The Realm Of Bizarre News 17: Alligator Blood For What Ails Ya’
We’re back to form here with Dr. Ruehl beginning this week’s episode by extricating the trivia question from its paper prison. And, Dr. Ruehl has a question for you, yes, you! Did you ever see the 1959 move “The Alligator People”? Well, if no, the doc will explain it to you, and its implications, along with the theory of grave therapy and a visit to the Vault of Strange Deaths in this, his seventeenth installment of The Realm of Bizarre News!
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Step 1:
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Realm of bizarre news XVII:
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Welcome once again, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, to the Realm of Bizarre News. I'm your host, Dr. Franklin Ruehl, and let's start off with a trivia question. Let me extricate it here from its paper prison. The question: what is the technical term for a group of alligators? Multiple choice, inverse alphabetical order: is it a rafter, gang, congregation, or bloat? Now the prize, the only prize: one pat on the back. You'll have to administer it to yourself. It's a heck of a lot better than a slap on the belly with a wet trout.
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Saviour alligators:
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Now, speaking of gators, may I ask if you ever saw the 1959 sci-fi film, The Alligator People, on television? It involved a scientist, George Macready, injecting war veterans with alligator extract to cure their wounds. And at first it worked, but then over time they became transmogrified into alligator-humans, i.e. alligator people. Now fast forward fifty years and researchers in Louisiana have announced that alligator blood actually is very powerful in fighting both viruses and bacteria. For example, it can cure the superbug that causes the deadly disease MRSA. They also believe it will help in treating diabetic ulcers, and infections associated with burns. So the question is: why did it take scientists fifty years to realize what the producers of that movie knew back in 1959? Alligators are our... ow! Ow! Ow! Oh, my finger!
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Group of gators question:
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Now for that trivia question again: what do we call a group of gators? Is it a rafter, gang, congregation, or bloat? Is your answer a bloat? No, it's a congregation. For the record, you have a rafter of turkeys, a gang of elk, and bloat of hippos. Yes!
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Open grave:
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Now, here we have a coffin. This pertains to the oddest grave in the world. It's down in Dusseldorf, Germany, and the vicar there is inviting parishioners to lie in an open grave -- not a coffin, just an open grave itself -- for five to ten minutes, to overcome their fears of death and conquer anxieties. And some who have done it say they feel resurrected, others traumatized. So the question is: would you consider grave therapy to fight your stresses in life?
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Vault of strange deaths:
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Now let's open up the Vault of Strange Deaths here. We have the question, what is an odd chain of events? This pertains to a man down in South Carolina in 1995, who received a donor heart, then surprisingly, he married the widow of the donor. Fast forward twelve years ago to last week, and the man shot himself to death -- with a gun, of course. Turns out that the donor also committed suicide by shooting himself to death, and we ask if this is an example of what we call trait transfer, a paranormal phenomenon in which an individual receiving a donor organ assumes some of the traits of that individual, and in this case, perhaps, a suicidal tendency: a possibility for your consideration.
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Stinking Formaldehyde:
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Now here is an old wool scarf, and this reminds me of a recent case in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They had on exhibit a dead, embalmed lamb, encased in glass with formaldehyde. Well, the formaldehyde started to leak, and the fetidity was so strong that patrons ran out of the museum. They had to close it down for over an hour because of that stinking formaldehyde. My question: if embalmed mummies don't need to be encased in formaldehyde, why should an embalmed lamb? Get out of the stinking formaldehyde!
Now, until next time, may the Power of the Cosmos be with you! Yes! Yes! Yes! And down with stinking formaldehyde!