Sideswipe

Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong found his endurance stretched "almost to the breaking point" last Friday by a three-hour, 30-song concert presented by his fiancee, pop-folk singer Sheryl Crow. "It was a pretty tough slog," Armstrong told reporters after the event, which he was obligated to attend as part of his new role as Crow's future husband. "I was really straining around The first cut is the deepest, I don't mind telling you. I just couldn't catch my breath. When we reached All I wanna do (is have some fun), I felt like I'd been through that territory about a million times, and I seriously considered just giving up and collapsing for the first time in my career." (Source: satire site www.theonion.com)

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From a website called Don't Date Him Girl, which is like a sex-offenders' register for cheating boyfriends, set up and used by unhinged women, get a load of this diatribe: "Each day, thousands of women around the world are cheated on by their boyfriends, fiances and husbands. A man's infidelity causes the destruction of thousands of marriages, engagements and relationships every year. What's a woman to do? Hire expensive private detectives? Pay for costly background checks? Now, women have a new, cost-effective weapon in the war on cheating men! Founded by women with women in mind, www.dontdatehimgirl.com is a free service that allows sisters to share their experiences of cheating men by posting pictures and other information about them in an easy-to-use, searchable database."

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A reader writes: "After the weekend bombings in Bali, the staff at our travel agency were sent an email stating 'please do not talk to the media or have any opinions' without first talking to your manager. No more free thought then!"

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An Auckland reader studying in San Francisco for a year is impressed with the wit of stores Avant Card (greeting cards) and 10,000 Minds On Fire (books). Any local contenders?

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Marital bliss oversimplified: The Islamic government of the northeastern Malaysian state of Kelantan will hold a lullaby contest for wives singing their husbands to sleep ... Nik Aziz said the lullaby contest will strengthen family ties. "This is important. For example, a husband returns home tired and when the wife sings to him, he can sleep soundly," he said. "When he awakes he is a happy man, and this will help build a great relationship between husband and wife."

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Land Transport NZ responds to criticism of its new ad: "Comparing the impact of crashing at speed to falling from a building is making people sit up and take notice. Keith Ebden questioned our calculations and has calculated the velocity of the car, whereas the ad focuses on the body inside the car, taking into account that in a crash the safety features of a vehicle lessen the impact on the body. The voiceover in the ad talks about the impact on a body in a crash being equivalent to falling from the different heights. For obvious reasons we could not show bodies falling from buildings."