Sideswipe: Inconsiderate parking

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A reader writes: "At Kelly Tarlton's on a busy January afternoon we found this rental car parked in the middle of the carpark. People were struggling to get out of their parks for fear of hitting it. After staff made several announcements on the PA system, called the rental company and had a tow truck called out, the driver showed up just as we got it on the truck. He had no idea he had done anything wrong. 'It was very busy and there were no parks left,' he said."

Weird news you may have missed

* In the US, a man named Donald Duck was stopped for alleged drink driving and another named Frankenstein, with a scar across his forehead, allegedly threatened to stab a cop.
* A British man spent 121 days in a small room with 30 venomous snakes, only to be rejected by Guinness World Records because they only accept record attempts for the category, "Most rattlesnakes, bathtub sitting".
* An American manufacturer has made two cube-shaped, Star Trek-themed urns: "To Boldly Go" and "The Voyage Continues".

Pipe down about smoking

Syd Dunford's objection to the billboard of a child smoking a pipe got right up Keegan Purdy's nose: "For Pete's sake, the child has a beard and tattoos. It's a fantasy designed to provoke the idea of tough, virile men a la Hemingway. That's all. And since when have pipes been glamorous? I'm tired of people flying off the handle given the smallest of opportunities. Dunford should find a more pressing issue. Those Space Man Candy Sticks, for example. Surely they should be a colour other than cigarette-white; won't someone please think of the children?"

Found: a wetsuit and a corgi

Sideswipe's holiday lost-and-found service:

* Wetsuit found on New Year's Eve in Te Arawa St, Mission Bay. Phone (09) 578-1050.
* Old female corgi (tag number 1553) wandering the road in Patumahoe on New Year's Eve. Phone 027-856-4203.