Martin World News

ITEM:  And back we go into the odd, the stupid, the somewhat insane.  Beware of falling PC!  Here we go:

ITEM:  We are going to start off with a grouping of criminal tales, leading off with an amusing article I found yesterday on four unusual ways that prisoners of the Indian penal system have escaped.


Our first contestant was handcuffed to a PLASTIC CHAIR that his guarding officer was sitting in.  When the officer left to "run an errand", the prisoner simply put the chair on his head and took off.

The Indian Express reports that when "the policemen went through the CCTV footage, their jaws dropped".
Police officers have since admitted that handcuffing a suspect to a plastic chair possibly wasn't the best idea.

"Ya think?"

Contestant number two was being held in a rural police station when a swarm of bees from a nearby tree entered the station.  The cops fled.  So did the prisoner.

As The Times of India put it, "no one saw this one coming".

Number three managed his escape by pocketing the seal with which visitors to the prison are stamped, stamped himself, and left.

The police inquiry found that "a casual approach by the prison guards and lack of due diligence in cross-verifying the claims of Manjunath [the convict] led to his escape".

Our final scofflaw had to be a bit clever.  He complained of being unable to move his legs.  So they moved him to a hospital section and put him in a wheelchair.


The man eventually asked to be taken to the toilet, where after 30 minutes, he walked out of the toilet in front of three policemen who were supposed to be keeping watch.
A senior official told the paper that the policemen had seen the man only on the wheelchair, which meant that they were unable to identify him when he walked out.


"But sarge, we all look alike..."

ITEM:  Next criminal is a dude in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, who tried to rob a convenience store  in a pseudo-Darth Vader Costume.

Despite having a gun in his hand, and more guns and ammo in his backpack, he was driven off when the clerk hit him in the schnozz with a bottle of bleu cheese dressing, giving him the cut you see above.  This caused him to both take off the helmet and flee to his vehicle- both witnessed by onlookers, and thus causing the swift arrest of one Jacob Jeremy Mercer, 32, of Tonawanda, N.Y.  I get the feeling his heart really wasn't in this robbery attempt- God knows his brain wasn't.



ITEM:  In Wollstonecraft, Australia, a gentleman was questioned by the police after neighbors heard screams, followed by shouts of "I'll kill you!"  Rather than explain what happened, I'll let you read the police Facebook post on the incident:

21/11/2015 Wollstonecraft 2.00am. Police received numerous calls in relation to a violent domestic, with reports of a woman screaming hysterically, a man yelling “I’m going to kill you, your dead! Die Die!!”, with the sounds of furniture being tossed around the unit. Numerous police cars responded to the address and began banging on the door. A man answered the door, out of breath and rather flushed with the following conversation:
Police: “Where’s your wife”
Male: “umm I don’t have one”
Police: “Where your girlfriend”
Male: “umm I don’t have one”
Police: “We had a report of a domestic and a women screaming, where is she?”
Male: “I don’t know what you’re talking about I live alone”
Police: “Come on mate people clearly heard you yelling you were going to kill her and furniture getting thrown around the unit”
At this point the male became very sheepish.
Police: “come on mate, what have you done to her.”
Male: “it was a spider”
Police “Sorry??”
Male: “It was a spider, a really big one!!
Police :”what about the women screaming?”
Male: “Yeah sorry that was me, I really really hate spiders”
As it turns out the male was chasing a rather large spider around the unit with a can or mortein. After a very long pause some laughter and a quick look in the unit to make sure there was no injured party (apart from the spider) we left.

ITEM:  Tell me you've heard this one before:

RICHMOND HILL, Ontario, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- A Canadian man was arrested after calling police to help start his car while intoxicated. The 27-year-old driver called York Regional Police around 2:30 a.m. to ask for assistance with starting his car. The police report says that the caller could hear the engine revving in the background over the phone.

When police arrived, they discovered the vehicle stopped on the shoulder of the road with the driver displaying "obvious signs of being impaired by alcohol."

Clue number one:  If you need help starting a car that is already running, you MAY be too drunk to drive.

ITEM:  Our final "criminal":

A gent from London paid (equivalent of) $7.50 for all day parking during a Winter Wonderland festival at Hyde Park.  When he returned to his vehicle, he found a bill for (wait for it...)
$5,500.

Apparently a while back, he had parked at the same place and the gate system malfunctioned on his way out.  "I booked into the car park on August 23 but when I was exiting there was a problem and it wouldn't work," he said. "I had to call for assistance and the operator lifted the barrier to let me out. As far as I know they never registered me leaving."

And since they never marked him out, when his day was done on the 22nd of November, he was charged for 93 days.  It took National Car Parks (yet another example of the UK's wonderful nationalized businesses, I guess) a week to decide, "Yep, that's our bad, here's your refund."


ITEM:  From the, "God, why can't we do that here" file, Serbia's version of the FCC is moving all reality shows into the "late night" time slot.  Why?

As in many countries, reality shows have proved popular in Serbia since the first was launched there in 2006. But concerns that the behaviour of some participants is inappropriate for younger viewers have grown in recent months, with an online petition to have four of the shows banned gathering more than 100,000 signatures, the Balkan Insight website reports. Contestants have had sex on screen, traded punches and on one programme - The Farm - a housemate is a convicted criminal whose jail sentence was reportedly delayed so he could complete filming.


"...contestants have had sex on screen..."  Don't you miss the good ol' days when the worst thing you heard on TV was...

ITEM:  Facebook friend and former congressman Mark Souder posted this link last night, from a book that is full of "spurious correlations"- unrelated things that seem to go up and down with each other.  For those too lazy to click the link and look at graphs, the page from their book included these correlated items:


US spending on science, space, and technology AND suicides by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation;

Drownings by falling in a pool AND # of Nicholas Cage movies released;

Per capita cheese consumption AND deaths from becoming tangled in bedsheets;

Per capita margarine consumption AND the divorce rate in Maine;

Murders by steam, hot vapors, or hot objects AND the age of Miss America;

US computer science doctorates issued AND total revenues from arcades;

Civil engineering doctorates AND per capita mozzarella consumption;

Number of people killed by venomous spiders AND number of letters in the winning word of the national Spelling Bee;

Suicides by crashing your vehicle AND Japanese passenger cars sold;

And my favorite...

Deaths by falling out of a fishing boat AND marriage rates in Kentucky.  There's a certain sense to THAT one...


ITEM:  Finally, the statistic you've all been waiting for- somebody figured up the likelihood by state that you would be involved in a Black Friday shopping brawl.  The top ten most likely:

10- South Carolina
9- Kansas
8- INDIANA...
7- Oklahoma
6- West Virginia
5- Missouri
4- Louisiana
3- Alabama
2- Tennessee
And #1- Arkansas!!!!

No, I don't notice the correlation with "states most likely to have a Confederate flag over the statehouse..."

The safest states, according to Estately are Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont.

Now, change the study to "brawls in a donut shop", and see who's on top..."