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.