Sideswipe: October 14: Genuinely unreal

Ian saw this rather contradictory sign in Bali.

'Lifeproof' case lives up to its name

Janine recounts a combination of modern technology and luck. "My son was halfway over the harbour bridge towards the city during afternoon rush-hour when he realised that he didn't have his new iPhone. He had to continue to the other side, then backtrack to the last place he had been in a street on the Devonport peninsula. After looking everywhere and checking the roadside, he could only conclude that he had possibly put his phone on the roof of his car and driven off, though he couldn't remember doing so. He came to my place and used my computer to 'find my phone'. A little dot showed its location, in the middle of busy Esmonde Rd at the beginning of the on-ramps. By this time more than an hour had passed and we drove to the location expecting to discover the phone either gone by the time we got there, or worse, squashed. After looking around he spotted the phone lying on the white-painted stripes which divide the northern and city-bound on-ramps. Because it was in a Lifeproof case, it had clung to the roof of his car for a few kilometres and while the corner of the case had taken quite a beating from hitting and bouncing on the road, the phone itself was in perfect condition."

More amended graffiti ... or not

1. Graeme says that during the Springbok tour, local farmers and stock agents wrote "support the tour" on their shed at The Warkworth stockyards on State Highway 1. Some local teachers cleverly changed it with a few strokes to read "subvert the tour".

2. Robert says there's no reverse graffiti needed. There's a moving billboard at the airport that contains its own graffiti. An Audi SUV (VW under the skin) spins its wheels as the background slides past. The ironic caption? "There are no shortcuts on the road to greatness!"

More water perhaps?

Noel saw this sign at a beach near Warkworth and wonders what sort of provisions a person would take for a week at sea in a life jacket? More water, maybe?

Relax - it's a different band of 'villains'

Alerted by a passer-by that bearded men with a black flag were acting suspiciously at a castle ruins in southern Sweden, police found, to their relief, that it wasn't a group of Islamic State sympathisers but a meeting of hirsute do-gooders. John Ekeblad, co-founder of the Swedish chapter of the Bearded Villains, says the incident on Saturday ended with police acknowledging their mistake and even ignoring the brotherhood's illegal parking by Brahehus Castle, outside the city of Jonkoping. Ekeblad said the incident was "hilarious," and that police drove off laughing. He explained the group promotes equality and does charity work in Sweden. Bearded Villains, founded in 2014 in Los Angeles, calls itself "a brotherhood of elite bearded men from all over the world" on its website.