Twisted Knee Day

I busted up my knee today and walking was no fun so instead of heading to the park after school, Nefarious and I spent an hour in the pool which was fun as always, although because the problem in my knee was with motion rather than weight I probably could have run around just as easily. Ouch. I’m sure it’ll be better after a night’s rest. At the pool an old lady was getting dubious swimming lessons… There’s a guy that “teaches” at the pool we go to and I don’t think he has any qualifications and his teaching style is lacking to say the least. He basically just yelled half-assed instructions to her as she walked/swam lengths along the shallow pool. There’s no way she learned anything — she’d have been better off learning to swim from a book.

I was a little disturbed to find out that a picture of Ari and my paintings made it into an anti-Islam video (at 2 minutes in) — on one hand it’s a little disturbing and creepy, but on the other hand, such is the power of Google Images… I know I’ve randomly plucked an image many a time. I think the video may also be making fun of my home’s tidiness. Anyway, I’m no friend of Islam, or any religion, so I suppose I don’t care that much… I was more interested in reading about how — as I had said, “best ghost town ever” — Dubai is collapsing and real estate sales have dropped to zero and people are fleeing the country, abandoning their cars at the airport as they go, hoping to avoid debtor’s prison.

Dubai is a place for the shallow and fickle. Tabloid celebrities and worn out sports stars are sponsored by swollen faced, botox injected, perma-tanned European property developers to encourage the type of people who are impressed by fame itself, rather than what originated it, to inhabit pastiche Mediterranean villas on fake islands. Its a grotesquely leveraged version of time-share where people are sold a life in the same way as being peddled a set of steak knives.

Speaking of things going bad, 2009 Will Be a Year of Panic by Bruce Sterling is a good read.

Continuing in the Arab world, I saw the video above of a “sand geyser” today after watching some sand storm videos — I liked the quote from the Koran, “and the earth throws up her burdens from within,” that accompanied it. I’ve never heard of this phenomena before… If I had to guess I’d say that it’s actually mud. But I don’t know.

Other than that, I’m teaching myself to write Firefox extensions.

in-markham

9 Comments

  1. i try to park like this in the winter too but i drive a stock chev pickup, so it’s slightly lower than that corolla.

    Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 6:06 pm | Permalink
  2. Kyle wrote:

    Wow that anti-islam was odd lol. I like how they use that picture to show a messy house while having a happy child in the middle of it. lol Seems to be taking away from there point. Im sure glad Im an atheist, I couldnt careless about religion.

    Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 8:03 pm | Permalink
  3. Ralex wrote:

    I am feeling allot of shame being Dutch right now.
    That stupid movie was made by Geert Wilders and he is a tottal idiot.
    only does thinbgs to make a big media circus ot of it, and sounds like a big girl.

    Boehoe they dont let me in, their bad

    As soon as he found out he was not welcome in england, he booked ticket to england, went without suitcase or bag, got rejected from the country, And now he is making it al big in the media

    Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 12:03 am | Permalink
  4. wlfdrgn wrote:

    The parking spaces get more challenging with a meter of snowbank :)

    I’ve heard people are doing the same in the states as Dubai, although it’s mostly H1B types losing their tech jobs. The car gets abandoned in the airport, with the maxed-out credit cards left inside.

    Last week, I read about illegal immigrants in the states trying to get back home, since there’s no work here. They were claiming they felt they could do better in whatever country they had left than they could do here. CNN claimed that about a million had left the states in 2008, and lots more were trying to find a way to get back home, but didn’t have the cash to do it. I wonder how long it’ll be before you see the Mexican army guarding the border to try to catch americans sneaking south.

    Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 4:58 am | Permalink
  5. Obiwanbenwin wrote:

    Imagine on of those sand fountains erupted in your back yard.
    At first I thought that maybe the Arabs had run out of oil and that is what was coming up instead… but yeah.

    Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 11:53 am | Permalink
  6. Dreya wrote:

    Ick. I don’t think I would like that at all. You should write to the guy and ask him to take her photos out.

    Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 10:20 pm | Permalink
  7. Shannon wrote:

    Being realistic, I think requests like that would be ignored (and I’d have to track down the person who did the video in the first place — I assume this is a repost)

    Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 7:16 am | Permalink
  8. MoonChild wrote:

    Hmm I just read the Dubai article… and it’s pretty ridiculous. I actually grew up there, in the capital city and ther is life there.. I mean there are regular people living, working and doing their everyday thing, just like anywhere else. These last few years Dubai did get overpopular but what makes you think that there aren’t a bunch of regular peopel buying houses there? It’s not all about the celebrity bullshit you hear overseas.

    I find the whole country shallow, I don’t blame them, they are only 30 something years old, give them a break the whoel country is developing as I write this.

    Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 7:58 am | Permalink
  9. Wonderland wrote:

    That video is flipping weird. They’re using a lot of things that don’t seem to go together well, from the theme song to Penn & Teller’s Bullshit to the picture of Ari in your messy studio.

    Monday, February 23, 2009 at 10:12 pm | Permalink
Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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