Sideswipe

Auckland City Council has decreed that bland grey concrete is preferable to the red chip footpaths, which are now banned

How about this for a sick scam? For a donation of $5 a word, a website called Afterlife Telegrams will deliver telegrams to your dead relatives with the help of terminally ill volunteers who memorise messages before passing away themselves. The site claims the money is either "given to a relative, donated to a charity or used to pay for medical bills ... Since we cannot guarantee delivery nor prove that a message has been delivered successfully, our customers do not pay for 'deliveries'. They pay for 'delivery attempts'."

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An anonymous reader wonders if Bishop Brian Tamaki is aware that his autobiography, More Than Meets the Eye, has the same title as an already published book on ... flower arranging.

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All bottles of wine sold in Britain are likely to carry tobacco-style health warnings from next year under government plans to crack down on binge drinking. The labelling of beer, wine and spirits will highlight the dangers of drinking too much and will include details of where to get help for alcoholism. There could be a generic health message, such as "Please Drink Sensibly".

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Brett Holm of Minnesota has invented a shotgun shell with an added extra. Season Shot pellets dissolve on contact in the game meat and, more importantly, automatically flavour it for cooking. Holm says he will initially offer lemon pepper, Mexican and Creole flavours. (Source: News of the Weird)

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While everyone is fawning over Google's purchase of YouTube, the poor guys at pipe and tube equipment company Universal Tube, whose web address is utube.com, wish the party would end. Millions of people can't tell the difference between YouTube and Utube, causing a surge in traffic that the little guy has to pay for. "It's killing us," says the company's president. (Source: Adrants.com)

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A number of readers wrote in to say the plastic safety barriers around the raised tree surrounds in Nuffield St are not a concern. But the raised surrounds themselves are a nightmare and have already caused some nasty accidents. And considering there is a high proportion of high-heel-tottering, miniature-dog-holding shoppers in Nuffield St, I am predicting an ankle or three will be broken before the year is out.