Sideswipe

A clever marketing initiative from the herbivores at an intersection in Hillsborough.

Opinion

A group of unknown and undistinguished New Zealanders (known as the masses massive) have sent a letter to Sideswipe about the state of TVNZ. "We are all under 30 and have never heard of Close to Home or McPhail and Gadsby (was he the guy what got done for drunk driving?) and we don't want our tax money spent on a middle-class oldies channel (they've already got Prime, UKTV and Antiques Roadshow). Surely they can find something they want to watch if they look outside the box - literally. Some suggestions: DVDs are not sexually transmitted diseases; they are ad-free entertainment. And there's always listening to the gramophone or going for a ride on your Penny Farthing."

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Forgetting where you parked your car is one thing and leaving your dog tied up at the supermarket is another, but this one takes the cake. Alicia Marsh of Auckland writes: "My friend had popped over for afternoon tea with her 2-year-old son so our boys could play together while our older daughters were at hip-hop class. When the time came to pick up the girls, I suggested that she leave her son at my place while she collected the girls. She agreed and off she went. When she returned, some time later, she was sheepish. She had picked up the girls, got in the car, and then couldn't find her son (who she'd left at my place). Frantic, she had been running around the shopping centre, enlisting the help of all the people she could, to find her missing son. She even called the police before she realised."

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eigoTown (an ESL website in Japan) has released the results of a survey that asked Japanese which English accent they found the sexiest. Blogger Charlie Tan says the New Zealand accent didn't fare well at all. Over 2000 of the website's users participated and 50 per cent chose British accents as the sexiest, with American accents second with 17 per cent. Ireland scored 13 per cent of the vote and Canada 12 per cent. The Australian twang and the New Zealand thud came in last with 6 and 5 per cent respectively. "Respondents noted that they enjoyed the 'boastful' sounds of the British, the American accent in movies sounded 'voluptuous', the Irish accent was 'mysterious', Canadian pronunciation was 'easy to understand', and 'the raised endings' of Australian sentences were 'cute'," says Tan.