Sideswipe: Assault on the senses

Photo / Supplied

Not happy with merely having the eyeballs of consumers, a billboard (pictured) advertising steak in North Carolina shows a huge piece of juicy cow impaled on a giant fork and pumps out the smell of a cooked steak into rush-hour traffic. (Source: Gizmodo.com)

At a loss over Telecom outages

A reader writes: "I'm a Telecom business customer. But for the last two weeks, I've had neither phone nor internet service because of a cable fault. I've contacted their fault service regularly for updates. After four different time indications, I've now been told it will be fixed 'as soon as possible'. Ironically, Telecom presented a crisis management case study at last week's Public Relations Institute conference where they shared 'insights, stories and lessons' relating to the multiple XT outages. What I'm wondering is ... what lessons exactly they might have learned. Nevertheless, I empathise with them over their loss of income. I know how it feels now."

Emma no longer tops

Emma is no longer the most popular baby name for girls in the United States. The new top name is Isabella, possibly influenced by the teen movie phenomenon Twilight, whose main character is named Isabella, known by her nickname of Bella. There are 22,067 new Isabellas who were born in 2009. Twilight also seems to have influenced boys' names since Cullen was the biggest riser among boys. Edward Cullen is the vampire boyfriend of Bella.

Wax capers

A reader had a laugh over the army guy scaring the lady at the museum in last week's column. "Many years ago I was at the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Queensland. I wanted to go through a doorway but was waiting for an elderly gentleman to take a photo of his wife. I was wondering what was taking him so long so I went up closer and discovered, to my embarrassment, that they were wax."

In Chile, it's about the smell

Tony Baker of Hamilton writes: "I was part of a group at a new house and we got around to discussing the question of removal of footwear when visiting. A gentleman from Chile was in our group and he told us that in his part of Chile no one ever takes off their shoes when entering a house. It is most impolite. "How's that?" we asked him. He answered: 'Their feet smell a lot nicer that way."'

Prayer flags, not clothes

Barry writes: "Pease tell Rob the Fool that it is not a clothesline hanging in Potters Park, but Tibetan prayer flags. Duh!"