KEY POINTS:
If TV resembled reality, Grey's Anatomy would go more like this: "Things heat up at Seattle Grace. George works a double and Izzie has to moonlight as a waitress. Meredith and McDreamy plan for a romantic encounter, but Meredith spends 15 hours tending to patients and McDreamy spends the afternoon completing paperwork. They get Chinese takeout around midnight and fall asleep on the couch while eating it. Meredith wakes up with chow mein caked to her forehead." (Source: David Hart at mcsweeneys.net)
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From the MAXX (Auckland regional transport) website: "Notice to Half Moon Bay ferry passengers. Due to low tides, the following ferry services will be replaced by a bus ... " Of course, says a reader, the replacement bus services will follow the roads, "but somehow this notice gives me a mental image of buses scooting across an empty harbour at low tide."
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Mark Stewart wonders why all the packaged products we eat and drink come labelled with nutritional information regarding fat and sugar content - except drinks containing alcohol. "What pre-historic regulations are governing this industry making them exempt from advising us what we are consuming? I have a sneaky suspicion that the beer I consume is responsible for stretching my stomach but without the nutritional labelling I cannot be sure. And also I cannot compare products to find which beer is best for my bulge."
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Police questioned a great-grandmother about drugs after they found artificial sweeteners in her purse. Former magistrate Marilyn Gordon, 72, from South Shields, Tyneside, was quizzed after officers became suspicious. Her daughter, Fiona Smith, says her mother went to the police station after losing her purse while shopping. "My mother told me the police conducted a test on the tablets to see if they were drugs and apparently reckoned they proved positive for cocaine. It was only when she started to insist the white tablets were sweeteners that the police relented and decided to do another test." (Source: ananova.com)
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You may have heard that Britney Spears has shorn her head in a bid for even more publicity. What you may not be aware of is how the plebs try to profit from it. On eBay many lunatics or humourists are trying to sell locks of her hair, claiming authenticity - including the owner of Esther's Haircutting Studio in California, the salon where Spears shaved her head, who has put clumps of hair (as well as her unfinished can of Red Bull and a purple lighter) up for auction. Someone else is selling "the broom and pan that swept up Britney's hair" and someone else is offering "an original portrait in oil" of the bald poptart.
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More on the kiwifruit saga: Noel Osborne was amused to see Italian kiwifruit in our supermarkets recently, but when in Rome last September he and his wife Ana noted a vendor selling New Zealand kiwifruit.
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And Peter Chou says that in China the kiwifruit is most commonly known as the macaque peach (or mihou tao) because the furry skin resembles the primate of the same name and also because the fruit is a part of the primate's preferred diet. "Yang-tao is a very seldom used term in referring to a kiwifruit and is more commonly used in referring to the carambola (starfruit)," he says.
