Comic Strip Dialogue_ from "The Denver Post"

 

Since Leo Tolstoy is in in vogue these days, perhaps due in part to Elif Batuman and Keira Knihgtley, there are probably folks putting "I must read 'War and Peace' this year," on their list of New Year's resolutions for 2013. Hmmm....I think I'll just put read the Dr. Seuss classic "Cat in the Hat" on my list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

 

I think we just broke the record for use of exclamation points on this blog; on that note, here is comic strip dialouge from the Sunday Dec. 16, 2012 edition of "The Denver Post"!!!!!!!!!!!!:

 

1) "Don't touch me!" (from "Zits"!

 

2) "Oh wait a minute! What am I thiking! It's fish!" (from "Pickles") !

 

3) "She's rolling.....Pop the clutch! Pop the clutch!" (from "Rhymes with Orange")!

 

4) "Holiday Sale! Guys! Holiday Sale!" (from "Baldo")!

 

5) "Mommy! I'm thirsty!" (from "Family Circus")!

 

6) "It's Christmas Time!" (from "Marmaduke")!

 

7) "Hey, No, Wait. None of this stuff was my idea!!" (from "Mother Goose and Grimm")!!

 

 

Quote of the Day- Elif Shafak

We are quoting famous Turkish people this month since October 29th is Turkish Republic's Day. I happen to be a Turkish-American, and unlike novelist Elif Shafak, whom I am quoting today, I actually try to avoid ethnic politics. But, as it is, a Facebook called "Armenians for Jesus" put me in their group without asking me first! The central conflict is not only my ethnicity, but also the fact that I am a human secularist!

While researching this piece, I was surprised to learn that Shafak, who turns 40 on Oct. 25, is actually a year younger than I am. She is not to be confused with Elif Batuman, a Turkish-American writer who published an excellent personal narrative called "Possesed..." about Russian writers last year.

Shafak has written essays, but she is primarily known as a novelist. She has arguably been the most controversial arts figure in Turkey since the late filmmaker/novelist Yilmaz Guney whose works in the 1970s and early 80s (he died in his late forties in France at a relatively young age) usually had very overt pro-Kurdish secterian views.

For her part, Shafak has encountered legal problems in Turkey for her her highly controversial 2006 novel "The Bastard of Istanbul," which unlike her contemporary Orhan Pamuk's works, was originally written in English.

Shafak decided to tackle the Turkish-Armenian controversy directly and she politically expressed her desires to see Turkey recognize those disputed events as a genocide.

Since I have had my own quicksand moments, such as the Armenians for Jesus Fiasco, I will refrain from my views on the matter here, which is certainly not inherent in my nature!

But, we will quote Shafak with a line from her latest novel "The Forty Rules of Love," which is ironically a best-seller in Turkey:

"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we were the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough."

Random Ten Classic Novels to Read This Summer

Today, we are posting ten classic novels that might make for good summer reading. I haven't read all the books on this list, but I did get a chance to read "Lord of the Flies" while spending time on the island of Buyukada, off Istanbul,Turkey, in the summer of 2008. Stephen King said that William Golding's novel was a major influence on him.

There is another list on our other blog "The Daily Vampire" which lists ten contemporary novels which might be worth reading. We deliberately placed two books that were made into Tim Burton films. On the other list, we featured "The Big Fish" by Daniel Wallace. Here, we include "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll. We found out why reasearching this that there is a nerological condition called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome which affects human perception.

Though we did not include a novel from science-fiction Orson Scott Card, who is perhaps the most famous living writer here in the Greensboro, NC, area, on our other list, we do feature "Treasure Island," which he mentioned as one of his favorite classic novels on the WUNC-FM talk show "The State of Things" a few months ago.

Turkish-American writer Elif Batuman got me interested in someday reading Leo Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace," which is over a thousand pages long. I noticed that it has not been checked out of one local community college library since 2003! I imagine the length of the novel has something to do with that.

Here is this list:

1. "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) by Jonathan Swift

2. "1984" (1948) by George Orwell

3. "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells (1898)

4. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (1932)

5. "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

6. "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (1869)

7. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding (1954)

8. "Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway (1952)

9. "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison (1952)

10. "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Quote of the Week: Leo Tolstoy

I may not share my fellow Turkish-American Elif Batuman's love for Russian literature. Batuman, whom I've never met, is a respected nonfiction writer who has published many articles in "The New Yorker" and she wrote a brilliant 2010 memoir "The Possessed." While much of that book talks about long, famous Russian novels, Batuman also talks about spending time in Uzbekistan where she spent a considerable long time engrossing the fascinating, yet very remote country.

Of course, one of the novels that Batuman was examining was the epic 1869 work "War and Peace" from Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) which is 1,225 pages.

Here is Tolstoy's quote:

"Historians are life deaf people who go on answering questions that no one asks them."

SIDEBAR: When I saw the headline in "The Huffington Post" that "Man Survives 96 Minutes Without a Pulse," I thought they might be refering to Dick Cheney, but the man is in fact an unmplyed chef named Howard Snitzer from Goodhue, Minnesota.

SIDEBAR TWO: Earlier tonight, we had a chance to listen to the show "Progressive Torch and Twang," an alternative country/folk/Americana music show from Impact89-FM, the college station from Michigan State via the Internet. The show is extremely entertaining and amusing. Among the highlights on tonight's show was a song from Eddie Spaghetti, an alt country singer from Seattle, who sang a tune called "Jesus Never Lived on Mars." We can't imagine that one would ever hear it on a country music station in Lynchburg, Va.!

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!

Hapy Children's Day in Turkey

Saturday, April 23rd, will be Children's Day in Turkey. It was officially started in 1927 as an idea by the Republic of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

For more info on the date and its origins, visit our sister blog "The Daily Vampire."

Here in America, many local Turkish-American associations, including the one in the Chicago metro area, have their own events for the occasion.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (known more commonly as Dr. Oz), Cenk Uygur of MSNBC, a fellow progressive Turkish-American and author/writer Elif Batuman whose work has appeared in "The New Yorker" are among the most notable of Turkish-Americans who were born in the United States. Uygur, who turned 41 last month, and I have birthdays that are two and a half weeks apart!

Status Update_ Today, I Learned What the Third Largest City in Uzbekistan Is

...And, the answer is Namangan. The city located in the northern edge of Uzbekistan in the Fergana Valley has a population of about 441,300 people according to Wikipedia.

In his new book "The Googlization of Everything," University of Virginia professor/author Sani Vaidhyanathan (and, I thought my last name Gokbudak was difficult!), we can effectively ask Google anything, and it will in 99 percent likelihood give us the answer. Of course, this has a dark side as well which the authro explains in great detail which would take a long time for us to go into (ok, it is actually a bit over our heads, but fascinating!).

Author Elif Batuman, a fellow Turkish-American whom I've never met, wrote about her adventures in Samarkand, Uzbekistan's second largest city behind the capital Tashkent, in her excellent memoir "The Possessed" which also talks about her affinity for Russian authors like Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace.").

I would write more, but the line for hamburgers at the deli is growing! In a future entry, we are hoping to post about the geographical distance between Wilmington, Del., and Lynchburg, Va.

Last year, we tried to do our own version of GeoQuiz, a feature on the NPR show "The World," but few people really seemed interested in learning about things like major tourist attractions in Slovenia. But perhaps one day we may bring the series back from the dead!