Martin World News

ITEM: First up, many of you have wondered what kind of reception my "motivational poster" had at work today:

This wonderful 8X10 glossy got a handful of reactions- mostly because most employees were too busy either causing or trying to deal with disasters to stop by.  I'm in a slightly out-of-the-way area of the plant.  But here are the reactions so far:

- three counts of chuckling, "Aw, that's cute!"
- one, "Heh heh heh, you got THAT right!"
- one, "Perfect!"
- one hearty laughter followed by, "Does he have something in his mouth, or is his tongue hanging out?"

I'm still waiting for a, "You do walk him a lot, right?  RIGHT??!!?"

ITEM:  Once again I will spare you the gorey details of the day except for two notes:

One, the engineering department covered itself in "glory" above and beyond their usual today.  And the corporate head of their department was here to witness it all.

Two, at the end of the day, I told my boss, "Y'know, usually we let the poor thing up after a while, but we screwed the pooch pretty much all day today."
I don't think I ever saw someone double over in laughter quite that quick.


ITEM:  I have my THIRD hockey champion of the year!  The Oilers of Stavanger won the Norwegian title for the fourth time, with their third triumph over arch rival Valerenga.  More details will be on the update next weekend on the NHFFL page.

ITEM:  My faithful yet wishing to be anonymous friend  e-mailed me a story I told her just HAD to make MWN. 


BERLIN — A German furniture store chain has apologized for selling coffee mugs featuring faint portraits of Adolf Hitler it had mistakenly ordered from a Chinese supplier, a news report said on Thursday.

The vintage-style ceramic cups feature a faint image of a Nazi-era postage stamp that shows a black-and-white profile of Hitler, postmarked with a swastika stamp, all obscured by other design elements including a rose and cursive script.

 

 

 

The owner blamed the “terrible” mistake on “a stupid chain of unfortunate circumstances” involving a Chinese designer who has mistakenly chosen the image of the Nazi leader, the news report said.


Gee, sounds like the typical day at my job for the last two weeks!  Apparently the store had already sold 175 out of the 5,000 piece lot before somebody noticed.  Cheer up, guys, the fabric WE get from China ain't much better....

(PS- This article courtesy Times Of Israel.  The rest, save for the one below, were from BBC.)


ITEM:  Speaking of China, I found an article that I really am left scratching my head at who to laugh at.  The article was an op-ed on China's Xinhua, taking the current Japanese government to task for "denying their crimes in WWII".  Now I know that this has come up before- it recently got fanned to a flame again after the newly appointed head of their National public TV network opened his mouth.  This time it was chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, who passed off the 35,000,000 number of Chinese casualties caused by Japanese soldiers during the war and the Nanking Massacre:

The secretary refused to recognize the number of the victims, saying that the Japanese government has yet to verify the "various views".


Uh, yeah, but if you've been around here long enough, you've read me mention a book called Japan's Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini which was a well-documented and damning profile of just what happened in Nanking and elsewhere.  For Japan to deny or quibble over numbers is as callous and sickening as listening to the Turks claim the Armenian Genocide never happened.  On the other hand...

Still, the Abe administration shamelessly denied the history to encourage the country's already growing rightist tilt, angering not only its victims but also every righteous nation in the world.
Were Tokyo a responsible player, it would nip in the bud the tilt which could jeopardize peace and stability of East Asia. Unluckily, its prime minister, carrying his family's "political DNA," become even a pioneer among the country's rightists.


Strong words from a country not all that willing to discuss the AT LEAST 18 million killed during the Great Leap Forward.  But just like the Left here, It seems evil is all the "rightists'" fault.


ITEM:  US Airways will probably want to watch who they give access to the company twitter account from here on.  Apparently, a lady sent several tweets to them regarding sitting on the tarmac for over an hour on a recent flight.  Eventually, they finally answered, and probably wished they hadn't...They sent a final tweet asking her to detail the trip and her complaints at what they INTENDED to be a web link.  Somehow, instead they posted the link to a picture that someone had sent to their twitter account that they "meant to delete..."


Now, you know me, I have no problem putting up pictures of the slightly risqué, but even the censored version don't make the cut here.  The pic was one of a lady with evidently loose morals, sitting naked and flying a model US Air jet into her coochie.  Buzzfeed learned that the image originally appeared in a German porn site.  How did it become the answer to a customer complaint?

We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating.



Uh-HUH.

ITEM:  Austria's Andreas Moellzer, a candidate for the European Parliament from the Freedom Party, has been asked and will withdraw from the upcoming elections to the body.

Moellzer, the old boy on the left, has lost favor, even for a legislator in a far-right party, for describing the EU as "a conglomerate of Negroes," and that the EU made the Third Reich look "informal and liberal."  So, why was it you were running, anyway?


ITEM:  The self-proclaimed "Robin Hood of Liechtenstein" has struck his last-or has he?  This man, a fund manager named Juergen Hermann, had been having a hate-hate relationship with Juergen Frick, head of Liechtenstein's Bank Frick.  That ended when Hermann murdered Frick in the parking garage of his bank.  Hermann's website, where he fought his campaign against Frick and other financial institutions, was taken down the night before; the police have found his car, his clothes, his passport, and a confession note- but no body, the trail leading to the Rhine where they THINK he drowned himself.  But they are still investigating, and they have INTERPOL on the lookout for what may be a soggy, naked man fleeing the Sheriff of Nottingham.

ITEM:  In Sao Paulo, Brazil, it's bad enough that motorists need to watch out for falling soccer stadiums.  Now, the latest way the government has tried to ease traffic "by expanding the area where motorists can turn or wait at lights" really has them confused:

The drivers can't explain it.  I can't explain it... 


...But Sao Paulo's transit authority, the CET, says the road markings are normal and meet regulations. Correspondents say Sao Paulo's lane dividers sometimes expand to give turning drivers some extra room, but they admit the lines on Avenida Dr Francisco Ranieri in the city's north zone are rather odd.

Uh, yeah...


ITEM:  A UN "special rapporteur"  by the name of Rashida Manjoo has accused the UK of being especially sexist.

She said sexism was worse in the UK than in other places, and warned that the government's austerity measures were having a "disproportionate impact" on women's risk of violence.
She said sexism in the UK was more "in your face" than in other countries, and raised serious concerns about the portrayal of women and girls in the media.


It might just be me, but I would have thought she might have been safe...

(Crap.  She'll be after me next!)

ITEM:  And finally, one I know you'll love.  North Korean officials showed up at London's M&M Hair Academy wanting to know just what was so funny about this ad:

Apparently the owner of the salon didn't know the North Korean embassy was just "a 10 minutes walk" from the academy.  Nor did they know this little tidbit:

Last month it was reported by Radio Free Asia that male university students in North Korea were now required to get the same haircut as their leader.

Or did they?  As the old Clairol ads went, "Only the hairdresser knows for sure..."