Martin World News

ITEM:  Well it only took two tries to get this line under that picture.  Fits well with a day of "Well, the head engineer messed with my machine while I was on vacation, and..." at work.  I think I will put one thing that happened today with each story for your amusement.

ITEM:  First of all, I have a set of stories from the BBC's "News From All Over" segment, leading off with a sequel to last week's statue story.  Question:  So if Kazakhstan doesn't like statues that look like two guys taking a selfie, what do they like?

How about legs sticking out of potholes?  The Guerilla Creative House has put sets of papier-mâché legs in 10 holes around the capital city of Almaty, both to warn pedestrians and motorists, and hopefully to get the Kazakh street dept. to pay a little attention. 

First story:  No air to my cutter.  Reason:  there is an as-yet unreplaced part which has cracked and makes it hiss at all times.  The insurance guy was taking a tour last Thursday, so they unplugged the air connection and never plugged it back in.


ITEM:  Next, you want police brutality, I'LL give you police brutality:

A police officer in Uganda has reportedly shot a tortoise dead after being attacked by the "aggressive" creature.

The incident happened in the Nebbi district in the north of the country near the Congolese border. The officer - named as Charles Onegiu by the New Vision newspaper - said the animal entered his home and attacked him while he was enjoying a post-work cup of tea. "I tried to scare it but the tortoise became very aggressive. I took a stick to chase it but it instead became more violent," he told the paper. After attempting to fend off the tortoise with a plastic chair, he said he "instinctively" drew his firearm and shot it dead. A local Christian group later prayed for Onegiu, "before burning the dead reptile to ashes."


The officer's commander thinks it might have been a case of superstition over some deceased former human (and now reptile) out to get the officer that made him fire.


Second story:  Changes made on the machine were to have been explained to me by our maintenance man- who ended up absent today.  So as I blundered along on my own, I met with a freakish combination of new features and bugs.  One of which was that, instead of clearing the screen when the item was finished cutting, it lined me up to cut the same item a second time.  That was a bug.  A feature that fooled me involved removing several steps in the process needed to re-cut a flawed piece- with the result of me cutting the new piece upside-down.

ITEM:  Remember hearing on the news a few months back (not on MWN) about Arab TV stations using muppets on kids' shows to teach hatred of Jews and other infidels?  Here's the comeback to that one:

Israel has dropped hundreds of lollipops bearing anti-Hamas messages on two cities in the West Bank, it appears.The sweets, found in both Nablus and Ramallah, are adorned with the message "Ramadan Kareem… Some sweetness, after Hamas has made life in the West Bank bitter," the Ramallah-based Ma'an news agency reports. According to witnesses in Nablus, Israeli troops threw the sweets after deploying heavily in the region as part of their search for three teenagers who went missing while hitchhiking in the West Bank.

The Times of Israel suggests that the misuse of the  Arabic word for "bitter" on the lollipops has caused locals to assume that the source of the message was Israeli. However, the Israel Defense Forces told the Jerusalem Post that it "was not familiar with the incident".

Yeah, right.

Ma'an says the sweets are not the first "gifts" left by Israeli troops in the last week. Residents of Nablus tell the agency they have found matchboxes bearing the Arabic words "Beware! Hamas is inflaming the West Bank".


"Mommy, look at the nice candy the soldier gave me."  In the West Bank?  Yup.


Third story: How about as I explain some of the unexplainable to the Facilitator, both my computers suddenly freeze up?  And the corporate IT personnel are both out of reach.

ITEM:  I'm going to pause on the BBC stories to relate several alcohol aided incidents.  First one happened in Florida (surprise surprise) but the perp, was a Georgian.  Apparently- if you believe Wesley Terrell, his DOG drove him across the state line to a store "to buy some corn."  The dog then locked himself in the sweltering car, with temperatures approaching 120 inside the vehicle- and with a can of GASOLINE inside to give the stifling air just the right ambiance.  What a stupid dog!  Next up, a lady (one assumes) from England leaves the pub, goes out and crashes into another  TWO cars, walks back to the pub.  Police find her, ask her to take a breathalyzer.  She tells them she's too busy drinking.  Surely they waited for her to finish.  Then we have, from Murphysboro Tenn., Lonnie Hutton, who first tried to have sex with an ATM in a bar;  getting nowhere, he began to parade around, thrusting his schlong in the air waiting for some animal, vegetable, or mineral to hop on it.  Cops were called and he was escorted to an outdoor picnic table to wait for them.  Yes, you guessed it- police arrived moments later to find him trying to slip "the high hard one" to the picnic table!  And he STILL did better IMHO than our last gentleman, who was fine with drinking wine with the 27-year-older than he woman, but said no to the sex.  She therefore decided to chase him with a hunting knife to get what she wanted.

Just so you know, this is the "she" in the incident.  All things considered, I'd have went with the knife, too.

Fourth story:  I found at one point the cutter had just randomly decided to take a small gouge out of a piece, so I took it up front to show my boss and the facilitator.  He sat down at my boss's desk to type something out on her computer when one of the five legs of the rolling desk chair broke with a tremendous BANG.  Seconds later, he was lying on his back on the floor, saying, "I think I need to go home."

Epilogue:  The new plant mgr decided to give me the business about "coming up to the office and breaking things."  I told him, "I've never seen one of those chairs break like that."  He said, "That's the second one since I started here."  He started a MONTH ago.


ITEM:  How about a true "Holy roller"...

The leader of Romania's Orthodox church has been mocked for using a paint-roller dipped in holy oil to bless new TV and radio studios, it's been reported. Patriarch Daniel unleashed his unusual blessing technique as he inaugurated the studios of church-owned Trinitas Radio and Television, the Romanian HotNews website reported. Photographs published by the Orthodox Church website show the patriarch carrying out a traditional blessing service, before moving through offices and studios with the roller on the end of a long pole.

 

 

 

The ceremony did not go unnoticed by Romania's press and internet humorists, with altered versions of the photos being widely circulated, Adevarul news website reports. One popular blogger posted an image showing the Patriarch apparently endorsing a brand of paint. A church spokesman later told Adevarul that it's not the first time Patriarch Daniel had used the "sanctification rod", one of a number of tools of his trade, as it helps anoint rooms with higher walls and ceilings which would otherwise be difficult to reach.


If nothing else, the church spokesman had best come up with a better name for it than the Sanctification Rod.  Or maybe the Orthodox don't have clergy celibacy, and I just read things horribly wrong.


Fifth story- All this mayhem to install a "notcher" tool that will cut notches instead of the cutting wheel doing it, theoretically saving me 15-20 minutes a day of the wheel taking three moves to do what the notcher does in one.  Or is supposed to.  Late in the day, I began to see places where it was supposed to notch, it tried to notch- but no notch.  Sigh.

ITEM:  Good thing Michelle Obama isn't First Lady of South Africa:

South African MPs have complained the meals served in the restaurant at Parliament are too fattening, it seems. In fact, they say the meals on offer are so unhealthy they're causing obesity among parliamentary ranks, the Times Live website reports. Members are apparently "nice and slim" when they are elected to office, but "they all go out obese", says Sheila Sithole, an MP for the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Fellow ANC member Zukile Luyenge agrees: "Every food item has fats and too much protein." If politicians' meetings run into lunchtime, they can snack on dishes such as lamb chops, samosas or spicy sausages. Or they could have a three-course meal at the restaurant, the website says.

The food is so notorious one MP reportedly started boycotting the meals entirely, shunning the canteen in favour of healthier options available off site, Sithole says. And in 2012 the country's health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, said an expanding waistline was an occupational hazard for politicians. "The problem as a public representative is that there is food everywhere - that is the danger of this profession." But Luyenge says he has just the antidote - colleagues should try sweating it out in the official gym to keep the excess pounds at bay.

Gives "pork" a new meaning, I know... but juvenile humorist that I am, my true interest in the story is wondering if the fat and happy members of the ANC have a little fun with the name of "MP Sheila Sithole".

Hey, no more work stories!  This is it for this week!  Have a good one!