Sideswipe

Fun for the hole family at Coney Island, New York.

A complaint to Continental Airlines about dreaded seat 29E, including diagrams: "As you know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out with my left arm and touch the door. All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It's difficult to say what the worst part of sitting in 29E is. Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that's blown over me every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the woosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers that butt into my personal space? I constructed a stink-shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment ... but the up close and personal factor has increased as passengers feel free to lean up against what they think is some kind of blanket wall ... I am picturing a boardroom full of executives giving props to the promising young engineer who figured out how to squeeze an extra row of seats into the plane ... I feel like I'm bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid and there's no man in a little boat to save me. I am filled with a deep hatred for your plane designer and a general disease that may last for hours."

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Liz Smith from Heart of the City writes: "Sheesh! It's interesting how the Poms can dish it out but can't take it. At least Jafas have a sense of humour. In response to the letter from yesterday's "Offended Pom", we're just getting in behind our team and responding in kind to the visitors' hackneyed "All Blacks are a bunch of sheep shaggers" jokes which are adorning the T-shirts of the Barmy Army and make up a good part of their Barmy Army Songs of Praise. Oh, and by the way, is the giant flag over Queen St measuring 8m wide by 16m high welcoming the Lions' supporters big enough for you?"

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Plenty to crow about: A billboard outside a New South Wales branch of the Terrigal United Church ... "Let he who has not sinned cast the first phone".

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Firefighters in North Shields, England, have had to unglue a 13-year-old boy from a lamp post. Radio reports suggest the boy was trying to climb to the top by applying glue to his hands and pants, thus making him sticky, like some kind of superhuman perhaps?

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Oprah Winfrey tops Forbes' Celebrity 100. The ranking is based on overall income, web hits, press clips and TV/radio appearances. The top 10 are:

1. Oprah Winfrey
2. Tiger Woods
3. Mel Gibson
4. George Lucas
5. Shaquille O'Neal
6. Steven Spielberg
7. Johnny Depp
8. Madonna
9. Elton John
10. Tom Cruise

(Source: Forbes.com)