Sideswipe: October 14: Getting into the Halloween spirit

Retirement home's Halloween decorations.

News is not Nickelodeon

A reader writes: "Can the Prime Minister please stop talking about beheading. Last night during the news I had to explain to my freaked out 8-year-old what it was (I used a historical context, mumbled in the hope of boring her, threw in guillotine and moved swiftly on to explaining modern capital punishment) then reassured her for 20 minutes it won't happen to her. Later that evening, my 10-year-old son, who is heading to Australia next month, started talking about not wanting to go ... turns out he didn't want to catch Ebola."

Pricing tickets on net mirth

In 2012, the Spanish government raised taxes on theatre tickets from eight to 21 per cent, leading to a sharp decrease in the number of bums on seats at comedy clubs. To make up for lost revenue, a Barcelona comedy club has installed a new system that charges patrons by how often they laugh. Each seat has a camera hooked into a facial recognition system. As patrons laugh, the program calculates their bills. CNBC reports: "Each giggle costs approximately 30 euro cents (48c). However, if a patron hits the 24 mark, which is about 80 laughs, the rest of their laughs are free."

Jon saw this in a toy store

"Didn't learn that word at school," he says.

Kind-hearted policeman

A policeman in Michigan pulled a car over last Friday for a traffic violation, and when he walked up to the car, he noticed that a small child in the back seat was only wearing a seatbelt rather than sitting in a car seat as the law requires. The mother told the officer that she knew her daughter should be in a car seat, but that she simply couldn't afford it right now. So instead of writing a ticket, the policeman told her to pull into the nearby Walmart, and there he bought her a car seat for her daughter out of his own pocket.

Auckland Council stuffs up

Denise writes: "I travelled in to the city yesterday specifically to go to the Wendy Ganley exhibition [at Nathan Gallery, Britomart]. Being a power wheelchair user, I made sure that the venue was wheelchair accessible, which it was according to the Auckland Council website for the Heritage Festival. As you can see from the photo (right), it clearly wasn't!"

Real estate bubble at a glance: What House Could You Buy In The Past? lets you look at what home your inflation adjusted income could get you into in throughout the years compared to now and offers... (Only UK locations here, but if any clever clogs could work out how to do one for our housing market it would be fascinating)

Video: First he was hawking smallgoods around the world, now the deadpan funnyman Leigh Hart is shilling for National Mini Storage with the unlikely premise that your love life can be vastly improved by eliminated dangerous clutter around your home...

Video: Cars board Greek Ferry in rough waters...

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Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz