Spare Room Be our guest…

Terrified and frozen to the spot, I kept screaming hoping someone would hear me and come and help. I then noticed the Avon man standing patiently at the front door. He looked through the window rather red in the face. “What’s the matter?” he asked … “Um … er … I thought you had smashed my door down,” I said. (It was the vacuum cleaner falling out of the passage cupboard.) Incredibly shaken … and embarrassed, I gave the cheque to the Avon man, who swiftly rode off on his nifty fifty.”

A FREQUENT flyer writes: “Silly me expecting a movie featuring a plane crash to get through the `in-flight editing process’ unscathed, but the Air NZ version of the film Flight Of The Phoenix I saw a year or so ago was particularly savage. Crowd of characters are on a plane, heading into rough weather. Clouds loom … the plane shakes. Then the film cuts immediately to crashed plane on the ground, half the characters injured and dazed, the other half gone. Apparently sucked out or killed somehow in the last 20 minutes of impressive plane crash special effects that have been kindly excised from the film.”

THE shark warning sign that appeared at Narrow Neck beach actually belongs to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World. “It normally adorns the entrance to the top of our shark tank where the warning is actually warranted, and not on Narrow Neck Beach,” says aquarium curator Andrew Christie. “We were wondering where it had got to after some recent redevelopment work. We would be grateful to get it back.”

TOURISM agency VisitBritain has compiled a list of the most stupid questions put to it last year. They included: “Are there any lakes in the Lake District?” And: “Is Wales closed during the winter?” One tourist wanted to know: “Why on earth did they build Windsor Castle on the flight path of Heathrow?”Another asked: “Can you tell me who performs at the circus in Piccadilly?” Questions put to VisitScotland staff included: “Are there any Sheena Easton museums in Glasgow?” Best of all, one tourist asked: “What time of night does the Loch Ness monster surface and who feeds it?” (Source: Ananova.com)

BRITISH MPs have set up an “e-petition” service which allows the public to have a say online to the Prime Minister. The two most pressing issues of public concern are the plan to replace road tax with pricing based on vehicle use and repeal of the Hunting Act. One petitioner wanted to “ban broccoli as an edible foodstuff and reclassify it as a toxic substance”.

FROM an avid Herald reader on the tiny, isolated and poor South Pacific Island of Niue (population 1100): “The Premier of Niue faced the reality of his Government’s long-standing financial crisis when he pulled into the island’s only privately run petrol station this week to fill his state-owned vehicle and was refused service. He was told the Government fuel account had not been paid for several months and until it was, no fuel for any Government vehicles.”

MT ROSKILL Community Board chairman Richard Barter is chuffed to have received funding for a youth centre but draws a long bow with the situation in Iraq … According to the Central Leader, Mr Barter says a lack of youth facilities is the cause of so many problems – “they are out on the street, feeling left out, cold, with nothing but causing trouble on offer,” he says. “The situation is exactly the same in Mt Roskill, except the kids in Mt Roskill won’t be confronted by soldiers, guns and bulldozers ready to demolish their homes if they can’t find who they are looking for.”

THE nuclear power sector in Russia is inviting female employees to compete in Miss Atom 2007, a contest to discover the industry’s most radiant beauty. “There are a lot of beautiful women in the Russian nuclear sector,” said a spokesman for nuclear operator Rosenergoatom. Competitors must be 18 to 35 and work in the nuclear sector in Russia or other ex-Soviet states, or at least be studying nuclear science at university.

Levi’s Suing Rivals: United States Patent and Trademark No. 1,139,254 is not much to look at – a pentagon surrounding a childlike drawing of a seagull in flight. But the design for a Levi’s pocket, first used 133 years ago, has become the biggest legal battleground in American fashion. Levi Strauss claims that legions of competitors have stolen its signature denim stitches – two intersecting arcs and a cloth label. (Source: New York Times)

Young and stupid: Jeremy Lyons, 20, from Pennsylvania, was arrested for an alleged vandalism spree, bashing car windows with a baseball bat. He rang a local TV station, which had carried a story of the arrest of another person and, laughing, told them they had the wrong man. He was arrested when the call was traced. (Source: News of the Weird).

Not-so-young and stupid: Ivo Jerbic, 55, from Croatia, was so angry when he couldn’t find any clean underpants that he threw a closet full of old clothes out into the garden and set fire to them. But the fire spread to the house, which burned to the ground. He told police: “My wife never throws anything out, I just lost my temper.” Jerbic could end up in jail for up to eight years for putting other family members in danger, even though no one was injured.

IT was nice to learn in the Herald that no chickens were harmed during the fire at the Tegel factory, says a reader. “These lucky chickens can now look forward to getting slaughtered rather than burned alive.”

SPOTTED at Tahunanui mini golf in Nelson: Mum, Dad and three kids (aged around 8 to 11). Mum wears a T-shirt that says “Because of people like you, people like me need medication”. Dad wears T-shirt that says “Jesus is a (insert highly unprintable four letter word).” Nice.

A BOSNIAN mechanic spent seven hours fixing a hospital machine in order to have his kidney stone removed, a newspaper reported. Slobodan Mocevic asked for tools to fix the lithotripsy machine after his operation in the small town of Kasindol, near Sarajevo, had been delayed because the apparatus had broken down. “I was desperate, I could not have waited for another minute,” he said. (Source: Yahoo News)

A JUDGE has denied unemployment benefits to a woman who was fired from her job for keeping a journal detailing her skiving off. Iowa woman Emmalee Bauer, 25, was employed by the Sheraton hotel company as a sales co-ordinator. While on the job she kept a 300-page personal journal detailing her efforts to avoid work. “This typing thing seems to be doing the trick,” she wrote. “It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important.” Bauer also wrote: “I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access. I haven’t really accomplished anything in a long while … and I am still getting paid more than I ever have at a job before, with less to do than I have ever had before. It’s actually quite nice when I think of it that way. I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it.” (Source: AP)

A FLURRY of development has been going on in Rocket Park, Mt Albert, over the holidays. A partial fence has been erected to stop toddlers making a dash for New North Rd, and brightly coloured gym equipment has been concreted in place alongside the swings and slides. Funny thing is, beside the gym equipment is a sign warning that the fitness equipment is not suitable for children. So far I have seen plenty of kids – big and small – trying to bench press, cross train and tone their thighs, but no adults. How strange to put adult facilities in a playground designed for small children and expect them not to go near them.

ORGANISERS of a tobacco industry conference in Hong Kong are fuming after discovering it will be a non-smoking event, thanks to the city’s new smoking ban. The Tobacco Asia Expo had been organised on the understanding that the wide-
ranging laws that ban smoking in public places would not be passed until later this year.

SANDY MYHRE was at the Indianapolis 500 in May last year when a woman in the media cafeteria asked her and a photographer where they were from. “New Zealand,” they replied enthusiastically. “Do you have, like, night and day?” she inquired. “Or is it dark all the time?” “Ah,” they said, “you’re getting us mixed up with Australia. It’s dark all the time there.” “Oh, that’s right,” she replied.

MY THIRD-generation NZer mother was tracked down by distant relatives in Britain doing a family tree,” says a reader. “After some correspondence on genealogy she sent the two elderly women a Christmas card. Not sure what might interest them she stuck to the `safe’ subject of gardening, describing her latest efforts. `I have just planted out the garden with some natives,’ she wrote. They replied: `You are so lucky to have natives. We can’t get any decent home help over here.”’

A READER writes: “While being hosted by a group of teachers in the United States, I was asked in all seriousness by a headmaster, `I suppose, living in Auckland, you can see the lights of Sydney?’ There was genuine surprise when they were told Sydney was 1200 miles away!”

WHILE crossing the Rockies on the Trans Canadian railway, Denis Fisher was chatting to an American woman who commented on how well he spoke English. Denis explained that English was New Zealand’s national tongue. She was astounded, saying, “Oh, I thought all you guys spoke Dutch down there!”

YESTERDAY flying saucers at St Lukes, today Santa Paws Christmas stocking. A reader writes: “I bought one for my puppy (yep, I know, I’m daft!) and it contained some dog biscuits, a green one in the shape of a tree and a red one like a bell. On Christmas morning I gave the puppy the green one to keep her quiet. Five minutes later we realised to our horror that the green food colouring was now all over the carpet. It will take a professional clean to get it out, so I complained to the manufacturers who suggested most people don’t give them to pets indoors.”

TOPLESS dancers in Alabama aren’t really topless: Dancers are spraying themselves with skin-coloured latex. Under Alabama’s strict law regulating exotic dancers, any skin that would normally be covered by a modest bikini must be swathed in an opaque covering. But the law doesn’t specify what kind of material must be used, so, in the legal sense, a nylon swimsuit and spray-on latex are virtually the same. (Source: Nerve.com)

LIST of The Simpsons name origins.
Lisa Marie Simpson – Lisa Groening (Matt Groening’s sister) and Lisa Marie Presley.
Marge – Marjorie (commonly called Marge) Groening (Matt Groening’s mother was named “Margaret” and nicknamed “Marge”).
Homer – Homer Groening (Matt Groening’s father and one of his sons).
Maggie – Maggie Groening (one of Matt Groening’s sisters).
Bart – an anagram for “brat”, a reference to Groening himself.

WITH dozens of puzzled beachcomber witnesses, a cow marched into the surf off the coast of Queensland in Australia in November and swam out as far as 275m for four hours (returning to shore twice but venturing out again) before drowning from swallowing water. (Source: News of the Weird)