook: The Real Cape
Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

So Falmouth and Barnstable are playing each other this Friday in the boys MIAA hockey tournament and everyone is freaking out. I’m reading all kinds of stories about the rivalry and how the coaches played against each other in the tournament in 1980 etc. etc. What I’m wondering is if the rivalry is still really that intense or not.

I’m a Falmouth guy, and when we used to play Barnstable it was the most important game of the season no matter what. Beating them on Thanksgiving is still one of the great memories of my life. We hated Barnstable with the fire of a thousand suns and they hated us just as much.

When I say we hated Barnstable, I mean if you were from there we wanted you dead, we wanted your family dead, we wanted your house burned to the ground and we wanted to piss on the ashes. Our hatred certainly wasn’t just on the field either, it was genuine. We used to have 60 person Falmouth vs. Barnstable rumbles on the lawn at Steve Miller concerts and shit. Random kids getting knee capped with bats in the parking lots after games. I’m talking Anchorman rumble scene type stuff.

Now that the world is smaller, the kids from each town are friends with each other on Facebook and they have all this no guff, anti bullying, everyone gets a trophy stuff, do they still actually hate each other, or is it just an on the field, friendly rivalry type of thing?

So some of you younger cats chime in, does the rivalry still run that deep or has it become all civil? Of course the minute we graduated from high school we stopped hating people from Barnstable (the sane ones stopped anyway), but in those four years we didn’t hate anything on earth more than we hated them, and the feeling was mutual.

I really hope the rivalry is still the same for kids these days, because it was pretty awesome.

P.S. I know this blog alienates people from other towns on the Cape, but what the hell could anyone write about their rivalries? They all started like two weeks ago. Falmouth and Barnstable go back to the 1800’s, that’s some Greece and Turkey shit right there.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

CapeCod.com – It will be an early start to the 2015 school year in Mashpee.

School administrators and the teachers union have agreed to start school before Labor Day, with the holiday falling as late as it possibly can in September this year.

The move is a first for the town, which always starts after the holiday.

That sound you hear in the distance is the hopes and dreams being sucked out of thousands of little bodies. Oh the children. The children that will never know what it’s like to receive a letter in the mail. The children that will never know the joys of mapping out a road trip on a paper map. The children that will now never know the true meaning of Labor Day weekend. Goodnight sweet children, may your childhood rest in peace.

The horror… the horror…

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The best part about having this tattoo would be that if a tourist is annoying the shit out of you at the bar, you can turn to your friends, hold up your fists, and say… (in raspy, bad ass, Clint Eastwood voice)

“Should I give him the Cape, or the Cod”?

P.S. Maybe we should do a Cape themed tattoo tournament for March Madness this year? We’ll get the prizes together if we get enough entries, so send us a pic of your Cape tattoos and we’ll do it. I’ll probably have to recuse myself though, it would be a landslide and everyone would say I cheated.

big thanks to Sean Kramer for the pic

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

I’ve gotta admit, I never really thought about the double meaning of Sandwich Police, it’s just one of those things that’s been in front of my face so long I never thought about it. I guess it would be funny if you didn’t know that Sandwich was a town? I would think that anyone with any semblance of intelligence would know about Sandwich, England. You know, the place the sandwich was invented, by the Earl? They probably have police too.

Either way, this is just another example of the rest of the world making a big deal out of shit we take for granted. Just like all the poor saps that have to live in other places go gaga over the Cape because they’ve never seen a sand dune or a clam shack, I guess they turn into 6 year olds when they see a Sandwich Police cruiser as well.

What I’m saying is this isn’t the first time that something that isn’t even a blip on the radar to Cape Codders is a huge deal for everyone else. It’s not easy here in the center of the universe.

P.S. Is it more shocking that George Takei has never heard of a town named Sandwich, or that Insane Tony knows how to take a screenshot?

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony