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.