Fourth grade teacher messes with his students' heads with a fake spelling bee.

Fourth-grade teacher Joe Dombrowski, from Michigan, decided to hold April Fools Day a couple days early (as it landed on a Saturday) and give his students a spelling quiz made up of fake words.

The test was made up of fraudulent words with silent letters, like "speekuzslmn" and "tangateen," along with mystery hyphens and umlauts which bewildered the students who suddenly thought they were having the worst day possible for a 10-year old.





Dombrowski posted a video of him going over the words' spellings on Facebook, as he had the students self-grade their quiz. In the video, you hear students exasperated, saying, "Whaaaat??" and slowly melting down. Tough life.

Dombrowski ends the video by saying, "April Fools. Congratulations, turn in your tests. This will be on your report card."

And there you have it. The worst day in the life of a fourth grader.

13 year old Michigan boy earns a perfect ACT score.

There are no statistics on the matter, but one official suggests the odds of an eighth grader earning a perfect ACT score would be one-millionth of one percent.

Yeah, it's impressive--but can he fly?

Don't answer that.

Thirteen Detroit principals charged with bribery in alleged kickback scheme.

A vendor named Arthur Shy allegedly paid bribes to over a dozen principals in the Detroit school system in order to charge the district for school supplies they never received.

According to the charges, Shy paid the principals $900,000. In return, Shy allegedly charged the district over $5 million for supplies, of which over $2.7 million was fraudulent.

Now, you might be thinking, "Isn't Detroit desperately broke? Aren't many of Detroit's schools crumbling and badly in need of repair? Are people really this corrupt to shaft children?"

Yes.

Yes.

And yes.

It's always good to be reminded that Lake Superior State University also burns snowmen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--everyone pays attention to Lake Superior State University once a year to see which words and phrases they want to ban from the English language.

But when they're not busy banning words, the Negative Nancy of the North also enjoys burning a snowman (alive?) at the end of every winter.

Look at this charming photo from 2014's wannabe Joan of Arc moment:

Even the guy down front can't witness the carnage.

In fact, here's a 45-second nugget from the same event. The laughter, the happiness, the joy as Frosty is torched. Notice how the mob starts burning him right where his heart is. Some morbid poet should run with this idea and write a sonnet on snowman violence.

Lake Superior State University's annual list of banned words includes...

There's no need to have a presser about this. So, let's have a conversation.

We all know those words and phrases that gain popularity, become an online sensation, and nearly break the internet with their use. It's as if these little vocal tics have a sort of magical secret sauce that makes us all say them. But when they become overly popular it can become problematic. Sometimes, just sometimes, we need to reevaluate the way we talk, look at these words and phrases, and walk it back a bit.

I don't want to hear you say, "Using these words is giving me life!" That just sounds desperate. You might as well relax, vape, have a drink, do a little manspreading on the couch, and relax.

You're part of the human race as well. You're a stakeholder in how we all talk. Everything you say has worth, a price point, so make it sound valuable. Make your words pop and punch people in the mouth, a sort of verbal physicality that takes people back.

And when all else fails, don't use the thirteen words and phrases in bold.

CBSNews: The ten best college towns to live in...includes a place in Nebraska?

These sort of list come around every few weeks, always with completely different outcomes. Each media outlet uses different metrics, weighs those metrics in varying proportions, and typically offers some random statistic to completely skew the results toward something entirely randomized.

Which brings us to CBSNews, which decided to create their own "scientific" analysis of the best college towns today. The results (with college in parentheses):

1.)  Princeton, New Jersey  (Princeton University)
2.)  Kearney, Nebraska  (University of Nebraska--Kearney)
3.)  Boulder, Colorado  (University of Colorado--Boulder)
4.)  Bozeman, Montana  (University of Montana)
5.)  Cedar Falls, Iowa  (University of Northern Iowa)
6.)  Cambridge, Massachusetts  (Harvard, MIT, Cambridge College, Lesley University)
7.)  Ann Arbor, Michigan  (University of Michigan)
8.)  Grand Forks, North Dakota  (University of North Dakota)
9.)  Ames, Iowa  (Iowa State University)
10.)  Madison, Wisconsin  (University of Wisconsin)

Don't rub your eyes. You're seeing that correctly. Something called "Kearney, Nebraska" is considered the second best college town in America. Nothing Nebraska-related is ever good news. Even Bruce Springsteen hit a low point in his career in 1982 by naming one of his albums Nebraska. Do you know how Wikipedia describes that album?

"The songs on Nebraska both deal with ordinary, blue collar characters who face a challenge or a turning point in their lives, but also outsiders, criminals and mass murderers, who have little hope for the future - or no future at all, as in the title track, where the main character is sentenced to death in the electric chair."




Mass murderers and the death penalty! Sounds like a real toe-tapper, get down with your bad self kind of album. Even the album is in a bleak black and white. But you know why it's so depressing? Because it's Nebraska, that's why.

And then there was that murky movie a few years ago filmed in black and white as well, called--you guessed it--Nebraska. You know why it was filmed in black and white? Because seeing Nebraska in color is too much of an offense to the eyes of the rest of America.

The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards. You know how many it won? Zero. Do you know why? Because it's...

Oh, but, hey. Let's all move there.

University of Michigan student claims her family making $250,000 a year makes them middle class.

Defining what is middle-class is a fickle definition. The U.S. Census Bureau defines middle class in the United States as a median household income of $51,017. That said, the middle class varies. What's middle class in Massachusetts or New York is different than what qualifies as middle class in Mississippi or Alabama. But median is median. Massachusetts and Mississippi meet each other at some point, and it's regularly well under $100,000. Well, well, well under $100,000 for a family.

But that doesn't stop University of Michigan student Jesse Klein from claiming in the school newspaper that she is really middle class--despite her family earning over $250,000 a year and living in a $2 million home in Palo Alto.

"My family's household income is $250,000 a year, but I promise you I am middle class," says Klein in her article. "I live in a $2 million dollar house, but I promise you I am still middle class. It has one story, doesn't have a pool or its own movie theater. It is a modest three-bedroom, two-bath."

It doesn't have a movie theater? That's slumming it. And she did promise us...

Klein's story has raised the angst of people around the country who debate the merits of what makes someone middle class. (Psst: it's not $2 million homes). Palo Alto is an affluent neighborhood, but even there the median household income isn't a quarter million.

Indeed, the last demographic statistics for median household income for Palo Alto was $119,046--which is still lower than Ms. Klein's idea of middle class--by more than half of her estimate.

The problem for Klein is a matter of perspective, and to a degree, ridiculousness. While the median income of her hometown might be $119,046, the University of Michigan reports that 63% of all incoming freshman claim a family income of over $100,000. In essence, Klein has no idea how the majority of the world--the majority of America--lives, if only because everyone she grew up and attends college with is equally affluent.

And apparently, the University of Michigan has no idea as well.

There's a bubble, and sometimes it's hard to see outside it.

Aquinas College students prank professor for April Fool's Day, and he actually likes it.

Aquinas College (MI) macroeconomics professor, Stephen Barrows, has a way with dealing with cellphones going off in his classroom. If your phone rings, you have to answer it--on speakerphone.

On April Fool's Day, his students decided to get back at him for his policy. Student Taylor Nefcy received a call on her phone, and per the professor's rule, answered it on her speaker. The news from that call? That she was pregnant with a deadbeat father's child. Congratulations!

Barrows mildly panics. "Okay, you might want to, ummm...shut that down."

President Obama released his NCAA college basketball picks, probably won't win $1 billion.

March Madness is upon us, which means 68 colleges and universities will vie for the national championship in basketball. Moreover, it's a time for gamblers and back alley bookies to make a buck off us regular jamokes on a selection grid.

Everyone gets involved, even Warren Buffet, who's aligned himself with Quicken Loans this year to award $1 billion (yes, billion) to anyone who correctly selects every winning team in the bracket. Odds of correctly accomplishing that feat? According to mathematicians, an easy 9.2 quintillion-to-1 (yes, quintillion), or 128 billion-to-1 if you know anything about college basketball.

Like the rest of us, President Obama knows who's going to win it all this year. His selection? Michigan State University--but take it with a grain of salt. In his years as president selecting a national college champion, Obama has only been correct once, in 2009 when he selected the University of North Carolina, yet also incorrectly guessed countless other matchups in his bracket. Last year, out of 8.15 million brackets submitted online to ESPN, President Obama finished in 2,080,996th place, or the 74.4th percentile.

That seemingly leaves the guessing to the rest of us. And who am I going to pick?

What? And give up my billion dollars?

Watching elementary school kids sing Pharrell's 'Happy' will actually lead to happiness.

The Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences choir does their interpretation of Pharrell's Happy.

I don't know who the two lead singers are, but it's safe to say they're going to be the Best New Artist Grammy Award winners in 2024.

Writers can get a free house in Detroit.

Detroit has seen better days, but that doesn't mean there aren't better days yet to be seen.

This partly explains the logic behind Write A House, a nonprofit organization that's refurbishing dilapidated homes throughout Detroit and giving them to writers. That's it.

Why?

The reason is tri-fold, according to the organization. By using local area students, the rehabilitation of homes teaches kids vocational skills to use in the future. Those vocational skills lead to updated neighborhoods in Detroit. And those updated neighborhoods gain a writer to help revitalize the arts scene.

There are some small points to keep in mind. Writers are responsible for ponying up insurance costs and property taxes. Furthermore, students will complete 80% of the house remodel, leaving the writer 20% to finish.

Writers channeling their inner Bob Vila? For the literary set, the pen is mightier than the hammer. This could all go horribly, horribly wrong.

Doctors are lying to the Detroit News web editor about spiders in his brain.

At least that's what the web site for the newspaper showed recently. As this screen shot from Deadspin shows, a family of spiders have taken up in the editor's brain and, damnit, this is conspiracy material, people!

Props for still following through with his job. He did supply us with notable photos despite the spider nesting.




photo: Deadspin

Michigan State math professor breaks down in class, removes clothes.

It's funny because he stripped himself stark naked in a math class--which is how panicked and disturbed I felt by being in a math class, too--so, I empathize.

It's sad because he was clearly mentally unwell. Always called "eccentric" by students, according to reports, the Michigan State math professor started screaming at students this week before slamming his hands against the classroom windows and "pressing his face against it," said one student. At one point, according to another report, he screamed "there is no God" and pulled out a dollar bill from his wallet for no discernible reason.

At some point he stripped himself naked down to his socks, where campus police found him in the hallway and detained him. He hasn't been charged with a crime.

That's just a bad day gone...bad. Horribly bad. Poor guy.

The 10 Public Colleges with "Insanely Luxurious Dorms"

That's The Fiscal Times description.

What qualifies as "insanely luxurious dorms" to The Fiscal Times?

At Penn State:
...dorms with a microwave and fridge.

At the University of Michigan:
...single, double, and triple rooms (luxury!) with air conditioning and wifi.

At the University of Cincinnati:
...shared bathrooms and living rooms (dreamy!), and a state of the art gym.

At Colorado State University:
...air conditioning and heat, with a 700 person common dining area.

At East Stroudsburg University:
...moveable furniture and apartments with up to four bedrooms.

That's right--the lap of insane luxury is furniture that moves in giant apartments with four people.

When I was an undergraduate I lived in an apartment across the street from a potato chip factory, with a beaten down meth den next door where concoctions were brewed in the basement and excess leftovers dumped in the backyard. An elderly man pimped out fifty year old women from his second floor apartment, while a slew of Mercedes and BMWs parked out front for a half hour. Meanwhile, the apartment below me ran a chop shop, where they stole cars from Boston and stripped them of anything valuable. A prostitute was found murdered on some abandoned train tracks behind the complex I lived in. And one delightful day a local police officer pulled a gun on me while I walked my dog because they mistook me for a criminal.

By The Fiscal Times standards, I was living the dream.

71-year old Michigan man holds 29 college degrees, somehow still married.

The wife works full-time while he goes to college full-time--and they've done this for nearly fifty years.

Apparently Michigan is a wonderful world of Shangri-La where doppelgangers of Mother Teresa moonlight as wives.

Speaking of real estate, Hogwarts is for sale.

I don't know what this is. It's either Realtor.com keeping up the amateur night Chuckle Hut routine, or there's actually some really dedicated Harry Potter fan who built a Hogwarts in rural Michigan.

The listing claims 542 bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a four car garage on over 20,000 acres of land in Alcona, MI.

Asking price? $99.9 million.

Everyone arrives by flying on brooms, so that explains the small garage. I get that. But I can only assume everyone at this house has a strong bladder and/or failing kidneys.

Which state uses racist language the most?

According to a study that researched racist words searched on Google, the state that searches for racist language most is West Virginia.

The Top Ten:
1. West Virginia
2. Louisiana
3. Pennsylvania
4. Mississippi
5. Kentucky
6. Michigan
7. Ohio
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. New Jersey*

The only surprise here is Pennsylvania. But, really, go fifteen miles outside Philadelphia and the banjos and overalls crowd pretty much dominates.



*Don't even act surprised about New Jersey in the top ten. All the racist New Yorkers move there. It's one pitchfork away from a John Grisham novel.

I'll admit, I never heard of "mama grizzlies" until now.

I could man up and tell you that Lake Superior State University has no right to ban words. But why refudiate a school's ability to do anything? Sure, Lake Superior State University lacks any wow factor that makes it appealing on a national stage. It's a small school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So small that it makes Fitchburg State University look epic in size. But Lake State's back story is that it makes a name for itself by creating a yearly list of words and phrases it wants to ban from the American vernacular. The American people are a stubborn creature, which explains the need for Lake State to take these measures.

I'm just sayin' that Americans beat words and phrases into the ground until they have a collective "a-ha!" moment that lets them know there's only one way to describe the way we talk: fail.

We can blame social media for this. If you facebook various profiles on any social networking site, you'll notice ubiquitous catchphrases, to the extent that it seems language goes viral sometimes. And it's not just between BFFs either. Strangers thousands of miles apart speak the same way, too. You can google random words and phrases and find Justin Bieber's fan clubs using the same keywords as a mama grizzlies' website.

You won't find me talking this way though. I choose to live life to the fullest--and that means never following a crowd.



Psssst: In case you're not a sharp one, all the bold words are this year's banned words and phrases. Because I'm cute like that.

HAL is now moonlighting as a sports reporter these days.

Are you generally a cold, emotionless person? Do you enjoy conversations with awkward people who sound like robots? Do you enjoy books that read like a 5th grader's interpretation of a Hemingway novel? Then you're in luck.

A company called Narrative Science has created a new software system that eliminates the need for writers for a variety of newspaper stories that are heavy on statistics. Likewise, it also eliminates the need to have any sense of human emotion in the story, too. It's like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but without the murderous jealousy.

So, let's play a game. Here are three different versions of a baseball game between the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa. Two are from local news reports, and one is from the Narrative Science software: You guess which one loves binary codes the most:

1.) The University of Michigan baseball team used a four-run fifth inning to salvage the final game in its three-game weekend series with Iowa, winning 7-5 on Saturday afternoon (April 24) at the Wilpon Baseball Complex, home of historic Ray Fisher Stadium.

2.) The Iowa baseball team dropped the finale of a three-game series, 7-5, to Michigan Saturday afternoon. Despite the loss, Iowa won the series having picked up two wins in the twinbill at Ray Fisher Stadium Friday.

3.) Michigan held off Iowa for a 7-5 win on Saturday. The Hawkeyes (16-21) were unable to overcome a four-run sixth inning deficit. The Hawkeyes clawed back in the eighth inning, putting up one run.

Let me help you out. One of the above examples uses rapid fire sentences like it's hopped up on premium unleaded gas. The rapid fire example--#3? Shockingly, it's not written by a sports reporter high on six pots of Maxwell House. That would be the software pumping out a story. I know, who'd have guessed software would write such a silky smooth narrative?

The company says that the software is "machine-generated content" trying to become a "less bad writer." Wow, that's a way to make the whole machines-as-amateur-writers sound sexier than ever. Even better, the software was partially created by journalism professors--the same journalism professors who probably decry the lack of jobs for journalists.

Awww, cannibalism can be cute sometimes!

Is that gunfire? Or is it Michael Buble's music that I hear?

Clearly, it goes without saying that Saskatoon is the first thing many people think of when white-hot romance comes to mind, especially in book form. Montreal? Vancouver? Quebec City? That's only if you want puppy love. If you want the scorching, ripped-shirt romance of a Fabio book cover, you need to look to Saskatoon.

According to Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, Saskatoon is the most romantic Canadian city. This is based off an Amazon.ca poll/study/rib-tickler that says Saskatoon is the biggest buyer of romance novels, romantic comedy DVDs, and Michael Buble CDs. And, really, why would you want to count any other musical act besides Michael Buble? You can't doubt the sheer animal magnetism that is Michael Buble's music. His CDs are quite possibly responsible for 25% of all new births that occur within Saskatoon city limits.

For you ignorant Americans who forget Canada isn't the 51st state of the United States, Saskatoon is the equivalent of Nebraska, if Nebraska had a jones for unbridled violence. That's right, Saskatoon is also known as being Canada's most violent metropolis, too. (Put another way: Saskatoon is Baltimore, without the crab cakes.) That makes perfect sense with Saskatoon's new found Lothario status. When you're a lover, you're breaking hearts every day. Heartache leads to irrational acts of violence. Really, if Saskatoon wants to lower its murder rate, it very well might need to ban Michael Buble's music.

As a side note, Windsor, Ontario, ranked as the least romantic Canadian city. I object to this. I've been to Windsor on many occasions, and I can report the auto factories and smoke stacks churning out cars across the river from Detroit do nothing but fill me full of romance. Or carcinogens. It could be carcinogens I'm feeling. It's hard to tell sometimes.