Sideswipe: May 30: Peak real estate speak

Peak real estate marketing?

Purrfect job for a moggy mollycoddler

A job for a "Cat Cuddler" at a Dublin veterinary clinic has been listed in the job ads. Just Cats Veterinary Clinic & Cattery explains that responsibilities include helping calm felines that may be anxious about their time at the vet and that "gentle hands capable of petting and stroking cats for long periods of time", are required, along with a soft-spoken manner and "an ability to understand different types of purring". (For those confused about what this last one means - purring is typically associated with being content, but cats also sometimes purr when they are stressed or afraid.) (Via Huffington Post)

Lacerating your wedded bliss

A Spanish company has introduced a new wedding day experience involving walking barefoot on broken glass. Wedding Glass says the experience is a metaphor for marriage and is pitching it as a wedding ritual. They say couples these days want more than the classic church ceremony and subsequent party. The "Crystals of Love" ritual is explained with expected drivel: "As we walk down the path, we have to stare into the eyes of our partner and feel the strength and passion of the commitment we seal today, the day of our wedding. Every step we take has to be firm and secure. As we move along the path of the crystals of love we will realise that together we are able to overcome all the difficulties and adversities that life presents us." (Source: Oddity Central)

Clean, green eating ...

Weird Universe reports that Le Plat Sal (The Dirty Plate) restaurant in Paris features specialties actually containing dirt - or as Chef Solange Gregoire calls it, "the mud of the earth that caresses our toes ... the sand kissed by the sun ... rocks." What's left? People are already eating snout-to-tail, leaves-to-roots ..." Gregoire explained that her 4-star dishes include pastry crust a la Mont Lachat rock and a Boue Ragout stew simmered with silt from the River Seine.

Couldn't see the wood for the trees

Photo / Supplied

"Auckland Council has a big programme under way called Prevent Kauri Die- back," writes Kevin Murphy of Bayview. "However, several years ago, against the wishes and advice of the local community, they planted these eight kauri trees in a traffic island on Glenfield Rd. Sure enough they all died a slow and painful death. Now they have been quietly removed. What a waste of time, money and healthy kauri trees."

Every post a delineator

A reader writes: "Quite a few years ago most roads had white marker posts to help motorists stay on track. I believe they were called marker posts ... Now they have become 'highway delineators'."

A world without people

"For a number of reasons, natural and human, people have evacuated or otherwise abandoned many places around the world-large and small, old and new. Gathering images of deserted areas into a single photo essay, one can get a sense of what the world might look like if humans were to suddenly vanish from the planet. Collected here are recent scenes from abandoned construction projects, industrial disaster zones, blighted urban neighborhoods, towns where residents left to escape violence or natural disasters, derelict Olympic venues, ghost towns, and more..." More here.

Plates not on trend

The @wewantplates account on Twitter is where the "global crusade against serving food on bits of wood and roof slates, chips in mugs and drinks in jam jars" and it's fantastic... See what other silly things restaurants use to serve food on, here.

Time-lapse of terror attacks

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