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Cursed by Oak Island

I have been cursed!

Someone has enchanted me with promises of untold treasure and solutions to mysteries that are centuries old.  It’s like a real life National Treasure, one of my all-time favorite movies.  Curiosity and greed pull me in to their tangled web of clues, false hopes and commercials, week after week.

Curse you Oak Island.

In case you don’t know, the Curse of Oak Island is a History Channel series chronicling the adventures of a band of brothers (Marty and Rick Lagina) in search of a mythical treasure buried on Oak Island, a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Apparently, centuries ago, someone stumbled onto a depression in the ground on this island.  This was odd enough that they started digging.  They found several platforms of logs at various levels.  Some levels had coconut fibers.  (There are no coconut trees on the island.)  At ninety feet, someone found a stone inscribed with strange symbols.  Someone else apparently “decoded it” and the stone reads, “Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried.”  I hope it was etched by a Britain!  Otherwise it begs the question, two million pounds of what?  Rock?  Coconut fibers?

Hypotheses range from just a sinkhole, to perhaps the buried treasure of Captain Kidd, the Templar Knights, or the lost crown jewels of Marie Antoinette, among others.  Some think it is an elaborate hoax.  The whole thing has been dubbed the money pit.  Millions have been spent trying to find the treasure–often thwarted by traps set to flood the tunnels with sea water–and at least six people have died in the course of these treasure hunting expeditions.  John Wayne apparently invested at one point, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was photographed as part of an expedition to solve the mystery as well.

And while evidence that any treasure actually exists is sparse, I am intrigued.  A natural sink hole would not have layers of wood at various levels, nor an inscribed stone which is obviously man-made (assuming that the history is correct and this stone was actually uncovered in the pit and not part of some hoax.)   At some point coconut fibers were found deep in the hole where they would not be naturally found.  And at the risk of offending Monty Python fans, I do not think coconuts migrate, nor can they be carried by swallows:

It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a 1 pound coconut. . . Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European swallow, that’s my point . . . But then of course African swallows are not migratory. . . Wait a minute — supposing two swallows carried it together?

If there are coconut fibers in that hole, then it is not natural.  It is a game changer, to quote Marty (or Rick, I often confuse them) Lagina.  And a hoax?  We can’t uncover this damned thing with 21st century technology.  Who in bloody blazes would be able to construct such an elaborate hoax 200 years ago?  Aliens?  Sorry, but that is a different History Channel addiction. And why?   Such a hoax would mean there must be something else in the area incredibly valuable to warrant such a complex diversion, right?

So I’m addicted.  I sit there each week riveted to this program that spends 45 minutes rehashing what we already know and have seen just so we can be taunted with 15 minutes of new revelations . . .

Look, it’s a piece of wood.

I think it’s a rock.

The wood looks carved–by man.

We dredged up a bone.

There’s a plank in the swamp that could be part of a boat.

We got more rocks.

Charlie Brown on Oak Island

There’s a Templar Cross etched into a stone miles away from Oak Island.

At one point, they sent a camera down shaft 10X (not the money pit, but another shaft to a watery cavern that they believe connects to the money pit) and it showed murky, muddy water, but then there was a bright shiny gold object.

Now we’re talking!

That was three freaking weeks ago and we still haven’t found it yet, despite three or four dives into the cavern.  And what looked like a chest on sonar?  It’s apparently a rock. Shaped like a chest.

One recent episode they traveled 130 miles away to look at a boulder that seemed like it had a face carved in it.  (I could see it, but not well.  Kind of like looking at a baby’s face on old ultrasounds.  Frankly, I’m more impressed by the coconut fibers and the inscribed stone.)  The boulder faces toward Oak Island.  Sure it does.  The boulder wants to know what that shiny object is too!

Now they’re off to the Roosevelt Presidential Library to do research (data mining is just as important as actual mining my ass) because some producer thinks watching them data mine through old papers is more exciting than actually finding that shiny gold object.  Show me the damned gold object!  That’s what we want to see!  I don’t care if Roosevelt himself put the damned gold there.  Show me the money!

If that’s NOT a rock, then this is game changing data.  Game changer!

The opening credits talk about the legend and how six men have died and how a seventh must die before the mystery will be solved.  All right already.  Let’s shoot somebody and get this treasure found!

It’s excruciating and fascinating at the same time.  Scholarly and conspiracy theory simultaneously.  Mesmerizing.  Of course, they may be making more money from the series than they’ll ever recoup from the watery depths of Oak Island.

But I’m going to watch this week nonetheless.  They’re so close.  I can feel it!  Maybe we’ll get to see that gold object tomorrow night!

Or probably not.

Too many commercials to show and not enough shiny gold objects.

 

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No Lame Excuse

A friend of mine related a story about her brother, who had suffered an injury years ago which weakened one arm and limited the amount of weight he could carry.  This was particularly notable because her brother was in the construction business.

One day, on a job where concrete blocks had to be moved from the delivery site to the actual work site, he was helping several other workers.  But while he could only carry one concrete block at a time, they were each carrying two.

The site supervisor came over and asked her brother why he was only carrying one block while the others were toting two.

He replied:  “Because they’re too damned lazy to make two trips!”

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