OBX Report

NAGS HEAD – Mystery is no stranger to the Jockey’s Ridge in Nags Head. For centuries, scientists and archaeologists have probed inside the largest sand dune on the east coast. But until now none had stumbled upon a 100 foot long space hidden under its sandy surface.

Jockey’s Ridge contains a number of well documented artifacts, from the lost Putt Putt golf course to an antebellum version of the Nags Head Hotel. The shifting sands sometimes give passer-bys a glimpse of these artifacts from the past.

But what has remained hidden, and what researchers at the Outer Bank History Center feverishly hope lays within the mysterious chamber is essentially the Holy Grail of all Outer Banks archeology: the lost grave of Virginia Dare.

“Wouldn’t that be fantastic?” mused Brent Evans, lead historian at OBHC. “Finding Virginia Dare’s final resting place would fill hundreds of blank pages in our local history.”

When pressed for what those questions were, Evans pointed toward the window and shouted “Benghazi squirrel!” and dashed from the room.

Archaeologists plan to begin excavation on Monday to reach the chamber but they will have to work quickly: the sale of Jockey’s Ridge to local developer Saga Construction was recently approved by Dpt. of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Construction of a new subdivision is slated to begin January 1st.

Rep. Beverly  Boswell has introduced an amendment to her bag-ban repeal bill which she says will address the concerns of those who feel the bags may harm wildlife. Bags used on the Outer Banks will now have to feature a warning “Not fit for human or animal consumption” printed on both sides.

Rep. Boswell said she got the idea from her own childhood experiences of playing with plastic bags.

“Oh sugar, growing up, we used to always play with them big plastic bags they’d put over your clothes when they come from the dry cleaners,” Rep. Boswell stated. “Sometimes I’d leave it on too long and turn a little blue. Anyway, then one day they started putting that warning about suffocation on those bags and my momma said ‘No more!. You can’t play with them bags no more.’ And we didn’t and nobody died ever again in the whole wide world from a plastic bag.”

The amendment requires the warning use minimum 12 point font and include a Spanish translation on at least one side of the bag. According to Boswell this is for the mackerel here legally, not the illegal ones.

Drug Drop Boxes are a safe and popular way to dispose of old or unused medication, but Mrs. Enid Strict with the Manteo Public Library wants patrons to know the Library’s after hours book drop is only for books.

“I’ve found z-bars, rittys, vike, cotton and everything goddamn thing you can imagine,” complained Mrs. Strict. “Sometimes people even drop their weed and skag.” Mrs. Strict said that frequently  the drugs are not properly packaged and wind up stuck between book pages which creates a hazardous reading environment, particularly in the children’s section.

“It’s hard enough to keep the kids quiet,” Mrs. Strict said. “Imagine if they found a handful of disco biscuits in the pages of Cat in the Hat. My God, the horror.” The Dare County Public Library has issued a statement encouraging people to use the drug drop boxes at Kitty Hawk PD or the Dare County Sheriff’s Office to dispose of old or unused prescription medication.

Miami Florida – Scientist and middle schoolers alike are enjoying a hearty chuckle now that Maria  has safely passed the East Coast. It doesn’t take a much imagination or a degree in anatomy to see what the joke is. Immature people from Florida to Cape Cod were holding back laughter as the storm threatened the coast.

“It looks like a chubby wiener,” said Tommy Culpepper, a 13 year old local from Nags Head, as his friends and family laughed.

“I can’t even be mad at him,” his mother said, “It looks just like a johnson. Not exactly a big johnson though. I’d say this one isn’t a category five if you know what I mean.”

“Don’t worry about size,” said her husband, Gary, “It’s not the category of the hurricane, it’s the motion of the ocean.”

Some scientists were not enjoying the comparison of their work to part of the male anatomy. “We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man hours to develop this model. It has a statistically significant predictive power, and can save peoples lives. This is the culmination of my life’s work, so you can understand how hard it is for me to admit it looks like a stubby dick.”

Doctors have long talked about how humor can heal wounds and ease stress. They are reporting a massive decrease in stress now that the threatening storm has passed. Local doctor Steven Stevensensonberg said, “now that we don’t have to worry about being on the business end of that thing, the only dicks left near the east coast are those people who can’t empathize with what the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are going through.”

How you can help hurricane victims of Puerto Rico

Having learned a lesson from the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, the National Park Service has taken steps to preserve local lighthouses in advance of the inevitable destruction that will be caused by Hurricane Irma.

“Once Jim Cantore said Irma was going to hit us, we swung into action,” NPS spokesperson Lynn Dixie said. “We purchased every inflatable tube available and stitched them together to make these massive life rings we believe will be able to float the lighthouses in the event of flooding. The taxpayers will be pleased to know the tubes were purchased at a steep discount thanks to an end-of-summer sale, 50-90% off, that was going on at Wings.”

The devices have been dubbed “light-rings” by locals and have been deployed around Hatteras, Bodie Island and Currituck lighthouses. The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse was not deemed worthy to save.

“It’s a replica, not under our jurisdiction and judging from the sunken sailboat about 40 feet from the base, it’s not doing a very good job as a navigation warning device,” said Ranger Dixie. “If the Town of Manteo wants to preserve it, we have leftover material. We’ll sell it at cost.”

Sources close to key legislators are saying that there were unseen forces working to repeal bag ban in Dare county.  Apparently a secret cabal of powerful cat lovers has been making back channel moves to get the plastic bag ban repealed so they can save money on bags for the litter box bags. Unbeknownst to the locals their entire economy, government, and local Facebook group was secretly controlled by Big Cat.

Some simple calculations reveal the extent of money involved. Each Feline Hoper has at least 34 cats, which produced approximately 14 ounces of cat turds per day. Now you might be able to fit two cat turds in one bag, but that would require perfect timing. So on average we are looking at around 30 bags a day. There number of members in the Feline Cabal are estimated to be more than 20 and less than a hundred, so lets round it to fifty. So thirty bags times fifty people a day is 1500 bags a day. Times that by three hundred and sixty five days in a year and you get 547,500 bags! The cheapest you can find bags on Amazon is 1000 bags for $14.50 (free shipping with Prime).  Now if you remember how to do portions from school you will divide 547,500 by 1000 to get 547.5 and multiply that by $14.50 to get $7938.75 in bags a year.

The sources say once the our state representatives heard how massive the savings would be to these powerful locals, they decided to vote in favor of this wildly unpopular legislation. Not only would this help them piss off some of their constituents, it would also kill sea turtles, so it’s a win win.

Pamlico Sound – New warnings tonight from geologist and vulcanologist  about troubling seismic readings. If a tropical storm wasn’t bad enough, now locals need to worry about the possibility of volcanic eruption. Experts are saying they can’t predict an eruption with any certainty, but that one is imminent.

“It could be twenty years from now or it could be tomorrow, but when you get that much activity in a magma chamber, there will be an eruption.” said local geologist Steve Stilerson. “Locals should exercise caution when swimming, boating, or living within 100 miles of the volcano.”

The last time the Mt. Tillettoa showed activity was during the Roanoke Colonies. It was well documented by Marlowe and White on their expeditions.

Local officials have refused to give any statements on the volcano, saying they heard it was “fake news.” They instead plan to dedicate more meetings to listening to Julie Dohrmer complain about the potholes on her road.

Locals don’t seem to be worried. Willis Creef said, “Mwa fwamloi bin feeshin roun dat volcwano fwo fiften generations. Jus cus soime dingbatter volcano dwoctor tawlking, I aint scwoird.”

The Island Insurance agency has started to offer new plans to home owner since Volcanoes are not covered on traditional homeowner’s insurance plans. “No one thought we would have an earthquake before 2011,” said insurance salesman, Wally Silverson, “If you really want to be protected from calamity, you need a good policy.”

 

 

 

Ken Ham, the controversial Christian literalist who preaches that the earth is only 7,000 years old and that cowboys rode dinosaurs, is coming to town. In 2016, Ham’s lifelong dream of building a life-sized version of Noah’s Ark was realized with the completion of the Ark Encounter theme park in Grant County, Kentucky. The flood of visitors paying $40.00 a head to find out everything they learned in public school was wrong never arrived and the enterprise has been a spectacular financial failure.

Undaunted, Ham has found a new use for his Ark, which at 300 cubits is the largest timber structure in the world and is believed to have single-handedly contributed to a 1 degree rise in global temperature due to the number of trees felled in its construction. Having observed the copious amount of rain the Outer Banks has received over the past 30 days, Ham believe we may be on the precipice of another flood of Biblical proportions. He has offered to move his Ark to the top of Jockey’s Ridge which, he feels, will give people enough time to round up two of the approximately 8.7 million species of animals on Earth to fill the Ark. Just like last time, the plants, Ham said, will have to fend for themselves.

Reactions to the proposal have been met with mixed responses from both the public and Nags Head officials. Speaking off the record, a Nags Head commissioner said while he appreciated the need to plan ahead for certain catastrophic events, he felt it was “more likely that (expletive) Jennette’s Pier will be hit by a North (expletive) Korean tactical nuke than another (expletive) flood event was occurring.”

Jay Fidgett of Southern Shores, a frequent visitor to Nags Head, thinks Ham might be onto something.

“Oh, God’s wrath is upon us. I blame the gays mostly, of course, but I don’t think he’s happy with surf and turf being served at Mulligans. That’s violating Leviticus (11:10-12). I’ll be first in line to buy a ticket to on the Ark.”

The Nags Head Commissioners will vote on Mr. Ham’s proposal at their next meeting.

For years, kids enjoying the YMCA at Nags Head have dreaded “The Whistle.”

Not the quick “tweet tweet” that reminds them to walk, not run. Not the sharp “bleeeet” when play gets a little rough. Not even the shrill blast that announces the closure of the pool when distant thunder is heard over Tyrell County.

No, “The Whistle” they dread is for the mandatory time-out imposed on otherwise well-behaved pool children for a period known as “Adult Swim.”

Darla Hood, 8, of Kitty Hawk put it succinctly: “I hate Adult Swim.”

For ten agonizing minutes of every hour, YMCA lifeguards at the outdoor pool force dozens of kids to exit of the water so two or three elderly patrons can hog the pool to themselves. The practice dates back to 1585 when the original colonists forced Virginia Dare to get out of the community swimming hole for a few minutes every day to check for water moccasins. The practice evolved over the centuries, becoming longer and more regimented with the passage of time. Even though a water moccasin has not been seen at the YMCA since its construction in 2003, the attitude of successive YMCA directors has been “If it was good enough for Virginia Dare, it’s good enough for these kids.”

Four hundred and fifty years of ageism came to a screeching halt last Saturday when a group of parents spontaneously organized to protest the Adult Swim time. Taking a page from the great civil rights struggles of the 1960’s, at the first Adult Swim whistle of the day the parents quickly created handmade signs from random pieces of cardboard, burned their bras and marched arm in arm into the warm waters of the lower pool chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Adult Swim time has got to go!”

YMCA lifeguards responded by turning the pool’s water cannons on the protestors, but as usual water pressure to the canons was so low the stream barely reached beyond the nozzle. Eventually YMCA director Bryan Penderson agreed to meet with the demonstrators and acquiesced to their demands. “Adult Swim” was consigned to the dust pile of historical injustice where it belonged.

“I was so proud of my dad, standing up for us kids like that,” said Carl Switzer, a rising First Flight seventh grader. “Adult Swim gave me the PTSD-ADHD and now maybe I can finally get better.”

Scientists from the Forensic Reconstruction Division at the College of the Albemarle’s Manteo campus have rocked the trucking world with research published in Science Today about the popular “Mudflap Girl.” The Mudflap Girl has been a de rigueur adornment for commercial drivers and rednecks with lift kits since her introduction in the 1970’s by Bill Zenda in Long Beach, California. For decades, the hourglass silhouette of the buxom lady has been the metric by which all silhouette women have been judged. If the COA scientists’ work withstands rigorous peer review, that may all change. Lead researcher Dr. Leta Leroe explains:

“We used forensic reconstruction and a specially modified MRI to detect subtle shading in the original artwork. The imaging gave us perspective lines invisible to the human eye along the torso and left arm.”

These lines revealed to the team that the female model posing for the silhouette was, in fact, posing with her left hand on her hip. The shape, in relief, gave the impression of a gravity-defying, well-endowed woman in a mood of deep reflection.

“I had seen this woman on the back of mudflaps for decades,” said Dr. Leroe. “And I was always puzzled by the fact that she clearly had two legs, two feet, but only one arm and this grotesquely disproportional thorax to an otherwise pleasantly proportioned physique. Now we know.”

Not everyone is happy with the COA team’s research results. Ben Alexander of Southern Shores, the owner of a 1999 jacked up Ford F150 was particularly enraged. His truck has mudflaps featuring Mudflap Girl on the front, rear and spare tires.

“I’ve spent years keeping my girls clean, literally hours every day wiping every inch of them down until they gleam. Now I’ve never actually touched a real woman, but I think I can tell a boob from an elbow and them’s no elbows!”