Crap! Kathy, I've been cheering you in my head for a week but always forget to actually type out my admiration. Go you!

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A man accused of robbing a Belfast lingerie shop at knifepoint has fallen back on a time honoured defence – namely, his claim that he believed he was a female elf at the time.

Belfast Crown Court was told by the prosecution that 45-year-old Robert Boyd from Broadlands, Carrickfergus had held up the shop, Orchid, while disguised in a wig, hat and sunglasses. He allegedly made off with bras, knickers, stockings and suspender belts.

However, Boyd's defence maintain that at the time, Boyd believed that he was a elf, having been playing the cyberpunk role-playing game Shadowrun.

More specifically, he believed that he was a female shaman (meaning a natural magic user) elf named Beho, and that he thought he was armed with a samurai sword. Boyd admits that he may have 'blurred reality and fantasy'.

He also claims that he can not remember the details of the incident.

While Boyd maintains that he is innocent of the crime, he admits that he can't be sure that the metahuman Beho did not plan to rob the store.

The prosecution are sceptical of these claims, and suggest that Boyd/Beho is 'using this memory loss scenario to avoid answering very difficult questions.'

[link]

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K, who was never really planning to have kids, always says "If I'd have known he was going to be this cute, I'd have had him waaaaay earlier."

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I have to be a bit conservative with Ethiopian -- burning-hot spiciness = bad -- but I have definitely enjoyed the whole "your plate is also dinner" setting and the various flavors. Asmara is pretty good -- and a lot cheaper for lunch than they are for dinner!

The secret to the chicken-eyeballs issue is not to ask. You see something vaguely eyebally swimming in your soup, you just don't ask. You don't ask what's in a hot dog, do you??

N.B. This approach does not work for chicken feet. They just look exactly like what they are.

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How do you eat chicken feet? Do you just chew them up? Aren't they mostly bone?

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Chicken feet are mostly bone, and you do not eat the bones. You chew on the skin and tendons, and spit the bones out.

I ate them on a dare, at dum sum one day, and while it was not an unpleasant experience (they taste like cooking oil, basically), it was also like, "If I'm not actively starving, why would I go to avian feet, which have very little muscle in them, for my animal-eating experience?"

The best part of the experience was the look on the poor dim sum waiter's face when I said, "Yes, I know they're feet." She didn't want to believe me that I really wanted them. (Like I said, it was a dare.)

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My impression is that Ethiopian food is somewhat similar to Indian food, and that I wouldn't like it.

How do you eat chicken feet? Do you just chew them up? Aren't they mostly bone?

The feet have lots of cartilage, which you can chew. Then you spit out little bits of bone.

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Do you just chew them up? Aren't they mostly bone?

DH loves the chicken feet. I think they're nasty -- not just because they look like feet, but because they're nothing but skin and gristle. You kind of just gnaw on them.

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I find Ethiopian food to be very strongly spicy but generally not hot-spicy, except the reddish 'wot' sauce which must have hot peppers in it somewhere. But compared to Indian, there's practically no milk products and lots of easily-identifiable beef. It's worth a try, especially as the meals are generally "family style" so that you have a variety of dishes to take a bite each of and decide what you favor. (Mostly they're all delicious, though I can't testify as to the beef ones.)

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I'm super non-adventurous when it comes to food.

I'm willing to try just about anything once, although I tend to draw the line at things like feet and brains, or when the thing I'm meant to eat still has its eyeballs.

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