Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for April 08, 2022

TGIF – Believe it or Not

Before Silver lands on me for a repeat, I’ll admit it up front: I’ve told this one before. However, I’m a sucker for a good shaggy dog story, and this is one of the best.

A traveling salesman has just been awarded a new territory, and when he came into a small town on his route, he saw a big sign over the theater: TONIGHT ONLY – THE AMAZING GOLDBERG! Well, the town was all a-buzz about the act, and even though no one could tell him exactly what the act was, he went to the box office and bought the only remaining ticket.

The appointed time came, and the salesman took his seat in the theater. The lights dimmed, the curtain came up, and there stood a table with three walnuts on it. A small, weasened old man came out, walking on a cane, and stood in front of the table. He then unzipped is pants, took out his schlong (I used that word in your honor, Silver) and WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! He smashed the walnuts into smithereens. The crowd erupted into tumultuous applause, the curtain came down, and the act ended.

“Strange act,” the salesman thinks. “But worth it.” So he goes on with his career, and decades later, he finds himself in another small town, and once again sees the theater marquis: TONIGHT ONLY – THE AMAZING GOLDBERG! The salesman says to himself, it can’t be the same man; all those years ago, he was so old…but I’ll check it out anyway.

So he bought a ticket – the only remaining ticket – and when the appointed time came, he sat down in his seat. The lights dimmed, the curtain came up, and there stood a table with, instead of three walnuts, three coconuts. Then a very small, weasened old man came out, walking on a walker, and stood in front of the table. He unzipped his pants, took out his schlong, and WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! He smashed the coconuts into smithereens. The crowd erupted into tumultuous applause, the curtain came down, and the act ended.

Stay tuned…

The salesman couldn’t contain himself, however. He fought his way backstage and found Goldberg. He asked him, “Mister Goldberg, I saw you years ago, and I was impressed! But all those years ago, you were smashing walnuts. Tonight, you used coconuts. Why the change?”

Goldberg looked at the salesman, and sadly shook his head. “Mine eyes, mine eyes,” he said. “They just aren’t vat they used to be.”

Firefly synchronization is very interesting, since the nature of the pattern actually means that can happen even with very small, instinctual behavioural responses on the fireflies’ part. It doesn’t require any complex social behaviour or planning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-_VPRCtiUg

You can see information about it in this video, around the eight minute mark.

That NZ shark pup… did they release it back?

I hope they didn’t begin singing “Baby Shark.”

Photinus carolinus (Synchronous Fireflies) will be putting on their display around mid May. It’s so popular, the National Park Service runs a lottery for vehicle passes April 29 thru May 02. Check the NPS website for details if you’ll be close to Gatlinburg, TN.

https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm

BION, some species of humans synchronize their steps with each other. And they do it while listening to sounds made with odd contraptions! Weird! :D

Lightening bugs, fireflies, we love the attention no matter what you call us. ~ Bzzt McZzt

Take care, may revered dead but somehow still active cartoon voicer Mel “Bugs Disappointed Me When I First Saw He Was Not An Insect” Blancord be with you, and gesundheit.

Oh look! We have an extremely rare shark, let’s cut it open!! Reminds me of Gahan Wilson’s cartoon. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/2251868553208390/

i have egg yolk in my stomach too

681 million light years? It should be done by now but we’ll never see it.

Think about the constellation Cancer. A lot of smart people are spending a lot of money and time studying something that most likely will never have any bearing on what’s happening on this planet. Sure seems like a waste of intelligence and money that could be used to solve problems we have here.

Nothing like traumatizing a freshly hatched shark. Amityville, you’ve been warned.

so let’s kill a rare species to see what it ate…yeah, baby…BTW, let’s clean the lens to our telescope, it has finger prints on it again making everything blurry and quit bumping into it, that makes things appear as if they’re moving…and last but not least…you there, firefly number 2,356 you missed your cue, you’re to FOLLOW 2,355…get it right will ya…

681 million light years away – it’s difficult to wrap your head around that.

Whatever it is that they can see happening there took place 681 million years ago, things could be very different by now.

I’d be interested if those fireflies synchronized their light shows to the In a Gadda Da Vida drum solo

I like my women like I like my neutron stars.

Hot, dense, and degenerate.

I’ll bet those galaxies didn’t have Geico insurance. “15 minutes could save you 15 million light years.”

A short Wikipedia search reveals that the Cancer constellation has 121 stars; maybe a few more, undiscovered? And galaxies have from a few million (a “dwarf” galaxy) to a few trillion stars. So, how to understand the claim that the Cancer constellation contains 3 galaxies?

It never fails to amaze me how some commenters make nitpicking into a fine art. I guess I didn’t realize that the comment section of a comic had to be a doctoral dissertation.

ReTest

I haven’t seen a “lighting bug”…that’s what we called them…since I was a kid.

3 pretty much ‘if you say so’

We don’t have fireflies here. I loved to watch them when I was in my hometown. Would be awesome to see synchronized ones.