Sideswipe: June 28: Miserable electrical structure

Spotted in Half Moon Bay.

Ugly artist has exhibition pulled

Uglier and Uglier, a controversial artwork that ranked photos and videos of 5000 different real-life women from ugly to ugliest, was removed by a Shanghai-based gallery following public outcry. Created by male Chinese artist Song Ta, Uglier and Uglier featured photos and clips of thousands of women on a university campus ranked by how unattractive he found them. Song Ta reportedly created the controversial exhibit in 2013 and has showcased it in several art galleries since, but its latest outing at the OCAT Shanghai gallery was met with so much criticism from the public that it was eventually taken down. The fact that Song Ta once said that he and his assistants ranked the women depicted in his artwork from "forgivably ugly" to "unforgivably ugly" might have had something to do with people's reaction to the exhibit.

Kids are a crack-up

1. "When I told my 5-year-old son that his shoes were on the wrong feet he looked down at them and then back at me and said, 'They're the only feet I have'."
2. "At a gymnastics 'competition'. My daughter is on a podium posing with her trophy over her head. Tripped and fell, trophy crashed and broke in half. Everyone gasped expecting tears. She picked it up and joyfully said "Look! Now I have TWO trophies!"
3. "Our goldfish died. When I told my then 5-year-old son we had buried it in the garden he burst into tears. I was trying to think of how to explain how all living things die when he tearfully said, 'I wanted to eat it'."
4. "My son, irritated at some rule I was enforcing, grumbled, 'Daddy is the fun parent'. I gave him the Eye and asked him what that made me then? He paused ever so briefly and then said, 'The smart parent'. I told him, 'Nice save'."
5. "I was driving in rush hour, frustrated and muttering about how slow we were moving. My then-3-year-old suddenly piped up from her car seat, 'What's the matter mummy, are you pissed off about all the damn traffic'?"

For legally safe coffee

Job ad from the Katikati Advertiser.

Holding a grudge for a very long time

"Many years ago, at university and I had a part-time job working evenings," writes a reader.  "A girl who lived in my halls of residence also worked there and she had a car but never once offered me a ride home, so I caught the bus. One night, it's late and dark, she has parked down a really dark and notoriously dodgy street and was too scared to walk to her car herself.  She asked me to walk with her. We get to her car and she says thanks and quickly (before I could say anything) jumps into her car and drives off!  Leaving me, also a young female, standing there in the dark and dodgy street all alone, the same dark and dodgy street that she was too scared to go into on her own!  At the very least, I thought she should have driven me back to the bus stop, or at least a lit and safer area.  I've never forgotten that Monique, never!"