Sideswipe

Spotted in Valley Rd, Mt Eden, and photographed from a distance by Kim Mazur.

The satire of American Stephanie McMillan, one of the few girl cartoonists on the planet, has a bit more oomph when she suggests South Dakota Senator Bill Napoli, who was instrumental in getting abortion banned in the state, might want to help women out with other decisions. The strip goes on to give out his home phone number. (Source: minimumsecurity.net)

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New Zealand has nothing to fear from the CIA if the US spy agency's internet listing on New Zealand ministers of the Crown is anything to go by. Supposedly updated on February 22, it still gives George Hawkins, Margaret Wilson, Paul Swain, Marian Hobbs and Taito Phillip Field as members of the Clark Administration. The American spooks are sufficiently interested in our international relations to have noted that Winston Peters is now Foreign Minister, but the other minor-party leader propping up the Labour-led Government, Peter Dunne, doesn't rate a mention in the list. His portfolio, Revenue, is listed as being held by Michael Cullen. And many of the other portfolio allocations are wrong as well.

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Kate Jonas from Te Awamutu writes: "I live on a dairy farm in Te Awamutu, which my husband manages. In a few weeks we will be moving to Raglan to work on the family farm. I have a few chickens and two pet pukekos (who think they are chickens and were hand-raised). I decided to move the chickens and pukekos to Raglan a few weeks ahead of time. The pukekos hung around their new home for about three days. Then they disappeared. I figured they were somewhere on the farm and they'd be fine. I went back to Te Awamutu a week later after going to the Stevie Nicks concert in New Plymouth and I heard my husband yelling, "Quickly! You won't believe it!" It appears we have a homing pukeko who had travelled 70km from Raglan to Te Awamutu. An incredible journey indeed."

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He says: "Regarding your item from a single female in need of more males in the 20-49 age group. Being such a New Zealand male in the prime of contention I would point out to your female reader that if Kiwi women changed their stuck-up and holier-than-thou attitude for the better, males such as myself would then consider going out with them." (Yes, single ladies, he has a point).

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She says: "The reason your mathematician finds more men than women registered on local internet dating sites, when there is supposed to be a shortage of single men, is that many of the men on these sites are not actually single. A fact any woman using them soon discovers..." (Sideswipe received a number of emails saying the same thing.)