Sideswipe

A reader noticed this intriguing sign while climbing the stairs to her gym.

Gruesome wedding-ring anecdotes: "I can top the one you printed yesterday," enthuses Philip Tetley-Jones. "When playing Saturday morning soccer a friend of mine, then in his 20s, rose to head a ball near the goalpost and somehow hooked his wedding ring on part of the goalmouth apparatus. Catching his finger on the post, then falling violently, he 'degloved' his ring finger. Being an undramatic type, he calmly replaced the missing appendage and went to A&E. But they couldn't save the finger."

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Who'd have thought a measly wedding ring could cause so much injury? Another reader writes: "A couple of years ago I slipped over on the back deck on a very dark night and stuck my hand out as you do. Unfortunately, my ring finger caught on a garden box and was bent up 90 degrees. The following week, wifey suggested I take my blackening finger to A&E where they cut the ring off. Then I lost it somehow a few months later. Now have another ring. Some people don't learn do they!"

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Malaysian babies can no longer be called Adolf Hitler, Stalin, or 007. These names, with Zaniah (female adulterer), Batumalai (stone hill) or Ah Kow (dog) have been forbidden by the National Registration Department "in a bid to spare a child the blushes when he/she grows up", the New Straits Times reported. Also banned: Ah Gong (unsound mind), Chai Too (pig), Kai Chai (chick) and Sum Seng (gangster).

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When Nola McRae tottered to the kitchen at 2am for her tea and toast fix, she found the bench swarming with ants, thousands of them, rushing hither and thither in a frenetic, heaving mass. "They took no notice of me," she said. "They just kept right on rushing. Not wanting to spray them and then have to clean up all the little corpses, plus messy spray, I prepared a wily trap. In a plastic dish I put a few spoons full of brown sugar, a slice of ripe banana and some dabs of honey. I put the dish on the bench in the middle of the swarm, intending to scoop up the dish as soon as the ants, in a feeding frenzy, rushed en masse into it; then I carried it outside and sprayed the poor little blighters with insecticide - voila, no mess on the bench. In the blink of my eye, the ants had disappeared. Gone. Not even one left."

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An email from Bill Ralston in your inbox can be a scary thing, especially when you've just dissed One News, but he politely responds to yesterday's snippet as follows: "Sideswipe this morning reported the results of our poll on the drinking age 'are nowhere to be seen'. The results of that poll were broadcast on One News last night [that's Monday night - Sideswipe had already gone to print] and posted on tvnz.co.nz. Seventy-three per cent agreed lowering the drinking age was a mistake, 27 per cent disagreed. Every two weeks we run a 6.30 report feature on a specific issue and then seek a public response. Every second Monday the results are revealed and we move on to a new story." This result pretty much confirms a One News/Colmar Brunton poll in May 2004 which showed 71 per cent wanted the age put back up, while 27 per cent wanted it to stay 18 (and 2 per cent didn't know or care).