Coming Soon to This Very Blog Near You (No Promises): Ten Most Embarrasing Ways to Die

Greetings to our blog readers in El Salvador, Latvia and Jordan or wherever you may be today.

Oh...........In case you are wondering, yes, the image of the late French mime Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) is being used just to grab your attention.


Here are some blog entries we are contemplating/considering:

1) More Casualties  of Modern Technology: It's been a good two years since we ran this series, but it seems that pay phones, clothes lines and mixed tape cassettes are not the only things which have been mushroom clouded due to the advent of the new age (my apologies to the Grammar Girl for using mushroom cloud as a verb).

2) A List of Ten Embarrassing Ways to Die: Getting hit by a Valley Metro Bus in Roanoke, Va., does come to mind, but of course, there are two issues with possibly posting this entry: 1) There might well be someone who is a relative of a person who was eaten by Gustave the man-eating crocodile in the central African nation of Burundi; 2) I may get hit by a Valley Metro Bus myself!

3) How to Say Certain Words in Norwegian or Turkish: Did you know they call sharks 'the dog fishes' in Turkish (the actual word is kopekbaligi), and of course, we are arbitrarily mentioning that because we suspect that with the Discovering Channel's upcoming Shark Week that anything relating to sharks shall be trending.

Au revoir for now mon amis...........


http://www.valleymetro.com/

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week

Turkish Soccer Results....

It has been a busy hectic week, and it's only Monday?!

Anyway, it is for this very reason, that we are putting off some other blog entry projects until a day when life is as slow as it on a Sunday afternoon in War, West Virginia, in the far southwestern part of the state which is perhaps a good place to go (aside from an asylum or a prison) if you want to read all 1,225 pages of Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in its entirety!

So, with that in mind, let's turn to sport as they say on the BBC, and here are the results from weekend action in the Turkish Premiere League. I should note that my late father came from Turkey, and since his favorite team was GalataSaray, I know he would want me to jeer those who root for their arch rival Fenerbahce, but alas those fill-in-the-blank Yellow Canaries** won as well!:


Kayseri 1 Eskisehir 1

Istanbul BB 1 Antalya 1

Gaziantep 1 Manisa 0

Ankara Genclerbrligi 2 Konya 1

Trabzon 2 Bucaspor 1

GalataSaray 3 Kasimpasha 1

Fenerbahce 1 Karabukspor 0

Sivas 1 Ankaragucu 1

It should be noted that the game between the BursaSpor Crocodiles* (yes, we don't think there are any crocs in Turkey, not even at the Ankara Zoo!) and the Besiktash Black Eagles was cancelled. We presume, given the fervent passion of the fans on both sides, it was for security reasons. Elif Batuman, a fellow Turkish-American I've never met, wrote an excellent, haunting piece about Besiktash fans for "The New Yorker" several issues ago. Amazingly enough, Che Guevara is one of the fans' icons! Since many of the most fervent soccer fans in Turkey are a bit right-wing, this came as quite a surprise to me!

And, as a gesture of ethnic political goodwill, which will of course do absolutely nothing to ease tensions between us Turks and our Armenian friends, I will mention that the three teams atop the Armenian Premiere League are Ulisses, Gandzasar and Pyunik.

As I jokingly tell my friends who have neither ethnic background, if a Turk and an Armenian happen to come across each other at a Buddhist temple during a mutual tourist visit to Bhutan, yes they would probably go at it!

But, as far as the dispute we have with our Greek comrades over who has the better yogurt and feta cheese, well, of course, it is us Turks! Of course, I'm overlooking the fact that an Egyptian friend of mine said that Bulgarians were actually better at making these products than either of us.


*-There is actually a notorious man-eating crocodile named Gustave in the central African country of Burundi; I wonder how that country's tourism department gets around that!

**- Yes, Turkish soccer teams have nickanmes which are almost as strange as some minor league baseball teams--my favorite nickname is the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers who are based in Appleton, Wisc., where there might be six people of Turkish and Armenian heritage combined!