Sideswipe: September 7: Trolling Putin?

After Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew from political life, he did a Pizza Hut ad. In the print part of the campaign Gorbachev is seated in the rear of a sedan, driving parallel to the remnants of the Berlin Wall that he helped to dismantle and pictured with the classic brown bag. The 2007 ad seems rather dull until closer inspection. On top of the bag is a magazine with the headline: Litvinenko's Murder — They Wanted to Surrender Suspect for $7000. Now, Alexander Litvinenko was the former KGB spy and defector who was poisoned by polonium and died the year before, publicly accusing Vladimir Putin as being behind it. Now with Gorbachev's passing, questions linger whether or not he himself was privy to this subversive subtext of the ad.

Mind your weather cliches

The human doing socials over at @WeatherWatchNZ has issued a challenge to NZ's news media. Not to use the following in weather news headlines: "Batter the country" ... "Causing chaos" ... "Wild weather" ... "Extreme fog" ... "Weather bomb" ... "Batten down the hatches" ... "Blasting". Twitter users added to the list: "'Big wet' never sat well with me, said one. "Wreaking havoc" received a mention, as well as "fierce gusts" (lions are fierce, not gusts) and apparently TVNZ weather presenter Dan Corbett uses "juicy" way too often.

Identikit artist

Donald's daughter drew this identikit picture for Father's Day. He was chuffed.

Minor confessions

1. "I read on a knitting site in a thread about superstitions that if you weave a hair from your head into your knitting, the wearer of the item will love you forever. I'm not superstitious but I always knit a hair into anything I knit for my children and grandchildren."

2. "We're almost hitting September and so far my biggest achievement of this year is that the local op shop has chosen to use my clothes for their mannequin display."

3. "When I change the sheets I sing 'It's a nice day for some clean bedding' in the style of Billy Idol."