Sideswipe

Mark Lorrigan has been retouching photos for over 10 years and, inspired by the "un-retouched" picture of Helen Clark on the front of the Australian Women's Weekly, submitted his own cover of an "un-retouched" Don Brash.

Mark Botting of Mt Eden shares his tale of passport woe: "My wife and three kids needed new passports to go on holiday on July 7. We put them in with plenty of time to spare only to have them all returned allowing only 10 days to go. All photos were rejected because the 'paper wasn't of the right quality' and two handwriting experts have determined that my wife's "written application doesn't match the signature". What? She also filled out the kids' applications - but they weren't worried about those. So with a 5-month-old in tow she pulled the kids out of school, drove to Mangere to our witness, drove back to the city passport office with minutes to spare, only to have the photos rejected yet again - because the heads were on a slight tilt. What? So, we missed the deadline for the normal service and had to get a third set of photos done, return the next day and pay the urgent fee, only to have those photos rejected because of a minor shadow behind their heads. What? So a fourth set of photos and the handwriting were finally accepted. But then we got a call this week saying we were not the legal guardians of one of our children. What? And what's even more stupid is they ended up using one of the rejected photos in the passport we just received yesterday."

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British police have charged an Oxford University student with public disorder for making "homophobic comments" about a police horse. Sam Brown came out of a pub early one morning and encountered two mounted officers. He asked one of the officers, "How do you feel about your horse being gay?" The officers then arrested him. He spent the night in jail and faces a fine. "It was way over the top. As far as I'm aware, horses aren't that sensitive," said Brown.
(Source: Reason.com)

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Strange band names:
* The Kids Who Never Learned to Colour Inside the Lines
* Scoring Dope for the Ultimate Woman
* The Plot To Blow Up the Eiffel Tower
* Mr Quintron and the Flossy Unicorn Puppet Show
* Root Boy Slim and the Sex-Change Band with the Rootettes
* Bernie the Trailer Park Queen and the Deadbeat Dads
* Gregg Turner and the Blood Drained Cows
* My Wife Was Breathing Just Fine When You Borrowed Her
* Congratulations on Your Decision to Become a Pilot
* When People Were Shorter and Lived by the Water
* And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (originally known as: The Clouds that Fondle Jagged Crags and Raging Storms Conspire and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead)
(Source: www.vitaminq.blogspot.com)