6 THINGS THE NEW ZEALAND AUTHORITIES GOT RIGHT IN THE DOTCOM CASE

Sure it's easy to judge. Sure there have been a few "human errors". Sure some evidence has been obtained "illegally". Sure some searches may have been a little "heavy-handed". But they can't have got it ALL wrong... CAN they?...

1: Um...

2: Oh, gee. Hang on...

3: No. There must be something...

4: Oh, hey. They answered that call from the F.B.I. pretty damn quickly.

5: Actually... in retrospect, that may also have been an error of judgement.

6: Nope. I've got nothing.

THE 6 MOST ANNOYING THINGS IN THE WORLD... LAST SATURDAY

I was obligated to attend my 8 year-old's soccer prize-giving ceremony last Saturday morning. While that in itself wasn't overly annoying (although, having to do ANYTHING on a Saturday morning peeves slightly), you won't believe what happened while it happened...

1: The couple sitting next to me brought a 2 year-old. This is unforgivable. If you're that committed to your kid that both parents have to be there, farm the younger one off to a relative. Get a sitter. Leave it at the MacDonalds playground for an hour. Do SOMETHING dammit. I'd rather adopt my kid out than force it to sit through something as boring as a prize-giving.

2: The same couple fed the kid CRISPY NOODLES to keep it happy. This is almost worthy of a double entry. Due to their crispiness, the noodles themselves are a loud enough snack as it is, however, these particular noodles seemed to be in a very large FOIL BAG. I guess that seals in the freshness but NOT THE DECIBELS!

3: Someone left their phone on. Guess who? That's right, the mother of the toddler sitting next to me, the toddler now smearing half-chewed crispy noodles all over my right sleeve. Why do people who leave their phones on always choose that "authentic, old-style ringing phone" ring tone. Munters.

4: She answered it. I'm not kidding. Right there, in the middle of the prize-giving, while they were handing out awards, she answered the phone and had an actual conversation. Out loud. (Pointless trying to whisper into a phone, I suppose. It'd be annoying if the person on the other end of the line couldn't hear you AS CLEARLY AS WE CAN)

5: Calling out "Go Jaydyn!" when Jaydyn's team is summoned to the stage to accept their awards. Luckily for the couple sitting next to me, Jaydyn wasn't THEIR older kid and they weren't doing the calling out, otherwise there may have been violence. I don't know if that's how you spell Jaydyn, but I certainly find the two Y's annoying, don't you?

6: Leaving early as soon as your child has their certificate. This is just bad manners. If everybody did this, there would only be one set of parents left at the end. These are probably the same kind of people who enter lifts before the people inside can get out. There's no excuse for that kind of behaviour. Oh, by the way, yes, it was the couple sitting next to me. Good riddance... and take your crispy, full-noise noodles with you.

6 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE NEW NEW ZEALAND HERALD

It's not a tabloid, it's just compact, okay? Well, whatever it is, it's certainly smaller than it used to be. We didn't ask for it, but I'm sure it's way better. Here's why...

1: Less newsprinty fingers. Hopefully, less size means less ink. I hate having to wash my hands after reading, don't you?

2: More room in my letterbox. This means I can now accommodate the pre-Christmas influx of junk mail. I just love junk mail, don't you?

3: The pictures of sharks and supermodels aren't so scary. When it comes to sharks, small is good. Same goes for supermodels, I suppose. Now if we can just get them to stop publishing completely pointless pictures of sharks and supermodels with no news value, we'd REALLY be getting somewhere.

4: It's lighter. When you're recovering from a dislocated shoulder, every gram counts.

5: By comparison, it makes this blog look like a weighty tome... almost longwinded and drawn-out... a bit like this sentence...

6: That hilarious game, "Hide the Herald" has become so much more challenging. Now you can hide it simply ANYWHERE... in the cereal box... behind the couch cushions... on the internet... anywhere!

6 THINGS WE DON'T WANT FROM AUSTRALIA

First it was the apples. Then it was our immigrants. Now they don't even want to import our potatoes. Well two can play at that game. There's plenty of THEIR stuff we don't need either...

1: Uranium. To be fair, we don't have much use for it, but even if we did, we wouldn't.

2: Charlotte Dawson. I'm not bullying or trolling or anything. She just seems a bit high-maintenance.

3: Julia Gillard. Or her freakishly long earlobes. And especially not her whiney voice. It's bad enough having ONE Prime Minister who can't pronounce the word "texts".

4: The new Wiggles. Especially the girl one. Her hair clashes with all of their jerseys.

5: Bananas. We'll get all ours from Ecuador thanks. If they're good enough for Julian Assange, they're good enough for us.

6: Julian Assange. Come to think of it, we're about the only country that DOESN'T want him.

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.