6 NEWS STORIES THAT AREN'T STORIES

This week was the week of the 64th Tomatina Festival in the Spanish town of Bunol. That's right, it's an annual event and it's happened 63 times before, making it in no way news of any kind. So why were there stories on it everywhere I looked? Here are some other non-news items I never want to see or hear about again...

1: The Shortest Day. Like La Tomatina, this happens every year. Unlike La Tomatina, you don't even need tomatoes, just a basic understanding of astronomy.

2: The Longest Day. This is certainly a LONGER story than the shortest day, hotter too usually, given it usually happens at the end of December EVERY YEAR.

3: The Price of Flowers on Valentines Day. They will be more expensive than usual. Something to do with a little known law of economics known as, and I think I've got this right, "Supply and Demand".

4: Snow In Winter. It's a meteorological thing, apparently, when it gets cold (like, during winter) snow can happen.

5: Smoking Too Much Dope Makes You Stupid. Anyone who thought this was a story this week is clearly on drugs.

6: Bull-Running/Cheese-Rolling/Bog-Running/Wife-Carrying. Like the tomato throwing, these things also happen at least once every 12 months. Now if a bull rolled someone's wife into a bog, that'd be news.

6 PROBLEMS WITH WEARING PYJAMAS IN PUBLIC

What an unprecedented blow-up in Gisborne over wearing pyjamas out to the shops. Of course, there are many reasonable and well thought out arguments on both sides of this debate... although perhaps a few more AGAINST than FOR. Here are the issues I have with using nightwear as daywear...

1: Finding a handbag to match.

2: All the extra washing and drying involved. You'd have to go from once a month to once a fortnight. I s'pose.

3: Avoiding open flames. I presume there are more open flames out in public. Maybe there aren't. It'd pay to be careful though - you're bound to be more flammable than usual.

4: Nasty drafts in unexpected regions.

5: Getting into fancy nightclubs. Technically, many pyjama tops DO have collars, although I'm not sure a dressing gown qualifies as a jacket.

6: The clean underwear conundrum. Obviously you should always wear clean underwear in case you're run over by a bus. But a lot of people are in the no-undies-under-jarmies camp. Undercarriage comfort over potential bus accident embarrassment - now THAT's a curly one.

6 PLACES TO PUT THE BEAST OF BLENHEIM

When you work at a radio station that offers callers the chance to call in and express their views to the rest of the nation, you hear some interesting ideas. Some of these are genuine suggestions on what to do with the Beast of Blenheim - other than what they're ACTUALLY going to do with Stewart Wilson. (His middle name is Murray, in case you didn't know)

1: Send him to Belarus. This is quite an elegant kill-two-birds-with-one-stone solution. Punishes him and them. Perfect.

2: Strand him on White Island. This is a specific variation on a theme. Quite a lot of people seem to want to set up some kind of survival-of-the-fittest, each-beast-for-himself, isolated prison island where we just drop them off and leave them to their own devices - a bit like that big hole in the latest Batman movie, I suppose. Others just want to throw him into an active volcano.

3: Set him up in a state house in close proximity to nice, law abiding citizens in full view of a cycleway and a recreational lake where young women and children regularly exercise, swim and play. No, that's just ridiculous. They'd never do that.

4: Public Shunning. This is actually a real thing they've decided to do at one of the many meetings they've had about the Beast in Whanganui. It's one of the positives to come out of this situation for Whanganui - they've got the Beast, but at least they've had heaps of meetings. Nothing brings a community together like a good, old-fashioned witch-hunt.

5: Force him to attend all the meetings they're having about him. No, that's just cruel and unusual. Nobody deserves that.

6: Keep him in prison. Nice idea. If he shouldn't be released back into society, maybe we shouldn't release him back into society. I'm sure there's a reason this wouldn't work... just not sure what that reason is.

6 THINGS I WORRY ABOUT WHILE WAITING FOR MY TAXI

Unfortunately, when one dislocates one's shoulder doing something stupid, one still needs to get to one's place of work, even though one has been forbidden to drive by one's crack squad of medical specialists. This means although one has become a regular taxi passenger, there are certain things one can never predict...

QUESTION 1: Will my driver be male or female? ANSWER: Actually, this is completely predictable. He'll be a bloke. I don't ever remember ever even SEEING a woman taxi driver, except on the TV show "Taxi" obviously. Still, I live in hope it'll be Marilu Henner who'll turn up in my driveway at 3:30 one morning. Is her hair still red, even at 60?

QUESTION 2: Will my driver speak English? 
ANSWER: You may be surprised to know, most of the drivers I've come across so far are not actually that good at English. You may also be surprised to know, I much prefer it this way. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's making inane conversation about things I don't care about with someone I don't know. Take note hairdressers, massage therapists, telemarketers...

QUESTION 3: What will it smell like? 
ANSWER: I don't necessarily mean the driver here, although it's amazing how much HIS personal aroma can affect that of the entire taxi. Guys, can we just ease up on the garlic and onions a little? Although, at the risk of sounding finickity, you might also want to dial back the hang-off-the-mirror, clip-on-the-air-vent, plug-in-the-lighter air fresheners. To me, they all smell of impending car-sickness.

QUESTION 4: How dusty will it be? 
ANSWERS: Either not dusty at all (if the taxi is a nice new Prius) or incredibly dusty. Why is this? Where does all this dust come from? Disturbingly, in the back of my mind I know where all this dust comes from; it's mostly dead skin cells and dried mite faeces. And in some taxis, it's everywhere. Ick.

QUESTION 5: How many weird gadgets will there be? ANSWER: Heaps. Obviously any taxi has a lot of weird gadgets anyway... CB radio, the thing that keeps track of the fare, EftPos machine etc... but I swear these guys are all electronics geeks in their spare time. Radar detectors, the aforementioned air-fresheners, a vast array of hands-free devices and finally, the obligatory cell-phone, complete with Bollywood-style sitar-based ringtone.

QUESTION 6: What will I be forced to listen to? ANSWER: Could be anything. So far I've had talkback (obviously), Classic Hits (although, not quite on the station and with loud interference from all his gadgets), a lecture about why the transmission keeps slipping and a Dire Straits CD turned up real loud (I believe it was "On Every Street" - not a bad album, although annoyingly, he kept skipping to the next track). One guy even offered to let me plug my phone into his stereo so I could listen to my own stuff. Now THAT's what I call service.

6 OLYMPIC SPORTS I MAY HAVE GOT WRONG

Perhaps the greatest thing about the Olympics is for 2 weeks we're exposed to an incredible line-up of sports we wouldn't normally take an interest in, or in some cases, wouldn't even have believed existed if we hadn't seen them with our own eyes...

1: FLAG BEARING: I was so excited when I heard Nick Willis had been selected for this one. I knew he had the legs for it, although I was a little worried in terms of upper body strength. Who won this, by the way? What time were they trying to beat? Or was it just the first one to the grassy knoll?

2: FENCING/SWORDFIGHTING: I think I've got this one right and it's everyone else who's got it wrong. Obviously the actual fencing happened before the opening of the games themselves otherwise the equestrians wouldn't have had anything to jump over. Why people think the swordfighting is called fencing, I have no idea, but I totally sympathise with that Korean lady who sat on the swordfighting stage and cried for an hour after she lost the other day - if someone had just stabbed me with a sword, I'd probably cry too.

3: BOATING: This one's got me really stumped. For starters, it seems to be happening in 3 completely different venues so it must be hard to decide who's won. I wouldn't give it to the ones who do it backwards, because technically they're going in the wrong direction and the winners are actually the ones at the back. There's some people in canoes on a much rougher part of the river, but for some reason they keep turning around and going back the way they came, which must be costing them a lot of time. Then there's the people in the sailing boats who always seem to end up where they started, so obviously they won't win either.

4: SUNBATHING: I watched some of this the other night but it's not as good as it has been at previous Olympic Games. They keep forgetting to take off all their clothes and just start playing volleyball instead. Maybe those English beaches are colder than they expected.

5: DIVE RACING: This is my favourite. It's always so close and it seems to get closer the further they get through the competition. In fact, sometimes it's almost as if they get to the water at exactly the same time! Weird how they always put people from the same country up against each other. I guess that's just how the draw works out. I'd raise those two diving boards up a litter higher if it was me though, so the races last a bit longer.

6: MUSICAL CHAIRS: If I'd known this was an Olympic sport, I would have made more of an effort at all those birthday parties over the years. It looked pretty easy at most stadiums in the early stages, although I noticed sometimes the organisers were putting soldiers in the seats for more of challenge. That first round at the opening ceremony looked really difficult; I couldn't see any spare seats anywhere and the music hardly ever stopped.