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    Home Opinion The world is a weird place
    The world is a weird place
    Opinion, Сolumns
    Marcie Schellhammer marcie@bradfordera.com  
    February 7, 2018

    The world is a weird place

    Did you ever just have one of those days?

    You know the kind I mean. Can’t find your keys. One shoe disappeared into some alternate dimension with single socks and hair ties. The dog gets sick in your chair. Cris Collinsworth is color commentator for the Super Bowl. Your car gets stuck in a snowbank created by the snowplow driving by.

    Just one thing after another.

    I feel like that’s where America is right now — having one of those days. Lawmakers in New York are asking Tide to stop making Tide Pods laundry detergent look so tasty.

    Really.

    In 1944, American 18-year-olds were storming the beach at Normandy. In 2018, they are eating laundry soap.

    I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. So I looked up some other odd news. And I realized the world is a strange place.

    A story out of Maryland reported a man is in stable condition after a dead goose fell from the sky and knocked him unconscious. One of the people in his hunting party had shot it, and the trajectory of the falling fowl was this man’s noggin.

    That’s some bad luck. It sounds funny, but it’s a little more serious when you see the man was in stable condition at a trauma center.

    Last month in Utah, four parking enforcement officers were fired for taking free pizza instead of writing parking tickets for the pizzeria’s owner and employees. Again, it sounds funny, but in the two years the scheme went on, there may have been about $19,000 in fines Salt Lake City could have collected. That’s a lot of pizza.

    Recently in Saugatuck, Mich., Michael Ryder was approved for $360 a week in unemployment benefits. Not so strange, right? Wrong. Michael Haddock is the owner of a dog named “Ryder,” who mysteriously received a benefits letter from Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency granting the German shepherd unemployment from the restaurant where he supposedly worked.

    Computer glitch, the agency says. Although I must confess I’m picturing the crafty canine toiling away at the computer keyboard while the boss is at work… (P.S. “Ryder” isn’t getting the money. Bummer. I bet he’s a good boy who just wanted some doggy cookies.)

    Here’s another good one. I admit, I enjoy digging through treasures at thrift stores. But I am glad I missed this one. In Bradenton, Fla., employees at a Goodwill store found a loaded grenade launcher in a shipment of items that had come in from another Goodwill store.

    The workers at the first store said they didn’t know what it was, so they passed it along. Luckily, someone at the second store realized the explosive truth and called in authorities to dispose of it safely.

    Here’s one that I found quite funny. An inmate from a federal prison in Texas was caught trying to sneak back into prison with snacks, alcohol, tobacco and cooked food. Three bottles of Martell brandy, a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey, multiple bags of Bugler tobacco, salty snacks, fruit, and home-cooked food like barbecue sausage and fried chicken.

    But wait, there’s more. It’s not the first time. Similar incidents have been happening “pretty much since day one,” a deputy told the Beaumont Enterprise.

    That must be some prison.

    So my point is this; Don’t eat laundry soap; when the ducks fall, duck; pizza for parking isn’t OK; dogs, even good boys, shouldn’t get unemployment; know the whereabouts of your grenade launcher; and be more careful sneaking back into prison.

    And don’t let Cris Collinsworth be the color man during the Super Bowl.

    Tags:

    cris collinsworth economics employee food gastronomy grenade launcher michael ryder one pizza unemployment work

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