Sideswipe

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Elaine Burchill got a book from Amazon.com called The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and found two pages on "the kiwi bird of New Zealand". The author says kiwis are just lazy and not flightless at all, and has challenged evolutionists (who think that kiwis are flightless because they didn't have any natural predators) to perform an experiment he has devised. This experiment involves gathering as many kiwis as possible ("20 to 30 is probably sufficient") to get a large sample size because "some kiwis are bound to be lazier than others", loading the birds on to a truck and dumping them off the highest cliff available. He suspects that the birds "seeing their fate rushing towards them at terminal velocity, will flap their useless wings and fly to safety".

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Sideswipe's photo of the gnawed block of cheese last week, reminded Eric V. C. West that his brother, as a young lad, had the same habit of breaking off pieces of cheese as he passed the fridge. "This annoyed my father greatly," says Eric, "until he realised the likeness between cheddar cheese and Sunlight Soap. With great skill, cunning and a very sharp knife, he carved a fine, if somewhat soapy, replica of Waikato's finest cheddar, and left it on the cheese dish, pending my brother's attention. Unfortunately, Dad overlooked a genetic link in my brother's habit. This link was proven as my mother broke off a piece of 'cheese' and began, quite literally, foaming at the mouth. To this day, I have never seen a better 'standing long jump' than that which Mum performed between the fridge and the bathroom, nor a better 'high jump' than that which my father was for, when she got her voice back.

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Doing the email rounds: Two patients limp into two different medical clinics with the same knee complaint. Both have trouble walking and appear to require a hip replacement. The first patient is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week. The second sees his family doctor after waiting three weeks for an appointment, then waits eight weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray, which isn't reviewed for another week and finally has his surgery scheduled for a month from then. Why the different treatment for the two patients? The first is a golden retriever. The second is a senior citizen.

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Simon Devoy agrees that the idea that one could be charged with child abuse for smoking in a car with children is a little extreme. "But," he says, "I have an abiding memory of awful childhood family car trips, barrelling down the motorway with Dad puffing away and all the car windows wound up. Even at the time (I might have been eight) I remember thinking it just wasn't right. (To his credit, Dad stopped smoking eventually to our pleasure and good health)."