Sideswipe: January 15: Hairy Martha

Sideswipe - ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz·NZ Herald·

14 Jan, 2015 04:00 PM3 mins to read

Poor Martha needs a wax.

Don't get mad, send glitter

An Australian company called Ship Your Enemies Glitter is offering ... well it's self-explanatory really. The blurb reads: "So pay us money, provide an address anywhere in the world and we'll send them so much glitter in an envelope that they'll be finding that s*** everywhere for weeks." The cost is A$9.99 ($10.50) and they refer to glitter as "the herpes of the craft world" because once the recipient opens the envelope it will take forever to get rid of the glitter spread. (Source: Dangerous Minds)

The many faces of pareidolia

A reader writes: "The brain is naturally programmed to recognise faces, and anything having a similar pattern, no matter how minimal, can be seen as a face ... pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague visual stimulus (or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing faces in clouds or the man in the moon."

Creepy face

A creepy ape-like face lurks near Whangarei, according to this Google screen grab.

First prize in bad beginnings

In the latest Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for (deliberately) bad writing, Betsy Dorfman wrote this winning paragraph: "When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered - this had to mean land! - but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose." And Michael Shaw of Rockville got a nod for this entry: "The tears of her loneliness rolled from her cheeks and fell upon the steaming pavement outside a second-rate shopping center in Torrance, California, those tears quickly evaporating in the heat and turning into molecularised water vapour that was gradually pulled into the upper atmosphere and slowly dispersed across the planet until, many years later, a few of the molecules descended upon Riomaggiore, Italy, where they were inhaled by her soulmate, Giorgio Abatangelo, whom she would never, ever, meet." The contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels and takes its name from the Victorian novelist George Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who began his Paul Clifford (1830) with "It was a dark and stormy night."

Spotted in Silverdale