DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIDDY NINE

Last of the 150s. Time sure flies when you're wasting away your life!  Or working, whatever it's called.

I have to say that the NY Times travel on a budget pieces blow my mind. Their idea of budget and mine are clearly very, very different.  Dani Burlison is my new favorite author, and her "Sex Tourism on a String" is no exception:

After spending thousands of dollars on diets, cosmetic surgery, beauty products and “find your lost and confused soul mate and mold him into the man you’ve always wanted” workshops each year, women are left with little more than orange faux tan residue and one-way conversations with the millions of rescue cats adopted each year from local animal shelters they’ve subsequently renamed “Ewan McGregor” or “David Bowie.”

...According to my research, the more conservative men tend to take a liking to women with free spirits, foul mouths, tattoos and radical, leftist politics. I’d advise women to not dismiss these men. Often, they have experienced some degree of internalized oppression and their inner, more sensitive sides can come out of their rough, six-pack-abs exteriors with the right women. And the right amount of alcohol. 

I should probably start taking pictures when on vacation... Like, I don't think I have any of most of the places I went to, though I guess it doesn't matter. Maybe I'll get a poloroid. Or get INSTAGRAM THE COOLEST PROGRAM EVER AND THEN I CAN MAKE THE PLACES I GO TO LOOK ALL COOL AND MAYBE TAKE PICTURES OF MY FOOD AND STUFF!

Today's the first LUNCH BEAT ISTANBUL! Unfortunately I think it's too far away from my work to go to. Instead, tonight, I'll have to jam out to my own ecstatic dance jam. MY OWN ECSTATIC DANCE JAM! Apparently there are zumba lessons somewhere in Istanbul. I'll report back more once I'm done wasting my life. Or working, whatever it's called. But before then, a kinda old radio message: hippie dances ecstatically. Officemate send me that five years ago.

Someone on PAWI helpfully said that they're giving their "small town" niece a place to live for the summer. While it's totally cool that they're giving the teenager a chance to live in Istanbul, I really, REALLY, REALLY get annoyed when people say others are from small towns.  *I* was called from a small town at points. Do you know how many people are unfairly labelled as being from a small town just because they're not from one of the BIGGEST cities in the US?  In anger, yesterday I told officemate that I was going to make a list of European capital cities that are less populated than my home town.  Not the EGR hometown (WE'RE NUMBER FIVE! WE'RE NUMBER FIVE!!) but the larger city that surrounds EGR. I'm going to take the combined statistical area because it's the biggest and probably the most unfair number to use, and that's the way I roll. Also, I'm going to not actually just do capital cities because it turns out a lot of the ones that aren't totally boring are a little more populated than GR. But I'm not doing it now because it's time for me to work, or something like that. OR LOOKING UP NEW HAIRSTYLES GOTTA GO

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT

Wow! Who knew it was humanly possible to sleep as much as I did last weekend to this week? On the plus side, I now have the *coolest* supply of medications ever - DEATH TO THE ALLERGENS!

This was provided by officemate, and I love it:

Here's a rather boring article explaining at least one part of the song.

I need to stop being a bad feminist, but it's just so easy to dismiss people who act the fool to get male attention - which works. Actually, no, I think I'm going to stay in the hater's club.  Plus, it's super obnoxious that half of the people I think are worthless I think are because... they are. Men and women alike. So maybe it's not me being a bad feminist, but a not good enough elitist? Hater? Dunno.

I've been looking up places to go on vacay in Asia... Suggestions?  Palau may be a bit too expensive to go to, sadly. With Vietnam as my base, where should I go to? I WANT EVERYTHING! But maybe I won't plan anything and will just hear from people where to go? Probably better that way...

Earthquakes can be a sad time for humans and our four-pawed friends as well.

Speaking of that, all quiet on the cat front! Shortbus has run away, again.  Well, she actually went outside the door and I looked at her for a few seconds, asking housemate whether I should run after her. "She'll probably come back..." was a good enough for me response.  She hasn't returned, solving that problem.  In all honesty judging from her flea-free existence and round belly, I think she may be living in at least one more apartment, pretending to be their pet just as she has pretended to be ours. Would you like her to pretend to be yours?!?

And with that I'm leaving, mostly because I haven't been able to studystudystudy math over the past few days. Happy summer Istanbulites!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!

Pretty much the most awesome weekend that could have ever been hoped for, aside from the failure to obtain a cabortion.  No fear, though, today's the day!

Two videos to watch first, both with some similar imagery. This one's shot in France and I thought it was great when it came out back in the day (and it's called Niqabitch, so who wouldn't love it)?

This one was shot in places that range from as far as a few blocks away from my house to on my corner.

And this is so pretty! Care of friends of the apartment!

I'm still sore from dancing harder than I have in a long time to this band. AND OF COURSE IT WAS BETTER LIVE.

And I'm getting way into Warren Zevon, 30 plus years too late. Whatever. His wiki article is making me get all emotional and stuff.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX

i like that number too!!

unfortunately i've been slammed at work all day so very little time to work on this post.  i didn't even get to read a single newspaper article and i was uuuuuuuuuuuuuber behind on the coolest new thing in our office:

COFFEE CLUB

i've nominated myself to be the monthly newsletter maker and coffee review writer. the first to reference our ongoing war with nescafe got my nomination for war cabinet minister. officemate wanted to be historian and secretary. we still need more positions. AND, i already found two images:

as you can see, we're trying to get yeni officemate (a lady) to join the ladies contingent. i'm not really sure why we like ice but that may have something to do with our hearts or whatnot.

SPEAKING of ice cold hearts!

the other fun thing i got to do today was to arrange a CABORTION. it's like an abortion, except for cats. and kittens. not like i'm getting cat's taken out of me or something! i'm going to write much more extensively about this experience, which is probably played out the same way every day in the south of america (coming soon to you too UK!!), except in this instance they didn't tell me i had to have a medical instrument shoved up my lady bits before i could have it done. i'll also let you all know how it goes, as long as it's not too far along. in which case my CATS: WHY PEOPLE PERCEIVE ME AS A CRAZY CAT LADY will be even more true with a gaggle of KITTTTTTTTTENS!

and finally i heard officemate having a funny conversation with someone she didn't know she knew on the phone who had called the office for something or other. it was beautiful to figure out she knew the person after hearing the reference chain.

fastest blog post ever. that took less than 7 minutes. rock. DONE. HAPPY WEEKEND EVERYONE! GO TO FESTIVALS, MEYHANES, AND LOTS OF OTHER FUN STUFF LIKE IMMA DO THIS WEEKEND. also watch the end of house because it's lovely and one of the only endings i could have wanted for the show.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE POST TWO

This goes out to officemate and our trip to the tattoo parlor back in the day. Look at the birthday ("Early life")!

So that above means I lied about the updates for the day. Somehow I got into Japanese killers and then hijackers and then various Palestinian leaders and hijackers and MOSAD assassinations. Look forward to a much more interesting blog tomorrow!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE

Today will be the least inspired blog post ever.  There's some idea in Turkish law that if you break a criminal law but then come into compliance with it the past breaking is moot. That's very strange to me.  Also, the evil cold of May 2012 has REALLY struck with a vengeance so my post is going to take a sum total of like, 10 minutes to write and be sourced from really easy sources.

First, review of avocado curry.

Unfortunately there were no avocados at Dia, nor were there onions, throwing my whole dinner plans into disarray.  Instead, I made lubyee after sourcing onions from a different store. Lubyee is an absolutely delicious Lebanese green bean stew that I used to eat many times a week in high school. I also learned that you can make something that seems just like French cut green beans by slicing normal big green beans really thin. It was a fascinating discovery. For a dish that doesn't taste quite like the original dish but is still good, add Chinese five-spice powder and some garam masala.

As many of you know my food processor has opened up an entire new world of awesomeness in my life.  Because of it, I've been living with the motto "Her gun yeni bir corba."  Today I'm doing dill gazpacho with some Dave's Insanity Sauce (you better believe).  I LOVE SUMMER and all the great fresh vegetables! Now all I need to do is install instigram on my ipad and then take a zillion pictures of everything that I make and eat, because that's SO UNIQUE AND AWESOME AND IT LOOKS ALL COOL AND RETRO.

Anyway, soup. Soup's got so many weird phrases associated with it. SOUPS ON! Also, the soup nazi was first mentioned in Sleepless in Seattle. 

And today's Wiki picture of the day is one that I had to study way back in 10th grade English, then again sometime later.

And vaguely relevant to the GMATs and what I vaguely remember from English

According to one author "The painting is often referenced for its immaculate depiction of non-Euclidean geometry",^[28] referring to the image on the convex mirror.

Non-Euclidean geometry! I had a dream about math. And then about debate. It was horrifying. Next thing you know, I'm going to be naked showing up to the final of some class I dropped out of but forgot to do.

Worst.blog.post.ever.done.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR POST TWO

For whichever person was googling nohut america sex, you found me!  As odd as that is, it's still less weird than the ones where someone obviously thought officemate or someone with officemate's name had a sex blog and kept looking up variants of her name and ridiculous things... many of which were then directed to my less-than-coherent blog which covers a variety of strange topics. Remember that dolphin!?

Many of the articles I was going to share today made me miss 'MURKA too much. It seems that I really want to live in NY.  

Okay, but instead, I'm going to say that you HAVE to watch this and you have to watch the videos. In particular, I'm loving the video that the marketer put up. LOOK AT MY TAX RETURN! You know I'm not using PhotoShop! Well, actually, now I kind of think you are. Well, actually, at first I just thought you made up numbers, but now I think that you PhotoShopped it. Lethal Commission is awesome too!!

Record away!

I love the class name: KNOW THY ENEMY.

The finding that “the gleam in a young man’s eye is in the fall,” she said, was “astonishing.”

Tonight I'm going on a curry odyssey that will take me into realms I've never even thought of before today: avocado curry.  That's right: avocado curry. My review plus maybe some pictures if it doesn't look like vomit, which I'm guessing it may. But probably a delicious flavor. Kind of like when I made my cucumber/yogurt salad base/cheddar cheese powder/curry avocado pasta. That was the BOMB. Actually maybe I'll make a real post about that sometime because it was remarkably tasty. As has been the popcorn that I've started eating regularly ("the only real whole-grain!"). CURRY POPCORN WHAT!

do you have the curse of SOCIAL JETLAG??? It can make you fat. So can, according to my boss, boys.

BOOK REVIEW TIME!!!

Are you cool enough that you know what O&E means? ODDS AND EVENS! Do you know the properties of odds and evens? No? Well it most certainly does not matter unless you have to take a relatively arbitrary exam that largely determines your future based on your willingness to spend a bunch of time studying for something that is likely to be useless knowledge in the future (HELLLLLLLLLO MBE NICE TO THINK OF YOU AGAIN). Actually even the MBE has cool stuff that you get to learn about, like the difference in torts between Africanized bees and domesticated honey bees, and the difference between having a normal cat as a pet and a giant lion.  LIONS! TORTS! OH MY. ANYWHOOOOOOOO no cool math lessons yet. Just stupid number lines. If x^3-x=p and x is odd, and x>1, is p divisible by 24? pshaw! of course it is! Factor that shit out, get (x-1)x(x+1)=p and use those good ole NUMBER properties to find that  there's clearly two evens there (prime factors 2 and 2), plus then another 2 since they're consecutive evens (*2), plus then there's gotta be a three in there because there's 3 consecutive numbers and get 2*2*2*3. YES! IT IS DIVISIBLE BY 24!!! ......sigh.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR

Nothing like a wicked allergy to a mulberry tree with one growing right outside my bedroom

Remember that tomorrow is Cyrillic alphabet day!! NEVER FORGET

BOOK REVIEW TIME!

In the Company of Cats: or On Nature's Natural Birth Control

Ok this book is actually kind of cute, even though Robin didn't like it enough to keep her present from Jim and Beth for Christmas in 1992. One quote I like in particular is something that's quite relevant to a recent visitor to this city:

"Whenever he was out of luck and a little downhearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own."

And I want to be like this cat: "... grace and elegance... independence and arrogance, and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare."

That's that. Book wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

Time for lunch! But before that, look at some pictures of William Kunstler!

Next book review: MANHATTAN GMAT - the new standard. FRACTIONS, DECIMALS & PERCENTS, GMAT STRATEGY GUIDE. or not?

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE

It turns out that the tales of Bob Tomarchin and Moko are GREAT stories to tell to everyone who I can corner to listen. Great for me, probably not so much for everyone else subjected to the tales of Henderson island and Pitcairn history, but whatever.  He made Life Magazine! And was insane! And grabbed the chimp and went on a circuitous route to Mexico - FREEEEEEEEEEEDOM.

The soul-sucking, soul-crushing, horrible hideous thing that is what I spend much of my day doing is even worse than it normally is.  Every single day all I do is waste my time doing stuff that I should never have to do.  I am a completely wasted resource at a firm that underpays its employees while emotionally abusing them.  I learn nothing anymore; I do nothing. My coworkers have complained that they sometimes get bored, just staring at their computer screens. My computer is jacked so I can't even print the emails that I'm supposed to print, and the new intern came in already to complain about how slow her computer is going, as if she thinks she has a unique problem.  I am contemplating breaking the copy machine more than it is so it finally gets fixed, seeing as right now it can only print one page before it gets jammed. [ED NOTE: this has downgraded to not even printing a page before it decides it's jammed.]  I just want to quit so I can move onto something else, but my boss hates attorneys who leave so much that she has pretended that one of my former coworkers, who is now heading a team at another firm, is dead, and we're no longer allowed to speak her name.  I'll look back at the 11 hours a day I've spent here over the past year with an enormous, enormous amount of regret, and this completely pointless waste of time blog is the only (incredibly crap) thing I've gotten out of it, other than a hatred of the legal profession and an extremely strong desire to never have to work in a law firm again.

In protest of that, I'm going to blog for a little bit, and I may work out for a little bit during lunch.  That or play sims on the ipad. The only things I've used the iPad for so far are taking pictures and playing games. And reading Vanity Fair. I really want to read Sons and Lovers but OH I JUST FOUND IT FOR SOME REASON OUT OF ORDER ON MY IPAD WOOOOOOOO. Sons and Lovers here I come!

I found out one thing my life is missing other than purpose is Gizlibahce on Saturday nights. Best music I've heard in a long time and I danced like I haven't in a while.  

NEWS ROUNDUP

People come out against putting that one kid away who videotaped his gay roommate and told people to watch it online and then that kid committed suicide and it was all big in the news, and I think he had also posted something to it gets better (note: not the law school version, just about it getting worse).

This article is interesting but I wish it went into a little more detail about the glass escalator.  Like in nursing, at least from what I remember my mom telling me, although nursing is primarily female dominated, when men enter, they tend to flock to the most highly regarded areas, like nurse anesthethists, which - although it's certainly good to remove gender barriers for professions - kind of keeps them enforced (male nurses earn the most, female remain the underpaid masses). From the article:

Men earn more than women even in female-dominated jobs. And white men in particular who enter those fields easily move up to supervisory positions, a phenomenon known as the glass escalator — as opposed to the glass ceiling that women encounter in male-dominated professions, said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociologist at Georgia State University. 

I had some more articles but, of course, my work computer is too messed up to be able to handle both printing and blogging at the same time. So with that, my dear readers, I tell you to please do as I say, but not as I do, and never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever work in this office.
~~~~~~
Update! Well, that was an exciting day!  Officemate assigned the intern some of the more boring work from the job, certain individuals in the office indicated they have little grasp on the assignments they deal, and my blackberry caught on fire! full of smoking melted plastic. HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO

Looking up tropical islands a bit more - specifically, coral atolls - I found this gem about Henderson Island:

In 1957 a twenty seven year old American, Robert Tomarchin, lived the life of a castaway on the island for approximately two months, accompanied by a pet chimpanzee, apparently as a publicity stunt, until he was rescued by people from Pitcairn in two longboats.

Of course, I needed to know more.  First, of course(!), it coincided with the International Geophyiscal Year (IGY), a year of many discoveries and scientific feats, including the launch of Sputnik and discoveries related to solar flares and a lot of other things. Not sure why, but IGY was something I looked up yesterday. Probably has something to do with the islands, atolls and research stations.  Read that article, if only to appreciate the Russians who've edited the section on the Space Race and why the USSR really won... Or at least I think that's what the incoherent English is trying to say.

Anywho, I stumbled across this article, which lays out the history of the guy.

They're not really sure why he was on the island, but it may have been because he jumped ship from a yacht that was sailing near by.  After a bit of discussion, the nearby islanders of Pitcairn went on a rescue mission the Henderson, which has little potable water. Upon discovering him on the beach:

The islanders knew something was up, though, since he had an extremely well-supplied tent that looked like he wanted to camp out on a desert island for a while. The yacht he had been 'cast away' from later radioed Pitcairn to tell them Tomarchin had paid them to put him on the island, where he was incapable of cutting his way to fresh water.  As the Americans refused to bring him back with the chimp, the islanders took pity on him and brought him back to Pitcairn, where

Rob was a stranger, a very muscular and personable young man of 27 who had come dramatically onto the island. No wonder the girls who had only seen their relatives all their lives should be attracted to Bob, even though he didn't do a tap of work all the time he resided on the island.

He apparently liked his time on the island enough (or was insane enough) that he attempted to return after a directive from Fiji announced he had to leave.  However, sneaking in as a stowaway and being caught only resulted in a further directive prohibiting him from interacting with the islanders upon his eventual arrival.

The Pitcairners interest in seeing Bob again was intense, but Bob was locked away in the spare hospital room with a guard on watch and no one was allowed to see him or send a message. Charles Christian managed to get fruit to him. As they left the ship Clarence Young yelled out,Goodbye, Bob! And Bob stuck a hand out of the window and waved pathetically. 

The story just gets better and better, with Tomarchin eventually selling the chimp to a zoo, after which he thought the chimp was heartbroken and wanted to be reunited with him.  After the zoo refused to return it, he snuck into the zoo and left a check and an IOU, absconding with the chimp in a desperate attempt to get south of the border.  When he was eventually caught, instead of arguing insanity as I probably would have done - something is seriously not right with this guy - his attorney argued that his relationship with the chimp was akin to father and child.  The lawyer also compared this case involving a chimp to a case where a Jewish couple adopted a Catholic kid, because clearly the two are very similar. Of course.

If you want to read more, check out the links here and here and this picture here.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE POST TWO

Aw! This is kinda cute, about the language spoken on Kiribati:

The Kiribati language is written in the Latin Script and has been since the 1840s, when Hiram Bingham Jr, a missionary, first translated the bible into Kiribati. Previously, the language was unwritten. The letter 's' does not appear in the Kiribati alphabet, instead the combination "ti" is used for that sound.

One difficulty in translating the Bible was references to words such as "mountain", a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati at the time (heard only in the myths from Samoa). Bingham decided to use "hilly", which would be more easily understood. Such adjustments are common to all languages as "modern" things require the creation of new words. For example, the Gilbertese word for airplane is te wanikiba, "the canoe that flies".

And then another article about the Dothraki language, which was farmed out to be created based off the novels to someone from the Language Creation Society.  The article's not very interesting, to be honest, but perhaps in the future there'll be more to add there.  On the positive side, the Language Creation Society's webpage has a lot of cool stuff, including a calendar with awesome holidays such as Cyrillic alphabet day and the feast day of the inventors of Cyrillic. And when the 5th Element came out.

I'd like to give a big thank you to the person who gave me the illness that I can feel I'm currently battling off.  Your efforts weren't for naught; my immune system was feeling a bit bored with its easy life.  As an added bonus, my allergies have been acting up like crazy and I've even gotten some hives!

And finally YOU MUST WATCH THIS! IT IS SO ADORABLE AND IS SOON TO BE MY FAVORITE DOCUMENTARY EVER! Based on this website.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE

Every day Hatice comes, a little part of my insides die.  Also, her presence in my house means that I can't make the cold soups that I have so carefully researched: today was to be cucumber avocado, after yesterday's yogurt cucumber success.

A rather poorly written article about nuns in the Western frontier.

There's just something about the tiny Pacific islands that gets me. Here's one that used to be called DANGER REEF. Unpopulated and almost always completely submerged, it was quite dangerous for ships.

I JUST LEARNED SOMETHING REALLY FUNNY ABOUT OFFICEMATE. So funny that she has clearly not been telling me knowing I would laugh and laugh and laugh. !!!!!!! AND LAUGH AND HOW.

I'm a sucker for men in uniforms, but have to say, not sure these ones are so hot. Also, the tales of the dude wearing a cartoon shirt outside the children's police station also did not sound so cool.  

Back to reefs and stuff: here's a phantom reef. Many of these islands are completely abandoned and probably uninteresting to my loyal readers, so I won't tell you about Starbucks island (or the variety of other islands with such pleasant name as "starve island" or "barren island"). 

And then after reading about different types of rats ("rat island"), I want to get a mouse-like hamster.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY POST TWO

Just saw I missed this - a court case involving the Turkish Coalition of America, Inc. v. Bruininks, a college.  Guess if it's about the Armenian genocide or not! Guess! Go on!

And another Turkey piece that was published recently about Natashas, a term for sex worker. Most of my loyal readers will, of course, know that, and if you don't, fun fact! And not so fun stuff in the article:

Furthermore, over 40 percent of women have experienced physical and sexual violence, meaning a woman is significantly more likely to have survived abuse than be gainfully employed.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY

I remember reading this article about the world's largest family with early onset Alzheimer's, and it looks like there's another one in the NY Times.

"Sea level does not rise uniformly around the world, and so far, Dr. Fletcher and other geologists said in interviews, Hawaii has escaped some of the rise that has occurred elsewhere as earth’s climate warms." 

Do you know where the longest serving head of state in the Americas is?  St. Kitts and Nevis, which is also called St. Christopher and Nevis. His name's Denzil Douglas!  If you google St. Kitts and Nevis because you've taken it into your head that the idea of moving to a tropical wonderland may not be so bad after all, you'll find that the first result is for wiki, second for their tourism website, and only the third is for the government. With an extra governmental .net website thrown in for good measure. St. Kitt's and Nevis, if you want a more effective social media analyser, I can be your girl!

And now, with the anger and frustration of dealing with an incomprehensibly idiotic Nelnet behind me, I sign off for the day.  Officemate has been called away yet again on urgent tutoring duty. Fourth grade spelling tests can be hard and important -- hard enough, and important enough to keep a kid home from school for a week! Apparently.

DAY ONE HUNDRED FORTY NINE POST TWO

Istanbul Daily Secret today recommended that after going to 45'lik that people head into the "soup bar", or as it's actually called, By Çorbaçı Soup Bar.  I will have to say this, my own personal restaurant review of By Corbaci Soup Bar:

Never.

Ever.

Ever.

Go there.

Never again.

That place had some of the most disgusting food I've ever had in my life.  In addition to rotting vegetables in the salad bar, the soup was alternatively tasteless or extremely overly salty to the point of not being consumable.  I have tried 4 different soups there, and each was as gross and disgusting as the next.  Yes, it's only 10 lira or so for a mixed soup/salad bar/rice meal, but it is *beyond* nasty.  The soup had lumps where they shouldn't be, unidentified chunks of something, uncooked chickpeas in the nohutlu pilav, and undercooked grains in any soups where grains should be.  They seriously messed up tomato soup, which is kind of hard to mess up.  They totally screwed up the ezo gelin soup, which had rock-hard pieces of bulgar in it. The lentil soup was extremely salty and unpalatable, while the vegetable soup's vegetables were questionable at best.

I give this place a failing grade and rank it almost as gross as Fudu, which actually had really nice little taste packages but had quite bad vegetarian wraps.  I think that's unfortunate, but more fair than a soup/salad bar having absolute crap soup and rotting salad.

DO NOT GO TO BY CORBACI SOUP BAR AND SHAME ON YOU ISTANBUL DAILY SECRET FOR SUGGESTING ANY HUMAN BEING WITH TASTE BUDS EVEN THINK OF ATTEMPTING TO ENTER INTO THE DOORS OF THAT SUBPAR ESTABLISHMENT.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE

Lots of work, so my blogs are going to be quite short.

Can geoengineering save the environment?

The biological functions of art. 

This is a really sad article in the Atlanta Magazine about Bill and Doug getting married.

Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? About how diamonds were marketed as a required gem to symbolize love. Fairly horrifying how well this ad campaign worked, and how it's changed the minds of those in many countries. I wonder if these will be featured in Mad Men at any point?  Regardless, it affirms my desire to keep my (semi-cursed, but beloved) garnet claddagh as the only ring I ever wear. Then stupid gem searching led me to a uvarovite, which is a really pretty green garnet.  Tanzanite, my absolute personal favorite, has to be just around as horribly evil as diamonds. And now I want to go buy BLOOD GEMS but instead I'll just do some squats.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT

The booty popping project continues.  Apparently, no pain no gain is true, at least in regards to how to do it correctly, which is hopefully means I'm making lots of progress considering how incredibly painfully sore I am. There's a video officemate sent me to assist with the dance mission of 2012, but SonicWall has classified it as porn (booty poppin is not porn!). Or, the soreness may be from freeze-tag or dodgeball. Regardless, all are good practice for Bosphorus swim 2012! Along with choose your own adventure. And joining the gym. The latter two I have yet to do, but will soon.

This article is a fantastic look into the process of writing and directing Thelma and Louise.  I especially like the descriptions of a young Brad Pitt. It's also got a reference to the 1968 Miss America pageant and women's protest movements there, which I'd never heard of before. However, the now ubiquitous fist in a female symbol debuted shortly after those protests, which apparently also reignited women's lib movements...

And that's the entirety of the post for what should have been posted yesterday. In other news, I saw kids running around attempting to set off car alarms by kicking soccer balls into cars, I got some people to say "chips" rather than crisps, and I also got them to say "baaaaysil" as basil is properly said.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN POST TWO

I'm in love.

And eating veggie burger number 2 for the day. Second lunch win. And researching the very friendly country of Canada, which I like a little bit more than I did before because based on their popularity contest immigration point system, I'D TOTALLY BE IN!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN

Last night was a breakthrough on the booty popping initiative, and I'm proud to report that within a few months I too will be able to booty pop. And Brazilian butt lift.

I'm also proud to report that for the first time ever, I made a custard and home made mayonnaise! Also, did I mention I like to dance?

Of course, it's a post-Thursday day, so I'm completely exhausted.  Here's a video that has been getting me all pumped for the day:

And this:
 

I'm clearly in love with Florence + The Machine:



I was trying to figure out what was up with the recent spate of publicity on Maurice Sendak and was sad to learn he died on Tuesday.  A collection of some of the better pieces going around now is here, here, here and here.

And finally, the blog entry you've all been waiting for since you, like everyone, must know that I recently received a cat book.

IN THE COMPANY OF CATS: A tale indicating to me that my friend's mom thinks that I will die alone and ultimately get eaten by my hoard of cats, with an additional subtitle Well it's not too bad that Shortbus ran away, really, because one cat less is one cat better, kind of like the opposite of animal farm: Four bad, two good. One even better (I'm thinking of you, Tigs - doesn't freedom sound nice? No? Ah well). I know, what crazy titles!

Well, that's about as far as the review's going today since I have a ton of work and . Tigger did take the chance during lunch to rush out of the apartment, so I hope she found her way back in - IT WAS JUST A BOOK SOMEONE GAVE ME, IT DIDN'T MEAN ANYTHING I SWEAR!!!!!!!

In other random news: have you ever been approached by a relatively attractive American stranger on the street who you spoke to for about 20 minutes before the pieces fell into place and you realized that he was almost a parody, a person that some of your friends referred to as "Poop Eye" due to an unfortunate first week and a misunderstanding of how to flush a toilet or what a bidet was, resulting in a day or two of stink eye?  TThe worst part was that once I realized he was poop eye, I couldn't just go around shouting it, instead having to wait excruciating minutes until he wasn't nearby. He's also the subject of an ongoing bet that I have with officemate, the stakes of which have yet to be determined.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN

Have you seen the booty poppinist video around? Have you ever considered going to Walmart to pick up chicks? If you haven't, think again - because these kinds of ladies apparently hang out there all day long:

As an aside, I'm now sore from a truly valiant attempt to do that last night.

And, if you're in the mood for some daggering on top of that, this song again, which goes with the above one like milk and coffee.

A history of the second wave of house music in Chicago, along with interviews and clips and at the bottom, a mix from Derrick Carter and DJ Sneak, who I've been lucky enough to see a couple of times. Although in regards to the article, I will say that I think Chicago doesn't win the most segregated city in America award, as mentioned: that title goes to Detroit (including Livonia)! 

Here's a sad tale of some LA Armenians. It's really interesting - particularly the descriptions of food that's widely available in Turkey (çiğ köfte, or, as the article and possibly Armenians call it, raw meat and bulgar che kufta).  I'm also not so sure that attempted cheating on an entrance exam in 1997 alone would be enough to prevent the kid in the article from entering law school, considering that convicted killers gain entry to law school... 

My font changed after the cut and paste, but I like this font better. Thoughts?

This article makes me want to go to expensive extremely popular restaurants and bribe my way in.  This article makes me want to be able to bribe my way to good service. Honestly, it'll probably be the only and best way to assure good service in this country. Three years from now, I'll have the kind of cash to do so(!), although from my memories in NY some of the hippest restaurants were also filled with foods I thought to be gross -- but it was during the foam craze of the mid aughts. This place, though, sounds cool. An excerpt from the article:

I was clearly in another league of exclusivity. Lay eaters wouldn’t dream of trying to enter a restaurant where if you order verbena tea they bring the plant to your table and a white-gloved waiter snips the leaves with silver shears.

This article is pretty interesting about the relationship between rap/hip-hop and the LA riots, although I think overall it's rather poorly written and the connection between the two is laid out too sparsely and unmethodically to mean anything. Still, a pretty short read.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX

You win some, you lose some. Shortbus has returned!! Again!! For the fourth time! This means if you know anyone who wants a slightly dim-witted cat who is absolutely adorable, please send them my way. Please?

My blog's not going to be so good today because I want to help throw a nice dress up cocktail party this weekend as a precursor to a friend's birthday party. So far, the things I have decided to make are:

Gazpacho

Hummus

Goat cheese stuffed dates

Bruschetta

Yogurt dip

Veggies

And for drinks:

Homemade ginger ale

A ginger-lemon-mint-soda concoction over ice

A milk, coffee and coconut cream blended ice drink 

It's all terribly exciting, and means I get to cook up a storm.  I'll also be able to do it this weekend - again, terribly excited.  Summer has returned, and am I ever glad for it!

I've received a song for my blog.  Fuck your blog. My favorite line? EVERYTHING. Another song by them that's fantastic? Let me smang it. And their documentary. NO EMBEDDED VIDEOS FOR YOU! And I also like Key and Peele, mentioned in their Fuck Your Blog song. And it's true, and he did school them. 

(And as an added note: I think I'm now completely smitten with Donald Glover.)

***Update. It appears Shortbus has, yet again, run away. Apologies for the excitement - she does appear to be as mentally challenged as originally believed.

Also, I didn't know that the DIA was the second largest city-owned museum in the US with one of the largest art collections in the US!  I just remember I love the place, especially the Rivera fresco. This article is making me want to revisit two things when I visit Michigan: the DIA and the Frederick Meijer Gardens. Exciting times!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE POST TWO

While looking up someone's email to try to get a recipe of a dish I loved, I stumbled across a bunch of pictures of Quintin, perhaps one of the best cats I've ever had.  I'm still extremely, extremely annoyed at my couchsurfers who let the cat out of the house and didn't think to bring him back inside, particularly after I had told them that he had been trying to escape recently so watch out.  It sucks -- he was like a dog, and totally awesome, fluffy, played fetch, and the friendliest cat ever.... I'm sure if Tigs ran away I'd probably care, but honestly, Quintin was a way cooler cat than her. 

Number properties are boringer than I thought possible. I prefer reading the Wiki articles on various number properties, which have way more interesting facts about them than this obtuse book.  But there's a rumor afloating around of a *giant* costume party tonight, so all may not be lost in the day!!!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE

I obviously like numbers in the hundreds. 

A friend told a story about a student of theirs named Kemal Mustafa Bata Turk (or maybe Bataturk). This has, in fact, prompted me to look up things for Bataturk and Atman. The best images so far:

There are more, too, like this:

More here:

In other blog updates, and semi-related to the above: what's in a name? A question pondering a false Rockafeller.  I knew a guy who interned with me whose last name was Kennedy. Not *the* Kennedys, but he said that for his entire life, it had just been assumed -- better safe than sorry. And, as an aside, Learned Hand did not become famous because of his name! 

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR

I just found out some great news from one of the ALASKAN CRUISE 2015 vacayers!!! Congrats jimotron and jan!!!!

Today it's a gross day! Get it? Ha! Actually, it's a really wonderful day outside - nice enough that I woke up *before* the alarm clock to stretch in bed, wishing that today was not a workday. And did you know that Shakespeare was partially or fully responsible for turning the non-number gross into what it is now?

I was asked to take a bet yesterday that I wish I had taken having to do with land area of various countries. I think I'd have been able to persuasively argue winning the massively important one lira bet. In lieu of that, though, I'd like my loyal readers, including those weird new hits I keep getting from Latvia, Japan, Ukraine, Slovenia and Malaysia (with several of the hits coming from search terms involving sonicwall and porn) to know:

Saint Pierre and Miquelon - one day, I'll remember their names - which I've written about before.  Nobody ever remembers it though. They use the Euro! And they're so close to Canada! And one of them lost its sole inhabitant!

I think that one of my friends must have posted this or sent it to me, because I found it open on my desktop today.  One of the foremost balloon sculptors of the world! 

OH MY GOD I DEMAND THAT YOU WATCH THIS VIDEO OF A LIONESS TRYING TO EAT A LITTLE BABY. And here's the full video. 

I gotta be honest: I think this biography is one of the least necessary I've seen in a long time (not the book, but the write up of the author's bio). Sunday book review time!

Here's a fun article about blimps with some interesting posters. I always wished there were more blimps - or, apparently as I've learned now, blimps, semi-rigid or rigid airships - which are really fun to see in the sky, but often seemed featured only over football games as far as I remember. Goodyear what what! And I love this picture of a series of floating ships.

And now, for the "scary but true" section of the blog.  CONVICT POKER! It's actually less poker and more a chicken/very angry bull game. And it's at the prison which houses the Angola 3 (now less than 3 but still really important), also previously written about on the blog, along with this one about solitary.

National Eagle Repository? Craaazy!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE POST TWO

Oh, Kieth Haring is one of my favorite political artists ever. He's the subject of today's Google doodle. Bunches of websites all in this sentence for you to look at.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE

Gourmet Burger Kitchen is one of the best breakfasts to have after a loooooooong evening!

And that's about the extent of what updates I can muster up. Except we've gotten a TimeOut and I want to make gazpacho. Next Friday is bring a stranger to a party party. Imma invite "very hot guy" in my phone as I suspect he'll be a stranger to all. I'm also considering inviting some of the random names from the phone's previous owners. Also, "umit motorcycle" is in. I'd invite some of the other names ("air"), but frankly, even I've forgotten what some of the less obvious nicknames are and am afraid some of them have been so named because of their less-quality characteristics.

AND OH YEAH LUNCH TWO MEXICAN DELICIOUSNESS. officemate is going to be soooo jealous but she pretended she didn't want mexican food even though once i get it she's going to be so so sad. burrito AND nachos? yes please!!

COMIDA MEXICANO ESTOY EMOCIONADA POR MI COMIDA Y MI OFFICEMATE SERA CELOSA ES LA VERDAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDD

i have been requested to stop singing my new song about mexican food so thought i'd share it here.

today was a nap day, but not the conventional amanda-derya/(sara) apartment nap day. instead more of the unconventional ninja like nap!

If you just google cool pictures, most of the pictures are, in fact, not cool. However, this GINORMOUS INTERACTIVE SPACE INVADERS GAME is cool. 

So I started off with this search for cool things in Istanbul. And then I was all like, whoa, underground hotel coolness? That's where I'm demanding my 30th birthday be. Then I did this search. Which found this article ("when completed in 2010"), then this ("still not happening").

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO POST TWO

And now I get to walk home in a short skirt and a loooooooooong jacket. Not as fun as it sounds with Besiktas fans about.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO

Skipped a day there due to not being at work. Awoken today to Hatice the cleaning lady asking a billion questions to one of my housemates who has not yet learned to pretend not to understand a lick of Turkish to most easily avoid having to deal with her repeated questions about the same things she has already learned about. 

Tuesday was May Day, and was a lovely little break from early-mid-week work.  Mine was spent laying in the grass in a park, cooking (Indian food, of course) and generally avoiding anything involving responsibility, which is how every May Day should be!  I didn't see any massive riots, but we did get to trade tales of years past.

Online classes: an integral part of year of Herkes on Top (HOT)!! Here are some more offerings, though I myself am focusing more on languages and less on science-y stuff, aside from programming.

So true, so true. Terrible taste.  And this xkcd comic is unfortunately rather true, except that in fact, you do need to use geometry, algebra, and number properties (powers, etc) on the GMAT. Really hard!

I've been listening to a lot of the grey album lately. This song in particular is really nice:

And this one which has several songs:

Lawyers, Guns & Money is one of my fav blogs/blawgs. Here's an analysis of the death penalty issue, along with the internally cited articles from the New Yorker about executing an innocent man. Here's the wiki article about the same issue.  This case was the basis for a Law and Order: SVU episode, though that's not mentioned in the wiki article. Here's another LG&M article about Willingham. I don't understand why the NLG doesn't use innocent people for its anti-DP/jailhouse lawyer issues (grrr Mumia), though I guess the most powerful, though less-moving, statement against punishments such as the death penalty would be arguing that even for guilty parties, it's not acceptable. Too bad so many groups maintain Mumia's innocence. !! Gr.

And finally, a shout out to Garanti Bankasi for its ability to mess up every thing conceivable in a banking experience. Go Garanti!! Go Garanti!! Though on the plus side, I did get some wickedly fantastic mint chocolate afterwards, before having to deal with Hatice some more at the house.  She may be onto our tricks, considering that she's now asking whether or not officemate is in the country. I too should have fled my house before her arrival, if only not to have to deal with her zillions of intricate questions about how she was supposed to clean the windows (I'm not sure if she noticed, but window cleaning is not my forte).