Shortly after I saw this video (not very safe for work at all) in which Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a complete fool of himself while shilling for the city of Rio de Janeiro, in a strange kind of Internet synchronicity this article hits the news. It’s a political scandal about how he said that a co-worker was “hot-blooded” because she was Latino. If you do watch the video, it’s actually pretty funny how awkward the whole thing is in an 80’s kind of way, with Arnie telling us which female body part he is most interested in. I’m sure that the appearance of the video is not an accident, it was probably carefully timed by someone. The job was accomplished because it’s hard to watch that and think that he is an elected official.
Category Archives: News
Workout Mistakes
Last week I went for my first outdoor run with a friend. I have been running for more than 6 months at the gym, and felt I was sufficiently prepared to attempt to run outdoors in the real world, with someone who let’s say is certainly in better physical condition than I am in, and who is also considerably younger, and who is a karate instructor by profession. Ok, I’m an idiot, alright? That’s all too clear now. Still, I didn’t expect to do that badly, the distance we agreed on was pretty comparable to what I normally do, and I figured as long as I ran at the pace I usually run at I should be able to more or less finish in a reasonable time. It was the perfect plan.
More than one week later, I am still limping around suffering the repercussions of that perfect plan. The distance (as estimated by my fit friend) I am now hoping was way way longer than he and I had figured on. The pace we ran at was a complete unknown to me since I have never had to set and maintain my own pace before (the treadmill does it for me, my goal in that scenario is simple: run fast enough that you don’t fall off the treadmill). I’m now hoping that the pace we actually ran at was rather optimistic, shall we say. The problem of pace was sort of compounded by my good natured, well intentioned, ludicrously toned fitness coach who was running along beside me at a much slower rate than he is used to, so he had lots of wind left to “encourage” me to greater efforts. This, and elderly pride, no doubt led me to ignore certain warnings from my body that would have normally been noticed and acknowledged. Warnings like: “Asthmatic geeks don’t run, do they?”, “Whoa, that blood clot just moved about six inches closer to your brain.” and “That plinking sound isn’t guitar strings breaking, but is actually the fibers of your Achilles tendon stretching and peeling off the bone.” So, I haven’t been running since then because I am limping along, trying to pretend that my injury will no doubt heal itself, it just needs another week off. Yeah, of course.
So naturally, this article caught my eye this morning. It’s about mistakes that people make at the gym and when they workout. Particularly this one:
17. Taking on too much at first. “Whether on a treadmill at home or working out at an exercise facility, people tend to do too much too soon,” says Kasper. “They put themselves at risk for an orthopaedic injury.”
Sigh.
Photoshopped Reality
CNET has a gallery of pictures up that serve as a reminder that our news is always filtered, scrubbed, embellished, buffed and sweetened. It’s a whole series of pictures that have appeared in the media and news that have since been proven to be altered. This provides some nice depth to the recent story about a Reuters photographer who (very poorly) added some touches to a picture he took. In this case the end result is almost laughable once you notice the problem.
So, as usual, the moral of the story is: If you are going to lie, be sure you don’t suck at lying.
Terrorism Shmerrorism
Before you get scared and depressed about the news of the foiled terror plot, do yourself a favour and go and watch yesterday’s episode of The Show. Ze Frank gives some very sensible dimensions to this news. It’s a good analysis of terrorism, and how we should be reacting to it as a society, which is basically exactly how we aren’t reacting to it. In fact he says that Bush’s general sweeping statements more or less reinforce the terror aspect of terrorism and make it more effective as a tactic. Smart stuff, Ze.
Love that guy.
Lordy, Good Neighbour Jim’s on the teevee!
I spoke about GNJ last month when he was participating in the (debilitating and brutal) Primal Quest race. Well, it turns out the folks at the Weather Network liked the cut of Jim’s jib (I can’t imagine why, but I guess his jib can’t be all bad; Ali did get hitched with the guy) and thought they should be asking him and the team some questions.
Very cool stuff, congrats to Jim and thanks for leaving the helmet on, since after racing in that heat, I’m thinking the hairdo is probably one of the first things to go.
Greatest Rambles
Yes, it’s summer rerun time, folks.
Since I’m currently experiencing a creativity block, I thought I would do what TV does and just regurgitate some old stuff and call it new. Hey, it’s my party, I can do whatever I want, right?
Anyway, here’s some of the old stuff.
– Way back in October 2003 Nikki and I went to Quebec City and had a run in with some jerks at a bed and breakfast. Be sure to check out the next few posts too ’cause Nikki tries to get her revenge, but it doesn’t go as planned.
– The author tag got lost along the way, but Ali posted this pearl: She was born in 1915. That’s a lot of driving experience.
– Somewhat pithy words of wisdom on parenting a ~2yr old, Quinn at the time, but which still ring true to this day.
– And finally or at least for tonight, The Feral Baby