Sideswipe: August 10: Lights out but lampposts on

Police in Lelystad (the Netherlands) arrested a man who was driving with two stolen lampposts strapped to the top of his car and posted the picture to their Facebook page. Photo / Supplied

Police in Lelystad (the Netherlands) arrested a man who was driving with two stolen lampposts strapped to the top of his car and posted the picture to their Facebook page. According to the police report, it seems that the guy was drunk, uninsured, had an expired driver's licence, and was driving around with two stolen lampposts on top of his car and could offer no reasonable explanation as to what he was going to do with them.

Cat's rescue mission

"Our cats are much loved, as are the baby birds they watched me hand-rearing," writes a reader. "They only ever heard kindness in my voice, but when they looked longingly at birds, they heard a stern NO! Eventually they learned and any occasional catches were brought very carefully, alive and as a gift, to me and then secretly let go. One day Candy the cat was out in the back garden with our family when she suddenly crawled under the side fence into one neighbour's garden. She reappeared a few minutes later with a bald baby bird in her mouth, dropped it at our feet and disappeared under the fence again. She repeated this three times, delivering three live baby birds. When we checked, we saw that Candy had gone under a side fence, a back fence, into a trailer where another neighbour had dumped a nest removed from his roof, picked up a bird and repeated the journey there and back three times. Those babies grew into raucous starlings who finally flew away as adults."

Smoke shaped cloud

"Rangitoto Island  erupting at 9.49 am. Monday July 30th. Or was it just a well placed passing cloud?"asks Colin from the North Shore.

Missguided sign

A teen fashion brand thought it was a good idea to put a neon sign in store which read "Send me nudes x". The London store, Missguided, which sells cheap clothes to the teen market, has since taken down the sign after a petition for its removal was signed by more than 8000 people in under 24 hours. "Teenage girls feel under increasing pressure to create and send nude pictures of themselves," it read. "Once online, these nude images can be seen and used by anyone, making girls and vulnerable young women the victims of bullying, revenge porn and exploitation." (Source: The mirror.co.uk)

Scam callers get the runaround

"I'm enjoying the ways people are dealing with the scam callers pretending to be from Microsoft," writes Fiona.

"We get them too - from Windows, Spark and Slingshot too. So far I have turned the conversation around to ordering takeaways for dinner and asking how long till delivery, answering and speaking in French, saying I'm not the computer expert so am passing the phone receiver over (to our dog ) and walking away and answering then putting the receiver in a drawer. In all cases they have soon got the message fairly quickly and have hung up!"

No-one was injured...

Limousine gets stuck trying to cross a railway track.

Quiz

Your dominant personality trait will be assessed by these 30 vacuous questions (or not)...You could answer them all honestly or lie to yourself to give you a better result...

Video Pick

Just what the election needs, comedian and Snapchat dude Tom Sainsbury impersonating politicians...Here he is as Paula Bennett, quickly touching base...

Quickly touching base with Paula...

Posted by Tom Sainsbury - Comedian and Snapchat Dude on Monday, 7 August 2017

Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz