The bra is 100 years old this year! 

And no it wasn’t invented by Otto Titzsling nor Phillipe de Brassiere.

Some may disagree with the date, maybe it’s 103, I’m just not sure, and the data out there sUPports just about any theory you want.

Vogue Magazine celebrated the 100th year of the bra in 2007.  Many say it was all sewn UP in 1913, but then the patent wasn’t awarded until 1914.   Apparently sweet little Mary Phelps Jacobs wanted something special for her debutant ball, and sewed two hankies together with a pink ribbon.  She’s the one with the patent.  And a bundle of cash.

Prior to that – corsets and all that stuff.

At any rate, the bra business is a huge one.  Bra sales are in the billions each year, and places like Victoria’s Secret are making a killing keeping the tatas from a saggin’.

It’s a good thing, as Martha would say.

There sexy ones, frilly ones, plain ones, black ones…you name it, you can have it.

There are even bra fitters.  One lady, in Atlanta is called “The Bra Whisperer”…ahhhh…so freakin’ many places I could go with that.  But alas, “family blog”…must get back on track.  Susan Nethero owns Intimacy at Phipps Plaza in Buckhead.  She’s a bra pro.  Fitter, and all that.  She’s a pretty big deal hugely successful, with stores everywhere.  You might even say, “her cup runneth over”! 

TLW, got tired of spending so much cash on bras, she learned to make her own.  There are classes.

Legend has it that Otto Titzling invented the bra or maybe it was Phillipe de Brassiere, this of course came from the book Bust UP -The UPlifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra, and made even more popular by Bette Midler in the movie Beaches. 

Women have worn something to hold things UP for ages, with of course a brief hiatus in the late 60’s and early 70’s…you know, all that bra burning. 

So, it really doesn’t matter who invented it, or how old it is. 

Otto, Phillipe, Mary – women worldwide say thanks for the support! 

And Happy Birthday to the Bra!

While at lunch Sunday for Father’s Day, my son told me my blog was “all over the place”.  He added, “You know, Jenny’s has a purpose, all that mommy crap, your’s is just everywhere.” 

My eyebrows went UP.

Then he added, “Kinda like wikipedia.  And, sometimes their kinda long.”  (I got him to define “kinda like wikipedia” – TMI, too many facts, information overload, too much history!  Well now!)

Hmmm, he may be right, and that’s probably why I get no swag!

He’s lucky I’ve nothing to leave him, ’cause he’s out of the will!

And at least he sprung for lunch!

You won’t hear this too often, but I actually have to commend a politician for coming UP with a good idea.  I normally stay away from political issues here on Redneck Latte Ravings, but this is just too good to pass UP.

We’ve been paying dead people. 

The US government has issued checks to over 20,000 people who are dead.

Dead, that’s right, casters in the air, bit the dust, bought the farm, asleep with Jesus, D-E-A-D dead!

And it’s added UP to $180 MILLION!

So, President Obama has come UP with a “do not pay” list.  It’s just a simple idea to save the tax payers’ money.  Once it is UP and running, and of course, we’re dealing with the government – bids – contracts – bull$hit, and all – so who knows when that will be, all agencies sending out checks will have to check the list before they put the check in the mail. 

“We’re making sure that payments no longer go to the deceased — it sounds ridiculous even to say it,” said  Vice President Joe (always check the mike first ) Biden in describing the database.

The new list not only includes the newly dead, but contractors who’ve fallen behind in their payments or landed in jail, and companies that have been suspended or otherwise declared ineligible for government work.

“This stuff seems obvious on its face,” Biden acknowledged. “The voters will go, ‘My God, isn’t that happening already?’”

There’s already a list – the Social Security Administration does have what it calls a “Death Master File”.  But not every agency checks it before mailing out the checks.  President Barack Obama on Friday signed an order that  would centralize the information from several sources.  Sort of a “Checkland Security”. 

The figures on payments to the deceased came from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which also says checks went to 14,000 convicted felons, both in jail and on the run. The three-year total there: $230 million.

The White House guesses that improper payments of all kinds — from outright fraud to checks to inmates to simply mistyped pay stubs — totaled $110 billion in 2009.

“We think we have the tools now to take a real bite out of this,” Biden said.

Well, let’s hope so.  I’d hate to think our government wastes my hard earned money!

Don’t ya just hate it when you make a mistake?

I know I do, on the rare ocassion when I do, and I discover it on the blog or elsewhere, I cringe.  Really, I do.  It makes me turn “reddish”!

Imagine how the Catholic Church feels!

You know, Copernicus -  the 16th century astronomer who said the universe didn’t revolve around the earth, and that we were part of a heliocentric universe.  That guy, Nicolaus Copernicus.  Yeah, you remember him.  He was from Poland.

A little know (at that time) astronomer, Nick lived in northern Poland and used “the naked eye” to observe the heavens as the telescope had not been invented yet.  He surmised that the earth orbited the Sun and not that the earth was the main ball in the park.

Copernicus’ epochal book, De Revolutionibut Orbium Coelestium,  or On the Revolutions of the Celtial Spheres was putblished shortly before his death in 1543.

The Church was not happy.

The book, as we will call it, is regarded as the launching point of modern astronomy which began a scientific revolution.

He  theorized that with the Sun at the center of the universe, the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting Earth at rest in the center of the universe.  His work stimulated further scientific investigations.

Some by the local Priests.

He was excommunicated.

Branded a Heretic.

Voted off the island.

After his death, his remains rested in an unmarked grave beneath the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, on Poland’s Baltic coast, the exact location unknown.  He had been a canon there.

His revolutionary model was based on complex mathematical calculations and his naked-eye observations of the heavens.

But, alas, they found him, dug him UP, and on a Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland’s highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried his coffin through the cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot.

All that was left were a few bones and his skull.

Nice!

They identified him with DNA, it matched a hair left in one of his books.  I guess he was a shedder; can you say manscaping?

He is getting some “cred” though, a black granite stone marks the spot where he rests.  It not only identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory, but also a church canon, a cleric ranking below a priest. The tombstone is decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets.  Yes, I know there are nine  eight.  Not all of them were discovered yet, apparently his eyes weren’t all that good, and then there’s poor Pluto!

This event comes 18 years after Galilelo was rehabilitated by the Vatican.  Galilelo was persecuted during the Inquisition for carrying the Copernicus Revolution forward.

BTW, Poland is also the home of the Late John Paul II who said in his day that the church was wrong for condemning Copernicus.

The funeral is considered as having symbolic value in that it is a gesture of reconciliation between science and faith.

Gee, I wonder where Scopes is buried?

ps.  I am guest posting at http://realworldvenusmars.blogspot.com/ today.  Check it out!