Sideswipe

This week's release of the eagerly anticipated Telecom 2005 White Pages proved to be a blessing for one company and a total disaster for another. According to the phone "bible", PR consultancy Hill & Knowlton has opened 12 new branches across the wider Auckland area, and expanded their expertise into home appliances and electronics. Meanwhile, whiteware and electronics chain Hill & Stewart 100% have downsized to one outlet. A simple typo mixed up the businesses and by 3pm Hill & Knowlton had already fielded one call from a woman asking about a fridge.

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Peter Tier, of Mairangi Bay, was stopped behind a Volkswagen Passat on the motorway and wondered if the VW marketing department are totally lacking in knowledge about txt abbreviations, or maybe the engineers had something to say about the reliability of their car. The vehicle was labelled "VW Passat W8 4motion".

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Was checking out the secondhand bookshops in Devonport the other day. A sign in front of me said: "Australian History behind you on shelf under True Crime".

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Never mind the cockroach found in KFC New Lynn, but steer clear of Wendy's in San Jose: A woman eating chilli two days ago bit into a human finger, spat it out, told an employee, then threw up. The finger could not be identified - presumably a finger-count was taken in the kitchen - so it was wrapped in a damp cloth and dispatched to the San Jose medical examiner's office. Wendy's was shut and the chilli was impounded while a fresh batch was made with newly purchased ingredients. The restaurant then reopened. A blogger at the World of Wonder Report suggests all this fuss could have been avoided if an employee had yelled, "We have a winner!" when the customer made her discovery.

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More from the New Cynics Dictionary:

Aliens: The extra-terrestrials among us, usually identifiable by their inexplicable ability to jog at 6am and thrive on 14-hour workdays.

Body Piercing: Self-mutilation as a fashion statement among nonconforming young people who crave peer acceptance. A practice generally frowned upon by concerned parents who used to gain their own peer acceptance by taking hallucinogenic drugs and plotting to blow up the Pentagon.

Bonus: A little year-end pocket money that for investment bankers usually equals the lifetime earnings of their favorite high school teacher.

Cubicle: A sensory deprivation chamber designed to boost productivity in the workplace, at least according to people who work in corner offices with large windows.

(Source: Rick Bayan at The Cynics' Sanctuary, www.i-cynic.com)