Sideswipe

David Anderson wants to know who tagged his ambulance in Blockhouse Bay.

When visitors to Walmart.com requested Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series on DVD, four other movies with African- American themes were recommended under the heading "Similar Items". They included Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream/Assassination of MLK and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Last year Wal-Mart had to apologise for a newspaper ad that equated a proposed state zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning. Then came the Robert Greenwald documentary The High Cost of Low Price, which criticised Wal-Mart's treatment of employees.

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Vitamin Enriched Undies: Australian underwear company Aussiebum has introduced their newest line of underwear, called Essence. It is made from microfibre, which is treated with acerola (a fruit high in vitamin c and antioxidants) and other "organic substances". These ingredients remain active for 15 washes and can be "reactivated".

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Concerned of Browns Bay writes: "Having recently returned to Auckland from a pleasant journey to Papamoa to visit close friends, I was gobsmacked to read in your column on Monday that a reader was outraged at a company committing the heinous crime of gifting employees with road maps and three small bottles of bubbles. I have to confess that I have been guilty of conveying a six-pack of Speights and a couple of bottles of cheap chardonnay in the boot of my car as a New Year's offering to my friends. On my return should I now hand myself in to the Takapuna police and plead guilty of the crime of reading a road map to check my planned route before carrying a load of demon drink in the boot of my car on the way to my destination?"

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Sidney Hale, 31, was arrested in Virginia after enlisting a woman friend to help him to "sharpen his reflexes" in case an intruder broke into his trailer home. The woman was to knock at the front door and Hale was to see how quickly he could grab his handgun. (A third person acted as timer.) A police report said the woman knocked and Hale grabbed the gun which, of course, accidentally fired a slug through the door into the woman's back. (Source: News of the Weird)