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!