KEY POINTS:
Rejection (left) and Bye Bye Birdie (right) are Bent Objects made by an artist who has found a novel way of expressing his ideas and humour. Go to bentobjects.blogspot.com for more.
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Donald writes: "My 80-year-old mother-in-law has an 85-year-old friend in the Gold Coast, Queensland. They telephone
each other periodically, checking out each other. Last month my mother-in-law phoned her friend for his birthday. The number was constantly engaged so she rang the local Gold Coast police, voicing concern. Within half an hour the birthday boy phoned back. He had been astounded upon answering a knock to find two burly policemen at the door. One put his arm around mother-in-law's friend and said, 'Happy Birthday from New Zealand.' The police left, after replacing the phone handpiece on the cradle.
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Here's an interesting little episode that plays out each week on the Whangaparaoa peninsula, says an observant reader. "Some people take on the job of delivering advertising brochures, mainly from the big retailers. These brochures get sent to the 'default deliverer' in tidy tied-up bundles, placed along the footpath with other household papers awaiting collection by the recycle truck. Seems everybody except the retailer wins; the lazy deliverer gets paid, the recycler gets nice clean bundles of brochures and householders are free of junk mail."
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A reader from Kingsland writes: "Queen Street retailers must be struggling to grasp whether it's good news or bad news that Alex Swney is standing for the mayoralty. The bad news is he'll now be focused on getting elected rather than speeding up the footpath debacle. On the other hand if he does get elected, Queen Street will have a mayor who's its number one advocate. But then again, flamboyant Swney as Auckland Mayor with Newmarket voice Cameron Brewer promoted to lead Heart of the City, and John Banks back on the radio, would test even the most tolerant of Aucklanders. It could be a hard lesson in the law of unintended consequences!"
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Peter Reutlinger writes: "Interesting mail from New Zealand Police arrived, two infringement notices, one for me and one for my wife. Both clocked on the same day, in the same street, with exactly the same speed (61km). Quite a coincidence. According to the probability theory this event is pretty unlikely. Hence, I would like to know if anyone else was clocked going at 61km in Astley Avenue, New Lynn, on July 28. Just to prove that unlikely events really do happen ... "
Today's Video Webpick: Any chance of an ABBA reunion is fraught with peril due to the fallout from divorce and petty jealousies, the latter unintentionally played out in front of the TV cameras in this clip. Watch it here. These are the very best online videos from Ana's online magazine Spare Room.