You gotta love this woman's underwater tesla coil experiments (via BoingBoing)!
Yesterday was the How Berkeley Can You Be parade and festival. An annual freak show in lovely Berkeley, CA. Our float was for a new Seoul Food restaurant, with a mostly korean and all-dog menu. As in dog meat in every dish. We walked the parade route offering free grilled dog-meat samples and handing out brochures (Side 1, Side 2) which explained that our dog meat resource is the already euthanized dogs from animal shelters, and that we not only contribute to their bottom line through the meat purchases, but also donate to free animal hospitals in urban areas. The brochure also explains the many benefits of eating dog meat and even features several dog recipes (Chili con Perro anyone?).
It was, of course, a prank.
However, I'd say well over 50% of the people we talked to bought it hook, line and sinker. And some of those who fell for it still tried the "dog". Go Berkeley! The dog samples were mostly regular pork sausage, but we also shared some rabbit ("chiuahua") and goat ("german shepherd") that was hanging above the grill. Several of our group were threatened, many vegetarians got quite huffy, and the cops showed up ....so we consider it a grand success.
How can a vegetarian like myself participate in such carniverous silliness? With gusto, baby. With gusto.
[Seoul Food Prank Photos]
[More Seoul Food Prank Photos]
Tonight after attending Larry Harvey's interview at the Commonwealth Club I caught a jazz/funk show at Mingle's in Oakland.
A friend of mine, Uriah Duffy was playing bass with the band. I couldn't stay long but he thinks it is going to turn into a regular gig so I'll have to go back again, these guys (and the very lovely lead singer, London) were tight.
My brother Marcus calls me Wednesday afternoon and tells me that some band called Nigel Pepper Cock was borrowing his generator to put on a guerrilla punk show at 16th and mission outside of the BART station. I get down there as the band is setting up. We start up his generator and Marcus tries to get the band to start before the cops show up. A good sized crowd has gathered, some local punks who were told to be there at 6pm, some random passerbys, all of the usual street denizens. The band was starting to get cold feet because the cops had already come when they were setting up and asked them if they had a permit. They had some stolen Live 105 (shitty local Clear Channel pop station) banners hung up behind them so they told the cop to check with "Justin at Live 105." The cop had took off soon after but the band memebers were starting to worry that they would come back and confiscate their instruments. But the crowd was anxious and eventually they caved in and played two songs before quickly dismantling. Great showmanship, easy to mosh to; I give it an 8point5.
Don't click on this link, you may regret it: Nigel Pepper Cock.
My first favorite book as a child was The Story About Ping. I was thinking about it this morning, so I ordered a copy from Amazon ...and now I just discovered that I can watch a video presentation of it online! Go here: Story About Ping.
On the Yangtze River in China, a little duck named Ping lives on a boat with his many family members. Every morning, Ping and his family leave the boat to hunt for food. The rule is that the last duck back on the boat in the evening will get spanked. One day Ping realizes that he will be the last one on the boat, so he decides to hide in the tall grasses all night. When he tries to return to the boat the next morning, the boat is gone.