Sideswipe

A birth notice from Mt Gambier, South Australia.

The Wall Street Journal reported in July on people who pay "lifestyle designers" up to US$450 ($650) an hour to construct fanciful, all-new personas, including proper wardrobes and home decor down to which gifts to give and which holidays to take. For example, an ad agency owner who wanted to project a "carefree" image had to be told to buy herself a turquoise 1955 Thunderbird and wear cowboy boots and a bright-red scarf around town. (Source: News of the Weird)

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Gwyneth Paltrow saddled her offspring with a lifetime of fruit puns and now actor Nicolas Cage has finally made a clean break with reality, burdening his newborn son with the name Kal-el. As in Superman's Kryptonian birth name.

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Homeowners in Leamington, Ontario, may not hold more than three garage sales a year. City officials say the new law will cut down on noise and traffic, but they also admit that local businesses complain garage sales hurt their revenues. Those who break the law will have their sales shut down by police, and face fines of up to C$5000 ($6200).

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Odd coupling: The Rolling Stones have done a deal with American soap Days of Our Lives. Their new single Streets of Love, from the album A Bigger Bang, is to become a recurring love theme on the show.

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Miles writes: "The Land Transport NZ response to Keith Ebden is enumerate [sic] unscientific hyperbole. In my building, one storey goes up 4m (13ft); two storeys 8m and so on. In the Land Transport NZ's magic castle, at 90km/h, one storey takes up 31.9m (105ft); at 110km/h one storey shrinks to 9.5m (or 31ft) and at 125km/h it becomes only 6.8m (that's just 22ft)! Obviously, the LTSA has data on relativity that destroy's Einstein's theory ... Betcha all this nonsense was dreamed up by the ad agency's art director - the guy who knows that 1+1 = 3 for VERY large values of 1 ... God help all motorists."