Northern lights sighting over Cape Cod last night #capecod #aurora pic.twitter.com/Fz6ZQkhqeO

— Matt Mullin (@Matt5Mullin) June 23, 2015

It seems like the Northern Lights are visible more and more from the Cape. I’m not 100% sure it’s really happening though. I still haven’t seen them myself or actually met anyone in person that has seen them either. Does anyone know if there is an app for phone cameras that lets you add the Northern Lights to a photo of any sky?

It would be a pretty sweet app if not. You could really mess with those weirdo people that somehow equate seeing the northern lights with being cool. You know that neighbor who probably played Magic the Gathering in High School. You could just be like, “Yup, saw ’em again last night” every time you see him and then watch with glee as he angrily clutches the latest issue of MAD magazine he just grabbed out of his R2-D2 mailbox.

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CCT – On this day in 1933 the Cape Cod Canal was closed because a lighter carrying rocks hit a rock in the canal and sunk in three minutes.

The Eastern Steamship Company freighter Sandwich attempted to edge pass the sunken lighter but scrapped against it and was grounded itself on the opposite shore.

Too bad there weren’t blogs in 1933. Jebediah “Hippie” Gosnold would’ve had a field day writing about this. A barge carrying rocks hitting a rock and sinking is just inherently funny. It’s like a waiter carrying a tray of banana peels slipping on a banana, the irony is so thick it makes my brain explode from punchline overload, I’m not even sure which joke to make.

What I do know is this. I’m going to bookmark this post, and whenever I’m convinced the world is going to shit I’m coming back and reading this. Oh, it took us longer to paint the Bourne Bridge than it did for our great grandparents to build it? Well at least we didn’t sink a boat full of rocks by running into a rock. I mean, If you were the captain of a vessel carrying rocks wouldn’t you just say to yourself over and over… “Don’t hit a rock, do NOT hit a rock. If you hit a rock you will never live it down. Keep an eye out for rocks and whatever you do DON’T. HIT. A ROCK!”

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Old People At Bonnaroo from Funny Or Die

 

Even old people love music festivals! Come see two of the bands in this video at The Real Cape Music Festival on August 1st at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds… Tickets are moving fast, get yours today.

 

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CCT – A recently married Orleans woman has something else to celebrate. On Saturday, Stacy Foster purchased a winning $30 Supreme Millions” scratch ticket at the Tedeschi at 2360 Route 6 in Eastham making her the first $15 million winner for the new game. According to a release from the Massachusetts State Lottery, Foster and her husband who wed on May 1, requested a $30 ticket from a dispenser in the convenience store and was told by the clerk she would need to get the ticket from a different dispenser.

A closed cash register and a different dispenser made Foster and her husband David millionaires.
According to the release, the couple took the one-time cash payment of $9,750,000 less taxes.

Dammit. This just reduces the odds for the rest of us Cape Codders. The odds for winning this $15 million dollar prize is listed at 1 in 7.5 million. I’m no mathematician but those odds probably drop quite a bit when someone close to you geographically already won. The odds drop even further for most of us because we don’t buy scratch tickets due to the fact that gambling against a government controlled computer seems kinda futile.

I’m inspired by this story though. I’m going to turn in my blogger card and live the glamorous lifestyle of a Mass Lottery gambler guy. We’ve all seen them, with their velcro shoes, drinking shitty coffee from a styrofoam cup, sitting on a cheap folding chair in the back of a Tedeschi. Scratching away like the wind all while multi tasking rounds of Keno in between.

Forget the fact that there is a zero percent chance of coming out on top in the long run. Lotto Guy doesn’t care that he could probably live the life he is wishing for if he just saved the money he spends on the lottery. Who gives a shit if it takes $1,000 to win $20, it feels soooo good to win that $20. Scratch tickets are unfair? Lotto Guy don’t care!

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CC – The first great white shark of the season has been spotted off Cape Cod.

Researchers from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and state shark researcher Dr. Greg Skomal spotted the shark yesterday off South Beach in Orleans. The crew was able to capture underwater footage of the approximately 15 foot shark.

The sighting comes as researchers continue to study how many great whites are in the area.

“Our primary goal this summer is continuing the research we initiated in 2014, and that is to try and get a population estimate for the number of white sharks that are around Cape Cod,” said Skomal, a leading expert who works with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

First? Yeah OK. By “first” they mean this is the first time since like May that human eyes from a tiny boat have come across a 15′ shark in thousands of square miles of ocean you can only see a few feet into on clear days. First, suuuurrre.

I don’t know about you but I say stop counting. They started this idea of establishing a population number last year and basically found sharks every single time they looked. Stop. Just stop. I don’t want to know the real number. It’s going to be like turning a log over in the woods and 80 zillion bugs pop out. Let’s all just live together on our peninsula in ignorant bliss I say. You don’t see anyone out there counting the mosquitos.

P.S. I don’t want to know the number of white sharks in our waters for the same reason guys don’t like to go to the doctor. We know there’s a million things all around us that can kill us, we just choose to ignore them until they bite us directly in the face.

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Source – There has been an increase in the amount of shark attacks in the United States during the last decade, with a large number of these incidents occurring along the Atlantic coast.

According to the International Shark Attack File, we have seen a drastic increase in the amount of reported shark attacks since 1900, with each decade having more attacks than the previous one. In 2014, out of 130 incidents of alleged shark-human interactions worldwide, 72 of these incidents represented confirmed cases of unprovoked shark attacks on humans.

Ummm… is 72 out of 130 shark attacks being unprovoked supposed to be a high number? Because I would have guessed that 130 out of 130 were unprovoked. What’s weird to me is that 58 of them WERE provoked. What the hell is going on out there? Are people banging sharks girlfriends and talking shit about their mothers or something? What kind of lunatic provokes a shark?

I might actually have to stop being afraid of these killing machines now. My fear is based on the fact that all shark attacks are totally random. That they could happen at any time for no reason at all. The fact that so many of them are provoked kind of puts things in a new perspective. Maybe it’s not the sharks fault after all. I didn’t realize they were attacking people because they owe them money and shit.

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So I was reading an article about Plovers this morning and telling myself that I won’t write about them today. Many people think we rant about them too often, so I was going to let this one go without a peep. Then I came upon a quote from Mary Hake, the resource management specialist at the National Seashore and immediately knew I could not keep my trap shut.

This quote is exactly why we need to keep ranting about this until we change the culture. We are told that all of these beach closures, regulations, and the shutting down of practically the entire Cape to ORV’s, are due to an effort to RESTORE the Plover population. This is not the case. They know that these regulations will NEVER work. This is going to go on forever. Look at this quote…

“Unless people stop coming to the beach, this is a species that will always need active management,” said Hake. “It is hoped it will be attained though management that provides as much visitor use as possible while still protecting the species.” – Mary Hake (Resource Management Specialist, National Seashore

Either we stop going to the beach or they will always need management. We are not trying to fix them, we are putting a permanent band aid on them. The Plovers on Cape Cod are terminal. Terry Schiavo shit. It’s time to pull the plug. Let them thrive in the other places on earth that they survive in just fine, and let us…

• walk
• kayak
• fish
• surf
• drive
• kitesurf

on Cape Cod again. Living on Cape Cod and not being able to use the beach is like living in Vermont and not being allowed to ski. Even their crunchy, Subaru driving asses wouldn’t even contemplate shutting down a mountain.

 

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