AdamH

Though not themed as such, the Manx is a very british-feeling bar. Best scotch selection this side of the Rideau and great food and beer. Brixton's on Sparks is ok too. If she missed the London Underground logo it's all over that place.

Tomorrow is your day!

I see a show coming up in Ottawa in april and I am all over it. I love this music.

I just came back from a 10-day work trip to Rwanda where I met with NGOs and development workers. One interesting area i learned about was how the Rwandan government is processing war criminals from the 1994 Genocide. I thought you'd find it interesting that processing war crimes in Rwanda has moved away from a Westernized judge and jury trial in favour of Gacaca (pronounced Gachacha). Gacaca is the traditional community method of exacting justice. Basically all of the community members witness the criminal recounting his crimes..so in this case he/she is being asked the names of the family members he killed and how. The community then serves discipline of some kind (community service in alot of cases) and works on reconciliation. It was a necessity in Rwanda because over 100,000 Hutus were in jail awaiting trial, and that would've taken decades to process. The reconciliation part is important not only for stability but also because, as 99% of the world's anthropologists have pointed out, Hutus and Tutsis are the exact same people. There are no genetic, cultural or religious differences at all. I went to the Genocide memorial and read some of the background to how these groups came to be....one theory suggested that belgian missionaries classified "any man with 10 cows or greater" as Tutsi and anyone else as Hutu. Experts in the field would ask why, during the genocide, Hutu militiamen needed to see Tutsi identity cards to know they were Tutsi? The 1994 genocide was the only case of pronounced, public genocide where racially equally people killed their own under seemingly false pretenses. Thanks Missionaries...great success! Here's some Wikipedia about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacaca_court

Next theme: Songs that the musicians mention themselves 1. Devo - We Are Devo 2. Ween - What Deaner Was Talking About 3. Steely Dan - Show Biz Kids 4. Drive-By Truckers - Road Cases 5. Public Enemy - Public Enemy #1 6. Prince - My Name Is Prince 7. Kid Rock - My Name is Rock 8. Phish - Mike's Song 9. Ween - I Saw Gener Cryin' in his Sleep 10. The Clash - Clash City Rockers 11. Snoop Dogg - What's My Name? 12. KMFDM - KMFDM Sucks

Did you know they're made in Poland? Did you know they have more calories and fat than a chocolate bar? They're good, I'm just pointing out two interesting dimensions of Sesame Snaps.

My top concert remains Remember Shakti in Chennai...and it would've been amazing anywhere but seeing them in India was mindblowing. More pics please, and if you get as far as Goa keep going south because all of the white people there will eventually get on your nerves.

Cafe Olympico's Latte is the only Latte I've ever liked. They must use whole milk or something really creamy in it. Their espresso is all class.

6000 is such small potatoes for a charity of this size that it wasn't worth it to make a stink about the donor.

PR Nightmare for The breast cancer society. Possible porn career For Trina Ricketts? Feature film entitled "I would do anything...even that Ricketts girl"?

Is there a paging system in the U of G library? You should just page "Jennifer" and see what quality the turnout is.

You will make the corn tortillas, heat up the oil in your deep fryer, then use tongs to hold the tortilla halfway in the oil until crispy. you will remove the half-fried item, switch sides and hold the unfried half on an angle, in the oil until crispy. It's real easy!

Indeed. It's all organic vegetarian but more importantly their sandwiches and (as above) falafel are outstanding

[2/26] Tomorrow is Tuesday, a.k.a Falafel Day. So hit up Bread and Sons at lunchtime Do yourselves a favour. If you, like me, scorn all of the shwarma places for offering what they like to call "falafel" which is in fact some kind of fried bull shit made at 9am, with congeraled shit on it and so on.... Go to Bread & Sons. They are doing real falafel sandwiches every Tuesday. They make the pita bread. They make the falafel mix from scratch. And the sandwich comes with lots of little nugget sized balls instead of two dry and mealy footballs. They are thinking about offering it every day but for now only on Tuesday's. After such an exceptional falafel sandwich I am floating on a cloud of happiness.

Wow AD, how do you really feel! It was neither good nor bad. It was what it was.

Prince playing Foo Fighters, that's a new one. It was a good little halftime show.

Funny and true story. My former boss was stripped of her management role but instead given an executive-type role (read: not accountable for others). This was a source of frustration and borderline anger at her incompetence for the last year. As you would expect there were emails and sussing between staff here by email about her. On Monday she sent a meeting request to me, which I forwarded to a colleague with suitable callous remarks about her ability. My colleague hit reply and wrote more callous things but when you reply to a forwarded meeting request your message goes to the Organizer. Truly a "shit has hit the fan" moment. But in a way it's a good thing as we can now get it out in the open and start dealing with it. So to answer the QOTD I evidently deal with people that piss me off by accidentally and inadvertently letting them know that they piss me off..in the worst way possible.

I'd like to think that what we're not seeing PETA do is probably the "meat" of their work, the stuff that is good and not simply shocking. I think the shock and awe tactics are just branding exercises to make sure you remember who they are, so that 1/1000th of the people who see it quietly give money to the organization to fund the staff and resources needed to send letters of intent to fast food chains and hog farms. I don't know that any of this is true but as I said I would like to believe it is. It helps me swallow a naked lady reading from cue cards followed by recycled animal cruelty videos. While not defending the animal production sector I think it's fair to say that not many consumers are willing to pay a real price for their pork chop or their bag of dog food. We would have to pay that price to ensure proper safety measures for slaughterhouse employees, hygenic facilities, humane rearing and slaughtering etc...All this hippy crap about going organic is great but the scale needed to change over the entire country, hell the entire city of Ottawa, is monumental and we are generally self-centred and unwilling to pay an extra 50 cents a pound for this "sleep well at night" meat.

It's true you gotta give the mom's a break on that one. What I fuckin' hate is opinion. Blogs, youtube, myspace the internet as a whole has given us all free reign to share our unsubstantiated and listless e-drool all over the place. My conclusion from that is that most of humanity is boring as fuck or all received "He/She is smart but doesn't apply himself" on their report cards. But hey that's just my opinion

Good reminder to add this movie to my zip.ca list. David Lindley is so super cool.

You will enjoy. Swede rock that has a bit of resemblance to the Soundtrack of our Lives but more melodic and interesting. A friend introduced me to them. I want to start a band that sounds like this. http://www.peterbjornandjohn.com/ Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/peterbjornandjohn

I don't have a setlist at the moment but will add it when I can find it. I'll keep this brief for the sake of those who weren't there. The Ups: 1. Ice Cube. Don't understimate him like we did. He was rock solid and goddamn if he isn't better now than he was even in his prime. His set was a mix of old and older/NWA tunes. 2. Civic Centre: It has it's own set of problems but for a large concert venue it's decent. The Downs: 1. Security - predictably it was going to be tight but this meant that it took a long long time to get in, and it was colder than a witches tit outside. There were dogs spotted, there were extensive pat downs and there were police detail posted at some of the gates. Judging by the amount of dope smoke most didn't have a problem getting in with whatever they got in with. 2. Snoop: I don't know, he was good in his own way but maybe it was the pyjama get up that led to him giving a sort of innocuous set of music. The 10-minute Uncle Junebug bit would've been good for 2 minutes. Overall: Worth every penny of the $60 ticket. I'd have given $50 of it to ice cube and the rest to Snoop.

If you use a rice cooker you have a million and one options to replace the water with another liquid or add chopped veggies or whatnot. If you do stovetop you can still do the same but you'll have to keep an eye on the cooking time whereas the rice cooker just magically knows when everything is ready. I have broken up chunks of dried mushrooms (adding a bit more waer than what's called for for the rice). A bit of sasame oil in the water is also good with more sesame seeds on top afterwards. I don't make the plain ol' white rice very often as Jasmine and Basmati have their own flavour and don't need to be adulterated. Plain SUshi rice (i.e. sticky rice with the rice vinegar/sugar/salt flavouring after cooking) is really good warm and on it's own as a side.

I don't have a picture but for my friend's Mexican Birthday party Saturday I made squash and corn enchiladas with tomatillo sauce (An Epicurious recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/5604 They were delicious and even better for breakfast the next day. I didn't make the tomatillo sauce but used a canned "salsa verde" that was basically the same thing.