The ugly eyesore across from the Post Office was torn down. The lot is zoned commercial and is for sale listed at $99,000.  Any takers?

A developer threatened with legal action sells derelict flats which Norwich City Council had branded an "eyesore"…. From BBC News. Full story

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Norwich City Council threatens a developer with legal action over derelict homes due for demolition which it says have become an eyesore…. From BBC News. Full story

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Not the San Francisco one; that “other” one in S.E. Arizona.

Another eyesore of the month.

Mac OSX Snow Leopard has some issues which annoy a lot of people, so here in this short post is a list of all changes Apple has to make to make Snow Leopard at least a decent service pack instead of a large annoyance.

-Safari Stripes :
Many people have been experiencing issues with top sites in Safari. When loading a page the first few seconds all we see are stripes. Apple fix this!

-64-bits not enabled and even impossible for most people :
Apple should better not be promoting 64-bits as a new feature in Snow Leopard, because it isn’t. Many people have to perform special actions to boot in 64-bits mode and most people can’t even run Snow Leopard in 64-bits mode disregarding the 64-bits EFI.

-Huge icons in stacks :
The new stacks feature is completely visually screwed up. The icons are huge and this can’t be changed it’s really an eyesore.

-Blue decorations and slowness in exposé :
This is just plain ugly, get rid of it or enable people to disable it.

Solve these things Apple and Snow Leopard will actually be an update instead of a downgrade.

It’s hard to believe that this eyesore has been falling apart since I moved to Tangerine 17 years ago.  Have any of our elected officials been out here to see this? Our saving grace in this mess is that it hasn’t become a crackhouse. At one time it was a clinic for Dr. Snyder who treated patients that came to experience the healing waters of Lake Ola. Dr Synder retired and the building began its slow decay.

[A little history here: Dr Synder was Steve Blanton's next door neighbor and Mrs. Holley, also a neighbor who passed on, was his nurse. ]

Do you think we could get Orange County Planning to take a look at this and approve it as a police substation as George Wiggens suggested in the past? After all, it’s at our town core. You’d think the same people that allowed StoneyBrook Hills [formerly the Foothills of Mount Dora] to be approved without notifying us of such a huge change could help us out on this one. Elected and county officials: are you listening? Please fix this eyesore ASAP!

Another classic study in “consumerism” gone awry.

This gem was also found in south Texas. What kind of mileage does this automobile get?

I wonder how many times citizens contact the City of SLO about its billboards. They must have been around for a long time to remain standing. Here’s a classic example – this one is located at the entrance to the cute uptown part of Monterey street – and ordinarily the rail would provide a beautiful framework. Instead. . . dude, DOMINO’S!

To the “goyim” the black hats say these ugly structures that they put up in front of U.S. official buildings are symbols of “light” and “unity” of “the nations.” But, among themselves they say:

“It’s a brazen mark of influence, especially as the menorah lighting claims to speak for an American Jewish community that traditionally has been uncomfortable with displays of belief on public land.” (“Chabad’s man makes mark in D.C.,” Ron Kampeas, Washington Jewish Week, December 12, 2005)

Yes, and it’s also a brazen mark of chutzpah and hypocrisy, given that the “displays of belief” that the “American Jewish Community” is most “uncomfortable” with, based upon the incessant shrieking and litigation, are Christian symbols. I haven’t witnessed discomfort with these ridiculous 20 and 30 foot-tall metal and PVC menorahs in front of court buildings, the White House, etc., on the part of the “American Jewish Community.”

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten second from left, Rabbis Abraham Shemtov, left, Levi Shemtov and Nachman Holtzberg, right, light the so-called National Hanukkah Menorah, at the Ellipse, near the White House during a lighting ceremony marking the beginning of the celebration of the Hanukkah, Sunday Dec. 21, 2008. Associated Press.

Also see:

Orthodox Judaic Attorney General Mukasey to Light 30′ tall Menorah on White House Lawn

Who Will Call for the Separation of the Synagogue of Satan and State?

Perpetual Purim, Reversal/Hippuch

Iraq: A Judaic Conquest

Everything’s Kosher in Washington D.C.

How Wisconsin Bishop Listecki and His Flock Observe Advent

Let me get out of these

How retarded it is to mix a heart with a hammer (maso) and BF’s fave flower…uncharacteristic of Christmas.

Just an addition to the oh-so-many eyesores on the Metro roads.

For about seven months, a piece of bitumen in Old Perth Road has been for sale and fenced off.

The Rent a Fence surrounding the plot is extremely ugly and is surely costing the owners a small fortune.

OK, it does give any potential purchaser a visual picture of the boundaries, but surely if someone is really interested they can be shown the boundaries of the title on a map? The size and shape of the plot is, in fact, indicated on the for sale board.

The fencing is adding to the lack of parking in Old Perth Road and, as I am fairly sure the new owners will want to develop the site, rather than keep it as a car park, this will be an ongoing problem for all retail business in the street.

Another problem is the sorry state of disrepair of the plot. It is not being maintained and is covered in rubbish and weeds. Isn’t it sensible to maintain something that you are trying to sell? There is no way the state of the site will be encouraging any potential buyers. This eyesore in the centre of town will certainly not be doing much for any of our propery prices in these troubled times.

Recently my dad, nearing 92, said, “I hope I live long enough to see that hideous pile of junk cleaned off the busiest corner in our town.”

At the corner of Beebe-Capps and South Main, stands arguably Searcy’s biggest eyesore.

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It was easy to be overwhelmed by this monstrosity of 20th century industry as it sits in ruin complete with its own smoke stack.

5 Exposure HDR. Click image for larger view, click again to zoom.

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Red Hook Industria

I’ve just come back from what should have been an invigorating walk with Piles; a walk training not only the calf muscles and improving my overall well-being and benevolence, but my arm muscles as well seeing I have to drag Piles the whole way. That boy hates heat and should live in Norway, leaving balmy HK to us amphibians.

Anyway, the walk turned out not to be invigorating at all but a kind of nightmare, the reason being CARS.

Pui O on Lantau Island where I have been living for five years; no, not only Pui O, the whole island actually, has turned into some kind of haven for lazy show-offs. Not only can they not walk five meters, when they get their sacred cars (at least two per household) it has to be enormous, fkuc-off SUVs, covered in stickers saying “Save nature!”

Pui O is the countryside and has country roads. These bastards drive as if they’re on the Tolo Highway, clearly vexed at having impertinent pedestrians like Piles and me being in their personal space which they and only they own. They glower. They stare. they honk their horns.

Here I am saving the world’s resources for their children and I get grief?

Because they can’t be arsed to ride a bike to the bus stop 200 meters away or walk, I won’t have shampoo in ten years’ time. The whole world’s everything is based on oil, but they use it like they have their own personal oil-well which will never run out, tucked away somewhere behind Park’n'Shop.

But the worst thing about cars is they’re so incredibly ugly. Everywhere I go, they are, marring the scenery, making it impossible to take photos or let the eye get a good nature workout.

Now Pui O is being swamped by pilots who, not happy being away from their planes for any amount of time, need cars the size of a Boeing 747, to feel more comfortable as they drive a bottle of laxative home from the shop.

Meanwhile the entire Pui O is looking more and more like the gigantic parking lot outside a mall for people with particularly bad taste.

And the ever helpful government doesn’t have to be asked twice: To ensure that these people and their families will soon lose the use of their legs from atrophy, our civil engineering/transport dept is building more and more roads, widening roads, flattening roads and taking away nasty trees dropping leaves on roads, all for the purpose of letting guys with cars the size of houses feel they’re living back in the States or Oz.I’ve written about this before and no doubt I’ll get back to it again and again.

You really want to do something for your children? Don’t drive!

I’ve never even pretended to have any insight into the human mind and its workings. Everything people say, do and think is a source of constant bafflement for me.

But I know one thing about people: They will always do the opposite of what I tell them. In that they are not unlike my dog Piles. If we’re on the beach and I say for example: “Piles, don’t eat that three day dead fish and puke it up later all over the living room floor,” then that’s exactly what he’ll do.

So I’m not at all surprised, when I tell my helper to take Piles for a one hour walk, that she tidies my underwear drawer instead.

Or that she, when I tell her not to use binliners or plastic bags for rubbish but empty the kitchen rubbish bucket straight into the communal rubbish bin (already with thick black bin liner) thus saving one layer of plastic, takes in binliners from outside, pours the rubbish into it and leaves the whole thing on the kitchen floor.

I’m not at all surprised, when my Canto students ask me what’s the best way to learn Cantonese and I tell them talking to some of the 7 million free teachers milling around Hong Kong, ( the old “talking and listening” technique they used as a child to learn their mother tongue in fact), that they instead get Lonely Planet’s Cantonese glossary and only ever talk English with Chinese people, reserving their Cantonese for me.

And when people congregate on my roof for a Sichuan meal and ask me where the ashtrays are and I tell them just to chuck their cigarette butts on the floor (of the roof) because my roof is the Free State Of China and I’ll sweep up everything the next day and isn’t it lovely to be able to chuck stuff once in a while – then I’m not at all surprised that they don’t chuck a single fag end but instead push them into the soil of my flower pots, poisoning the plants.

Not suprised at all. But maybe a little bit baffled.

Then again I don’t listen to what people tell me either.

I can’t claim to have visited every single one of Hong Kong’s many MTR stations, especially not recently. However I do think it’s fair to say that amid fierce and brutal competition, the latest advertising campaign featured in Causeway Bay Station, that of Pizza Hut, must surely be the ugliest, most tacky MTR advert ever.

I welcome any proof to the contrary.