Sideswipe: March 2: The perfect sub-woofers

What every car needs - a pair of subwoofers. (Spotted in Pāuanui by Mark)

Cooked to imperfection

"When I was about 19 I hired a portable solar tanning unit to help heal my skin and also make me brown," Sonya Young of Red Beach writes. "I was given no instructions and stupidly found the light so mesmerising that I stared at the unit and surrounding items for quite some time, enjoying the strange effects. I lost my sight for two days and couldn't drive, go to work, read or anything. Gave me a hell of a fright and a life lesson about UV rays."

Life imitating work of fiction

When readers first came across a biological weapon named "Wuhan-400" in Dean Koontz's novel The Eyes of Darkness, we doubt anyone thought the thriller author was "predicting" a real-world outbreak. But after news broke of the Covid-19 coronavirus, eagle-eyed Koontz fans shared this passage from the book. It's true that Koontz named a fictional biological weapon "Wuhan-400" in this novel and that Wuhan, China, is at the centre of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak. But that's pretty much where the similarities end. In Koontz's novel, "Wuhan-400" is a man-made weapon, the coronavirus is not. In the novel, "Wuhan-400" has a 100 per cent fatality rate. While researchers are still learning about the coronavirus, the current fatality rate sits at about 2 per cent. Fictional "Wuhan-400" incubates in about four hours, compared to Covid-19 which is between two and 14 days. (Via Snopes.com)

Spammed by Meat Loaf blooper

What's the biggest mistake you've ever made at work? "Twenty-one years ago I reviewed a Meat Loaf gig for a newspaper without attending the gig (I was ill/an idiot). An hour after publication the paper called to inform me that the gig had, in fact, been cancelled. I was sacked. The Sun wrote a piece about it. The headline: MEAT OAF."

Dean Koontz's predictive text.

iPhone's calling out for owner

On his keep fit, "oldie" bike ride John Watkins of Remuera stopped for a drink under the trees inside the east gate of Cornwall Park by the roundabout. Lo and behold an iPhone was sitting there. "The iPhone was lying on the grass next to a tree. It has a purple and orange swirl pattern on the back. I will be taking it to the Newmarket Police station this afternoon."