Martin World News

Today I was all set to rant about several situations at work that left me wondering if anyone in the corporation making more money than myself were capable of dressing themselves in the morning.  But moments after coming home, I saw something that changed my mood.  Remember "red", the chipmunk I told you about yesterday?  He was sitting in the middle of the porch as I passed the back door.  As I stopped to look at him, he decided to take off- and ran right into the butt of a blue jay who was sharing a mid-afternoon snack with him.  Right. Into. His. Butt.

After that, I decided I had to have fun with life, and share it.

So I looked around and decided our best bet was an old-fashioned weird news segment.  Ready?  Here we go!


Item 1- And it glows in the dark, too!

A lady in Canada shared with the world that her UK cousin had a birthday request that was just a bit too hard for the cake maker.  Novelist Harriet Alida Lye said her cousin had asked for a Mariah Carey themed cake, but the order taker, no doubt a former librarian, misheard the order, and the cousin instead received...

...a Marie Curie cake!  Easy to confuse the two (except for the thighs, I guess), and since they would both need to lip-synch any Mariah Carey song, no harm done.  Mariah herself, approved as well, tweeting, This could've been me if only I hadn't failed remedial math  happy birthday Siobhan!!


Item 2- I bet they gave him the 6 degrees at the station

This here gentleman from Vermont was interested in looking for a clip from the sitcom Saved By The Bell- unfortunately for him, he was not saved.  It seems that his search had several flaws, including:

-he was driving at the time
-he managed to sideswipe another vehicle while searching
-it was a police cruiser
-he at first didn't notice he'd done it, then thought about it, stopped, calculated the money he wouldn't be saving with Geico, and fled the scene
-he got caught about a mile down the road.

In case you're curious, apparently the clip involved Screech making a very good spaghetti sauce, so maybe he was just hungry.

BONUS:  His name?  Kevin Bacon.


Item 3- Let's see those damn squirrels top that!


A power outage affecting the electric train system in Japan's southern Kyushu district May 30th, left 12,000 people stranded and 26 trains cancelled.  Recently, an investigation into the cause of said failure has been released.  The culprit?

They determined the cause was a single tiny slug that found its way into some sensitive equipment.  He managed to crawl onto a live cable in a supposedly sealed box, shorting out the system and his life as well.  Now I just looked up an article titled, "Survival Food: 5 Ways to Eat Snails and Slugs", and 'Frying in an electrical box" was not there, so don't get any ideas.


Item 4- Also accepted:  'I don't know, but the teacher lost all of hers'


So a mom, I'm guessing in the UK since I cribbed the story from Mirror Online, has a child with dyslexia who goes to a private school specializing in learning disabilities.  And she had to be thinking the school had some not-so-good experience in such disabilities after her daughter brought home a test with the following question:

"Janell had 15 marbles.  She lost SOME of them.  How many does Janell have now?"

Seriously?

Later on, Mom spoke with the teacher.   "I spoke to her teacher today and found out the answer to her homework question was to 'come up with her own answer.'

"Her answer, the question mark, was not considered wrong."

Of course, Mom posted the whole thing on FB, and among the comments, I had to agree with this one:

" I hate that kids who at 7 or 8 years old are being expected the no one is wrong garbage. While still learning fundamentals of math. Math is math not theology."

On the other hand, this one made me scratch my head.

 "And they wonder why we have kids with literacy and numeracy problems."

Numeracy is a word.  Who knew?