Sideswipe: Uncharitable donation request

Voted the top fail for 2009 via Fail Blog.

A reader from Orewa was just about to eat dinner when the phone rang ... The caller was phoning on behalf of Riding for the Disabled. "Okay. Send me an envelope and I'll send you a donation." "Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you. Would $20 be all right?" "Uh, how about $10?" "Oh I'm sorry. We have a $20 minimum." Excuse me?

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Snoop Dogg has voiced a GPS driving navigation system and has added his own witticisms, which include him saying, "Keep left ahead, and you'll be bona fide" and "Turn around when possible and keep it 'G', ya d-i-g?"

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Non-Telecom mobile phone owners beware if you have a fault on your Telecom landline. Not only does the 120 fault line take up to 30 minutes to be answered but it charges for your call. I discovered this only when, on my fourth call over four days to the fault line trying to get my phone fixed, my mobile ran out of credit. I guess I should be grateful I'm on prepay or else I wouldn't have found out. In the meantime, more than $90 of credit had gone. Telecom's call centre response to my distress: "What do you want me to do about it?" Um, maybe warn callers to the 120 line that you are going to charge? Or even better, don't charge.

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Kelvin asks: "How big does your reader want the bus-only signs on Grafton Bridge? I see the signs every day from my car. I also saw a huge electronic sign telling everyone it was a bus lane only. It's not the council who's stupid."

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A reader writes: "With regards to Katerina Adams defending The Shawshank Redemption on the basis of its being a classic, I'll accept that as soon as a network agrees to screen The Godfather, also a classic, on Christmas Day."

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Kelly Huntley braved Sylvia Park on Monday night and, as expected, was harassed by the hand-cream hawkers. "But I went back on Thursday and even walked past them more than once and they didn't approach me or anyone around me. Wonder if they have been given the hard word after all the complaints in Sideswipe."

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A man says a 3-month-old kitten hitched a 200km ride in sub-freezing temperatures in the wheel well of his SUV. Marc Lichty left Olympia, Washington, after finishing a day of work and heard meowing when he stopped at a rest stop. But he couldn't see a cat, KPTV-TV reported. When he reached his home in Tualatin, Oregon, he heard the meowing again and, he says, "the cat was up underneath in the spare tyre spot". Lichty says his family will keep the kitten.

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View today's Herald cartoon

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Today's Webpick: CCTV in Manchester catches a gun toting teen who is approached by a man who had the presence of mind to walk straight up to him and head butt him. Go here.

To say thanks and Merry Christmas to Sideswipe and Spare Room readers, I have put together The Best Christmas Hamper Ever. It's worth over $2500 and will make Christmas very merry. Go here to enter.