Sideswipe: August 16: Message received

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Humour is such an individual thing.

Bread line

A French baker has installed 24-hour baguette vending machines outside his bakeries. The loaves are pre-cooked, placed in the machines and warmed up when purchased. "This is the bakery of tomorrow," Jean-Louis Hecht told the Telegraph in England. "If other bakers don't want to enter the niche, they're going to get decimated." The machine in Hombourg-Haut opened in January and last month it sold 4500 baguettes. (Source: Mashable.com)

Host wins carpark nonsense

Cameron tried to have a function at a restaurant and didn't want his guests to have to pay for the pay-and-display carpark. "So I contacted the council to offer to pay a flat rate for the whole carpark for that day. Not to restrict access to it, but just so they wouldn't issue tickets there (ie, any other members of the public could get free parking too). I was told I needed to provide a Traffic Management Plan and traffic marshals! I went to the bank, and supplied every guest with coins for the meter."

Cream carries warning

More than 14,000 sun worshippers tried to order a new "miracle" tanning cream - without realising it was a spoof from a UK skin cancer charity. The tan-seekers were apparently convinced by the Sunny-3 website, which claimed the cream could "triple the power of the sun". It was also said that using Sunny 3 meant people could sunbathe at night. And in the week the site has been live, 250,000 people have seen it and 14,000 have tried to order the $15.50 cream. However, they instead receive an email warning them about skin cancer. (Source: Newslite.tv)

Shopper checked out

Jonathan Zavou doesn't want to be one of those people in the supermarket express queue who counts the items in someone else's basket but ... "I want to be relaxed about the fact that they might have 13 or even 14 items. But when that queue is taking a little longer to process, I find myself craning my neck to check how much they are buying. The funny thing is that when I casually glance back behind me everybody else is doing the same thing. It's the herd mentality in action."