In case you didn’t notice this handful of news items the past few days, here they are. I think they’re certainly worthy of mentioning on my blog:

1. Climate Change Hits Mars – Apparently Mars is also experiencing that pesky global warming. Those wasteful Martians have obviously been using too much toilet paper up there.

2. India Groom Too Drunk to Wed, Brother Steps In – The headline says it all. Apparently the groom was too drunk to get married, so his brother did the honorable thing and stepped in and married the bride. I have a sneaking suspicion the groom and his brother planned the whole thing in advance.

3.  Dead Man Travels Unnoticed for Half a Day – Apparently a man went to the restroom on a train in Indonesia, and died while he was in there. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his family didn’t notice he was gone for half a day. That seems like a long time to be in the restroom, but I guess you never know. Anyway, his daughter plans to file a complaint against the train company. That’s good – we can’t have people going around dying on trains and not being noticed.

Anyway, this kind of thing would never happen on Amtrak, and if they’re smart, they’ll use this as a marketing strategy – “On Amtrak, we’ll notice right away if you die in one of our restrooms.” Or maybe, “Amtrak Cares If You Die”, or possibly “On Amtrak, we clean our restrooms every hour, so there’s no chance of a dead person remaining unnoticed for very long” or, “If you’re feeling really, really sick, our train is the right place for you.” Oh wait, here’s another one… “It wouldn’t exactly kill you to ride our trains. But if it does, don’t worry – we’ll find you.”

Well, I admit the slogans need a little work, but I think we may be onto something here.