Sideswipe: August 2: No unicorns were harmed

An entry in the Potato Top Pie category was named The Unicorn. Photo / Supplied

This entry in the NZ Bakels Supreme Pie Awards may not have won or even come close, but it certainly gets kudos for originality. An entry in the Potato Top Pie category was named The Unicorn.

Smile, you're married

"I got married 7 months ago," a reader tells Quora.com. "It was a traditional arranged marriage. After the wedding, it was the time for 'bidai' (the post-wedding ceremony when the bride leaves her parents house to stay with her husband). I was sitting in the car beside my husband, crying. My mother and aunts were also crying. It was such an emotional moment for all of us! When the photographer told us to smile for one last group picture, we could not even smile. Now at this moment, out of nowhere my brother shouted, "We traded you for a goat! See ya!" I started laughing like anything and my newly-wed husband almost choked laughing! And we got our best pic of that day." More embarrassing moments here...

Did you know...

1. The phrase "always a bridesmaid but never a bride"originated from an advertising campaign for Listerine mouthwash from the 1920s.

2. The idea of an umbrella began in France but when Englishman Jonas Hanway was the first to parade an umbrella in 18th-century England, he was ridiculed. Umbrella usage was symptomatic of a weakness of character, particularly among men. Few ever dared to be seen with such a detestable, effeminate contraption.

Not particularly heavy

Photo / Supplied

A data scientist at DegenerateState.org wrote a program to sift through more than 22,000 albums to find the words most frequently used in heavy metal songs compared with their use in standard English. "Burn" is the most metal word, followed by "cries", "veins", "eternity", "breathe", and "beast". The least metal words were "particularly", "indicated", "secretary", "committee", "university", "relatively", and "approximately".

School daze

"Lots of pranks at Tawa College in the 70s," brags a reader. "The teacher who left their Mini at school for the weekend, must have been surprised to find it on the roof on Monday. And the glow in the dark footprints leading to and up the flagpole looked better in the dark. More dangerous was the actual bomb, made and let off ... the teachers could never work out why the whole class cheered after that particular bang. No one was caught, no one came to any harm and most of us grew up to become good contributing members of society - even a school principal or two."

Iconic art re-worked.

Picture this: An image challenge on b3ta.com asked their users to make famous art better and a user, Happy Toast came up with The Gnarly Wave off Kanagawa, based on the iconic wood block print by Japanese artist Hokusai.

Picture this: Buildings that look like what they sell...

Quick clip: Flower girl steals the show...

Video: A new compilation of utterly cringe-worthy news bloopers...

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