Sideswipe: August 31: Self-deprecating business

Man about the house

"I was making garlic bread, and didn't check the timer. I thought I had put it in for 20 seconds ... I put it in for 20 minutes. Five minutes later, I go and check on it, smoke has entirely filled the microwave, dark black smoke, and it's billowing out the side. I grab an oven mitt and run outside and I leave the bread on the porch. It looked like a lotus pod, and it was all black and nasty too. Fast forward a couple of hours and 2.5 cans of fabreze, the house is smelling almost normal, when I see a balloon. I'm thinking, 'well I'm already mad I'll take it out on this balloon'. I super kick the balloon, and ... I miss. I super kick the ground toe first, and fracture my right big toe. I ended up getting several balloons from my girlfriend on my birthday with a note saying 'do not kick the balloons'. TLDR [too long, didn't read]: I burnt garlic bread, nearly burnt the house down, and broke my toe kicking a balloon." (Via ManEatingGnomes on reddit.com)

On yer bike Lycra lover

"To the charming British Lycra-clad road biker who shouted at me as I walked with my wife and 20-month-old son at about 9 on Sunday morning," writes a reader. "As hard as it is to believe, given the brightness of your tight, tight Lycra, I didn't see you as you rode down Twin-Oak drive towards me. My focus was on pushing my son on his little yellow three-wheeler and enjoying the daffodils. However, there's a fairly good reason I wasn't looking out for cars or bikes that cloudy morning. You may have noticed the signs that said 'PEDESTRIANS ONLY' ... However, it's possible you didn't understand given the Lycra was cutting off blood to the part of your brain that helps comprehend written language.

Still that means you missed the other sign which was essentially a pictograph - a picture of a bike and a detour sign with an arrow - pointing AWAY from the road you were riding down. Perhaps you thought that those rules only applied to those not in such resplendent Lycra as yourself? Next time mate, maybe ride where you're supposed to ride and you won't have to abuse families out for a Sunday walk, and other such non-Lycra mortals."

Good call on cellphones

A reader claimed that using a cellphone at petrol stations isn't illegal, but a call to BP's head office confirms that "it is illegal to use a mobile phone on the forecourt"; NZ legislation. It is, however, permitted in a vehicle. The theory being that when the user is standing, a dropped phone has a bigger distance to fall, break apart, causing a spark and a possible explosion.

Dad joke

Rice anyone?

Hat could conceal a weapon

Fay Lambert didn't like being asked to remove her hat when at Masterton Library on Monday...

Weekday dinners

Photographer Lois Bielefeld grew up in the kind of home that always ate dinner together and had to ask to be excuse themselves from the table...an inspiration maybe, for her series of 78 portraits documenting people's dinner rituals in all their idiosyncratic glory.

Video Pick

There are six new episodes of Black Mirror, a dark British science fiction series that explores unanticipated consequences of new technologies, are coming to Netflix....Here's a sneak peak...