Sideswipe

Trucks plastered with enormous photos of aborted fetuses - an initiative from the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform which claims to care about the unborn, but is not too perturbed about terrifying America's children.

A reader and his brother discover a strange, brown mahogany box at the door of their father's new house. "We took it inside to show dad who was in the middle of serving dinner. He said he had never seen it before and suggested we open it." Inside is a second box, not entirely unlike an industrial-looking icecream container. "As I lifted it out by the corners my brother read some writing on the side of it: 'We sprinkled her ashes on the roses ... ' In front of us, right next to the freshly roasted chicken and yams, were the remaining ashes of one of the home's prior occupants. Realising there had been some kind of mix-up, we took down all the details written on the side of the container before quickly reconstructing the box. Now if finding a mysterious brown box on your doorstep filled with human remains isn't strange enough, the date next to this person's name was 2002. So what the hell were the remaining ashes from three years ago doing on my father's front doorstep? Two Googles later, dad was ringing the deceased's daughter who still lived in the area. 'It can't be my mother,' she said. 'She died three years ago at which time we scattered half her ashes on her roses and the other half were placed in a beautiful mahogany box and buried next to my father.' After a long pause my father replied ' ... I don't think that was your mother you buried.'

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It turns out this woman's father has for the past three years been resting next to the ashes of a complete stranger. All the while, mother dearest has been gathering dust on the shelf at the crematorium. I suppose the next big question is: whose remains were buried three years ago, and does the family of this person have the ashes of someone completely different again sitting on their mantle?"

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An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building. Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woollen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together. When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in Victoria on Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet. Firefighters cut power to the building, thinking the burns might have been caused by an electricity surge. Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, returned to seek help from the firefighters. "We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," said fire official Henry Barton. "I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this."

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Jolene James of Tauranga wonders if anybody else noticed the irony of Susan Wood's response to the "perennial fave DVD" question in Saturday's Time Out. Kill Bill! Watch your back, Mr Ralston. Maybe the rumours about a change of host for Close Up are true.