Saturday, May 9, 2009

Burcad Badeed (sea bandit) lunches with New York Times reporter. Hilarity ensues.

Abshir Boyah, one of Somalia's best-known pirates

“Man, these Islamic guys want to cut my hands off,” he grumbled over a plate of camel meat and spaghetti. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“It’s like hunting out there,” Mr. Boyah said through an interpreter. “Sometimes you get a deer, sometimes you get a dik-dik,” a runty antelope common in Somalia.

“Ha!” he said, through a mouthful of spaghetti. “Me eating with white men. This is like the cat eating with the mice!”


Hawo, left, with a friend, is the wife of the pirate Abshir Boyah, who says that he is thinking of giving up pirating.

very funny

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of hilarity ensuing, have you noticed that Blogger is now reducing many of your words to illegibly tiny print?

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Anonymous said...

OT:

Elizabeth, how come Ilya Krasik isn't one of the choices in your "not playing" poll?

:)

-Matt

Elizabeth Vicary said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elizabeth Vicary said...

he was too scared to even play me

Elizabeth Vicary said...

Also, I like how outgoing Hawo’s friend is. She’s clearly psyched to be in the NY Times.

Anonymous said...

dear americans,

I do not normally follow american chess outside of the uscl (which is why I'm asking about the us championship on a blog about pirates) so if this has been discussed to death on some forum, please excuse the ramble:

why the hell is becerra playing hughes in round 3? this pairing is *blatantly* INSANELY wrong. 3 players have 2/2, 5 have 1.5/2, and 8 have 1/2, so everyone with 1/2 plays within the scoregroup and the pairings should be pretty straightforward. this makes it all the more puzzling that the TD felt it necessary to pair the 1 vs the 8 within this 8-player scoregroup.

the 8 players and colours thus:
1. Becerra WB
2. Akobian BB
3. Khach BW
4. Sevil BW
5. Robson BW
6. Shank WB
7. Brooks BB
8. Hughes BW

among them, only Becerra and Robson have played. Akobian and Brooks are forced whites. ideally the pairings would of course be 1-5, 2-6, 3-7, 4-8:

Becerra-Robson
Akobian-Shank
Brooks-Khach
Hughes-Sevil

forced colours are correct, and the top 4 alternate. COOL. but Robson and Becerra have played. no worries, though, just switch Robson and Shank:

Becerra-Shank
Akobian-Robson
Brooks-Khach
Hughes-Sevil

there, correct pairings. instead, Shank, Brooks and Hughes are inexplicably mixed around. how the hell can such an obvious error happen in the us championship? unless I'm blind (in which case my apologies to the TD), there is no rational reason to do this. can any american tell me what is the deal with this?

Greg Shahade said...

dunno I agree it looks like an odd pairing but it does result in the colors alternating better? If that's possible is that not a higher priority than making sure that 1 doesn't play 8