Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for December 01, 2022

Hot, Hot…NOT!

If I recall, Robert Sherman is long passed away and his co-writer brother Richard is still around. Those guys are quite the Disney Legends.

In order that I might join the list of illustrious joke tellers, I submit this attempt…

One fine day, a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus, and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops – a few people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.

At the next stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight,built like a wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said, “Big John doesn’t pay!” and sat down at the back.

Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically meek? Well, he was. Naturally, he didn’t argue with Big John, but he wasn’t happy about it. The next day the same thing happened – Big John got on again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the next.

This grated on the bus driver, who started losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him. Finally he could stand it no longer. He signed up for body building courses, karate, judo, and all that good stuff.

By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong; what’s more, he felt really good about himself. So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus and said, “Big John doesn’t pay!”

The driver stood up, glared back at the passenger, and screamed, “And why not?”

With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, “Big John has a bus pass.”

And the brave little Taylor had a few more hits further down the chart at that time.

Really? The kid needed sugar for the oral polio vaccine? That always tasted like cotton candy to me. I was disappointed when it was switched to an injection.

But what about number eleven? Huh? What about that guy who plays the harmonica while smoking a cigar with his ear? Huh? And what about the Beatle guy’s wife who plays the tambourine while lip syncing songs she knows nothing about? Huh? And what about Fred over there who plays the PVC sink trap pipe to the tune of Danny Boy while kicking a bean bag into the air repeatedly with his left foot? Huh. A little credit where credit is due.

Take care, may facial scar counter and mapper Chuck “I’ll Give My Cat Myrtle Her Medicine If It’s The Last Thing I Do” Flinchord be with you, and gesundheit.

I’m guessing the director made the cat an offer it couldn’t refuse…?

I’m from a different generation but not getting the Taylor Swift thing…

Was the cat paid union scale?

If it weren’t for old jokes I’d have no jokes at all. (Gloom, despair and misery on me).

My car started making this whining noise. So I took it to the shop and had the mechanic look over it. Turns out all he had to do was take the Taylor Swift album out.

Taylor swift waved at a boy yesterday, but he didn’t wave back.

So she will have a new album coming out tomorrow.

Did you hear that all of Taylor Swift’s exes are collaborating on a new album?

It’s called “Maybe She’s the Problem”.

A few hundred years before the brilliant Sherwood brothers wrote A Spoonful of Sugar, the brilliant Torquato Tasso wrote in his epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (1581):

“So we, if children young diseased we find, / Anoint with sweets the vessel’s foremost parts / To make them taste the potions sharp we give; / They drink deceived, and so deceived, they live.”

(Translated 1600 by the brilliant Edward Fairfax)

Huh. I remember getting the polio vaccine on a sugar cube.

Cats and other animals can add a real life aspect to a story. Perhaps to indicate tenderness struggling to reach out. After watching Donna Douglass in the Beverly Hillbillies, possibly Frankie and Johnny would have been very different if an animal had been allowed on the set.

People forget now how dreaded Polio was. A Polio outbreak was cause for pure terror. Especially because it hit children. Swimming pools were closed, houses and people were quarantined, public gatherings were cancelled. My Uncle had Polio. He had to endure the Iron Lung. He lived but his femurs were so bent from the disease that he had to walk with leg braces his whole life. The Polio vaccine ranks up with the Smallpox vaccine as one of the great triumphs of medicine.

Guess there wasn’t much musical competition that week.

I remember my family getting our polio vaccines via a sugar cube……….now polio seems to be on the rise because so many people haven’t had the vaccine in the past 20 years.

One for today :- …. The rain was pouring down outside O’Connor’s Irish Pub. There, standing in front of a big puddle outside the pub, was old Decklan, drenched, holding a stick with a piece of string dangling in the water. A passer-by stopped and asked him, “What are you doing?” “Fishing”, replied old Decklan. Feeling sorry for old Decklan, the gent says, “Come in out of the rain and have a drink with me." In the warm ambiance of the pub, as they sip their whiskies, the gent, being a bit of a superior smart-Alec, cannot resist asking, "So how many have you caught today?”“You’d be the 8th”, replied old Decklan.Birdman out.

Sugar cubes in medicines were used in the UK for years before Mary Poppins came along

If the population in America during the polio crisis, thought like today’s population about the covid crisis, we’d still have polio. Thankfully, we were smarter back then.