Sideswipe: October 26: Wow, that’s just rude

Clearly drinks.

Storms are hysterical, so ...

In January 1972, Roxcy Bolton showed up to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conference to talk about “her-icanes” and “him-icanes”. The problem was that there were no him-icanes: Federal officials had been christening storms with traditionally female names since the early 1950s. “I’m sick and tired of hearing that ‘Cheryl was no lady as she devastated such and such a town’ or ‘Betsy annihilated this or that’,” the Florida feminist said. “As long as people can name her-icanes after us it’s just another way of putting women down.” She even offered an alternative: Why not draw inspiration from the roster of US senators? “A hurricane is as unpredictable as a woman and that’s as good an excuse as any,” said one Weather Bureau chief at the time. Bolton continued her fight against the sexist practice until her death in 2017, where her New York Times obituary described her as “tempestuous”.

Confiscated not a love story

Shark love.

Young and confused

1. “I always thought that Right Said Fred’s song I’m Too Sexy was about his love for the number 264. I’m ... two sixty-four. My shirt: two sixty-four. My car: two sixty-four.”

2. “When I was like 5 or 6, one of my dad’s friends said that he was going to get a boxing match on ‘pay-per-view’, and I asked: “Why do you want to watch it on paper? It would look better on TV.”

3. “I thought for a very (almost too long) time that an ‘only child’ was pronounced ‘lonely child’ because they had no siblings.”

4. “I had never seen ‘prima donna’ written down and was convinced it meant a time before Madonna was born.”

Replacement costs a bomb

If you lost an Audi key fob at the Auckland Normal Intermediate playing field, adjacent to the cricket nets, at 4.30pm on Monday, October 24, it’s your lucky day. To reclaim it: call or text Peter on 021 02454071.