A Little bit o' Martin World News

ITEM:  Before we begin, I must brag on my KCAs fantasy football team, who rolled up a 66-36 win this week to post a third straight win!  Of course, it was a 1-5 hole that they dug themselves into, but now they join 10 of our 12 teams in being either 4-5 or 5-4.  The lone good exception- Scrappy's Fiery Beagles, who rallied for a 45-40 win and a 6-3 mark.

And now, onto those of whom Jo Anne Meadows was heard to say:


...makes one wonder why are there so many stupid people in the world really more people should shove a spud up themselves and prevent producing more idiots...........



ITEM: In China, land is becoming too precious, in the People's Government's opinion, to be wasted on burying people- even if millennia of tradition demand it.  Therefore, several local constituencies have formed "funeral reform bureaus" tasked with drumming up cremation as an alternative.  In fact, in Guangdong province, at least two municipalities set these boards a cremation "quota" they were to hit, based on population and vital statistics ( the polite way of saying "death rates").

Can you see where I'm going here?  Read on...

Beiliu City police apprehended a man named Zhong who had been robbing graves of their occupants in the middle of the night, driving off with the dear departed strapped to his motorcycle (there's a good way to be sneaky- driving through town in the middle of the night with a corpse strapped to your Harley) to Guangdong province.  He told the gendarmes that he had already stolen 20 such bodies- selling 10 each to a pair of funeral reform bureaucrats named He and Dong.

He and Dong had decided that black market bodies were a lot easier to meet their quotas with than the door-to-door cremation thing.  He, a thrifty shopper paid about $245 each for his ten stiffs;  Dong (First name Ding, perhaps?)  must have been "seen coming", though, as Zhong made about $500 a head from him.  The two enterprising bureaucrats pled that the government had "approved" the transaction... sure they did.

Tradition maintains that a good burial plot for the dear departed can bring good luck, thus the simple folk have no desire to cut their luck by making an ash of the deceased.  However, disturbing a tomb can portend disaster.  As He and Dong are about to find out.


ITEM:  While Zhong took care of the penny-ante end of things, deputy coal chief Wei Pengyuan did the heavy lifting.  Wei was arrested with over 200 MILLION yuan- in cash- in his home.  This amount was so large (about 33 million US $), that 4 of 16 cash-counting machines brought in to assist authorities BROKE under the strain.

Wei got raided after he was indicted for taking at least 5.8 million yuan in bribes from 2002-2012.  Tell me there's no profit in middle-management in China!


ITEM: Switching to "dumb things to research", the Manchester, UK, Museum of Science and Industry spent a year using a "name-that-tune" type research tool on 12,000 people over a year's time to discover what the catchiest tune of all time is.  Surprisingly, there were some oldies but goodies, along with others I wouldn't be caught dead listening to.  The list:

20- Elton John, Candle In The Wind, #1 in the US of A in 1997.

19- Boney M, Rivers Of Babylon, #30, 1978.

18- Elvis Presley, Devil In Disguise, #3, 1963.

17- Britney Spears, Baby One More Time, #1, 1998.

16- Culture Club, Karma Chameleon, #1, 1984.

15- Michael Jackson, Billie Jean, #1, 1982.

14- BTO, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, #1, 1974.

13- Elvis Presley, It's Now Or Never, #1, 1960.

12- Hanson, MMMBop, #1, 1997.

11- Lady Gaga, Poker Face, #1, 2008.

10- Aerosmith, I Don't Want To Miss A Thing, #1, 1998.

9- Human League, Don't You Want Me, #1, 1982.

8- Whitney Houston, I Will Always Love You, #1, 1992.

7- Michael Jackson, Beat It, #1, 1982.

6- Roy Orbison, Oh Pretty Woman, #1, 1964.

5- ABBA, S.O.S., #15, 1975.

4- Lady Gaga, Just Dance, #1, 2008.

3- Survivor, Eye Of The Tiger, #1, 1982.

2- Lou Bega, Mambo #5, #3, 1999.

And the catchiest tune of all time, based on an average recognition time of 2.29 seconds:

Spice Girls, Wannabe, #1, 1996!!!!

I'm sure you know where I stand on the majority of these... let's hear what you have to say!


ITEM:  As I try to wash the taste of Poker Face out of my mind by spotify, let's move on to what has to me the most duh headline I've seen in a while:

IRS: Fan's arrest could affect job

This from ESPN, of all places, where one Stephen Sapp ( an appropriate name as it turns out), a furloughed IRS worker, went on a drunken rampage at a Steelers' football game:

PITTSBURGH -- Pittsburgh police say an Internal Revenue Service worker tried to bribe officers when they arrested him for being drunk and throwing steel crowd dividers, one of which knocked a woman unconscious, during a Steelers game.
Police say Stephen Sapp was screaming and cursing after he was asked to leave Sunday night's game and that he threw the crowd dividers in "a dangerous, disorderly manner."
Police say Sapp told officers: "Listen, I know how this works. How much money will it take to make this go away and to let me go home today?"
Online court records don't list an attorney for the 29-year-old Pittsburgh man.
An IRS spokeswoman confirmed that Sapp is a furloughed employee and says the criminal charges could affect his employment status.


Geez, if he'd only e-mailed the bribe to police...

ITEM:  Finally, here's one I thought you might get a kick out of.  A bear decided to make an impromptu interruption of a photo-shoot in British Columbia by taking the camera into it's own hands, er, mouth.  The results?

That's the news for today!  Tomorrow, an in-depth analysis of the election results and their effect on the progress of ISIS units in Iraq.  (JUST KIDDING!)