leopold's refuses to die, terrorists using the internet like everybody else (uh oh)

A few more posts for today. First time Sacramento has NOT been overcast this week, but I certainly appreciated a little bit of blue sky. Fall is sort of vaguely occuring in New Orleans but has arrived in full force in Northern California: the first time I've walked through a pile of dried up crunchy leaves thus far this year. I am eminently thankful that I am NOT in Great Barrington where it is currently 23 degrees out with a high chance of snow. So very thankful.

Ate at Zen Sushi downtown tonight: pretty good. I especially liked the grilled smelts. Little smelly fish are something I can always get behind. Back to NOLA tomorrow for less then two weeks to knock out finals, then I'm back in Sacramento for a month for the holidays.

Some more updates on Mumbai...

Terrorists Turn Technology into weapon of war in Mumbai - The Courier-Mail, Australia

"However amid the arsenal of military hardware, it was the use of humble mobile phones and internet technology that proved a key weapon – one which caught the anti-terrorist forces by surprise.

The use of BlackBerrys by the terrorists to monitor international reaction to the atrocities, and to check on the police response via the internet, provided further evidence of the highly organised and sophisticated nature of the attacks.

The gunmen were able to trawl the internet for information after cable television feeds to the two luxury hotels and office block were cut by the authorities.

The men looked beyond the instant updates of the Indian media to find worldwide reaction to the events in Mumbai, and to keep abreast of the movements of the soldiers sent to stop them."


Another game-changing development. Terrorists are no longer content with delayed reaction to their violent and splashy actions: they want to know right now how people are responding. This behavior is in no way different from the behavior everyone else displays when they post a photo on Facebook or put up a blog post: we want a reaction now and furthermore, bigger is always better.

The fact that the terrorists used their Blackberries and the internet to monitor military and police actions is disquieting but, I believe, inevitable. The genie has been let out of the box in regards to monitoring what private individuals report on. Reporters and the private media can be controlled and monitored, but private individuals cannot be.

We hear a lot of positive things about total freedom of the press, but we rarely hear about the bad things. This is, unfortunately, an absolute case in point. An awkward question is (as I've previously mentioned) presented: if citizen reporting is dangerous, how do we control it? Should we control it? What could it mean if governments and other entities decide to begin to control it?




Looking at Twitter as A News Source - InformationWeek


"The issue with Twitter as a news source is that it's not organized to handle news reporting. Frankly it's a complete mess. Twitter users are tagging way too many messages which only adds to the noise. This noise makes allowing potential "real news" to get through nearly impossible. To see this in action, check out the Mumbai search on Twitter. The majority of posts are commentary and reposts of mainstream news (i.e. CNN said...).

If Twitter wants to be taken as a serious news source, they need to work on how the information is shared. Although Twitter should probably first focus on how they plan to generate revenue to maintain a going concern. Perhaps there's an opportunity for a new quick messaging tool that's for serious news only. There's definitely room in the market and if the tool can stay away from general commentary and personal messaging, it could redefine how news is reported into the major news outlets. Naturally the tool should support multiple media types (e.g. text, audio, video). If the information submitted to this new news reporting tool can be verified and noted as such, that could make the tool even more powerful."

I definitely see the logic here. As it stands, combing through Twitter posts is a giant pain in the ass, (though I liked one bloggers tactic of randomly searching to arrive at some form of consensus.) I also think the idea of a Twitter-like service primarily for "real" news is a good one, although I am also certain random douchewaffles would decide to use it report on alien moon-landings and the return of the Great Lord Xenu. But hopefully less then one might anticipate. Social media is definitely in its absolute infancy: we're going to have to sort out the kinks.

For the love of Leopold's Cafe - The Economic Times

"The establishment refuses to be cowed down by the dastardly attack and has decided that it will reopen its doors to the public tomorrow. And this despite the fact that a grenade hurled towards the bar has left a hole in the stone floor. The three stone pillars, partly responsible for shielding a number of visitors from the bullets, have also been peppered with shots.

Dehmiri though brushes aside the extent of damage and the money that repair work will cost and tells us that within the next couple of days a carpenter will begin to fix the place. As for security, he said he would continue with his current arrangement — a lone guard at the door.

Dehmiri and his staff are not alone in their determination to put Leo’s back on its feet. A global effort of sorts has been mounted via the internet to show solidarity with a cafe of which people of many nationalities have fond memories. The Twitter community has called for a vigil at 4 pm on Sunday outside Leopold’s Cafe in remembrance of those killed in the terror attacks across the city."

To use a cliche, bloodied but unbowed. All the Indians I've spoken to have said that Mumbai's greatest strength is its resiliency, its ability to pick itself up, dust itself off, and keep on moving onwards into the future. Leopold's Cafe is proving itself entirely representative. God bless em'. I hope to have some tandoori chicken and a snort of whiskey there very soon.

more from the maximum city: social media comes of age

Mumbai Attack Coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media - ZDNet.com

"Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.

Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”

He’s right. On one hand, social media shows the wisdom of crowds while at the same time demonstrates the reactionary failures of the crowd."

Social media is ready for prime time. This is it: the game is on, we have arrived. Get on the bus now. We're going to be handling, processing, and watching horrific events like the Mumbai attacks in very different ways from here on out. This is not just for geeks and weirdos and the highly educated: this is for everyone.







'Terrorists had plan to blow up Taj' - The Times of India

"NEW DELHI: Times Now reports suggest that terrorist who was caught alive had confessed to investigating agencies that they had a plan to blow up
the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai.

The terrorists had enough explosives to blow up the Taj hotel.

Sources have told the TV channel that they wanted to reduce the life-size building of Taj hotel to rubble. They also believed to have told about their plan to replicate a ‘JW Marriot’, happened at Islamabad, to the Mumbai hotel.

In a sense to destroy the symbol of financial strength of the country and send shock-waves all across the globe, the terrorists wanted to do a 9/11 in India. "

Symbolism is everything in these overt terror attacks. Again, I can't help drawing the 9/11 connection: that too was a primarily symbolic attack, intended to hit the USA right where it lived. Of course, I doubt the terrorists motivation in this situation was to cut India "down to size" somehow - we just don't know yet. I'm damn well waiting.

AFP: Terror, Disbelief, Shock: Witnesses tell of Mumbai horror

"South African security guard Faisul Nagel was having dinner with colleagues at a Taj restaurant when the assault began. They barricaded the restaurant and moved everyone into the kitchen.

"We basically put the lights off in the restaurant just to create an element of surprise. And we armed ourselves with kitchen knives and meat cleavers," he told AFP by phone.

They ended up helping around 120 people escape -- including a 90-year-old woman who had to be carried in her chair down 25 flights of stairs.

When guests finally escaped, they could hardly believe their eyes.

"Outside in the foyer of this beautiful hotel, (it) was just like in a fog with all the smoke," retired judge Paul Guest told Australian radio. "There was blood all over the floor and bits of bodies."



Taxi Meant To Blow Up Domestic Airport - India Today

"Shortly before the terrorists moved into their targets in South Mumbai, a black and yellow taxi, with three passengers and enough ammunition to bring down a dome, sped in the direction of the airport. Instead of taking a slip road that would have taken the passengers straight to the airport, the driver took the flyover which bypassed the airport, only to get stuck at a red light.

At rush hour, the lights stayed red for long, at which the passengers berated the driver and asked him to cut the traffic lights. The driver moved on, but the wait turned out to be a minute or two too long. The car exploded. All that was found was a severed head and parts of three human legs. Had the terrorists' plans of coinciding a blast at the airport with the attacks on the Taj and Oberoi hotels succeeded, the death toll of 26/11 would have been much bigger than it already is. "

It's always horrifying to tease out the threads of a disaster like this one and determine where things could have gone much much worse. I do think this is one case where Mumbai's horrible nightmare clusterfuck traffic came in VERY VERY HANDY.

Mumbai Attack Coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media - ZDNet.com

"Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.

Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”

He’s right. On one hand, social media shows the wisdom of crowds while at the same time demonstrates the reactionary failures of the crowd."

Social media is ready for prime time. This is it: the game is on, we have arrived. Get on the bus now. We're going to be handling, processing, and watching horrific events like the Mumbai attacks in very different ways from here on out. This is not just for geeks and weirdos and the highly educated: this is for everyone.

mumbai blogging and tweeting redux

“I don’t care if this post does not make sense” – India’s Blogosphere Comes of Age – Financial Times

“The ensuing sense of anger was also captured. A blogger writes, “We cannot tolerate these fanatics arriving in a boat on the Mumbai coast armed with explosives and guns. We cannot tolerate the fact that they got into high security stations and so called well protected hotels with guns and bombs and held people hostages. We cannot tolerate the fact that they killed people to just prove that they were capable of doing so. I refuse to be resilient. I refuse to be tolerant. I want answers and I want them now. I want to know why the intelligence did not spot this. I want to know why the coast guard did not spot this. How can we let these uncivilised people hold the city at siege? I don’t care if this post does not make sense”.”

I am interested to see how India handles this massive, symbolic insult. It's a rickety metaphor but perhaps an apt one: 9/11 provoked the same passionate, vengeful emotions in Americans. I have absolutely no idea how India will handle their own watershed situation. I sense it's gonna be handled with more decisive actions then shown in India's past. These situations do make you understand WHY some people are perfectly okay with slapping around terrorists for information. Does that make it okay? No, but....


Twitter Turns Serious Amid India Terror – Financial Times

“Users have requested news when local coverage has been blacked out, and posted breaking updates from Indian channels ahead of Western networks. One man based in Australia used Twitter to request information on his missing family: “Hearing that more and more floors at Oberoi have been cleared but still no word on my cousin (Italian national woman with infant).” Six hours later, and after several desperate –messages, he wrote: “Just saw them coming out of the hotel. Live pictures of them safe and well. Overwhelmed.”

But as the attacks have gone on, the stream of messages has become more and more cluttered with conspiracy stories, arguments, spam messages and confusing posts, thrown in with tweets from media outlets and observers.”

Again, the wheat-from-chaff issue is brought up, although I believe the upcoming generation is savvy enough to figure out what is total bullshit and what is accurate. It's not like the major media outlets are startlingly accurate themselves.

One question: which route guarantees the most accuracy? The oversight of a trained editor or combining many sources of data to arrive at a general truth? I can't decide.

Twittering and Blogging About Terror – Times of India

"Blogger Harish Iyer, who started ‘Terror in Bombay’ soon after the attacks, has been posting everything from consulate numbers to lists of hostages. ‘‘Anything to do my bit,’’ says the 29-year-old, who is also fielding calls and emails from people desperate to find their loved ones.

Blogger Amit Varma, whose blog is called India Uncut, was in a thoughtful mood. “Earlier today, I was working on my novel. Now I wonder what’s the point. The book will come out in April, and Bombay will be a different city then. This book was written in a Bombay before these attacks; it will come out in a Bombay after these attacks, and it somehow feels, as I sit here in the business center of a boutique hotel a stone’s throw from the mayhem, that it will be inadequate. It is a love story and isn’t that perverse?”

We can only hope Mumbai will come out of this with its crazy-ass spirit intact. Slumdog Millionaire is earning a lot of attention and praise right now: hopefully the movie will draw international attention to how wonderful Mumbai is. Mumbai is aching for good publicity right now. I haven't seen it yet but I damn well will soon.


Twitter’s Moment – Forbes


"The question now is how to manage--if it is manageable at all--the information that comes to the forefront when anyone with a cellphone or a cheap laptop can blast information around the globe with a few keystrokes.

There are some reports that Indian authorities asked those in Mumbai to stop Twittering about the event in order to keep the activities of police quiet.

If true, that's a breakthrough. It's the sort of challenge journalists covering combat have long grappled with: What information should you share? Who decides what you can write? To what end?"

Good questions. We as the tech savvy are going to have to answer them to an at least acceptable degree before the older generation sees citizen journalism as "worthy." It also leads to uncomfortable questions about control: do we need control over citizen journalism? If so, who gets to inflict it? Do we really trust people to self regulate?

As an aside, general consensus seems to be that the terrorists were NOT using Twitter to monitor police or military activities. But we don't know anything for sure yet, do we?

That's all for now. I think I'll start posting some of my backlogged reviews of Mumbai restaurants in the next few days. I want to be reminded of the wonderful things about the city.

more about mumbai

Good morning. We had a lovely Thanksgiving as always - pictures are forthcoming. I really wonder why we don't eat oyster dressing and roast turkey more often. Well, I suppose there might be a volume issue..

But back to the situation in Mumbai.

Blood Washes Away Happy Feet on Colaba Causeway

"The horrific events that transpired on Wednesday night have shopkeepers around Colaba Causeway convinced that they have a very rough period ahead since the location of the shootings was one that was heavily frequented by tourists.

“They’ll be scared to come back now. There are people, even locals who come here every day. But foreigners certainly won’t return,” said Sitesh Awasthi, a shopkeeper whose stall lies just metres from Café Leopold. "


That's important. These guys absolutely rely on business from foreign tourists of all stripes and they are going to get hit hard by this. I never liked running the gauntlet of pushy shopkeepers and merchants every day in Colaba, but they were just normal people trying to make a living - they don't deserve any of this. Terrorism, as always, manages to hurt the average Joe on the street a lot more then the intended targets.


Eyewitness Account: Chaos at the Leopold Cafe

More from Joey Jeetun: From Playing A Terrorist To Hiding From One - Mail Online

Seems like everyone who was at Leopold that night is being tracked down and interviewed. Not a bad idea. I do wish the English news media was locating more personal accounts from Mumbai residents - most people DO speak excellent English, after all. The strawberry juice image creeps me out immeasurably.


Desicritics.org: Media, Culture, Politics, Sports and More

Speaking of, tons of excellent personal blogs from Indian citizens right over here. A must-read. Stuff being added all the time.

One sentiment I'm hearing a lot from Indians I know and Indian folks in general is echoed by Jawahara Saidullah's editorial here:

"No matter how bad this is, and not much can be worse, Mumbai is the one city that can withstand this. Even after the simultaneous train station bombings in 2006, people went back to work the next day. Yes, Mumbai is a tough city. Its people are tough and they are resilient.

Today, I can say, with no reservations and no pity, but with admiration and support: I love Mumbai. Today, I too am a Mumbaikar. And today with all Indians, even those of us who live elsewhere, I too can declare: Amchi Mumbai, My Mumbai. Terror will not overwhelm us."

more on the mumbai attacks

One of my pictures from Mumbai this April at Chowpatty Beach.

More personal accounts of the attacks from the Wall Street Journal:

Cafe Leopold - "Between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m. Wednesday night, two gunmen who appeared to be in their mid 20s pull out machine guns and opened fire on the restaurant full of evening dinners. The crowd scattered but more than 10 people were shot, he said. "It is still just like it was left," Mr. Jehani said later. "There is blood all over and not one table is standing. They are all upside down."

The gunmen moved on after shooting and the injured were stuffed into private cars and Mumbai's trademark tiny yellow and black taxis. The police didn't show up for 20 minutes. "We used whatever vehicle was available," Mr. Jehani said." - Eric Bellman

Taj Hotel: "It's familiar, it's iconic and even if it represents nothing more than a beautiful old building to see it ablaze like that is just shocking," Mr. (Peter) Keep said.

Thursday morning he watched as they started bringing bodies out of the hotel. "The authorities have been bringing out a load of bodies. About one dozen ambulances have come and they have been reversing them into the entrance," he said." - Eric Bellman

WITNESS: Walking the Streets on Mumbai's Night of Fear - Reuters

Good eyewitness article...

"There were very young - almost like boys." - Times of India

"A short walk away, at Leopold Café, a destination made popular for foreign backpackers by Gregory David Roberts’s best-selling novel Shantaram, the walls were left pocked with bullet marks and the floors streaked with blood. The wreckage of a red scooter, the remains of shop awnings and broken glass were strewn across the street.

“They shot indiscriminately,” Paul Stanley, an Australian tourist, said of the men who opened fire at the bar.

Sourav Mishra, a journalist who had been at Leopold, did not seem to know what had happened, such was the swiftness of the strike. Sharing a bed with three other people in hospital, he said: “I heard some gunshots . . . I was with my friends. Something hit me. I ran away and fell on the road. Then somebody picked me up.”

Cafe Leopold: News and Memories

I suppose I'm fixating on this backpackers haunt because 1. I've hung out there and 2. it's very representative of backpackers haunt all over the world, from California to Beijing to Bombay. It's the kind of place where weirdos, degenerates, and the merely frightened hang out, and the fact that it was selected specifically as a target gives me and I imagine many other lily-white foreign tourists a bit of pause. I'm not pretending Leopold is noble or anything, but it is symbolic.


From the BBC live feed of events:

1500 Farzed Jehani, who owns the popular backpacker haunt, the Leopold Café, told the BBC how it was stormed by gunmen. "Two people from the outside... started firing into the premises," he says. "For a minute it was like firecrackers, but they realised very soon that it wasn't - it was bullets flying. A grenade was thrown into the restaurant which, yes, blew [up]... Two of my waiters died. There was around five or six tourist bodies lying on the floor, as well as five or six Indian people who were lying on the floor, dead."

Unimaginable. I know exactly how that place looked on a regular Wednesday night and can't place crazed gunmen in the picture.

Cafe Leopold's: Where it All Began - India Today

"One of the places where Shantaram was distributed and sold on its release was at Leo's in 2005. From unsavoury elements, both Indian and foreign, to young students looking for a good time to regulars that have haunted the place for nearly half a decade you could find all kinds of people enjoying the onion stew on any day of the week at Leo's.

It's a pity that Robert's favourite haunt became the location for the first attack by the terrorist. The casual and friendly atmosphere of the cafe will be a thing of the past for a while, and with foreign embassies being what they are with their warning to their citizens, travelers from across the seas will take some time before they start flocking to their favourite haunt again!"

Shadowy Cafe Frequented by Westerners a Natural Target - Sydney Morning Herald


"Leopold's has long been a tourist destination because of its authenticity. For years its reputation and its art deco signage have lured travellers into the bustling, slightly tattered interior. Travellers have described visiting it as an "event". Like the Coliseum Cafe in Kuala Lumpur or Fishawy in Cairo, its down-at-heel charms have made it an international landmark."

"Authentic" is stretching it (shadowy is not) but the joint was certainly a Colaba fixture. (I hope it is not a "was".)

Also this:

"Leopold's was also the setting for much of the action in Shantaram, the novel by the Australian author Gregory David Roberts, and based loosely on his years on the run in India after fleeing Australia following his conviction on drug and armed robbery charges.

The Leopold's in Shantaram resembles a modern-day Rick's Cafe Americain from Casablanca, filled with shadowy types exchanging forged passports or doing drug deals."

Guess I need to read Shantaram now. Everyone seemed to be hauling that monster around Mumbai this April. The book vendors set up shop all along the street Leopold's was on, hawking slightly over-priced counterfeits to all comers. Wish I sprang for it.

David Coker tells how he stared down a Mumbai terrorist - Herald Sun

"As diners at Mumbai's Leopold Cafe were gunned down in front of them, an injured Mr Coker, 23, scooped up Kate Anstee, 24, as she was trying to crawl to safety and carried her to a taxi.

"When they got out of the restaurant he said he had Katie in his arms and he walked out through this debris of broken glass to see a man standing with an AK-47," David's father John Coker said from Townsville.

"He said, 'I'll never forget his face. He looked at me, Dad, and he didn't shoot us."


Finally, a fascinating and non terrorism linked article on Mumbai's Iranian cafe's from the Asia Times.


"Iranian cafes are century-old landmarks in India's financial capital and perhaps Asia's oldest surviving genre of restaurants. Their bun maska (crusty buns split and spread with butter), kari (fluffy) biscuits, custard pies, puddings and paani kum chai (thick milky tea) are as much part of cosmopolitan Mumbai as cheesecakes in New York or croissants on the sidewalk cafes in Paris. "

"Some remaining Iranian cafes, such as Cafe Mundegar and the more internationally famous Leopold Cafe in Colaba, transformed themselves into airy pubs that are now favorite watering holes for Western tourists in Mumbai. As with classic Iranian cafe tradition, the restaurants occupy the corner of a building and have two entrances: one never bumps into an entering or exiting customer."

twitter and mumbai, round two

Gorgeous photo from the Guardian.UK. The crows are a constant presence in Mumbai.

The most interesting aspect of these attacks has been the usage of social media. We saw a little bit of it during Gustav and Galveston, but these Mumbai attacks have taken matters to an entirely different level. The Indian government may be imploring people to stop Tweeting, but there's no way to stop the tide. Blogging has truly arrived: the way we used to blog is gonna seem slow. The internet is now more inclusive then ever before, according to this article: Web A-Twitter with Terror Attacks - Livemint.com

"Dina Mehta, who twittered and blogged about the attacks from her Mumbai home, said this sort of social media reportage had been used during the 2004 tsunami, and again during Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav. But technology has advanced to include programmes such as Twitter that allow far more people, especially less tech-saavy people, to participate: “You have a space where anyone can actually contribute to it,” she says."

But we do need to recognize the danger of disseminating rumors:

"The freedom of the Web, though, can also lead to rapid-fire rumours. At one point, Twitter users thought the terrorists were finding out about army movements from the website, and Mishra said he had to delete a series of Hindu fundamental propaganda posts from his site. However, he says the propaganda and misinformation is a small percentage of the postings and other users are quick to point out the mistakes.
Mehta agrees, “It’s a self-regulating kind of space.”


I agree. A lot of critics of new media claim that "anyone can post anything", rendering all info on the internet as unvetted and thereby useless. Bullshit. The beauty of the internet is that the collective knowledge of pretty much everyone is entering the picture. The way I (and I imagine many other people) use the internet is as a clearing house: we read everything and triangulate the truth. I'm just overjoyed we have the oppurtunity to do that rather then relying on some over-Botoxed newscaster to tell us the truth.

Not to mention, as others have pointed out, we can now follow this story in super detailed depth, rather then relying on CNN and American media outlets to tell it to us. Newsflash: they don't give a rats ass. They are much more concerned with the Macy's day parade and giving out turkeys to the poor. We care and now we can find out for ourselves.

TWITTER AND SOCIAL JOURNALISM PLAY HUGE ROLE IN MUMBAI ATTACKS

Okay, one more.

One fascinating aspect of this Mumbai debacle is how citizens have really picked up the slack journalism wise. People are using Twitter, Flickr, and blogs as we speak to post real time updates about the situation way before major media outlets can get there. We are looking at a curious and fascinating future, folks: you thought the TV news was real time coverage? You ain't seen nothing yet. The filters are breaking down and thank God for that.

Please, please look at this stuff.


TWITTER FEEDS:

Mumbai Twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mumbai

Bombay Twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=bombay

Mumbai Twitter 2: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23mumbai

http://twitter.com/mumbaiattack (one poster’s super poignant tweets)


NEWS ARTICLES:

MAHALO NEWS UPDATES (AWESOME!)
http://www.mahalo.com/Mumbai_Terrorist_Attacks

MUMBAI TERROR DRAMA UNFOLDS ON NET: GREAT ARTICLE!
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080074301


INDIAN GOVERNMENT TRYING TO BLOCK TWITTER?!!?
http://www.inquisitr.com/9863/report-indian-government-trying-to-block-twitter-as-terrorists-may-be-reading-it/


(Might I add this is a horrible strategy? People are using Twitter to communicate with one another and (maybe?) alleviate the panic and uncertainty they are currently feeling.)

MUMBAI ATTACKS CATALOGUED ON TWITTER – The Age Australia.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/mumbai-attacks-live-on-twitter-flickr/2008/11/27/1227491713487.html


MUMBAI ATTACK AFTERMATH DETAILED TWEET BY TWEET
WIRED.COM
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/first-hand-acco.html


BLOGS AND OTHERS:

SUPER WELL DOCUMENTED WIKIPEDIA PAGE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26_November_2008_Mumbai_attacks

GAURAVONOMICS BLOG: REAL TIME CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN MUMBAI ATTACKS
http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/real-time-citizen-journalism-in-mumbai-terrorist-attacks/

great post from Anand Giridharadas

I really enjoyed this snippet from Anand Giridharadas, who writes for the International Herald Tribune. You can read the whole thing and other excellent updates on the Mumbai situation at The Lede blog.

"Anyone, anywhere who has lived in Mumbai was gasping at the sight of a burning Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel. That is because it is not your average hotel.

It is not another Sheraton or Hilton in the business district of another world city. It is the aorta through which anything glamorous, sentimental, confidential or profitable passes in Mumbai. Its major role is to serve its guests, who come from around the world and elsewhere in India. But it also serves the local city in a way that few hotels in the world could claim to do.

If a momentous infidelity is being committed on a given night, or a billion-dollar business deal being inked, or a recklessly brilliant idea being hatched, there is a fair chance it is being committed,
inked, hatched at the Taj. Mumbaikars who can afford it have their most romantic meals at its Wasabi restaurant, accept marriage proposals in its Sea Lounge, land job offers in its coffee shop.
Non-guests are forbidden to use the pool. But so many Mumbaikars enterprisingly bring a towel, furnish a fake room number and dip into its manmade lagoon.

It stands across from the Gateway of India. Those who would not dream of paying $3 – a decent daily wage – for one of its fresh-lime sodas sit outside the hotel, leaning against the stone wall on the sea. They take in the scene; they admire the finely dressed people breezing in and out. They know that it is not their time for the Taj now, but, should a fortune bless them, it is in the Taj they will spend it.

Few other hotels of the world could say they were built out of spite.

Legend has it that J.R.D. Tata, a nineteenth-century industrialist, was once turned away from a hotel in British-era Mumbai because he happened to be Indian. He decided, in a strange kind of revenge, to
build the best hotel in the country, outfitted with German elevators, French bathtubs and other refinements from all around the world.

The hotel became, for many Indians, a symbol of the overthrow of the indignities of the colonial age. And it became a symbol of the best that could be had in a city paved with dreams."

Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai: Goddamit

Terrorist attacks have been getting more and more frequent in India of late, and the violence was ratcheted up to new extremes today. Mumbai, home of Bollywood, businessmen and some truly impressive slums is burning.

We have to put these things in personal terms, of course. I spent a little over a week in Mumbai, staying in a mid-range hotel a few blocks away from the iconic Taj, where terrorists are (as I write this) holed up with their weapons. Located on the water and within spitting distance of the Gateway of India, it's hard to imagine a more breathtaking hotel, its oh-so-Raj era dome towering over Colaba, recognizable from very far away indeed. (The view from the dome is, not suprisingly, spectacular.) My grandparents have stayed there many times and have told me about it: it did not fail to meet my expecations when I finally made it to Bombay.

I used to walk through the Taj five or six times a day to enjoy the powerful air conditioning and the bathrooms, which always featured an eternally smiling lady in a uniform: she would hand you a towel and a breath mint and send you on your way. I dressed pretty elegantly most days and liked to pretend that the attendants and residents of the hotel thought I belonged there: certainly everyone treated me graciously enough. I liked pausing by the display cases in that long marble hallway to look at the photos of celebrities and foreign dignatries who stayed and partied there: pretty much everyone seemed to have filtered through at one point or another. The cafe was one of the few places in Colaba open all night long and I remember me, my friend Aneesa, her sisters, and her cousins wandered in there just a little teeny bit drunk around 3 AM and drank coffee and slightly unnerved the wait staff: all in good fun. It's happy memories.

Which of course take on a new sort of poignancy while I watch the damn thing go up in flames. Not that I expected much from the Indian fire department.

I know, I know, it is a Symbol of Decadence put in rather disturbing juxtaposition with Mumbai's hideous and seething slums. The Taj is populated primarily by the super rich, the just faking it, and many a plump and slightly frightened looking foreign tourist. The terrorists are targeting Americans and Brits: if I were looking for good valuable hostages, it'd be the first place I'd target.

The terrorists also hit the Leopold Cafe, a disreputable but famous bar beloved by foreigners. Far as I could tell, the primary clientele was hairy Eastern Europeans and Brits with serious drug problems, but it always an interesting scene. The food was mediocre and overpriced as hell, but you couldn't beat the prices on cheap, adequately drinkable wine. I used to hang out in there, drink a couple of glasses of wine, and work on my sketchbook while watching the weirdos filter in and out. (I recall overhearing a really quite riveting discussion about how fun it is to do heroin on airplanes.) I am really trying not to think about what I'd have done if someone had decided to amble up with a machine gun. The cafe has been around since 1871 and is still packed solid every night: I hope it's got a future. I'm also thinking of the regular people who used to hang out on the streets around the Taj and around the bit of Colaba I stayed in: the crazy fruit seller, the weird Saudi guy who used to sell me fruity chewing gum and let me use his pay phone, the donkey cart guy and the groups of shuffling Parsi's who owned the corner restaurant. Never knew them or anything but they're part of the neighborhood.

The terrorist attacks happened at a bunch of absolutely iconic places in the city. The attacks on the airport make me sad: the domestic airport out in Santa Cruz is just plain beautiful and brand new, although the constant taxi-stand arm wrestle took a bit of the shine off the facility. I fondly remember my friend Saleem dragging his poor hungover ass out of bed at 7:00 in the morning to drop me off there. Due to Mumbai's nightmare traffic, the drive from Colaba to Santa Cruz always took roughly an hour and a half, but it was never boring: morning markets and rotting apartment buildings and horse carts and sports cars and the mosque on the island and the Cadbury's factory and the list goes on and on. The Nariman Jewish center is also under siege: Israel is (rightly) freaking out. Things are just getting uglier and uglier.

We can't let this sort of ugliness scare us and we can't let it give us permission to live in fear. I just wish it didn't have to happen to a place like Mumbai. I still hope to return next summer and I don't want to let this kind of bullshit intimidate me. Easier said then done.

i live in a more dangerous place then Baghdad!

(from Time.com, please don't sue me, i'm going to get shot anyway!)

I woke up this morning to discover I live in the most dangerous city in the USA. This was of course a bit surprising to me as I have not of late been shanked, but my experience does not reflect everybody else's, especially those everybody-else's living in the projects just a few blocks east of my nice little apartment. Murders are absolutely rampant and getting more overt all the time - the murder rate stands at 63 per 100,000, putting the Big Easy on par with, uh, Baghdad. (Seriously.) The KKK recruited and murdered a young woman, albeit completely ineptly, out in the swamps beyond town. Hell, alligator attacks are on the rise. Times is tough.

Certainly even we spoiled rich-kid foofoo bunny Tulane students have experienced a bit of primal fear around campus - rapes, break-ins, purse snatchings - and have some sense of What We Have Got Into. After all, according to a quote from Tulane's Peter Scharf, "Now, even white people have a chance to get killed." Ruh-roh!

New Orleans is, as I am fond of repeating, a third world city in many respects. It is not the kind of thing we as Americas are really down with admitting about one of our more famous and venerable metropolises, but the reality is hard to deny. Infrastructure is crap, public transportation works on on a curious schedule known only to itself, general maintenance is lousy, the cops (and the politicians) are woefully corrupt, and basic amenities can be difficult to find. Life isn't easy in NOLA and due to Katrina, the following exodus, and general governmental neglect, things aren't getting easier.

Of course, we also enjoy many of the benefits and pleasures of a third world city, such as delicious exotic food, a vibrant and gleefully immoral culture and social scene, a rather dizzying amount of freedom applied in certain exciting areas, and a fatalist and gorgeous sense of "we are all totally and completely fucked so we might as well have fun." See, there always IS a pony in the pile of shit.

I believe this delightful, fatalist attitude explains the city's laid back approach to huge quantities of butter, mysterious alcohols, and staying out all night and not getting any rest. These are things people in my decidedly first world home of Northern California are not supposed to do and feel guilty about doing when they do give in, whereas in NOLA, that is of course Tuesday Night. This also explains the booming tourism trade.

Of course, where there are stupid drunkass tourists, there is crime, and also where there are stupid drunkass law students, there is crime, but the city really cannot afford to eliminate stupid tourists and law students because they are (overall) good for the city. The city needs tourists and students and nice normal people who do not spend their weekends packing heat - at least if it has any hope whatsoever of surviving and garnering the sympathy of the country at large, which seems to be concluding that NOLA is pretty much hopeless.

Protecting stupid but wealthy drunk people can only be achieved by actually preventing crime, which is a hell of a lot easier said then done for the NOPD, which (far as my ignnarant self can tell) is also not doing a Heck Of A Job. As it stands, all of us NOLA residents live in a crime-ridden USA murder capitol that also happens to be pleasant, exciting, and a lot of fun. It's sort of a bitch.

I of course have no solutions whatsoever, being a 20 year old dork and not a crimologist or Ray Nagin (eww). I only know that I will proceed what I do currently, which is adhere to a basic minimum of street smarts, avoid getting toasted and stumbling around back alleys in hot pants with my wallet hanging out my butt, and trying not to let fear rule my life.

I have to say, though: I just wrote an article in the Hullabaloo imploring Tulane kids to get out of the campus bubble and explore the city. I am beginning to wonder if that is entirely responsible advice.

juan's flying burrito: go funny menu! go tex-mex!

Juan's Flying Burrito
2018 magazine street
new orleans, louisiana 70130




Good lord, just read the restaurant's name. How could I not love this place?

Thankfully, Juan's ain't exactly hard to love. It's a casual and expensive taqueria on Magazine Street, turning out solid and interesting Tex-Mex eats to an eager and hungover NOLA public. May it last forever.

Since I was hanging with my veggie bandit friend, we stuck to the non-meat side of things, though I want to come back to try the spicy shrimp fajitas ASAP. What DID we order?



I am a sucker for fajitas in any format, so I went for the Wicked Garden fajitas ($9.95), an impressively large plate of broccoli, spinach, squash, red pepper and onion, combined with addictively pungent roasted garlic. It even came with guacamole and spicy sauce. I easily managed to hork the whole thing down and would have been happy with more. Veggie fajitas can at times be sad affairs but Juan's has dodged the bullet here.

Aforementioned veggie bandit went with the Veggie Punk burrito (6.50), containing potatoes, jalepenos, beans, rice, salsa, lettuce, and cheese and sour cream if you want em'. This was also huge and proclaimed to be tasty indeed: she was able to save some to take home.

Note: Juan's has silly names for dishes. I love silly names for dishes. Restaurants, take note!

I'll definitely be returning in the near future to try some of the dead animal selections. I am most pleased to find tasty Mexican food near me: sometimes the South can seem like a real Mexican food wasteland to a Californian like myself. Whew.

Cafe Rani: Non-Bacon Based Food in NOLA?!

Cafe Rani
(504) 895-2500 ·
2917 MAGAZINE ST ·
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70115




This pleasant little cafe on Magazine has some great vegetarian and light options in a city that is extremely dependent on lard. For that alone, it's gonna see some repeat business from me. Shall we elaborate? (Oh yes!)

The menu relies on slightly foofoo salads, sandwiches, quesadillas, and pastas, with a few interesting appetizers thrown in - I want to try the stuffed artichoke ($7.95) like wow. Prices are wonderfully, magically low - music to the ears of this poverty-ridden college student.



I decided to opt for the Grilled Salmon Salad, primarily because I have never met a slab of pink fish meat that I didn't like. (Not that I am often formally introduced to dead fish.) I was able to substitute sun dried tomatoes for walnuts, and yes, I know I am trapped in an 80's time warp, whatever. The salad was very large indeed and came with delicious, quickly boiled haricorts verts on top - yummy. The salmon filet was less huge then the rest of the salad, but cooked to my specifications and quite tasty. For $8.95, it's a total deal, and it also took me more then five minutes to eat. If you know me, that's impressive. (I come from the inhalation school of eating. I am a delicate fleur.)



My buddy Amanda is a vegetarian, which is not exactly easy to deal with this in this town, where bacon is considered a viable condiment. She was happy to find the Mediterranean Sandwich, containing roasted red pepper, spinach, cucumber, tomato, pesto sauce, avocado, sprouts, red onion, cheese and god knows what else on a nice hunk of ciabatta, complete with a side salad. For $6.95, it was one big ol' sandwich, and she was able to take half home for lunch tomorrow. Definite thumbs up.

Rani boasts a whole bunch of house-made salad dressings, all of which looked tasty: I liked the honey-lemon vinaigrette very much indeed. I'll definitely try out the Pepper-Jelly vinaigrette next time for comparison purposes. Rani also has a full espresso and coffee bar, which could be a nice option if one is inclined to linger over dinner.

The dining area is homey and rather upscale inside, and pleasant and open outside: I liked the large and illuminated tree in the center of the courtyard. We've had pleasant and warm weather here in NOLA of late, and it was a real treat to eat a tasty, healthy meal outside in some nice weather. Rani isn't cutting edge cuisine, but it does scratch the healthy Wednesday-night supper itch I am prone to, and that is a good thing.

thanksgiving does not actually suck

Climatic Thanksgiving Conversion



I used to hate Thanksgiving.

As a little kid, Thanksgiving was the lamest of the lame holidays, containing exactly diddly squat to entertain me. Instead of being plied with candy or presents, I was instead forced to wear non-disgusting clothes and have table manners, neither of which I looked forward to. The food was also totally extraneous: I didn't care for turkey, pie left me cold, and I could not yet appreciate oyster dressing. People in my house insisted on watching football at ear-splitting volumes, and I never even saw the Snoopy Thanksgiving Special. The weather was usually chilly and damp in the locations I lived in, and honestly, if anyone had been partaking in wholesome touch football games, I sure as hell wouldn't have participated unless forced at gunpoint. Finally, no one was letting me get into the nice champagne. Thanksgiving sucked.

Thanksgiving became even more of an elaborate torture during my asshole teenager years, wherein the presence of family and being civil was about as bad as being attacked by bees. Incapable of cooking and uninterested in any of that togetherness bullshit, I would usually try to retreat to my room to talk to my awesome internet friends for the duration of the day, emerging for brief periods to eat a bite or two of turkey and snarl at anyone who made eye contact. I was a charmer.

(I was allowed to drink wine. It didn't help much.)

As these things generally go, I began to come around by the time I hit 17, the age when the evil begins to seep out of most kids systems. I began to vaguely appreciate the food, the cooking, and even the hint of family togetherness like-crap although I would of course not have admitted it on pain of painful death.

This veiled ambivalence continued up until last year. I had had a really quite awful semester up on the side of a Frozen Hill in rural Massachusetts, and found myself looking forward to 1. being home, 2. eating real food and 3. not being soul destroyingly cold more then I ever had before. For the first time, I really DID appreciate Thanksgiving, down to the yearly battle over proper turkey basting techniques to acquiring some goddamn-decent oysters to getting gently sloshed on champers to watching football games I never can understand on TV - hell, I liked it ALL. I ate my weight in cranberry sauce and dark meat and even went back for dinner. I had finally been converted.

I can't wait for this year. I'm already scoping out funky new cranberry sauce recipes and anticipating huge quantities of bubbly, delicious, champagne - ahem, sparkling wine. Let us not even speak of the beauty and majesty of oyster dressing. (Oh yes, lets!)

A brief list of Awesome Things About Thanksgiving:

- Picking all the oysters out of the oyster dressing when no one is looking. Being smug about realizing you are pretty much beyond the law, unless someone decides to set up some sort of oyster-dressing security system which would just be overkill anyway.

- Creating a magnificent pie sampler of all given pie varieties without being required to actually commit to a single one.

- Eating my weight in cranberry sauce and using it on absolutely everything for months after the big day. (The real stuff. The canned stuff is a crime against humanity. )

- Leftovers in the evening when everybody else is generally uninterested in food, wherein I have a personal Leftovers Smorgasboard wherein I can REALLY cover everything in cranberry sauce.

- Eating all the creepy ummentionable turkey parts in the kitchen where no one can see me. And I do mean creepy. Well, turkey wings aren't creepy but they are incredibly delicious.

terrifying kid food

SCARY FOOD OF MY YOUTH

I am a food snob. I opt for whole, organic, tasty foods. I do not eat fast food and try to let as little processed food as possible pass my pure, holy lips. In other words, I am the classic Asshole Californian, prone to sacrificing farmer's market nectarines on the dark alter of Alice Waters, and whatnot.

This was not always the case.

Kids love weird food and I was no exception. If it was blue, microwaveable, artifically flavored or "crackling", I was all over it. Foods that I now do not even associate with being "edible" were my manna from heaven. I look back in astonishment that there was a time when I would be delighted to eat this stuff, but then again, I'm also worried about there being long term health repercussions. How long DOES blue food coloring stay in in the system anyway?



- Nerd Blizzards

A Dairy Queen Blizzard swirled with rainbow colored Nerds? Where the hell do I sign? I used to adore these: the combination of mild, soft vanilla ice cream with crunchy, tangy Nerds was about as good as it gets for the kiddy palate. Extra points when the Nerds dyed the ice cream a jillion different artificial colors. They don't make these anymore, and trust me, I mourned. (I have to admit, I would probably make these a once a year habit if they were still around.)

Why the hell do they call these things "Nerds" anyway? Isn't that discriminatory against the pocket-protector adorned segment of society? Should I start an interest group?

-Kid Cuisine

Bug nuggets!

Patriotic brownies!

Ah yes, microwaveable instant meals for kids - what could possibly go wrong? Ahem. I think even I subconsciously knew these things were vile in my misspent youth, but the novelty of coming out of a box and containing candy outweighed any watery-Mac-N'-Cheese and creepy, mushy chicken nuggets concerns I might have had. There was also the benefit of a Free Included Toy, which was worthy any amount of crap food in my seven year old mind - have you ever wondered why people still eat Cracker Jack?

Today's Kid Cuisine varieties are, if anything, even more concerning then the ones I had in my (admittedly not far off) youth - I mean, look at it: bug shaped chicken nuggets?

Okay, I would have loved those.


- blue poptarts


Pop-tarts are of course a classic crappy kid food: shelf stable for yawning eternities, composed of entirely non-natural components, just as tasty cold as warm - and toasters take so long! Yes, we loved us some Pop-tarts, but you can bet we loved them even more when the Wild-berry flavor debuted, featuring - you guessed it! - blue and purple icing. They tasted okay in a bizarre, laboratory way, but the absolute best part of sucking down one of these bad boys was the blueish purple residue left on face and tongue and hands afterwards.

Look, when you are eight, that is the French fucking' Laundry, okay?

I looked on the totally surreal Pop-tarts website and discovered, to my horror, that these were just discontinued. They can however still be bought on Amazon. Who wants to go in on a case?!


-Lick A Color Popsicles (and others)


Popsicles were of course the easiest way to get in our daily artificial flavor requirement, without which we would of course sicken and slowly die. My friends and I plowed through a lot of popsicle flavors, but a continuous favorite was the almighty LIck A Color, which changed colors and flavors as it was consumed. No one, of course, was patient enough to actually sit still and lick slowly through every-single-last flavor - no, the way to do it was to bite the thing in half then be impressed at the layers upon layers of Real Fruit Flavors lying within its icy core.

We also loved Timon and Pumbaa bug popsicles, featuring real fruit flavors filled with gummy bugs. The gummy bugs took on a really interest texture in the freezer: somewhere delightfully between slimy and firm. An epicurean delight.

Push Pops were another big favorite. With Flintstones on them. I do not know what the Flintstones have with rainbow sherbet but rest assured, someday I will find out and write a blog post and no one will care.


- Bagel Bites


Okay, these actually weren't that vile all things considered, but I am automatically now suspicious of any frozen meat item marketed as a Healthy Snack. These always had a tendency to cook really unevenly in the oven, which meant you'd be confronted with a stone cold, inedible Bagel Bite and a lightly charred Vessel of Cancer on the same plate, which really could cramp your style. I also snapped off one or two bonded teeth components on these bad boys. In other words, Bagel Bites give me a bit of post traumatic stress.

I am fully aware I am the world's biggest pussy.

- Quaker Dinosaur Oatmeal


This stuff was absolutely amazing: boring ass instant oatmeal infused with TRANSFORMING DINOSAUR CANDY. Let me repeat: TRANSFORMING DINOSAUR CANDY. There was really nothing else needed to sell me on this stuff. Admittedly, it was a pretty cool process: you pour hot water into the bowl o' oatmeal filled with pink candy dinosaur eggs, which dissolve and leave you with little cinnamon sugar flavored multi colored dinosaurs, floating around in your bowl. Nirvana.

- Lunchables



Like a salt lick in a box, these little pre-made Lunches In A Box were flagrantly bad for you, which of course meant kids simply adored them. I wasn't allowed to eat these very often but it was always a wonderful event when I found one in my lunchbox - apparently their inherent nastiness didn't make much of an impression upon me.

The most disgusting version was absolutely the Beef Taco, featuring shelf-stable taco "meat" in an easy squeeze tube. The stuff tasted and smelled exactly like wet dog food, but we ate it anyway - cold in the elementary school lunch room, mm, mm, good! Extra points awarded if you had the presence of mind to sprinkle pop-tarts/rainbow candy/nerds on the meat, creating the 4th grade version of "fusion cuisine." Or is that molecular gastronomy?

The Pizza version were beloved by everyone but me, primarily because a box (not surprisingly) made me barf once in second grade. I do recall observing kids eating chocolate frosting, pop-rock, and pepperoni pizza on a daily basis. We should totally do a study.


A brief disclaimer: My parents did not actively approve of this kind of crapola food and I did not eat it EVERY day, though trust me, I would have committed any subterfuge or crime to do so. Furthermore, eating this kind of crap actually 1. showed me by example what kind of food is REALLY tasty and 2. got all those urges out of my system nice n' early.

Organic free-range parents: your efforts are likely to backfire. I know a lot of kids raised holistically-organically-Anthrosophically-whatever and it is not a pretty site when they get to college and realize no one is forcing them to eat quinoa anymore. Many of them go on joyful junk-food binges that end only when they gain fifty pounds or go into Red-Lake induced shock, found slumped over a box of the Pop-tarts they've been hoarding. (I only exaggerate slightly: one kid I know in that situation got scurvy. Twice.)

So, parents: let your kids occasionally eat neon-blue-super-frozen-sour-crackle crap at least on occasion. Trust me, odds are good they will see the light of organic all natural Real Food - I did. I now enjoy cooking all natural healthy food for my parents and have not eaten a Lunchable, Dorito, or Bagel Bite in years (though I occasionally still have to have me some blue candy.) Befriend the chemicals!

Technology is Evil: Really?

Technology is Evil - Really?



One of my first loves.

I'm getting increasingly freaked out by my generations luddite tendencies. Yes, that's right: my wired, internet loving, cell phone obsessed peers really really like to comment on the evils of technology when stuck in, say, a college philosophy course. Huh? What's with the backlash?

Maybe I should provide a little of my own background first.

I attended a Waldorf school during my high school years. For those of you who don't know, Waldorf is a "alternative" education system that looks upon technology with extreme suspicion - parents in the lower grades are encouraged with extreme seriousness to keep their kids away from TV and videos and video games at all costs, because Bad Things will happen. The school let up on these directives a bit in high school - we even had a decent computer lab- but there was definitely an aura of tech-distrust wafting around the premises. That didn't stop us: we all had Ipods, highly advanced cell phones, laptops, and the other trappings of modern teenager-hood, Waldorf or no Waldorf.


This is what I was looking at for most of my childhood.

I grew up as a very proud geek and have quite a few happy childhood memories of playing classic video games (Oh, SimCity 2000...) and watching excellent cartoons when I got home from school. I also spent a whole lot of time playing outside. Surprisingly, I don't think the two are in any way mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, I was pretty socially isolated when I hit 13 or 14, and I maintain the internet helped me out immensely. I'd moved to a new city at that time, and had never had the best social skills. I managed to find a community for myself on the internet and formed a tight group of online friends, people I could confide in, joke around with, and really care about.

I even met quite a few of them in person, and, surprisingly enough, I was not murdered/tossed in a white pedophile van/indoctrinated into a cult. I hate reading about parents who tightly restrict their nerdy kids time on the internet and interactions with others. Internet communities are such a great, indispensable resource for the lonely and awkward, and I believe they saved me a lot of emotional pain n' suffering growing up. (I grew up to be relatively normal and, help me God, a total party animal, so a few years of internet socializing didn't warp me.)

So I repeat: what's with the backlash? Maybe I just happen to find myself in wonky classes, but I've heard "technology is evil" sentiments from a good majority of kids my age in a lot of different settings. The argument seems to be that internet friends and cell phones are somehow cutting down on our social bonds with each other, making us more disconnected and alienated from one another then ever before. Others believe that blogs don't count as "actual writing" (you can imagine how that one chaps my ass, ahem.) I've heard kids (and professors) claim that reading something on the internet is not actually reading though I remain uncertain as to how that actually works.

The most vehement arguments come from plainly non-geeky types advocating against internet social networks, which really pisses me off. Just because you personally have not found yourself in need of a social life beyond that offered in your school or community doesn't mean you've got a right to piss on or critique those of us whose butts were saved by Internet talkin'.

These same kids remain attached at the eardrum to their cellphones, which leads me to believe a bit of guilt might be in play here. I also think they're doing themselves a heck of a disservice in the coming (gnarly) job market by pretending to be distrustful of technology. I work in the women's studies department computer lab and got my job directly as a result of my unabashed geekiness.

My boss mentioned that she hired me because I was the only "real" girl geek she'd come across in a long time. She feels that true unashamed geeks seem to be diminishing in numbers. We couldn't figure out exactly why, but my theory is that the internet's access to pretty much everyone has taken away some of its outsider appeal. Technology is open to everyone but being conversant in it has lost of its mystique - which is a real shame.

I am wed to technology and would not be able to function normally without it. I admit it and am unashamed. Technology and computers have allowed me to meet amazing people from around the world, voice my opinions to a lot of unwitting observerors, learn about zillions of interesting esoteric subjects, and (perhaps most importantly) amuse the snot out of myself in times of boredom and duress. If there's something wrong with being a tech geek, then I don't wanna be right.

Chill Out Cafe: Pad Thai And Bacon Anyone?

The Chill Out Cafe is on Maple Street, Tulane's mildly to moderately infamous college Avenue of Sin. It's not really quite that bad but it is a street with a startlingly high proportion of emptied Mad Dog 20/20 and Olde English malt liquor cans to rowdy frat boys take of that what you will. There are also many bars with very lax carding policies, meaning you are 100 percent guranteed to encounter piss drunk freshmen any given night of the week. Again, you may not actually want this to occur.

The cafe has a slightly bizarre menu of "Asian fusion" cuisine and breakfast specialities, served all day. This means you can get pad thai with a side of bacon, which really DOES strike me as killer fusion cuisine. There's standard Thai stir-fries, lots of noodle dishes, Chinese dim sum bites, spring rolls, and a good mishmash of other specialities - along with waffles, omlettes, and Thai iced tea, of course. I can dig it.



I decided to go with one of my usual favorite, a Thai seafood salad. The dish came out quickly enough and was pretty tasty: a good chili lime flavor and lots of interesting sea creatures to mull over. My only complaint is small portion size: for ten bucks, I want some more seafood, dammit. (And this IS a college-centric street, and what are we college students known for if not inhaling giant amounts of calories on a regular basis. While drinking malt liquor.)

I'll be back to try some more dishes in the near future. I'm always big on supporting adorable Asian restaurants with weird concepts, especially if the food is good.

food is not morality?!!?

I have a message for all you self loathing American women:

FOOD IS NOT MORALITY.

I am done with hearing my fellow women compare eating to being "bad", as if sucking down a bag of Zapp's potato chips is somehow equivalent to slapping Mother Teresa on the ass. It is not. It is food, and you are perfectly free to eat and enjoy it as you see fit. The devil will not appear magically in a poof of black smoke from behind a Nutella jar and set your thighs a jigglin'. It does not work like that.

Unfortunately, for a huge majority of women, it does. I read a disturbing article lately, that compared girls' diaries from the turn of the century and girl's diaries today. When girls from back in the day wrote about self-improvement, they discussed improving their minds or personalities or skills. Nowadays? Girls focus almost exclusively on their bodies, striving forever more to resist that Snickers bar or french fry because if they are skinny and beautiful they will be good. I can only imagine what Thomas Aquinas would make of this contemporary madness, as if the angels and demons of the ancient church have been reincarnated in the form of an emaciated, leering Nicole Richie. It is a distressing image.

And let me repeat myself: The skinniest woman in the room or the one who eats the least food is not the best person in the room. She is a person just like yourself who was born a certain way or made certain (possibly unhealthy) choices. She is not morally superior because she better fulfills some creepy media anorexia-loving ideal and you are an idiot if you give her that power. She could very well be a total douchemuffin - do you really think Paris Hilton or Mary Kate Olsen are a barrel o' laffs to be around?

I am by no means immune to this. When I buy a pair of size zero jeans, you bet your ass I get a sense of achievement, as if I've won some sort of giant, shadowy game played out by the females of this country. This is incredibly, incredibly messed up and I can only hope I will catch myself doing such a thing in the future. I have achieved nothing by buying a small pair of jeans other then 1. fulfilling my genetic prerogative and 2. not eating a lot of carbs and 3. exercising. It is still entirely possible that I am an asshole, arrogant, weird, or socially malformed and it has no relation whatsoever to the size of my thighs.

Morality and food have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, and we as enlightened people (and dedicated eaters) should do our best to separate the two forever. Everyone will be much happier (and more full) as a result.


Kelly Mills at Fitness Fixation defined this very sentiment wonderfully at her blog. Check it out.

One More Day Of Whining: The Election Nears An End

It's Time For More Thoughts:!

- The election is OVER TOMORROW. I would be going to a party and getting all boozed up and toasty in celebration, but, alas, I have a genetics test on Wednesday. This means I shall instead be hanging out inside and watching the returns and kind of hating everyone who IS out getting boozed up and toasty and jeering at the TV. I am hoping for good news. This election has gone on for two terribly long years - I remember reading about it this time last year and ALREADY being done with the damn thing - and I will be so thrilled when I can stop thinking about it. 

The irony is that back in 2004, I had the vague notion of growing up to become a political pundit. Thankfully, the combination of bitter defeat and constant abuse from my conservative classmates put an end to that most quickly. There is always a silver lining. 

- On that topic...

I am beyond sick of my fellow Obama supporters, who seem to believe that working themselves into anxious fits over OMG WHAT IF OBAMA DOESN'T win is somehow productive or interesting. Yes, we got our tree-hugging butts whipped good in 2000 and again in 2004 and it hurt like a bitch but it is extremely unlikely to happen again and for god's sake stop whining. If my tiny little hunch that Obama will win easily is proven wrong on Tuesday, I will of course be terribly embarrassed for at least five minutes. 

In the world of New Orleans...

- Discovered that Bistro Italia near my house on Magazine makes a mean grilled tuna salad. Covered in olive salad and parmesan and with lemon tarragon dressing yeah baby. I shall return post haste. (Although, why the hell is Pad Thai on their menu? Really?

- The weather here has been absolutely, posilutely lovely. 75 degrees and cool with a slight breeze and constantly reminding me why I moved here in the first place. I love checking out the Great Barrington weather forecast and sniggering evilly to myself. 

On a final note....

Election Themed Cupcakes? You better believe it.

Casamentos Round Two

 No profound observations here today, but I did go back to Casamentos and lo, it was good. They have an absolutely mystical hand with a deep frier. There may be some sort of Robert Johnson selling-soul-to-the-devil situation at hand here. I am also increasingly in love with the open, clean yet greasy kitchen, and the friendly cats that chill out in the bathroom area. This isn't exactly a joint that stands on pretensions.

This was one fine soft shell crab. Super light crust, nice and meaty, little crunchy legs and all that business. 

Oysters are getting really good this time of year. Casamentos had some absolute beauties the other night: big and juicy and sweet. Even better with saltines. 

happy halloween everybody

I adored Halloween coming up. I was lucky: I lived in a nice safe suburb and had fairly permissive parents, I was able to carry out my kid imperative and run around the neighborhood on a candy-seeking mission til' unfashionably late hours. My two partners in crime, Michael and Mark, would canvass the burb's quite elaborately once we hit the advanced ages of 9 and 10. I recall one year where we waged assault on two or three different subdivisions and came home with what seemed like a million zillion pounds of candy, a veritable mountain. (Pillowcases were of course the only way to go for the serious, dedicated Trick or Treater - those lame ass little pumpkin buckets held about 1/8th of the candy we anticipated scoring.)

Costumes were of course a important affair with only one real requirement: They Must Not Be Girly. I recall one year I intended to go as a cat but the costume got screwed up somehow (or I was just being a shit) and I found myself sniffling in my parent's bathroom about how it TOTALLY DID NOT LOOK LIKE A CAT AND THIS SUCKED AND I HATED IT. I managed to rally (hey, there was going to be candy) and decided that I was, well, vermin instead. Which meant I got go around to all the houses in the neighborhood and gleefully proclaim myself to be VERMIN. (I think I really got off on confusing people.)



I settled into a were wolf theme after that and it seemed to work out fine for me - I had a couple of pretty awesome werewolf masks that saw a lot of use over the years. I was especially amused when I was constantly mistaken for a boy because of course no girl in her right mind would go as a blood-stained gory werewolf. Hah! I also went as a were-lion one year, which I swear was actually kinda cool: I don't know who decided to manufacture Creepy Lion Masks but I am in debt to them.

Candy was of course The Ultimate Reason for the holiday. I am definitely not a sugar freak now in my dotage, but as a kidlet, I was all over it.

My favorites:



-Full size candy bars. Memo to all People Who Give Out Candy: give out the full size stuff and you will become a neighborhood god, a deity to be worshipped and talked about in hushed tones months after. (Seriously, we would stop in the middle of conversaiton and say things like, "..You remember those full size Hershey's bars at the Robert's house?".) I think becoming a minor neighborhood pagan idol is pretty cool. Once I have my own actual house, I am so giving out the full size stuff.

- Reese's Peanut Butter cups, preferably the big ones. I was never into those oh-so-wacky Ways To Eat A Peanut Butter cup stunts like some people, but I still enjoyed eating them slowly and with maximal appreciation. I still love that chalky, salty bit in the middle.

- Gummy candies, all sorts. I still harbor a secret adoration of all things gummy and these were the absolute best. I loved those intensely flavored Amazin' Fruit bears, although the Halloween themed pear flavor was...weird. Extra points for gory, realistic gummy body parts - eyeballs, bloody hands. Or gummy cheeseburgers. Oh, gummy cheeseburgers.

- Electric blue anything. Electric blue candy was a form of currency in kid-land. I suspect this is universal in the kid pysche. Especially favored were blue Warheads (make your tounge completly numb!) and bright blue Giant Blow-Pops. I feel sorry for all those children today whose parents completely subscribe to the organic all-natural-everything notion. Those kids will never experience the profound joy of an electric blue tounge and a vague headache from the intake of exotic chemicals. I weep for them.

Worst Candies?

- Dots and Milk Duds both were incredibly sticky, which really freaked me out since I had serious braces going on. I would eat either of these candies and become convinced that 1. my braces would come off in a single hideous mass and 2. the next day would involve me spending five hours in the orthodontists chair and a long, angry lecture from my parents. I have not had braces for a very long time now and still can't look at the damn things without cringing.

- Tootsie Rolls, all sorts. What half-assed chocolate flavor. Especially awful were the banana-flavored Midgee's, inevitably the last candy to be consumed (and even then under duress.) Blech. Somewhat redeemed by blue raspberry Tootsie Roll Pops, but even then, only barely.

"Healthy" Halloween candy or treats. Inevitably given out by the neighborhood dentist/clueless dementia victim/pedantic asshole. Don't do this, people. Your house shall be forever marked. This was not quite as bad as those people who were OBVIOUSLY home and OBVIOUSLY not answering their doors, but only by degrees. (Another hint: if you are going to be away, be forewarned that leaving candy by the door, while sweet, is subject to serious abuse by non-parentally supervised trick or treaters. Just saying. WE certainly never dumped half a bowl of communal Halloween candy into OUR pillowcases. NEVER.)


Halloween, like many holidays, loses awesomeness with age. I know, I know, trick or treating gives way to boozing and giant parties with silly costumes, and there is something to be said for that - but to be honest, that kind of fun can be had every single day in college in New Orleans (especially the costumes part.) I remember being extremely disappointed when I turned 13 and magically Every Costume Had To Be Sexy. Suddenly weird/scary/funny was not enough: maximal sluttiness was the only way to go if you were a girl and had any hope of social advancement. I remember this all came to a head at a school dance when I was about 15 and all the girls showed up in the skankiest outfits their parents allowed them out the door in - Daisy Duke, dirty Catholic school girl, Naughty Nurse, Kinky Cop, you name it.

I was a werewolf. In a dress. You may have guessed I was not very cool in high school.

The trauma is mostly over with. I had a very fun Halloween this year - participated in the craziness on Frenchmen street in the corner, saw a bizarre but awesome Quintron show at One Eyed Jacks, drank vodka shots and ran around with a prosthetic arm growing out of my chest (long story) - but it still wasn't as fun as those early days of running around the neighborhood in the pursuit of the almighty sugar god. Sigh. Ashes to ashes, etc etc.