Hey there, Recycle Bin Robber!

For your kind information, recycle bins are FREELY AVAILABLE to all Buffalo denizens at each one of these very convenient locations:

C.P.C. International Marketplace; 283 Grant Street; 884-7812
C.P.C. Gloria Parks; 3242 Main Street; 851-4112
Community Action Info Center; 103 Wohlers Street; 885-5925
Parkside Community Association; 2318 Main Street; 851-4324
F.L.A.R.E.; 307 Leroy Avenue; 838-6740
Ken-Bailey Neighborhood Housing Service; 995 Kensington Avenue; 836-3600
Hispanics United of Buffalo; 254 Virginia Street; 856-7110
A.B.L.E.Y. Center; 24 Ludington Street; 895-4074
Northwest Buffalo Community Center; 155 Lawn Avenue; 876-8108
N.H.S. of South Buffalo; 1937 South Park Avenue; 823-3630
Matt Urban Center; 1081 Broadway; 893-7222
City Hall; Niagara Square-Room 218; 851-4890
HomeFront; 560 Delaware Avenue; 856-2952

Source:

The point of giving you this copious information is that I need you to reform your reprobate ways, return my recycle bin and get one of your own! Don't you understand my anguish?? I took a day off work to go to the city hall to get this recycle bin! Well... okay, that's a lie. But you stole my recycle bin; lying is less reproachable. However, to redeem myself, I must clarify that I did take the day off; going to the city hall was a priority on my agenda for that day.

Getting back to the point, I can't take any more days off work. This means I can't get another recycle bin. My recycling stuff would probably collect in a corner of my flat again, and I would soon have no place to live after being chucked out of my building for harbouring rodents in my flat. I would be homeless and roam the streets of Buffalo.

You, dear robber, would then be responsible for the atrocious crime of creating one more homeless person in your esteemed city. Are you sure you want that sort of guilt on your conscience?? Return my recycle bin and the world will be right again!

Sans Cheers,
Tinypliny

I was sent this email at work today. It was written by a woman who my colleague's friend knows personally.

From my email (I edited and removed all identifying names.):

Ladies--

I had the very unfortunate experience of an "encounter" with the young punk assaulting women in the city (with the box cutter, in Gates Circle, Chapin, etc). I AM UNHURT AND OK. I was at Colter Bay on Sunday night & was leaving at about 10:30. I was parked across the street from Tempo. As you know, this is a very well lit area, and there was vehicle traffic, other people around & a lot of people at Colter Bay.

As I was crossing the street in front of Colter Bay, I noticed a young male turning the corner onto Delaware from Allen. I turned right onto the sidewalk & continued toward my car. There was a younger couple walking toward me. Although all of my friends were watching me from the windows to make sure I got to my car, thank goodness one of the guys I was with, recognized the young male based upon the descriptions from the victims & also from the photos published over the weekend. Not to mention that apparently, this kid was closing the distance behind me pretty fast!!

I made it to my car & got inside, & when I closed the door & looked up, this kid was right in front of my car looking at me, smiling & signaling me to get out of my car. I of course had already locked the doors. Anyway, my friend (who recognized the young male) confronted the kid & the kid ran off. We called the police & I gave a description to the P.O. & detectives.

This kid is exactly that, a KID. He has such a baby face. I estimated him to be about 19 years old. He was about 5'8" & 125-140 pounds. He is African American with a lighter complexion-very nice skin. Kind of a pug nose & very full lips. I didn't talk to him, but my friend described him as having a rather effeminate voice.

I thought he was wearing a white t-shirt, but my friend who accosted him, told me that he was in a white hoodie (My friend was behind the kid) under a black leather jacket. He also had a bit of a curly afro under a baseball hat (white front panel & red on the sides). He had baggy dark pants on (I couldn't tell if jeans or not). He was also carrying an over-the-shoulder bag, like those new ones the kids started carrying a few years ago instead of the back packs. He also had a dark plastic bag he was carrying.

We also noticed that there was another older male on the street at the same time that this happened who seemed to disappear when my friend confronted the kid. Also, while we were waiting for police, a metallic brown/champagne colored Ford Taurus pulled alongside Delaware a little farther down & sat for a few minutes before taking off. I don't know if these things mean anything, but I wanted to include them.

In talking to 1 of the ladies in my apartment building, there was also apparently another potential victim over the weekend on Virginia, near Mother's.

I'm sending this around to ask you all to PLEASE be careful--apparently we can't even walk alone across the street to our car at this point. I was stupid enough to refuse a walk but I was fortunate enough to have someone watching & paying attention & who followed his gut instincts. Please pass this information on as you see fit. Check the e-mail messages since I don't think I have updated addresses for a lot of people.

Thanks & be safe,

...

Elmwood not just became a "top-hoo-haa-village", it also became a mugging paradise, very unsafe for women. Try and gloat over that.

Since I am quite amused by all the confusion going around, I decided to do a concise (albeit biased) clarification about "Curry".

The East India Company (The British masquerading as traders) first docked on the southern shores of India and were immediately struck by:

1. The *awesome* South Indian cuisine.
2. The multiple layers of gold that women wore.
3. Everything else, including how gullible the natives were and how twisty the language was.

They decided to use their devious stratagem to buy enormous quantities of spices for cheap, and rob the gold and diamonds.

However, what they couldn't do was master the language. In particular, they had trouble wrapping their tongues around the word: Karuveppilai, the Tamil word for what is now (and quite inaccurately) known as the "Curry leaf". They also had trouble understanding the locals who called any side vegetable/meat accompaniment as "Kari". It didn't help matters any that every South Indian dish they ever had was either seasoned with Karuveppilai or had some powdered version of the Karuveppilai in it.

Using their tendency to clip short every vowel, and their total bewilderment with the language, they shortened the entire idea of a spiced dish to "Kari". Some Spaniards on the ship to England decided to spell it phonetically as "Curry". So voila, a new word was born.

When they proceeded further north into India, they came across another totally different type of cuisine - dominated not by the revered Karuveppilai, but Coriander ("Dhania" in Hindi, "Cilantro" in Spanish, "Kothamalli" in Tamil).

But by this time, the trade name "Curry" had curried favour up and down the length of the common(stolen)wealth. The seasoned business acumen that the British had acquired, stealing the wealth of natives around the world, warned them about the dangers of changing the name of a popular product in their home and overseas markets.

They decided that, since coriander was also a green leaf, and learning the names of the new spices involved trying to comprehend another wild language (Hindi), they wouldn't bother renaming the new North Indian spices (called "masala" by the natives). The easy solution was to just mix it all up in a bottle and rebrand the whole concoction as "Curry Powder". So essentially, the "Curry Powder" is about as Indian as Guano is a culinary delicacy.

And there you have it. The "History of Curried Confusion: Confounding the Western World, since 1600".

If you ever go to the heart of the subcontinent and ask for "Curry Powder", unless you are in a westernized supermarket, you are bound to get blank stares. Consider yourself warned.

If you want to get Karuveppilai here in the US, the best place to look would be an authentic Indian Store. South-east Asian stores seldom have it. The reason being that they don't cook with Karuveppilai, it is an acquired Indian taste.

Here in Buffalo, the places to go would be:

Super Bazaar
3218 Sheridan Dr
Amherst, NY 14226
(716) 835-4770

Spices of India
438 Evans St
Williamsville, NY 14221
Phone: (716) 633-4800

I really haven't seen it elsewhere. Just to give new meaning to the phrase "green with envy", here's a photograph of my stash.

Nicaragua has a blanket ban on abortions.


I know there was an abortion/pro-life debate on here some days back, but this irks me so much that it's impossible to not post and express my outrage directed at lunatics like this "Dr" Rafael Cabrera, who far from being a "doctor" is not even fit to be called human any more.

My heart cries for all the women in this godforsaken country. I am overwhelmed by sadness and anger, and once again am appalled that a few demons can plunge a country into the misery of the dark ages.

From:

The next time you go to that fancy shoe store and are enamoured with the pair that costs $$$$90 +, remember to also check out the cheaper pair, gathering dust on a neighbouring shelf. According to latest sports medicine research, the cheaper pair has just as many benefits to your running alter-life, if not more, when compared with the expensive pair.

In fact, if you yield to your temptation of buying that costly pair of trainers, then you should also realize that you have been conned into parting with your money simply by some carefully worded meaningless and empty "features".

So, hahaha @ all those vain snobs who make me feel bad at shoe stores! I love research that is pocket-friendly!

I downloaded a bunch of recipes, packed them all together and uploaded them here:

I know. I know. I should probably have typed out the recipes. But hey, I am lazy. Deal with it. Besides, my recipes change everyday and the results are as varied as the tropical vegetation in the Amazon. I am also chronically challenged when I am asked to use butter/ghee/sugar in a recipe and have a lot of trouble bringing myself to accept the cold plain fact that things taste better with butter. I am against all "replacement" products so I end up not making the dish or taking the non-buttered bumpy highway.

Getting back to the point, the archive is in the .7z format. It opens and extracts with this OUTSTANDING opensource program: Ditch those stupid winzip/winrar programs; they are no good.

If you are having trouble figuring out what the hell the recip鳠are talking about, let me know. I have to admit that I haven't really tried all of them, but I did read through a few and they sounded fine.

Oh, and when they say "oil", it means PEANUT OIL (or in rare cases, Sesame oil). Don't ever use any of the other crazy oils out there for Indian cooking. They just don't make the cut. I can't emphasize this point enough. If you are thinking, "Oh, maybe I could substitute with vegetable/corn/canola/soybean/rape seed/olive, STOP. STRANGLE and KILL that thought right now. In fact, even if the recip頳ays "vegetable oil", you will get infinitely better results cooking with Peanut oil. FYI, Peanut oil is called Groundnut oil in India.

As a general rule, you may want to tone down the butter and and the ghee and the sugar and the cream and the coconut. None of them are particularly good for you. You could subsitute butter for ghee, but you cannot substitute "I can't believe its not butter" or any non-belief short-changed product for any of the above.

Here is a lentil list for reference:

Happy Cooking!

PS: I also like this site: However, some of the recip鳠on there are non-traditional with equally unreliable results. Try with caution and use your discretion about the saturated fat content.

From now on, this is my favourite website:

Not only do they recycle and prevent electronics from getting into landfills, they do it for free *AND* donate their profits to breast cancer research. It's Win WIn WIN situation!

So if you have any computer monitors, CPUs, towers, peripherals, cell phones, cartridges, phones, cameras, TVs etc, that need some recycled loving, pick up that phone/keyboard and call/email/fax these wonderful people, ship your electronic junk to them FOR FREE and get some happy karma because you helped the cause of breast cancer *and* prevented your toxic electronic frameworks from polluting the planet!

RECYCLEFORBREASTCANCER.ORG

My department had a spate of office moves recently and enough trash was generated to choke a small island off the coast of the Caribbean. On persistent prodding of the maintainence staff, secretaries and other people in power, I finally came to the most appalling conclusion that Roswell does not have a recycling plan!

Yes, all those recycle bins in your offices at Roswell are a psychological device for employees so that we can go on living in bliss and believe that we are recycling all those reams of paper, cardboard, plastic and glass!

For an institute battling cancer, this is most unacceptable behaviour. Worse is the deception of its employees by placing dummy recycle bins whose contents will be dumped into general trash when the employees go home.

I am going to make an official complaint to Dr.Trump. Can other concerned Roswellers please make the effort to make a complaint too? Your voice can be crucial to force the institute to be more environmentally responsible and stop polluting Buffalo's landfills with totally recycle-able trash.

Thanks!

A view of the gorgeous skies, from my flat window!