THE GOOFY SEASON
THE NEFF ZONE -- BY JIM NEFF
CADILLAC NEWS -- MARCH 19, 2022
This is the time of year when things get a bit goofy. Is it winter or is it spring? Why didn't someone tell me all the clocks changed times? What is that funny looking yellow ball in the sky? Where did I store those flip flops when winter started last August?
Goofiness like this is pretty common. The best strategy is to go with the flow and even jump in with both feet. Goofy has great entertainment value, if nothing else.
For instance, there's nothing goofier right now than NCAA March Madness. This is when people who never watch a basketball game during the rest of the year suddenly become addicted to something called bracketology.
So, how likely are you to correctly pick the winners of the games? According to the NCAA, no one has gotten a verifiably perfect bracket in the history of the NCAA tournament. “It is technically possible, and even absurdly overwhelming odds don’t mean it couldn’t theoretically happen this year.”
Here are the odds a perfect NCAA bracket. “There is a one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (if you just guess or flip a coin). There is a one in 120.2 billion (if you know a little something about basketball).” No stats are available regarding the number of people who win office pools by picking the teams with the best uniforms. (https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/bracketiq/2022-03-10/perfect-ncaa-bracket-absurd-odds-march-madness-dream)
Okay, so let's say you do beat those odds and that sports book bet you made resulted in a financial windfall. You'd probably want to have a goofy celebration. For this there's nothing better than renting the world's largest charter yacht.
“The Flying Fox is four hundred forty-six feet long and every foot is custom made. It accommodates up to twenty-five guests, spread out among eleven cabins. There’s also a cinema on board. The main deck’s swimming pool is forty feet long. There's a forty-three hundred square foot, two-floor spa. Toys include jet skis, seabobs, poseidon rebreathers, a professional kite inventory (and instructors), stand up paddleboards, kayaks, water skis and towable inflatables.” All of this will only set you back $3,285,660.00 dollars per week. (https://www.dmarge.com/2022/03/flying-fox-yacht-charter.html)
Renting that yacht means instant “friends” will magically appear. This will give you an opportunity to regale them with goofy stories. Ironically, one such tale deals with bloodsuckers.
Recently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, seized six air cargo shipments of bloodsuckers. “The shipments contained nine plastic jars of the prohibited leeches, with about three-hundred in total. The bloodsuckers arrived from Bulgaria and were set to be mailed to locations in Connecticut, Florida and Illinois.” I have no idea to whom these Bulgarian bloodsuckers were destined, but this seems like an opportunity for a wiseacre crack related to politics. (https://www.arcamax.com/entertainment/weirdnews/s-2645919)
Perhaps even more goofy on the Customs front, was the guy caught with reptiles in his pants. “A man who tried to slither past U.S. border agents in California had fifty-two lizards and snakes hidden in his clothing. Agents found the live reptiles tied up in small bags in the man’s jacket, pants pockets, and groin area.” Nothing like a lizard in your tighty whities to put a hitch in your get along, eh? (https://apnews.com/article/science-oddities-lizards-snakes-california-06dd6da23ce434019c5905a81e76bbd4)
Every yacht party needs some music. If there are plants aboard your guests could be in for some goofy sounds. “There is a growing community of people who use various sensors connected to plants and mushrooms as inspiration for synthesized music. The results range from scatterings of notes in a strange tempo to fully composed ambient music.” (https://www.theverge.com/22922189/plant-music-sythesizers)
See, electrodes are attached to the plants and the data collected is translated into a musical creation. My guess is that roses produce love songs and Venus flytraps are into death metal. You can actually hear plant music at: https://youtu.be/172Elb4aH5w.
Finally, some goofy updates on a couple of items from last week's column. Remember those guys who had to be rescued from Saginaw Bay when their fishing shanty blew one mile across the ice? In a fit of extreme goofiness, they were at it again.
“For the second time this week, emergency crews rescued two men from the waters of the Saginaw Bay after they plunged through the unstable ice. The same two men they rescued in the first incident. The two anglers were trying to retrieve items they had to abandon during their first rescue. They took a twelve-foot flat-bottom boat to cross the water out to the ice floe and it capsized.” As I noted last week, you can't make up this stuff. (https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2022/03/crews-rescue-same-2-men-from-saginaw-bay-for-the-second-time-in-two-weeks.html)
Remember those giant spiders spreading across the country. Did you wonder if they could come to Michigan and, if so, make it through a Michigan winter? Experts weighed in on both fronts.
“The Joro spider will probably not wait twenty years to visit Michigan. The Joro spider will likely show up someday soon as a hitchhiker in luggage or in a vehicle.” So, they are on the way here. Yippee!
Could they survive? Maybe. “The Joro has been found in Japan all the way up to the northern tip of the country. The latitude of the northern tip of Japan is a 45-degrees northern latitude. That same latitude line runs across Michigan from near Leland to Bellaire to near Alpena. Also, Grand Rapids has a similar climate.” (https://www.mlive.com/weather/2022/03/can-palm-sized-joro-spider-survive-michigan-winters-expert-weighs-in.html)
Scientists did reiterate that the Joro is not dangerous to humans. Call me goofy, but co-existing with a spider the size of your palm that spins a web up to three feet across does not sound like much fun.
Jim Neff is a local columnist. Read Neff Zone columns online at CadillacNews.com and NeffZone.com/cadillacnews.