You're stuffed if you send toys
Ron writes: "My son in Canada was tracing a parcel with Canada Post that is two months in transit. The girl on the phone asked him what was in the parcel. He said it was a stuffed toy for his niece. "Ah!" she said. "That's the problem. New Zealand have a ban on stuffed animals." He replied, laughing: "Surely you are talking taxidermy." "No" she said, in all seriousness, "it clearly says New Zealand will not accept reptiles, lizards or stuffed animals." She could not be convinced otherwise so he opted to ring back later hoping to get someone else. What sort of a country do Canadians think we live in that a soft toy is on the banned import list? Our poor children."
Travel nightmares in NZ
A book based on the Darwin Awards (without the fatalities) called the Titanic Awards celebrates travel nightmares and includes jaded travel writers and their nominations for the world's worst beer, the dirtiest beach, the filthiest toilet, the world's worst cruise ship and the most nauseating food. And New Zealand gets a couple of nominations, for a) Worst Statue: Wellington's Cuba Mall bucket fountain. "It has buckets on hinges that are meant to gracefully tip into the next and cascade water down to the lower ones, but it doesn't work as it's meant to. The top bucket violently tips and splashes everyone with water," and b) Worst Pizza: Canned spaghetti on toast, New Zealand, 1982.
Pushing it with envelopes
A reader writes: "As if shrinking chocolate bars and pints of beer that aren't pints weren't enough ... New Zealand Post has reduced the size of its envelopes! The C4 bubble envelope is now 20mm narrower. Presumably this is to "encourage" us to use a larger envelope and thus pay more in postage!"
Arm's length from psychics
Apple has decided psychic healing has no place in its App Store, despite last week approving a "distance healing" application for warts available for only $12.99. The faithful who bought a copy of Wart Healer were asked to take a photograph of their wart which is sent to the "professional mental healer", who spends the next 111 days thinking about it, after which "first effects are visible".
Is it too much to hope for a slide?
Children in Millfield, England, who were expecting a new £70,000 ($147,000) playground complete with swings and slides will be disappointed after the local council gave them a pile of concrete blocks instead. The "minimalist" design at Diamond Hall Pocket Park includes a variety of rectangular grey concrete blocks, described by the Sunderland Council as "play features". (Source: Telegraph.co.uk)
* * *
Today's Webpick: An over-protective cat attacks the babysitter after toddler cries...Go here.
Follow Ana Samways on Twitter
* * *
See today's Herald cartoon.
