Sideswipe

Doing the email rounds, comic book parodies drawing attention to a petition to save the Western Springs Speedway.

Forty-five minutes after Theresa Wilson, 43, of Curtis, Washington, found her boyfriend with another woman, she says, she saw him driving in his car. She rammed the vehicle three times and forced it off the road, state troopers say. But then came the bad bit. "Oh my God, oh my God, that's not my boyfriend," she allegedly said after the crash. She had mistaken a stranger's car for her boyfriend's. Wilson was arrested and charged with assault. "We've got an anger management issue," the arresting trooper said. (Source: thisistrue - link below)

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Another reader supplies further grist to the ignorance mill. "In Hawaii a few years ago, I searched in vain for a Beethoven T-shirt for my son, hoping to encourage more dedication to his piano lessons. Bob Marley, Metallica and AC/DC shirts were available in abundance, but nothing for composers who had died beyond living memory. I finally asked an assistant if they had any such items. 'Who did you say?' she asked. 'Beethoven - you know, the musician, the composer.' 'No, I don't think so. What group is he with?"'

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And another ... "Having taken some whole beetroot to the checkout at the supermarket the assistant asked me what it was. 'Beetroot'. 'Oh no, that only comes in a tin,' was the reply."

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Kooky words the Oxford English Dictionary might add: This from the "Appeals" section in the OED December newsletter. The jury is still out on whether to include the following words in its definitive tome:

hoodie (n.: a hooded jacket, sweatshirt, or other garment)
posedown (n.: the final stage in a bodybuilding competition)
scrunchie (n.)
tikka masala (n.)

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Ah, now we see the resemblance. Sideswipe was fascinated to learn that Rotorua police prosecutor Sergeant Roy Blomkamp, who moves next year to Tauranga, was the Hudson Cookie Bear in the TV commercials of the 1970s and 1980s. Dum-de-doo, Roy.