Polyglot

One of my emails yesterday was simply this sentence:

plantage middenlaan and kerklaan, koosje at 21h30. see you then. i have brown hair.

I wandered that caf? for a good 15 minutes greeting lovely brown haired ladies who I thought looked Canadian. Kept thinking, this is no way to meet a new friend.

Well that’s not true… I changed the plan and my new Canadian friend came to the bicyclemark ranch to drink fancy tea with exotic chocolates. I mention this for one major reason, beyond being an evening of really fun conversation, this torontonienne’s job prior to moving to Amsterdam, was promoting CYCLING in her home city. I repeat- Promoting Cycling!

Yeah.. I was both jealous and in complete admiration. She informed me that the number of cyclists in “Torono” is on the rise, and they know this because part of their function was to keep track of the numbers. I kept imagining someone running next me in Amsterdam, clip-board-in-hand, counting me and asking questions about my cycling habit. Anyway this is what Amsterdam so often is for me… a big collection of people with fun backgrounds deciding to come do their thing here. I also thought this earlier in the evening when I started chatting with the man behind the Known Universe, who – to my surprise- has also lived in Amsterdam at one time.

In other news I have a pair of reflections regarding the United Nations to share. The first involves the opening statements of the General Assembly this week. I was disappointed at how the delegates applauded GW Bush’s speech. Naively.. I had hoped they would keep in mind how his decisions had undermined the work of the UN, and simply hold their applause as a sign of disapproval. But sure enough, most delegates conveniently forgot and applauded him like he was Eleanor Roosevelt in her old-lady black dress. Fortunately Kofi was there and to his credit, he had the nerve to hit back against all sides contributing to war and terrorism in the world.

The other thing is in his speech he said “welcome to the US and welcome to NY” now I might be knit-picking, but someone should finally explain to him that the UN is located on international territory, so he shouldn’t welcome them, it should probably be vice-versa.

Finally today, I’m prepared to issue a statement regarding the CBS-Dan Rather boring-ass memo scandal, which A-list bloggers have beaten to death:

Who cares what CBS news does? It’s ironic title “CBS NEWS” I mean, since when do we actually expect journalism to come out of that or any television network?

Dan Rather might quit you say? Is he still alive?

Conservative bloggers brought the scandal to light? So I guess bloggers are now famous for being crappy-network watchdogs. And apparently traveling in packs. I wonder if soon I’ll have a blogger-gang, then we can go out and break shit.

Today’s Music: Broken Social Scene – Feel Good Lost