Sideswipe: March 8: Sushi bedroom

Photo / @dimda_

Life is a bed of sushi.

Giant red flag billowing in the breeze

Shared on Mumsnet: “I’ve been talking to a man I met online for the past week and a half. We have a date set up for next week. He’s very chatty, bordering on too keen really but I was open to seeing how the date went. But now I have been completely put off. He has taken a picture of me from my social media and sent it to his friend, saying this is the pretty woman I’m taking out next week. The friend replies ‘she ain’t pretty’ and asks him to send a picture of me without a filter on. He then asks him to show him a picture of my teeth! I know all of this because the guy I’m scheduled to go on a date with thought it would be a great idea to screenshot their exchange and send it to me alongside a request for a picture of my teeth. Who does that?”

Tweaked traditions

King Charles III. Photo / AP

King Charles III’s coronation will be a blast as tradition and ceremony create a spectacle of privilege. One tradition is that the monarch is anointed with holy oils during their coronation ceremony. The oil, known as chrism oil, was consecrated at a ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, on Friday. For King Charles III’s ceremony, the chrism was made from olives harvested from the Mount of Olives at the Monastery of Mary Magdalene and the Monastery of the Ascension. Presumably so that he isn’t just being drizzled in olive oil like a bruschetta, the oil is scented with rose, jasmine, cinnamon, neroli, orange blossom, and sesame. Previous coronations have used oil secreted from the glands of civets and other small mammals, as well as oil from waxy lumps found in whale intestines known as ambergris, taken from a sperm whale, but we live in more animal-friendly times these days.

Strange firings

My dad was pretty high up in HR for a Fortune 500 company and he had some memorable firing stories. They had to fire one of their VPs because he was stealing bacon from the cafeteria every morning. He’d get his tray and put his newspaper over the bacon and then go through the cashier line. He lost a $200k-a-year job over 60 cents worth of bacon every day.