DAY TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN

i totally dropped the ball there.  record nine or whatever days without posts.

fulltimesucks, except when it ends.  WORK BITTI MOFOS.  replacement me for room acquired, new passport without handwritten notice of (not really but apparently) deportation worthiness in the works, and a whole lotta visas going on. 

HAPPY FULLTIME/PARTTIME/NO TIME YALL!  you have all witnessed the end of the least profound, quite random, and more pointless blogs EVA RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW when you read this message. or like hours or days before. it's been real!

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHT

Phew! That was a *very* long break.  I'll write up a longer, much more detailed post about it for a blog post later this week.  In essence, I was denied exit to Turkey, then granted it after a lot of hassle and having to run from port to port, then wrongly denied entry to Turkey.  Deportation woes!  Somewhat surprisingly, the same police who deported me then allowed me to enter the country two days later, because those who had denied me entry had "mixed up" some of the rules. awesome!! 

I'm eating from my crush restaurant because I wanted to have something delicious and different and then for dinner I'm going to have curry galore. I'm pretty excited for a time when I have a few months to visit home, travel, relax, and generally cook my way through the world and learn recipes.  First things first, though, so I gotta get some centipedes and millipedes to stop inhabiting my camera case... or I guess that can just wait.

There's a bunch of stuff going around on the internet about Turkey, including things like the rising conservativism/islamification of the AKP.  This seems to be somewhat of a surprise to people who are not living in Turkey.  People who imbibe alcohol at all (aka "drunks"), "gays" and "unmarried couples" living side by side with families, showing conservative families and children that sometimes lifestyles different than their own are ok?! NO! We must not have that!!

Anywhoooo those who know me know I am passionate about a few things: Tuvalu, Somalian pirates, hobos, and some other stuff like law and making hats and kittens and also Indian food and hula hooping and there are probably about 40,000,000 other things that I could say I'm passionate about.  Oh, Mumia Abu-Jamal, too. And ethernopian food. Ok, I got off track. But as for the hobo thing, give this a read. Aw wedding vows! And in particular, listen to number 16 for another remake of a popular video I posted in a prior post, maybe? And read this too.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND SEVEN

Last week we had an impromptu band. Turns out one of my friends can play a bugle, and it was just a small step from there to get some spoons, jars filled with various things to shake and play, and trays to use as drums.  As fun as that was, we were nothing compared to this cover of the most obnoxious song ever.

I think the cookie monster version is even better, though.

Now that song is out of my system (it's trapped in there like an evil spirit), watch this deposition of Wesley Snipes. If you were asked questions about commission, basically, would you respond with answers about pimps and hos? There's gotta be some way to embed this, but I don't know it, so watch it here. And boo The Hollywood Reporter for your mistranscription, posted correctly below.

It's no different than a pimp, that's what a pimp does with a ho. A pimp will lay claim to what ever the ho produces anywhere on the planet for as long as she is a ho and then after she retires from being a ho. They are still going to make the claim, now whether they actually do anything or not to deserve it is a whole other issue. That's kind of my experience with the talent agencies.

 Aw, the loneliest whale in the world.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND SIX

i too find comfort in shooting all men who make unwanted sexual advances at me that humiliate me and push me to the breaking point. oh wait, no.

this pro-gay marriage ad is adorable. 

turtles and puppies oh my.

the shroud of turin is always fascinating to read about.

nuns nuns nuns and vatican ii, excommunication of some nuns, excommunication of nuns in general, and one of hte only priests i could find to be excommunicated for abuse. and here's a judge and a whole slew of people who have been excommunicated for approving an abortion of a 9 year old kid who was raped. those bad catholics! or not.

i did not know about the japanese in peru who we got into internment camps. comes from the tokyo rose lawyer - he also did the korematsu case.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND FIVE

It appears that the New York Times doesn't know current fashion trends.  Neon is back! It's not just the Rubik's cube!

Some interesting articles about sexism in video gaming, including a link to a kickstarter campaign that looks pretty cool. And reading through it, people on the internet can be douches. Actually, they can be absolutely horrible.  Read one or two of those and you'll be sucked in real deep.

Obama's ancestors may have included the first slave in history through (gasp!) his white mother!

One of my sister's friends experienced this while at lunch when a woman made incredibly strange comments about Osama bin Laden and Islam to him.  And holy crap, I didn't realize how tall Osama was. Also, Osama quoted extensively from books by various authors, helping sales of those books soar -- and the quotes are pretty interesting. 

So my mind worked this way: I clicked on some FBI terrorist pages that came up when I clicked on OBL's top ten most wanted poster to investigate turban issues.  Then I clicked on one random one of a dude who was wearing a turban to check out where he was from to investigate why some of these folks wear turbans. Then I saw he was indicted for treason - Adam Yahiye Gadahn. Then I was like, whoa, dude, treason? Then I looked up people who were convicted or accused of treason, including Tomoya Kawakita and the Tokyo Rose. Actually, I can't really tell that either are guilty given the quotes in the articles (though the pardon issued to Iva and the reports of what she'd done is a pretty solid 'no' for treason).  Anyway I was actually trying to find out more about Kawakita to figure out whether he'd done it - should probably just read the court decision - and I found this article about D'Aquino/Tokyo Rose which is what led me to her Wikipedia page.  Then I decided I should probably get back to that Gadahn fellow. And then it was even weirder because Adam Gadahn said that Michael Sheuer was a missionary of hate and a counter-islam consultant. That's weird because of the above thing about the 2007 OBL video:

As with Bin Laden's January 19, 2006 audio tape, where he endorses William Blum's book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, in this video Bin Laden endorses Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. Bin Laden states in the video:

"And our holding firm to this magnificent Book is the secret of our strength and winning of the war against you despite the fewness of our numbers and materiel. And if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard."

Then the Tokyo Rose page directed me to look at Ezra Pound's. I was super confused til I remembered that he was an American expat who became a fascist and hated like, all sorts of minorities and stuff. Why is it that we learn Heidegger was a Nazi but don't learn that Pound was like actually horrible?

My mind's a spiral! Time to read longform!

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND FOUR

Finally! Caught up! Now it's time for the real blog posts!

nogales - hole capital of le world.

albert heppner - sad yall. interesting facts in there about speed walking, though. i guess i too liked to blow it off as a fake sport... guess it's not.

fun fact: the black sea has some sort of marine insect that bites. it's super, uber, really creepy looking. unfortunately, i can't find info online about what it is. but ick. ickick.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND THREE

another post lost

economics and serial dating

tv's greatest shows: not really the greatest. i've been trying to watch a lot of these.

here's the white australia policy the white dude was protesting in the 1968 photo.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND TWO

Was written, but forgotten to post. Instead, let's look at some cool things:

I recently discovered that people believed that caviar came from eggs harvested from the wild, kinda like civets and coffee. That's so not true.

Law school - dodgy investment.

1968 Human Rights salute - interesting to read about. I wish some of the links in the article worked better. Great longform article about it somewhere.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND ONE

almost forgot to post for the day. almost! but i did not! record fast blog entry coming your way!

reading a lot about operation c (confrontation), in addition to watching videos about bull connor. other facts: tarring and feathering doesn't use the kind of tar that we're used to (black, asphalt kind).  tarring and feathering used pine tar, the kind that was apparently used on ship ropes and needed to be liquid at way lower temperatures, more like room temperature. so it was basically a humiliation tactic, not a torture tactic. for turture, you'd move to the horrible scalping things that involved super hot liquids being poured on a cone on the head. ick.

and otherwise on the gah turkey front, passenger refused entry onto ferry because she had closed bottle of wine in her bag. 

and OH MY GOD OBAMA WAS HOLDING A BASEBALL BAT WHILE ON THE PHONE THAT MUST SIGNIFY SOMETHING RIGHT?

Carney however gave no direct response to such claims, and simply told reporters that all he could say was that the president was a baseball fan and an avid Chicago White Sox supporter. Carney also added that he would further study the photo for any other details. 

Well, nothing to fear here: no, school history books books did not use 'betrayed their country' to describe Armenians and Syriacs. Just 'problematic descriptions':

The offensive terms to be removed include descriptions of these groups as “back-stabbing rebels,” “puppets of European states,” and “stooges.” 

Turkey's newspapers kinda suck. For instance, here is a completely incomprehensible stream of consciousness article that is about on par with my blog, but has been published in one of the largest English newspapers in the country. Scary.

DAY TWO HUNDRED

WOOOOOOOO! day 200!!!

Earl Scruggs is awesome to listen to. Band includes Steve Martin and Paul Schaffer.

I got into an argument with a very strange girl at a wedding recently who told me that I was an evil person for being fascinated by military strategy. Kind of like this.

Wag Dodge is a strange name. The depiction of what he did to escape the fire is really different in the Wiki article than it is in the New Yorker article (another journalist fired!).

Hotshots and smokejumpers and helitack oh my!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE

US Nuns formulate response to Vatican.

Turkish film festivals, totally awesome! Especially the violence against women part!

Irish immigrants in NY.

Remember the 1904 Olympics? No? How could you forget them?  Hosted in Missouri, the decisively first place winner was Frederick Lorz, who had actually been driven for a significant portion of the race.  Second place was Thomas Hicks, who had taken the poison strychnine and had to be supported by his coaches in order to cross the finish line.  He wasn't the only one to use it - so did the person who came in after him. One who wasn't quite near death was the person who came in fourth, who had eaten some rotten apples along the race, felt ill, fell asleep, and still came in fourth. The marathon also featured the first two black people to enter the modern Olympics - one of whom may have done better had he not been chased a mile off course by dogs.  Start at 2.50 to see Stephen Fry and the QI folks discussing the race.  Also, the rest of that about cheating at Tour de France is fantastic!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY EIGHT

Kiyikoy two weekends in a row? Insanity! But Bodrum and Kiyikoy two weekends in a row? Amazing!

The Imposter: totally interesting.  I want to see it.  Willfully deceived to get what they wanted, the family of a lost child ignored that when their boy reappeared, he was several years older than he should have been, had different coloured eyes, and spoke with a French accent.  And was half Algerian. And now, reading those reviews, I want to watch Capturing the Friedmans as well.

The film is as an instructive lesson about the elusiveness of facts, especially in a legal context. Sometimes guilt and innocence are discovered in court, but sometimes, we gather, only truths about the law are demonstrated.

Tonight, I get to showcase the BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD. Previously, I had been made fun of for my pizza declarations, until people ate them.  Cherry-Roka-Balsamic pizza what what?! Walnut-goat cheese-(roka?)-carmelized onions?  BAM. SHIT WILL GET REAL TONIGHT. although to be fair right now i'm the only contender. everyone else just wants to create their own pizza. little do they know about the battle that will rage tonight! WHO WILL END UP ON TOP?

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SEVEN

yesterday was a first. with bacteria spreading throughout my body from my deep puncture wounds from a tiger-like cat, i was unable to write a blog post.  i was, however, able to play with a pit bull and later kittens. they turn one month old tomorrow! in other news, shortbus ran away. again.

today the kittens explored the house on their own, tumbling out to meet hatice.  she is afraid of them.  she also yet again asked me fairly intrusive questions about myself and my two housemates.  it kind of makes me want to carry a kitten around, waving it at her and freaking her out, but i'd do that anyway just to hold them.

i don't really understand why befriending albert speer is a contradiction in wiesenthal's life, though i guess it's a subject of 'continuing debate' how much speer knew.

greece trip planning continues, with an ever-changing slate of islands to hop amongs. rhodes, crete, santorini, oh my!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX

As it turns out, if your small cat who has mothered 5 kittens in your house has a big, big problem with a chihuahua, it's unlikely that she'll somehow do better with a pitbull, no matter how cute the dog is or how good of friends he is with various street cats.  In other news, puncture wounds (even those accidentally given by a kitten seeking reassurance) really hurt. Also, the fascination I have for these make me think that maybe I should go back and study medicine.

Human baiting, it seems, is real. Or was real. Other types of baiting: lots.

I have a restaurant crush and I want everyone to know about it.  There's a new Italian place by the green grocier on Susam sokak - it used to be a little fish restaurant.  I am now in love with the owners, an adorable married Italian couple, the place (it's cute!) and the food which is *fantastic*.  And I'm also in love with the server who chased us down the street telling us we overpaid after we left a tip. FOOD CRUSHHHHHHHH.

Kinda like the Kissing Bandit, but not nearly as cute.

Small town America and the impact of immigration and raids, and the changing nature of the employees who fill the worst of the worst jobs.

Seriously, screw this. One of the worst things to come out of this Presidency.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY FIVE

I watched It Might Get Loud for the second time last night and thought it was just as cute as it was before. Watching the director's cut of Live at Pompeii was a perfect way to round out the music documentary evening.

The kittens are eating grown up food and one bit me last weekend because she was mad that I was cleaning her paws. They have tempers now! And they want to explore our apartment, the stairwell, and meet other cats.  Tigger and Nicholas Cage have reported back that their lives are fine without any whippersnappers running around.

I've come to the conclusion that I will never, ever make injeera, and that's too bad considering that there are no Ethiopian food places here in Istanbul.  Although I guess if I could figure out how to make it that would be a very useful skill (for here) and a very useless one at home.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY FOUR

i have ELO stuck in my head! 

basket pong! like table pong, but not.

my sexual assault is not your political issue. 

seriously amazing piece - yes, america, we executed an innocent man. this one's about someone being blamed for a murder the other committed. it's not like this is a sole example - i'm pretty sure i shared this one before about the man who was executed for arson (featured on csi!). again, about texas. and more!

i'd write more but i got distracted by this boat that i really want to go on.

A riot of depth. I love that way of describing seeing the world in 3-D.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY THREE

hula hoopin craziness last night!

the games crows play! i hope they don't play that game with me and just stick to the deer.

no time to blog

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO

Our kittens have to be the cutest things in the universe, ever! They're like, real live cats and all!

That's it. I'm getting some dermal anchors when I go back to the US. Can't figure out where, but it must be done.

On the 5 people you spend time with. Very close to officemates lose the weakest link philosophy, but more hardcore. I've been doing a bit of this myself lately!

On the constitution. I used to have a handy pocket constitution, helpfully provided by the Cato Institute. On Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Tea Party folks. The article's interesting because it - VERY obliquely - references some really interesting characters, including America's first domestic terrorist, John Brown.  About a year ago after reading up on Langston Hughes' family, I got really into research the radical abolitionists and slave revolts.  I can't remember now if we learned about this as a major impetus that actually sparked the civil war, but it's fascinating nonetheless.  Anyway, back to the article:

In an interview in 1991, the former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

There's some sort of marching band/choir practicing outside our window. Though the opera singer was better, this one is still good. I take back my previous comments on Bosphorus-office smack talk and now love my new office!

Lots of metapictures today, some care of Sara, and some care of moi:

Animals that totally have misleading names.

Rules of booze, though I don't agree with them all. Number five's a big one.

Ricky Gervais on God.

Poor gingers! Kick a ginger kid day! Canadians, tsk tsk!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE POST THREE

On self-respect. Great article. I can't figure out where I am in that spectrum. Published in 1961, it's as applicable today as ever before. Longform is seriously fantastic.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE

right now so many issues for me: my current mood, my dream last night of a person who i've not spoken to in years, what creates dysfunction, change being hard and how my shoulder feels right now.  on the positive side, at least i'll be sharing good food with a great friend tonight and planning on stuffing myself, possibly with straight up lard, considering officemate has now hurled about the "s" word (skinny) several times. i also kinda want to get a jump rope to see if i can still do the tricks i used to be able to do, and practice some mounts. i also want to build the fan that will circulate air in my vast bedchamber.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE POST TWO

In other news, I decided to get really good at hula hooping. I'm going to learn tricks and stuff! I'll report back as I learn more. Today I'm going to focus on some twirls and lifts!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY

Yesterday I watched the rest of that Detroit Techno documentary.  It's fantastic and I encourage my legions of faithful followers to watch it.

My favorite part? One, that I went to the DEMF (or was it THE MOVEMENT then?) the year a lot of these scenes were shot and it was of course amazing. That Derrick May is apparently a lovable asshole is one of my other favorite things. How could he have not naturally fallen to be my favorite?! Also, now I kinda want to and may go to London to see him play since it's been sooooooo long since he was at the (now defunct, I believe) 11:11. Actually I'd probably have preferred to see Simian Mobile Disco also, but whatever.  LOVED THE DOC, WATCH IT!

I hate vice, but this article about sex trafficking is interesting. Olympics = sex trafficking? Note that the great webeditors at vice have left a few broken links in the article, just to mix it up a bit.

all natural foie gras!? this guy's awesome! i love his techniques!

A most disturbed man and his most unfortunate marriage.  People who fashion themselves from nothing through smoke and mirrors to become popular based solely off their social capital fascinate me. I can't find it, but there's another one about a reporter who met a man who sounded absolutely adorable, similar story, except not a horrible person. Instead, here's another fabulists: Stephen Glass, of course! And his fictionalized story that blurs the lines between fiction and non-, thus leaving you to wonder what was part of his story and what wasn't. And even cooler: The fact-checker and the fabulist. I'd actually love to be a fact-checker - and I got to do a lot of it already in the course of my job. 

Sad, sad, sad yall. Med mal is often so sad. In my med mal class we had a really cool professor who'd invite different people in - including his bud Geoffrey Fieger (he defended "Dr. Death" as some people know Kevorkian as and his brother sang My Sharona).  One woman's story about a misreading and the subsequent aftermath made me cry in class... Super sad stuff.

I actually like writing about the Turkish legal system, so sorry it's taken so long to update. 

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY NINE

KITTEN UPDATE!

the kittens have learned how to play! and they got whiskers! THEY'RE SO CUTE!

cute animals abound.

and this is sad, about babies born without brains.

words in english that came from india!

d&b is coming back, or so officemate tells me... trip to bulgaria to reminisce? 

turns out that lazer epilasyon is even worse the second time and can leave some pretty cool burns! and, apparently, if you like the sun at all it gets even worse. on that note, i'm trying to plan some of GREECE TRIP 2012 AMAZING AWESOME TIME.

AND OH MY GOD DERRICK MAY! <3 <3 <3 and a great history of detroit! love.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY EIGHT

last night i made slop, got back some ADORABLY FAST growing kittens, went to a park, went to not watch a movie, went to a parking lot view, went to a tower, a teras, and a speakeasy. one thing i will never miss about istanbul is that every night it's possible to look at how pretty this city is from so many different perspectives.

even photojournalists can be ladies as the women-targeted trash mag pix has helpfully pointed out. 

there's an opera singer in the distance. i change my non-appreciation of the bosphorus view.

some chips. mmm some tasty chips.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SEVEN

the blog has become a burden. 

diary of a court case. misunderstood by media, this is a *REALLY* interesting article tracing network coverage of the SCOTUS obamacare decision from scotusblog.

And many millions of dollars were gained and lost in the markets based on which media reports traders and investors happened to be watching.

michigan bar journal readin this week - did you know it's easier to become a lawyer in the UK than it is in canada? like, a LOT easier? now you know!

my phone just decided to give me the equivalent of the blue screen of death after sending out what i can only assume is 5000 of the same texts to my various contacts. awesome!

i just learned the word haole, a white person on hawaii. good stuff. including kill haole day! like beat up a white kid day, which helpfully also has a link to "school prank". i wonder why the list of school pranks, which includes things like wedgies, doesn't also include "hate crimes"? hmm.

I ordered chinese food and know that this cursed me:

 Jim:  mgz

el mgzo

mags know whats good

pasta in chinese to go cntainers

w pesto

 Sent at 2:19 PM on Tuesday

 me:  mmm

i ordered chinese food

i hope it doesn't suck

IT SUCKED. IT SUCKED SO BAD. it was 15 lira for half a cup of vegetables. i want them to go drown in their vegetables, BUT THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO BC THERE'S ONLY HALF A CUP. what a horrible place. and now because i hate them i'm also going to criticize their relatively racist icon which is a yellow man with squinty eyes wearing a green rice hat. i am just waiting to rank them on yemeksepeti so i can give them a piece of my mind. so angry. so, so angry.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SIX

A KITTENNAPPING HAS TAKEN PLACE! our house is now devoid of kittens. fear not, readers, for the perp has agreed to return them in exchange for a pair of sunglasses. we sall see if this dastardly crime is rectified.

Missed connections in Istanbul are often the best ever.

I want to keep blogging, but i also have PLEASURES OF A NOTORIOUS GENTLEMAN to read. this is about the brother of the dashing duke. a man without title (until he becomes a knight!), he lost his memory in crimea, but gained fair mercy's heart. but she's hiding a lie! will they be able to work it out? WILL THEY?  i keep wondering when the sexy cowboys are going to come into the story, but i guess this isn't one of the combo cowboy/duke books. sad yall.

other interesting things i've been reading about lately other than bedchambers is donme. realllllllly interesting and something i knew nothing about. one of my housemates insists that there are people all over the world who are doing this. could it be? probably! crazies! from there, we move on to operation nemesis, a super-hero like plan to kill all those responsible for killin a lot of armenians (lots of young turk folks).

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE

Big day today. I got moved into a room with a view! Of the Bosphorus! Rock. Limitations of the room: no officemate, the room is kind of boring, and because of where it's located people keep walking by and disturbing my reading. At first I resented them, but now I crave the distraction. Not even a seagull flying in the air. But a boat going by! Maybe the blog could turn into a stream of consciousness Bosphorus watching tool?

The perfect fire! 

My work is giving me a vacation! So now I shall go Greece bound and then after Murka and after Southeast Asia! Happy times, happy times.

Also, my kittens are absolutely adorable! All I want to do is spend time staring at them.

Snitchety snitch snitch. Great read.

I love Calvin and Hobbes, and they're right.

DUBSTEP WHAT

Dubstep Dispute from Fluxel Media on Vimeo.

WATCH SUITS! fantastic tv show. love it. THOUGH WHY CAN'T LAW SHOWS GET IT ALL RIGHT EVER?!?!

I figured out that the gardening project I was supposed to do with some refugee kids in town has been put on hold, but that won't stop me from gardening quite a bit tonight!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR

Last weekend was a fantastic time - I know I didn't write about it earlier, but it was filled with dancing, friends, beach festivals, boats, and a fake country's birthday.  

One part that was pretty crappy but turned to awesome was Friday night. Officemate and I decided to embrace capitalism that makes life just about fantastic and went on a shopping spree in Galata a few weeks ago.  I got an uber cute little black dress that is *so* *so* me and was wearing it out with friends, dancing and finally going to meet up with my housemate and some people, including a very tall person who lives about a block away from my house. When it was time to leave at about two, as I always do, I suggested taking a taxi.  It's just safer to do after midnight or one, particularly on the weekends.  As the guy lived really close to us, he scoffed at the idea of taking a taxi and offered to walk us home.

We started walking and several blocks away from my house I noted that there was someone who seemed rather sketchy following us, but wasn't very concerned considering we were a small group and he was only one.  A few minutes later, he ran behind me, pulled my tight dress up to my waist, exposing my underwear, where it stayed until I quickly and frantically pulled it down.  Throwing his hands into a victory motion, he ran.  This was completely unexpected, given that I was not walking alone and was in fact walking with two people, including a man who was about a foot taller than the guy, and that we were not drunk or looking helpless in any way; both girls were wearing flats that we could easily sprint in.  My friend began to chase after him, with my housemate and I trailing and yelling, tackling him to the ground after several blocks.  At this point, I began to hit him in the head with my purse while my housemate kicked him. Jerk. People came out of their houses to confirm we were okay. I did lose a ring in the process, but I felt a lot better.

It makes me so incredibly angry that in some places people can do things that are solely intended to humiliate women or show their power over them.  One way that places have been combating things like this is Hollaback, which raises awareness of street harassment.  It makes me even more angry that this happened within a block of my home. 

So thank you to Dayna and Mitch for assisting me in a small victory that felt like a lot more, and congrats on the NY Times reference Mitch!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND OHMYGODIAMSOTIRED

BREAKING NEWS: BEWARE THE ANTI-SEMITIC ELMO!!! I MEAN, BE REALLY CAREFUL! SERIOUSLY! Even CNN got in on it!

well that was most certainly not a dull night! action packed left and right, from every place i went! gave away at least two kittens, convinced someone not to drop dangerous psychedelics at the only thing i'm really glad about is that i didn't embrace my inner goddess, because it wanted me to behave with unladylike comportment. and i gave away two kittens!

as we all know, today is a crucially important date in history, particularly for those in turkey. it's the day that theodosius ii ceded power to aelia pulcheria. it's also the day that johnson signed the FOIA. guess which politician has had his fingers in every amazing piece of legislation ever over the last 40 years? if you guessed kucinich, you're on the right track, but it's ralph nader! and, about 70 years ago today, the largest full scale battle since game of thrones and the lord of the rings took place: the battle of kursk.

"he's a little turkish hipster. he's not even a skinny turkish hipster. he's more of a little turkish hipster. you know, because of his height?" said about a man with an ironic moustache who i'm now mildly in love with because of my mental image of his irony and also his bad ass tats. HEARTS GALORE!

"i don't care what other people think, i want the purity of my system to remain intact" about officemate's goodreads system

nothing beats ringing in the daylight with housemates, a puddle of kittens, a ton of delicious homemade macaroni and cheese/curry and an absolutely adorable edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros video. EXCEPT MAKING AND EATING A FLAG CAKE!

i'm not sure how conversation turned to animal tail butt plugs in the office [response to "summer of crazy" "there are so few people i want to be friends with now. i want to curl up into a ball, put in a fox tail butt plug, crawl into a cave and curl up into a ball."], but it happened, which then led me to wonder: what's the rate of humans actually having tails? which then led to this article about human vestigiality. i had read that humans *used* to have jacobson's organs before. long before fulltimesucks, when i was only a spec of a person thinking that fulltimegradeschoolwasprettyfun, i got into a fight with a vet about whether or not cats had jacobson's organs. he said only snakes had them. i said cats did too. it didn't even make sense because if he knew cats he'd know that when they really wanted to smell something they open their mouths. douche. reagardless, apparently it's not that uncommon for adults to have jacobson's organs. crazies!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO

This is probably the peak of musical genius. Pure lady, pure class, pure awesome.

Unfortunately, there's no clear jello available in Turkey, so I can't make what I originally wanted to for tomorrow's MURKA FUCK YA party. Boring ole cake instead, I guess.

Don't feel like blogging, but it has to be done. Until tomorrow!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ONE

I now believe that every weekend should be spent either on a beach, a boat, or at a bbq. The only thing that would have made it better was coming home to a kitten puddle. OH WAIT!

I think I must just have a thing for Scandinavians, or at least drum-heavy songs with women singers. This song doesn't end the way I'd like it to, but the song itself is really good. The video's part of what is supposed to be a mini-movie, but other than the Jose Gonzalez portion of it, I can't find the complete thing. I haven't really tried, though.  

I took the opportunity on Sunday to scope out the Canada-day scene in preparation of doing what America does best on Wednesday: totally rockin harder than our friendly neighbors to the south.  Mission accomplished, I think. In the process, I'm learning a lot about blue colored food, which is actually kind of hard to find in this city.

Amber waves of green, or inequality in America. The article isn't actually very good, but the concept is interesting.

Thanks to Sheri for reminding us about this study where scientists trained monkeys to use currency for food. The monkeys had other ideas about it - they bought sex.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY

I love this xkcd comic because it's about one of my favorite astrophysicists (i'm kinda in love with a lot of them):

This is a horrible autotuned version of a lot of cool things other science educators, theoretical physicists, and astrophysicists have said"

About once or twice a month, I go through the most popular youtube videos as a way to make me feel somewhat like I'm connected to popular culture. I saw a video of a bus monitor being bullied - it was so bad that I shut it off after about 20 seconds. Absolutely horrifying. Which made me happy to read good.is's most recent people are awesome post, which made me go back and click on the original again - and, though I was still unable to watch much more of it, it did make me feel slightly better to see that the video had 28,000+ dislikes.  Read also this article, which discusses the need to recognize and combat bullying, something I strongly agree with.

So while it's great that the internet rallied to send Karen on vacation, and Josh and Wesley may feel genuine regret, we need to teach students—and everyone, really—to identify situations in which group behavior is veering into dangerous territory and to speak up effectively. That means changing the cultural norms and practices in a school, so that kids and adults alike learn to help each other rather than compete. It means cultivating empathy with the same zeal that we teach science and math. And it means rethinking how we educate, so that today’s lunchroom bullies don’t grow up to be boardroom bullies.

More amazing things that reddit has helped do here. I myself am partial to the cutie with Huntingtons who died.  But my real favorite is Cain's Arcade.  Watch the documentary here and learn more about it. It's absolutely adorable. A kid created his own arcade out of cardboard, but nobody came... until someone decided to make a flashmob event.

One day, by chance, I walked into Smart Parts Auto looking for a used door handle for my ’96 Corolla. What I found was an elaborate handmade cardboard arcade manned by a young boy who asked if I would like to play. I asked Caine how it worked and he told me that for $1 I could get two turns, or for $2 I could get a Fun Pass with 500 turns. I got the Fun Pass.

It's spiraled since then and over $200,000 have been raised for his education (with matching funds going to creating a foundation to spur an 'imagination foundation' to inspire other kids). I love it!

And finally, sent by officemate:

Men and women who chew too much khat abandon their domestic responsibilities in favor of spending hour of hour getting mildly high.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE POST TWO

the season of shows has arrived, and with it, many choices. sad that i cannot do four million things at once, like get kittens, do lesson, sit outside with visitors + pets, go to concert, go to tower, go to teras, and play with kittens.

breaking news!! scotus upheld obamacare! with scalia, alito, and thomas joining kennedy dissenting. kennedy dissents but roberts upholds? crazy pants!

my craptastic phone is really on its last legs. i think it's time to upgrade to one that was built in this century.... or not. i also want a banjo. and a violin.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE

triumphant return (again) of lolita tonight, along with her brood.  exciting times we live in, no?!

How to make a viral hit. How? Steal. Steal steal steal!

A bunch of computers looked on youtube and learned for themselves what's really important: cats and tool-like objects rotated at a 30 degree angle.

As we all know, the Mexican elections are almost upon us. We all know that, right? Remember back in the day when if you took AP US Government you go to take the Comparative AP test too, and I found a comparative book that had been one of my cousins that analysed the USSR's political system? And then after using that I somehow got 3 credits of college credit for the Comparative test? Man, those were the days - days when you were rewarded for doing nothing...

I have to love this. Have to, of course. I mean, how could I not?

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT POST TWO

I got a fig today. Every time I get one, I'm totally paranoid about eating wasps. Except from what that article says, every single fig is the product of at least one dead wasp. So figs, like many other fruits and vegetables, are insect killers, digesting their bodies!  Nobody ever believes that tomatoes are another kind of insect killer. Fun fact. Or carnivorous plant.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT

I know everyone's anxious to hear about the cat issue, so, it's all good! No idea if the (5 out of 6 who survived) kittens will live, but at least the mom's ok!

Care of Sara, a really cool video:

Last night we got into a debate about the tv show Girls. I saw one episode and decided it was horribly, terribly, annoying and that I never wanted to watch another one.  The reason why?  Let me take some clips from this Gawker article to tell you:

Girls is a television program about the children of wealthy famous people and shitty music and Facebook and how hard it is to know who you are and Thought Catalog and sexually transmitted diseases and the exhaustion of ceaselessly dramatizing your own life while posing as someone who understands the fundamental emptiness and narcissism of that very self-dramatization. This is a recap of it.

And another article, "Am I Rich Enough?":

Let the record reflect that the television program Girls, which is "like nothing else on TV," and which has at long last brought the previously buried perspectives of 23- to 28-year-old females to bear on mass culture, has bravely broken yet another taboo by choosing to set its season finale at a surprise wedding. Nothing has ever been like that, on TV...So what have we learned here, kids? What is the message, finally? That all television shows are stupid, and that television is not art, and to relentlessly valorize a 26-year-old show-runner with tattoos of scenes from children's books as the voice of a new generation is foolhardy and empty? That youth is callow, and navel-gazing, and small-minded? That wrapping your persona in layer after layer of defensive irony and self-deprecation does not absolve you of the responsibility to be interested in something outside of yourself? That an awareness of your flaws is not a defense?
"But," you will say. "You don't get it. The show is a satire. A gentle satire, but a satire. The flaws are the point."
"And yet you celebrate her as an auteur," I will say. "The 'artist' and the character are virtually identical, and you valorize the artist for skewering the character. Besides, she's not skewering the character. These people are meant to be loved, to be understood and explained. It's a celebration, not a satire."
"Do you apply the same standard to Woody Allen?" you will say. "Is his filmic self meant to be loved or is he a comic foil? Is he the hero or the butt of the joke, or both?"
"Laurie Simmons' daughter is no Woody Allen," I will say.
"Stop calling her that," you will say. "Why do you insist on calling her that? Do you really think a feminist artist who works with dolls can call up HBO and get her daughter a gig? The TV business is rife with nepotism. Why single her out?"
"You misunderstand me," I will say. "I don't think she got a TV show because of her mother. But I think that the concerns of the wealthy private school girls ought to be dismissed as a matter of course and not be taken seriously. There are enough people who take them seriously; for largely tribal reasons I don't want to be among them. Especially if they surround themselves with their well-bred peers. I think that we should fight to rob the Laurie Simmons' daughters and David Mamet's daughters' and Brian Williams' daughters' and Drummer from Bad Company's daughters' of this world of the opportunities they have been unjustly awarded. Or at least highlight the injustice." 

He says he doesn't hate the show. I do. Although I guess my hatred shouldn't stem from the one episode I watched. Then again, it can.


A horrifying recount of an event earlier this year.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SEVEN

Heart's not in posting today. Spent all night with a dreadfully preggers cat (Shortbus) who finally returned to the house... to give birth. Fourteen hours later, nearly no sleep, and two emergency vet calls/visits later, she's getting the ultrasound that really turned her off the cabortion idea (my theory for why she ran away the last time; that, and idiocy) and I have no idea whether she has kittens or a mass of stillborns from what was, in all accounts, a massive hulking cat father. Which is leading me to become a neurotic cat mom, which I almost never am - if they run away, they run away, if they come back, they come back, but I hate her being at a vet's and not knowing. And what sick large cat would mate with my tiny little adorbs kitten? Can cats have midget fetishes? She's not very smart, so whatever sexual predator is out there should be stopped before he goes after another mentally disabled midget cat.

STRESSED. and had dreams of trying to assist difficult cat births. and yelling about my kedi being hamile, which i actually did have to do last night to emergency vet number one.

OBLIGATORY CAT LADY POST DONE. NEUROTICISM ENGAGED.

nothign better than some racism to distract. 'the unpronouncables', the turks. i don't really think ess key shay here spore is very hard to say, but i guess it is. now, if it were muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine spor we may have something to talk about.

still fixating on my cat.... will just sign off for the day.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX POST TWO

How and why one person changed their stance on gay marriage.  While I don't agree with his views of society, it's still interesting to read, and I'm happy he's come about.  One thing I don't think that's so cool about the article: referencing the Convention on the Rights of the Child... without mentioning that of the three countries in the world not to have ratified it, the US is one. Somalia is another, but it's pledged to ratify it. The other country not to have adopted it has a slightly better excuse, given that it's not even a year old. 

My mother, my daughter. Sad, sad, sad yall.

A disappearing act of major proportions. I'm so fascinated by people who do this. I think it's all the recent Person of Interest I've been watching (excellent, excellent, excellent show. Watch.). I'm even more fascinated because this tale involves a tiny village in Turkey, a "Turkish immigrant" named Nesrin Wolf, and Steve Buschemi, who I am in love with. Here's a critique of the article, which I don't agree with in its entirety - though, as the author of the critique notes, he knows the subject personally and so my own reading of the New Yorker piece will obviously be different; it's interesting to read both together. From the New Yorker, these two are meant to be friends - this much animosity belies an amazingly deep relationship. From the Rumpus Magazine, I actually kind of get the same. The amount of time and energy these two men are going to is crazy.

Ick. I just found out the actor who plays in my favorite show has done the following:

-Opposed stem cell research

-Donated money to Santorum

I kind of feel like I shouldn't even support him by watching it, but considering I stream it for free and really only earn Turkish streaming websites money, I guess that's fine.

Now that I'm looking at it, one of the actors is a relative of the actual discoverer of the geographic North Pole.  I had no idea that the first person - and the person to plant a flag there - was a black American named Matthew Henson, not Robert Peary. Plus, she was in Hustle and Flow and was sang a song in it that then won an Academy Award - the first song by a hip hop group to do so.

Time to read about the Mexican oil and gas sector. Fun, fun fun!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX

I've been wondering quite a bit lately why we no longer call bedrooms bedchambers.  To remedy this obvious failure of modern English language, the area where my bed is located will now be called my bedchamber.  Which brings me to the lady of the bedchamber, gentleman of the bedchamber, lord of the bedchamber and the Bedchamber Crisis, which was a 'crisis' involving replacing Whig ladies of the bedchamber with Tories. Scandal! I'd like to thank my hideously trashy novel WAKING UP WITH THE DUKE (good get stacey!) for reminding me that bedchamber is the only acceptable term for the living space containing a bed.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE

UNDER DESK IS AWESOME

THE HAIRPIN USED THE WORD SMANGING! Let me smang it girl, that's smash it and bang it!

A YEAR! wikipedia article.

Dorothy Parker's ashes.

Paper in prison!

EVEN WORSE THAN NORMAL POST DONE

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FOUR

YOU CAN'T FOOL NATURE. purer words have never been said.

i got a party on a boat today! it's a wedding! but not eritrean. 

exhausted. so tired. so much coffee.

slippery slippery slope!

I just wish their other songs sounded similar to that one!

hey, all the boys that got AIDs be quiet, and all the girls that don't like guys be quiet!

There are few things in the world more terrifying to teenaged boys than the power of teenaged girls. On the Straight Outta Compton Ice Cube spotlight track “I Ain’t Tha 1,” the rapper attempts to negate that terrifying power by fundamentally denying the humanity and agency of women, reducing the complicated, messy, and crazy-making dance of sex and romance to a simple formula: Men want sex, women want money. And it’s every real man’s solemn duty to get the sex he craves without sacrificing any of his hard-earned scratch. 

These slave shackle shoes are amazing. Pure genius marketing here.

If I don't get proposed to like this, I'm just going to have to say no:


I used to spend many a lunch in that park, but definitely didn't see anything like that.  I did once see a human-eating plant. It had its own show!

The libraries and closed schools are the saddest.  Reading through it, I'm not sure they understand what happened to some of the buildings, especially the libraries, which were closed 'temporarily' while I was in college... never to open again. At least some of them.

Read up on the race riots in Detroit from back in the day - it's kinda insane how politics remains the same. Conyers is still in office, and Romney's son is a politician. "This gave Detroit the distinction of being the only domestic American city to have been occupied by Federal troops three times."  I'm not actually sure if that's true - I don't know what other than the riots in the 40s would have led to occupying it... Loyal readers? What was the 3rd?


Amaaaaaaaaaazing. Art from a single thread.


Dorothy Porter, stupid as a poet.  Loved the final sentence (from their tumblr!). "Bring this poem to your mouth and suck it til I die."


That's about the most random long blog I've had in a while.  Those of you doing fulltimesucks stuff, enjoy!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THREE

I've been reading a lot of her stories and listening to them on YouTube.  An example: 

I absolutely love it, and love how even though times have certainly changed, and very few people waltz any more, the same story line plays out many evenings anyway. Tons of her stories are available online to read or hear.  You were fine is a particularly great one, and applicable to some folks I've known.

Unrelated, but Elisabeth Moss said this, which I'm going to use:

He's so great at doing impersonations. But the greatest impersonation he does is that of a normal person. 

Honesty, dishonesty, and creativity.  Premise is that everyone lies to themselves, nobody is rational, and those who lie the most are the most creative because they have imaginations that are able to connect things in unique ways. Interesting.

I know I've been promising to share all the cool Reader stuff I've been looking over, but check out my google updates instead because I don't feel like putting them all on here.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO POST THREE

I just discovered this - tots adorbs.  If you search a variety of words on Google, they come up with a little Easter egg.  Try it! Gay, lesbian, transgender (but not trans).  Here's an article about it.  And sad yall, it looks like I may miss the pride march because of two lovely lasses swooping in and a boat ride celebration. It was lovely last year, though!

Hey, remember when I kept telling people not to go to law school and when my professors in college told me not to, but I did, and I kept doing it, and then it wasn't the best idea ever, even though it worked out for me?  Don't go to law school! This year, a whopping 55% of graduates found full time employment.  Full time sucks, but it's easy to remember in this economy how extremely lucky I really am.  The class of 2011 that graduated from my school has a 13% unemployment rate, which isn't too shabby compared to national norms.  But only 63% got a position that required a law degree, while an additional 12% were hired at a place that preferred JDs but didn't require them. 

BLERG. Time's ticking down before I can go outdoors and to the tower for a fun-filled evening of song and dance. And sleepiness, judging from my current state.