Saturday, December 15, 2001
I ate at Chef Wondiy's again today — I really do recommend it if you're in the Toronto area (or passing through). So far it's the best Ethiopian place I've eaten at (in either Toronto or Philly anyway). I went there today with Saira*, one of my few meat eating friends, and here is what we had:
This meat is cooked. |
This meat is raw. |
Raw closeup! |
The raw meat was the experiment. When I ordered it, the waitress asked me three times to be sure I knew what I was ordering. Then the chef came out (a very friendly fellow), and made sure. When I confirmed, he expressed his happiness that I was going to eat it the traditional way and seemed very pleased with me.
The raw beef was exceptional, but I will admit that it was not the easiest thing to eat. I eat sushi all the time, but this really was quite alien to my palette, and seemed, for lack of a better word, very heavy. In any case, it was extremely good, and I will have it again.
* I talked to Saira about how there are some straightedge members attacking other members that had “lost the edge”. She wondered if hippies ever attacked ex-hippies for quitting pot and rejecting psyche-rock.
Saturday, December 15, 2001
I haven't picked up any CDs in a long time, so I went for a walk this morning to do so. As you know, it's been snowing and the sidewalks on the side streets are still icy. I'm walking down a stretch that's literally ALL ice and coming toward me on the sidewalk is some jackass on a bike.
Outside of the fact that riding your bike on the sidewalk is illegal, this is a sidestreet, and there are cars parked. Even if I wanted to jump out of the way, I couldn't easily do so. In addition, there's no traffic and no ice on the roads, so this guy has no real excuse to be on the sidewalk.
I figure he's somewhere between 25 and 35, and looks like he weights about 120 pounds. I weight about 240 pounds, so I decided to just let him hit me (it's either that or jump off the sidewalk). I figure it'll do more damage to him than to me. He's coming straight at me, looking me in the eye. I look at him and keep walking straight at his bike.
A few feet in front of me he chickens out and bails out. Next time he'll ride on the street I hope.
(I'll write about the CDs later).
On the way back I followed some very very cold skinny goths for a while. They'd chosen fashion over common sense and were shivering miserably… Then I walked past some hockey punks (oh canada).
Friday, December 14, 2001
Some of you might remember that last winter I took pictures as the snow started falling. My new camera (well, new in comparison to last winter), has an amazing open shutter mode, so I was just able to take the shots below without any light other than the nighttime ambience of the city:
PS. If you went to modifiedwoman.com and you saw a “coming soon” notice, would you assume it had been co-opted by a porn site?
Friday, December 14, 2001
OK, first, I said yesterday that there'd probably be stories coming out soon suggesting that the Bin Laden tape was either fabricated or manipulated. I suspect that there's no way that tape will ever leave government hands for truly impartial analysis, so we'll never really know for sure one way or the other. Here's a story from the Washington Post and another from NewsMax (nothing but jokers in the indymedia right now).
So Cracker Barrel is being sued for racism (no, not by poor white folks) again. A black woman says that others were served before her. Boy, if that's all it takes to launch a $100 million (yes, one hundred million dollar) lawsuit, then sign me up. There are lots of times where I've been at a business and some asshole didn't like my ears or tattoos and I get bad service. I'm not saying it's right, but I'm not sure it entitles me to $100 million. It just entitles me to tell everyone I know not to give their money to that company.
Many of you have listened to Saira's college/community radio show online, as well as I'm sure similar shows in your local area. It may well be a thing of the past… Thanks to the DMCA, college radio stations may well be banned from broadcasting over the web. (more…)
Well, I'm off now to take out my airconditioner for the winter.
Thursday, December 13, 2001
The US Government Translation of the Bin Laden “confession” tape was partially released today (FOX has the transcript, and CNN has a simplified version). It's mostly hard to understand and filled with religious rhetoric, but, assuming that it's not fabricated as some people claim (I'm sure links will pop up on that theory soon), it clearly implicates Bin Laden… However, the extent is not so clear.
My reading of the transcript suggests that he provided input (on how to destroy a building from his construction experience) and some planning, as well as financial support, but that ultimately, he did not know most of the details of the attacks (since perhaps only Atta actually knew that for security reasons). The transcript gives a fascinating insight into the way the group structured itself and used this highly decentralized to act effectively.
I'll be very interested to see how this tape is handled over the next few weeks, and how legitimate it turns out to be…
Oh, and I went to check my daily does of Wired, and look at the funny error I got (I must have hit it right at the exact moment they were updating something):
Today in History
Today is the 349th anniversary of the “discovery” of New Zealand by the Dutch. A number of Captain Tasman's crew were killed by Maori warriors (who assumed the trumpet signals from the Dutch were calls to battle) when they attempted to land.
It's also the 64th anniversary of the fall of Nanking, and the 7th anniversary of the European Parliament voting nearly unanimously to tell the US to give clemency to Leonard Peltier.
