freedom

currently eating: braunschweiger and mozzarella bagel sandwich w/ polish mustard.
currently listening to: computer fan.

free stuff: got a free beige G3. downloaded some free stuff to put on it. can't get any of the [fre lunix] liveCDs to boot on it, only the MacOS 8 installer CD that came with it succeeds in booting. hmm. i plan on experimenting with BeOS, actually. should be fun.

last night a priest called me up and was like, want to go see mohammad khatami speak? i was like, YES. so we went and were like, we'd like to see khatami, and they were like, have an invitation? so then we rolled and with our charisma modifiers [+1 beard for both and +4 blessed clerical collar for him], we almost made it. they trucked us back and forth across the grounds of the convention center and only at the very last minute did they just let us into the main convention hall for free. so we got to see him via cctv with thousands of others instead of in the actual room. it was still great. also got to see like a dozen other muslim speakers. best part: access to the convention all for free. doot doot.

khatami and his "dialogue among civilizations" made it hard for me for the longest time to understand why the US was so distrustful of Iran, though eventually it became clear that Iranian politics is much bigger than khatami and his reform movement, unfortunately, but the US distrusted khatami himself and still does. one of the interesting things about his talk is that though he is essentially a theocrat, he is still committed to democracy. his message, as somebody else said, was basically for Muslims in America to be good American citizens: vote, participate in public works, etc. to do: find one of his books on Islamic political theory, read it, discuss with a friend of mine who did his BA on al-Farabi who seems to agree with Khatami's mentor's ideas about the decline of Islamic political thought after al-Ghazali.

the other speakers were, just FYI, strongly anti-Bush, strongly anti-Islamic-despot/terrorist, and also rather anti-Israel. a couple were also pacifists. the other highlights besides Khatami were journalist Robert Fisk [not a Muslim, but he lives in Beirut] and Hamza Yusuf, a charismatic speaker and convert to Islam from a nominally Greek Orthodox background who I hope to hear more of [and will, they were giving out stacks of CDs on tribulation, so I took one].

i got a giant stack of bagels [hence the sandwich] and a giant tub of guacamole for free today.

now: back to hacking around on the mac to try to get it to work.

EDIT: I almost forgot another freebie. Mr Sanchez and family were riding home from church in a cab and, since they live only a block away, let me hitch home with them. I offered to pay my share, but they would have none of it. This isn't the first time I have enjoyed his generosity. Pip pip for Mr Sanchez.