Sideswipe

Fifteen years after artist Damien Hirst created his famous shark suspended in formaldehyde, which sold for a reported £6.5 million, the work isn't ageing well. The Art Newspaper says the curator of fish at the Natural History Museum in London, Oliver Crimmen, who advised Hirst on how to conserve a shark properly back in 1991, all along suggested an alcohol-based solution for the preservation of big fish, rather than formaldehyde. Crimmen believes the combo of chemicals Hirst used is causing the shark tissue to shrink and is making the formaldehyde cloudy. Hirst is talking to the owner about replacing it before it disintegrates.

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What a ripoff the 2006 Kids Fair was, says a disgruntled Mt Albert reader. "Our family of three spent $55 to be marketed at. Twenty-eight ping to get in the gates, $8 for two to take a spin in a cup and saucer, $8 for two coffees, $5 for a small flaccid Dora the Explorer balloon and $6 parking. That's a shed-load of cash to blow on 40 minutes' family entertainment ... which was mostly spent trying to avoid inappropriate sales pitches for a kid's quad bike, life insurance (to cover their tertiary education) or the latest Honda. No thanks, our 3-year-old does not want a fake tattoo of the Honda logo."

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Merania Ngarimu writes: "Two lovely ladies were giving away fortune cookies (courtesy of Air New Zealand) in Westfield Downtown, Auckland. The cookies fortune instructs the lucky recipient to 'Go to airnewzealand.co.nz/fortune before 28 June 06 to enter your code to go into the draw to win return tickets for 2 to Shanghai'. And when were the ladies giving away these cookies? Friday, June 30."

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A different point of view about security vans parking in disabled parking spaces. Tracey writes: "Why do security vehicles park in disabled parking spaces? Did you ever stop to consider the poor security guard, open to being robbed in today's society as he or she leaves a shop or bank carrying a vast amount of money, or are you happy to see them robbed by some spaced-out P freak? For the amount of time these people are parked in the handicapped space or, for that matter, the footpath in front of the shop, loading zone, bus stop or tow-away zone, what is there to complain about?"

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Queen Street. Saturday night around 10. Not far from Aotea Square and with a large number of people on their way back from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concert. A young man is crawling around on his hands and knees over a pool of vomit while a crowd of onlookers shout, "Lick it, lick it", and the scene is lit by the flashing of many mobile phone cameras. Now that's the Heart of the City.

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A Minnesota police officer was charged after allegedly falsely imprisoning a man and threatening to beat him, only to let him go when the man called 911 on his cellphone from the back of his car. Jason Patrick Marino, 31, allegedly handcuffed and detained the 21-year-old in his squad car without arresting him, after the younger man approached him to ask for a ride to Interstate 94. Once in the car, the officer threatened several times to beat him up. Marino then drove into a neighbouring county, but left the young man by the side of the road after realising that he was talking to someone on his cellphone. Another policeman picked the man up a short time later, and reported that he was crying and out of breath with fear. (Source: via www.fark.com)