Run For Your Lives Ladies!

Stand up straight, ladies; the corset is making a comeback.

The six-hundred year old undergarment is back in vogue, thanks to a slew of British period pieces. Personally, I think this is a good idea… for certain body types.

Breathe in… the corset – a garment that is never far from a revival in fashion circles – has been attracting a far wider audience recently. Online searches for the body-sculpting garment have soared, along with demand for four-poster beds and wisteria, an interest in all things Regency sparked by the period romance TV series Bridgerton.

Fashion experts have since pointed out that liberties may have been taken with historical facts – that being whippet thin wasn’t in vogue at the time, and the empire-line dresses of the day flowed freely below the bust. “A corset of the Bridgerton era would typically have been high-waisted not waist-pinching,” Valerie Steele, director of the museum at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology said. But she concedes that tight-lacing does “look good on film”.

Actually it always looks good if the corset sufficiently pushes up the boobs.

Guess The City

There’s a new time waster game out which challenges you to identify cities by its geography. I wonder if the Swedish Bikini Team make a cameo in Stockholm?

City Guesser is a browser-based game that let’s you try and guess a city based on a video from the point of view of a pedestrian walking around a city:

City Guesser is a geography based browser game that strives to provide an exceptional travel and guessing experience. City Guesser launched on August 13th, 2020, and welcomes thousands of geography-enthusiasts each day.

Here’s a tip to get you started. If you see bodies lying on the ground, that’s Philadelphia.

Minne-Tow-Ta

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has unveiled their new weapon against snow. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the Tow Plow.

If you see a giant snowplow that looks like the trailer is spinning off the back of the plow, don’t worry – it’s just the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s tow plow.

A tow plow is a 26-foot plow with an adjustable blade that’s mounted on a trailer and pulled by a tandem-axle snowplow, allowing a plow driver to clear more snow in a single pass than it would with a regular snowplow.

But apparently, tow plows scare people when they going into action, with some thinking the trailer is spinning off the back of the plow, according to the MnDOT Minute video the department shared Thursday.

This is sheer genus, which makes me think no one from Minnesota actually invented this creation.

The Wheels Of Steel

An enterprising engineer decided to substitute a bicycle’s tires with circular saw blades to effectively ride on ice and frozen waterways.

An engineer with The Q, who previously replaced his bicycle wheels with running shoes, took his creativity a step further with giant circular saw blades. He carefully removed the tires and the spokes from the original wheels and engineered the entire bicycle to handle such heavy and sharp blades.

He then took the bicycle out onto a frozen lake to see if he could ride it across the ice. The first try didn’t work, but after he sharpened up the teeth a bit more, the second one was a complete success.

Sure, everything is fine and dandy until you wipe out and your legs are shorn off.

You can see the video below the fold.

Feel-Good Friday

This isn’t your regular feel-good story, unless you are a big fan of history and historical items. That said, when I read this story, I immediately decided it needed to be shared.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re a soon-to-be-booted British monarch running away from the 1645 Battle of Naseby clutching a priceless gold diadem in your sweaty fist, but due to the slavering Roundhead horde nipping at your heels you don’t have time to stop and retrieve the not-so-lucky totem when it inadvertently slips from your grip as you beat a hasty retreat.

Some archeological historians speculate that might just be how an enameled gold figurine with an estimated value of $2.7 million dollars found its way into the Northhamptonshire field where amateur treasure hunter Kevin “Kev” Duckett found it in 2017.

I cannot imagine finding something so historically important. I’ll bet Duckett lost his mind when he realized what he discovered.

Although Duckett’s been hunting buried booty for three decades, it was during his maiden metal-sweeping foray searching a previously undisturbed site that the stunning icon turned up just inches beneath the topsoil.

By law, Duckett turned his find over to the authorities who sent it on to the British Museum in London for further study. If it does turn out to be a true piece of the Tudor crown, Duckett and the owner of the site where the royal trinket turned up will receive a handsome bounty from its sale to a museum.

The payoff will likely be pleasing to Duckett, but the fact he’ll likely go down in history for his find is probably more enjoyable.

Not-So-Rough Terrain

You may remember the post about Kyle hitting a deer with his car. (Kyle claims the deer hit him, but whatever.) It ran out in front of Kyle, and when the strike occurred, the entire front end collapsed. The car was totaled, and my sweet, sweet, 2007 Saturn VUE is no more. Since Mrs. Earp’s Saturn Relay minivan is a 2006, we decided we should look for a pre-owned vehicle that’s more reliable, and we can give the Relay to Kyle.

There’s a Kia dealership a block away, so Mrs. Earp looked into what they had to offer. Her mother bought a Kia sedan there, and loves it. We weren’t looking to spend too much, and made a list of the used cars for sale. Mrs. Earp’s frontrunners were a 2014 GMC Terrain and a 2014 Nissan Pathfinder. Both were around our price range and neither had high mileage on it.

For the record, this is the first time we’ve bought a car in fourteen years, and it’s always stressful making such a big purchase. It also doesn’t help that I trust no one, especially car salesmen, but I went in with an open mind. It also didn’t help that we were buying it for Mrs. Earp, and she forgot to bring her ID.

The problem was we just caught between eight and ten inches of snow, and the lot wasn’t sufficiently plowed. They couldn’t free the 2014 Terrain out of the snowbank, so they showed us Mrs. Earp’s third choice: a 2018 Kia Sportage. Mrs. Earp took a test drive while I sat in the back – the salesman was in the front explaining things – and I really liked it. It was a little low to the ground for an SUV, but the car was very roomy and the rear seats reclined. I thought that was great…

The Ghost Tracks Are Back

After a three-day snowstorm battered the northeast corridor, the Jersey shore beaches were succumbed to massive erosion. A result of the storm uncovered something rarely seen there anymore: the Cape May ghost tracks.

Abandoned century-old railroad tracks on the beach in Cape May, known as ghost tracks, were visible during shifting tides in the hours before the storm arrived. Images of the rails were posted at about 2 p.m. Sunday on the Sunset Beach Facebook page.

The tracks were spotted for the first time in nearly 80 years in November 2014. They were used in the early to mid-1900s to support sand mining and munitions testing during World War I.

The rusted, weather and water-worn tracks on a remote stretch of shoreline near Sunset and Higbee beaches were used by the Cape May Sand Company, which from 1905 to 1936, removed sand from the beach or dredged it from the ocean and pulverized it to make glass or cement.

I’ve heard stories about the ghost tracks, but since Cape May is a very expensive place to rent a beach house, I’ve never seen them. It’s a pretty cool story, and I always wanted to be a train engineer. I wonder if a freight train company would hire a 55-year old former cop who wants to ride the rails?

Dyin’ To Be Flyin’

The Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport has a lot more to see other than Starbucks and a bevy of newsstands. If you look closely, you can see the burial sites of two 19th Century farm owners.

If you’re flying in or leaving Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport, you might spot two two grave stones embedded into the tarmac. At first glance, you might think is just a repair on the runway, but it’s actually the resting place of Richard and Catherine Dotson.

Back in the 1800s, the Dotson’s owned a large farm on the outskirts of Savannah where the airport sits today. The couple was buried in their family cemetery, on the same land, along with over 100 other family members, slaves and farm workers.

The couple rested peacefully on this land until the airport began expansion of Runway 10. Descendants of Dotsons gave permission for the airport to move most of the remains to another cemetery but wanted Catherine and Richard to remain buried on the land.

The airport opted to honor their memory by putting these two headstones on the runway. To this day, family is escorted onto the runway to visit.

Once a year, the airport leaves tiny packs of peanuts and a $5 can of soda at the markers.

Is Their Doomsday At Hand?

While I have been occasionally posting about the death of professional sports, I specifically wanted to post this story from Breitbart, which breaks down how most pro sports’ ratings plummeted in 2020.

The year of the coronavirus was a major disaster for professional sports as every league suffered ratings declines, and lost billions in revenue in 2020.

TV viewership was not off by just a little, either. It was off an average of 50 percent over last year’s numbers. Even though many Americans were stuck at home as their jobs and cities shut down, TV viewership for sports still cratered.

Remember, most of us have been confined to our homes for a year… and yet, sports viewership dropped significantly. Those of us who are severely limiting/boycotting sports are having an impact.

According to Front Office Sports, one of golf’s big games, the U.S. Open, lost 56 percent of its viewers over 2019. Basketball suffered greatly, as well. The NBA finals were down 49 percent over last year. Tennis’ Open also cratered, losing 45 percent over 2019’s games. But the worst of all was Hockey’s Stanley Cup. The NHL’s big game lost a whopping sixty percent over the 2019 championship series.

Thus far the NFL is also cratering, being down at least seven percent over last year. It has been so consistently bad this year that advertisers are starting to rise up to demand concessions for their high advertising spending since viewership has been falling each week.

Seven percent may not seem like a huge number, but in terms of viewers, it’s a tremendous amount of former fans. Other leagues will collapse before football, mostly because far too many people refuse to cut that cord. Of course, if the ratings continue to drop – even slowly – the NFL will either eventually get the message – or better still – fold altogether.

Next Time, Take The Nay Train

A Rockville, Maryland woman found herself stood up after pressing the gas pedal instead of the brake.

The woman driver had been trying to park her car on the 1100 block of Rockville Pike in Rockville City, Maryland, when she accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes.

The woman’s frightening mistake led her car to launch forward into a chain-link fence and fall downward. According to the photo – which was shared to the Rockville City Police’s Facebook – the woman’s accidental maneuver left her car nearly vertical.

But wait, there’s more!

The car had passed through the fencing and landed onto the train tracks.

Rockville City Police explained on social media: “The Metro train was able to stop and there was no contact made between the train and vehicle.”

The woman blamed the accident on a defective brake pedal, PMS, and President Trump.