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What’s on Tammy’s turntable
Pho’sho!
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Fall reading syllabus
Most consistently interesting books I’ve read in the past three weeks:
“Shark,” a completely perfect book about sharks — ogle that elegant cover and unadorned title, both as sleek as their subject — limpidly written by Dean Crawford and speckled with striking photos and artwork, like this masterpiece of shark dining:
(‘Watson and the Shark,’ John Singleton Copley)
Next:
“Lebanon: A House Divided,” Sandra Mackey’s engrossing history of Lebanon’s war woes of the past 30 years. A sharp, tight primer on the region in prep for my October trip. Highly recommended.
Then:
The disturbing and enlightening “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” which you can learn more about HERE. Essentially, it’s an academic history of a grisly, now-obsolete form of capital punishment in old China.
Onward:
Bertrand Russell’s super practical and sensible little book “The Conquest of Happiness.” Read it, live it.
Also:
A pair of comforting and nourishing poetry collections, “Ballistics” by Billy Collins and “Everything Else in the World” by Stephen Dunn. They made me feel good.
Coming up for the next few weeks:
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The rotund rodent and other anomalies
Here’s some wonderfulness. Tammy, ethereal rodent goddess, is clinically obese. The vet said so. He punctured my artfully crafted bubble of denial with straight talk and a crooked smile.
My girl, fat? I once joked about Tammy’s amazing expanding belly, but actual obesity remained a distant concern left to fatty ratties and their bad rat parents.
I run a svelte household. I think Tammy has a secret stash, or she’s been eating those big, nasty water bugs on the sly (her delight in eating the creatures, when I’ve allowed it, borders on euphoric, ravenous).
Scratching and stroking Tammy’s acres of fuzzy flab has been a cute pastime, a hedonistic pause in Tammy’s frantic schedule of sleeping, napping, eating, digging in the plants, eating, hiding, eating, sleeping, napping and sleeping and eating.
I kind of wondered why she waddled.
She’ll live longer and happier if I place her on the South Austin Diet. So Tammy, bearer of unwieldy spare tires and ballooning gelatinous hindquarters, will get no more pasta and fewer chocolate-covered Big Macs.
We went to the vet for a pesky eye irritation - now cured - and wound up at Jenny Craig. Before and after photos coming.
Speaking of bodily deformations, they’re busy over at The Human Marvels, shooting frequent email updates about the latest posted biographies.
It’s a good site, offering a thoughtful anthology of some of the most famous human oddities on record, filed under a variety of conditions. Like:
Horns:
Parasitic twins:
Hypertrichosis:
And, of course, Tammyitis:
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Places that take visa
I’m baffled by the costs of visa entries from country to country. They range dramatically: some are $20, some $50, others free.
My tourist visa for Syria was a lumpy $131. What’s that free-floating single dollar for? It isn’t for return postage; the Syrian Consulate in Houston made me include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Maybe it’s for the tree-planting program.
It’s not an impressive visa, just a rubber stamp with lines filled in by a lowly ballpoint. The ones glued into my passport from Vietnam, China, Cambodia and India are full-fledged documents, thick and colorful, cluttered with bureaucratic ornament and the frippery of officialdom. I might frame them.
A rubber ink stamp, worth $131.
The Syria visa — phftt. Worst part about it is that it demanded I get a whole new passport ($85), because Syria will turn you away at its borders if your passport, like mine, bears an entry stamp from Israel. (Best part about it: It will get me into Syria.)
Same goes for Lebanon, whose visa entries, I think, are free. (All that war and stuff has the nation unfurling welcome mats like crazy.)
I go to both countries this fall, with a return to Turkey as well. I spent two weeks in Turkey in May, and you might have heard it was like the greatest vacation since the idea of vacating began in 15 million B.C., when nomadism was the rage. That’s saying a lot, considering I’ve had some nifty trips. It’s the sort that, with crashing recklessness, corrupts the mind with notions of selling everything off and adopting the place as a new home.
“Lebanon? Syria?” people keep asking me. My response: “Yup. Yessir. You heard it right, my liege. Now get off my toe.”
I have a knack for going to places that get bombed once I leave. Six months after I returned from Israel, Ariel Sharon oh-so wisely triggered the “second intifadeh.” Istanbul enjoyed some lovely terrorist attacks this summer. Bombs killed 18 people today in New Delhi.
Extremists — adorable.
(Random thought: How come, after visiting Asia five times, I’m still the most maladroit chopstick user after this guy? I’ve been playing drums since 1976. Shouldn’t that help with stick aptitude? Maybe I should have studied Buddy Rich instead of Keith Moon.)
Visa and new passport obtained, I’m ready to go. Land in Istanbul, where I’ll idle and amble for a few days before hopping an hour flight to Beirut. Few more days, then off to Damascus, St. Paul’s old conversion grounds, by car. Then up to Aleppo, with a possible Palmyra pit-stop along the way. Then into Southern Turkey and Anatayla. Perhaps Izmir. Back to Istanbul for decadent decompression. I have friends in Turkey I hope to see again. One of them is a street dog. She owes me money.
Tammy, miracle rat of the south, is as hale and hairy as ever. A little tubby in the tummy, Tammy is, but in a jolly way.
Recently she exhibited some kind of back-paw injury that made me sad. It was curled up and not of much use and made her squeak and hide more.
That went away soon enough. Then her left eye started weeping beyond normal. After every nap it would be encrusted with reddish-copper sleep goop, which is normal with rats. But this is a lot. I bought a cheap bottle of saline solution for people eyeballs and have squirted the stuff into the eye. Not helping yet. So I ungunk the eye after she wakes with spit and my fingers. (Don’t tell her it’s spit; she’s convinced it’s Oil of Olay.)
And then Tammy, clean and pert, wakes to the world. Her quivering spray of whiskers are motored by a furiously fluttering nose that sniffs all, never mind her rule of existence: bite first, sniff later.
Tammy turned 1 recently. That makes her roughly 30 in human years, say the ratsperts. Which means she was able to vote at age 6 months.
Incidentally, as a woman, Tammy is appalled by Sarah Palin. Here are two reasons why: one, two.
I have to vote absentee, as I did when I swanned to London during the 2004 presidential election. It will be interesting to see how the Arab world reacts to the outcome. In London, the mood was black and violently befuddled. No one could believe it had happened, again.
Fortunately I like Turkey so much. Depending on how election ‘08 unfolds, I might just stay there.
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Propaganda, prose and other disturbances
The one showing an American soldier dropping a baby down a well, that’s a good one. So are those depicting smiling young women surrounded by or hugging white billy goats.
North Koreans are vainglorious purveyors of agitprop, as seen in their government posters — great, screaming, Soviet-style propa-gaga only a cold, dumb autocracy could produce. Stark cultural differences will forever divide the west’s view of the posters (kitschy, hyperbolic, comically paranoid) and Kim Jung-il’s (awe-inspiring, stirring and triumphant).
Of course they are tawdry displays, angry, loud and cheesy. Also, they’re boggling and fascinating, with blaring slogans like:
“Let’s not forget the savage cruelty of the US imperialist wolves!”
“US imperialists, do not forget the lessons of history! Our bayonets know no mercy!”
“Let’s increase meat production by producing more pumpkins!”
“Let’s extensively raise goats in all families!”
I’ve been flipping through the new book “North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection,” though my unhinged jaw keeps getting in the way of the pages.
Other good summer reads of mine: Bill Buford’s “Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany”; Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”; Joseph O’Neill’s novel “Netherland”; a re-reading of Fitzgerald’s magnificent “The Great Gatsby”; and, now, “The Brothers Karamazov” (finally!).
Back to Fitzgerald. Because the writing in “Gatsby” is so lush and chiseled — so damn good — I went on a mini-Fitzgerald kick, pulling out my old copy of his posthumously released notes and essays “The Crack-Up”. This is dazzling stuff. The alphabetically organized scraps and notes and ideas are best, with seemingly random scribbled riffs that he might have hoped to use in later stories.
Like: “Her mouth was made of two small intersecting cherries pointing off into a bright smile.”
And: “The 19 wild green eyes of a bus were coming up to them through the dark.”
Or: “Crackly yellow hair.”
Then: “Your voice with the lovely pathetic little peep at the crescendo of the stutter.”
Neat-o descriptions and images like that. And those are ones I just swiftly snatched while doing this onanistic blog jobby.
Autumn trip, me thinks: Syria, Lebanon and a return to rhapsodic Turkey. Middle East. Danger. New passport (mine has Israel stamp and Syria and Lebanon don’t like that).
Wish you were here!
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Dog day on Aisle 4
I love animals, but more and more I realize that they just make me sad.
I saw a guide dog at the grocery store the other night, one of those creatures that plunges me into an inky funk on the spot. Sorrow all around on that one — for the poor slave dog and, of course, for her disabled charge. (The world is ambient with woe, and sometimes I buckle.)
As guide dogs always do, this sweet baby had sad, downcast eyes, was under-weight and scrawny, dirty and matted. Worse, she had a plumb-size tumor on a back leg and her spine spiked out like a mountain range.
I looked, sighed, and moved on to the saddest aisle I could find. (Not the half-hearted car accessories, and not the greeting cards, not this time.) My mood curdled by animal grief, I became philosophical, trying to deflect bad thoughts, such as the reality that millions of animals are far worse off around the world (I’ve seen, and petted, some of them).
Then I saw the pair at the checkout and the gloom rushed back. The dog stared at the ground, sniffed a little, then her visually impaired owner, an overweight man in baggy clothing, let go of the leather handle strapped to the dog and it plunked down on her bony spine. Enough. I moved on.
On my way out, I came upon the two standing at the exit. I chose to stop and meet the dog. I stroked her, asked her name and age. Her name is Romy, short for Romance, the nice guy, Peter, told me. She is 10. And she’s thin looking because of her age (I had a similar lab as a pet, and she too thinned out markedly in her dotage) and because she’s on a diet. She used to be fat, and took a spill trying to clamber onto the bus because of her tubbiness. The tumor is benign.
I asked if he played with her and if she was happy, and he assured me heartily that he did and she was. He’s had Romy for eight years, and he pulled out a photo of him and her at her guide-dog graduation. She’s 2 in the picture, beaming proudly.
I said goodbye to Peter and Romy, feeling a lot better. I still choked up a little as I walked away.
Be nice to these guys. Really, now.
Kinda old news, but Brad Neely rules. His cartoons are the most surreal and subversive laughs I’ve had all summer, except for the rather unfortunate Raccoon and Sno-Cone Incident. So: Baby Cakes! The Professor Brothers! Watch the tickly shorts here.
Guaranteed great Friday night movie rental: “In Bruges”. For real.
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For Rael
The title of this blog is Globe-Jotting. Today let’s change “globe” to “outer space.” To “nut-job.”
I was just reminded of the Raelians, that neato UFO religion that believes, quote, “HUMAN SCIENTISTS FROM ANOTHER PLANET CREATED ALL LIFE ON EARTH USING DNA.” (Caps theirs.)
This notion is immaculate on its own. It deflects intelligent commentary, mocks sarcastic assaults. It is impregnable. A kind of shiny genius.
More from their mothership:
WHAT HAPPENED?
On the 13th of December 1973, French journalist Rael was contacted by a visitor from another planet, and asked to establish an Embassy to welcome these people back to Earth.
The extra-terrestrial human being was a little over four feet tall, had long dark hair, almond shaped eyes, olive skin, and exuded harmony and humor. Rael recently described him by saying quite simply, “If he were to walk down a street in Japan, he would not even be noticed.” [!!!!] In other words, they look like us, and we look like them. In fact, we were created “in their image” as explained in the Bible.
The lil’ fella told Rael:
“We were the ones who designed all life on earth”
“You mistook us for gods”
“We were at the origin of your main religions”
“Now that you are mature enough to understand this, we would like to enter official contact through an embassy”
Not only is Rael a prophet, he’s a singer and a race-car driver. He’s the bestest.
Believe me, it only gets better, right here.
For Rael: THIS is the way to save gas.
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Cobra, uncorked
Snake karma bites.
Apparently because I ate an entire cobra in Vietnam, the bottled cobra I bought there decided it was payback time. The day I returned from Turkey, I knocked the bottle of snake wine — a yellowy liquid in which a small and very real cobra sits coiled with a smaller green snake clasped in its mouth — onto my concrete kitchen floor.
Yeah, it reeked. Like a science lab of death. Yeah, it was messy. I had to pick up broken glass and the crazy snake, which was firm and in tact thanks to its formaldehyde “wine” bath. I hate you, snake.
A normal person would have seen the signs and tossed the whole thing. My determination to save the best souvenir ever was fierce. So I spent much thought and scheming and bottle shopping to find Snakey a new home. Meantime, I dropped it and its herbal-root surroundings into a clear vase filled with rubbing alcohol, where it sat nicely. But the vase has no lid.
I emptied a mayonnaise jar, peeled off the label and cleaned it. The snake was too tall. I bought a fancy, art-deco jar with a lid, but the bottom was rounded and the snake leaned to one side. I bought a huge jar of pickles, dumped them, put the snake in, but again it tipped.
Finally, I decided the temporary vase would be Snake-ahoy’s permanent residence. I made a makeshift lid out of foil and tape.
Behold:
Call him Mikey.
Latest shots of Tammy, whose plump, fuzzy belly may be rubbed and wished upon.
The other night neighbors in my condo complex projected a 16mm print of George Lucas’ sci-fi classic “THX 1138” on an outdoor wall for everybody to watch. It looked way cool, though this photo from my place does it wan justice:
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Keep your carpets, I’ll take these
The Turkish movie posters landed on my porch yesterday and I got all giddy.
I thought they’d be lost in the postal ether for years, or forever. This after I paid ridiculously cheap postage — about $8 — to ship a chunky tube from Istanbul to Austin. The cost was a knockout surprise, until I started thinking as I roamed the streets, “Maybe that guy got it wrong, charged me too few lire, and now the posters will never see my walls.”
Why that would’ve been more upsetting is how I obtained them.
While strolling down Istiklal Caddesi (Independence Avenue) — a giant pedestrian shopping street off Taksim Square where many pro-secular protest marches happen (I witnessed a good one) — I spotted in the corner of my eye a loud and lurid Turkish movie poster half-heartedly taped-up in a dirty, cluttered window.
Of course, I had to go inside. After a series of messy clothing shops crowded with teen girls I located this poster shop way in the dingy back. Heaps and piles of Turkish movie posters filled the ring-box-sized shop like sagging islands. Among the archipelagos were an old man who sat at a sewing machine, embroidering t-shirts bought from the other stores, and a teenage kid who seemed to just be standing around.
Neither of them spoke a spit of English. Merriment ensued.
One by one, I peeled back posters looking for one that I absolutely had to buy. There were cool ones that would be fun to own — “Shaft,” for example — but not worth toting around a poster tube the rest of the trip. I needed an excuse to scoop up a stash of the lesser posters, such as “Sleeper” or “The Elephant Man,” both of which I discovered after two hours of dusty rummaging.
From then on, I back-tracked to find the other ones I liked but weren’t must-owns. Why? Because each graphic, often prurient poster — reprints of hand-painted Turkish originals — were only 5 lire, or about $4.
(When I say prurient, I mean it. Nudity, gore, monsters and genre sensationalism splatters these primitive works. Even the “Elephant Man” sheet shows a woman screaming and the title character looming menacingly. One of my favorites, which I didn’t buy because I knew I’d never hang it, was “The Omen.” In bloody detail it depicts EVERY death in the film, including the hanging, the priest’s impalement, the beheading, etc. So much for spoilers.)
Sum-up: I bought seven posters, leaving the “Shaft” one behind (it wasn’t that cool), focusing on movies I really like, including a few cheeseballs. I drove that poor kid batty with my persistence and reversals. We were both tired and dirty after lifiting mountains of unwieldy paper. Some shopkeepers watched me through the window and laughed to each other. They know not my passion.
I chopped the tube open yesterday. Here’s what spilled out.
‘Death Race 2000’
‘Serpico’
‘Gamera vs. Godzilla’ (I think)
‘Sleeper’
‘The Elephant Man’
‘Alligator’
‘Blue Water, White Death’ (aka, ‘Man-Eater’ in Europe)
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Mitey Rat
Tammy hated her sonogram. She squirmed, squeaked, protested. I believe she swore.
She came back from the procedure in a tizzy of panic-eyed stress, her belly cold and wet with alcohol. She buried her head between my elbow and stomach, stretched out on my arm as I stroked her back. (She cried: “Papa!”)
Tammy wiggled so much that the vet couldn’t quite look at everything she wanted to. Yet I was assured her female parts, kidneys and abdominal region are good to go. Tammy has a fat belly.
I took her in for mites and wound up with a full gyno exam. Odd, the same thing happens to me whenever I go to the doctor.
Mites are common and a cinch to exterminate. A quick shot that day (with a curt eek! when the needle poked), and another tomorrow. They’re gone.
But during the examination, Tammy squeaked when the vet pushed and prodded her female areas, and this was a red flag. (But, really, the good doctor was pressing her in visibly uncomfortable ways. I’d squeak too. Ask my GP.)
Along with the ultrasound, the vet wanted a urine “cytology,” which required a urine sample. Tammy provided this by unleashing a small ocean all over the counter, the telephone and computer keyboard. Which meant the vet had to suck up the mess with a syringe for the sample, because Tammy was now empty.
This is why I don’t have children.
$100 later, we were back at home. Tammy was nettled. Instead of gamboling and looking for snacks, she voluntarily went back to her cage and nestled under the water bottle and napped off her big day, which was one hour in human years, about six weeks in rat years.
Tammy, last year, as a little girl. Much bigger now.
Late the other night I was standing at my favorite al pastor taco stand at Ben White and South Congress, waiting for my snack. It was quiet, the air still. The cook’s wife was sitting outside feeding their baby.
Then whoosh-crash. I thought someone had hurled a bottle and hit the taco cart. But no. It was a drive-by egg-tosser. The egg missed my head by a hairbreadth and splattered the door. The cart shook. A gooey speck of egg sat on my shoulder.
The cook, wife and baby heard it, felt it. But they were unflapped. It happens, the cook told me, shrugging.
I asked why. “Racism,” he said. Said it happens to the Mexican workers at the Wendy’s drive-thru across the street too.
It’s a theory I cannot advance or prove, but one that I do not doubt.
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Turkey parts: a waking dream
I still haven’t the energy or thrust to think to death my two-week Turkey odyssey. It flowed too faultlessly for deconstruction. It was too consistently happy to be mauled by vivisection. So good was it that I leave it to my own introspection (and dreams: I still dream about it nightly, which is just strange). You can’t have this one.
Within a glorious fortnight Istanbul changed my life. It did what the best travel accomplishes: strips you to your most glowing essence, scraping off the barnacles of ordinary life’s meaningless stress and empty striving, placing you in a crystal vacuum of what living should really be about.
An unsustainable fantasy, absolutely. But it gets you thinking, decants you in a space of fleeting purity, and that is gold.
(I suddenly feel like the author of new age books. I hope my next trip does the same, even more. Perhaps I’ll shave my head and evangelise and hand out daisies.)
In my meager sharing mode, I’ll pull a list thing, a free-associative roll-call, a banner dropped from a terrace, spangled with priceless encounters, people and moments.
- Hotel Poem, my crash-pad in the home-away-from-home Sultanahmet area, a boutique heritage hotel that dispenses with room numbers in favor of titles from famous Turkish poems. (I stayed in “For You” and, rather non-poetically, “Hotel Rooms.”) Sweetest staff, cozy, complete rooms, beautiful ocean and city views, chirping birds and the smell of fresh bread baked from the next-door bakery, where on many a late, late night I sprung 40 cents for hot baguettes. My rooms were less than $65 a night. (Now I sound like a shill.)
Hotel Poem, with its generous, jovial owner, who exclaimed “Garcia!” whenever I appeared from upstairs into the little lobby. He pronounced it GAR-see-a. (The one photo here I did not take.)
The view from my room, which was titled ‘Hotel Rooms’
- Hot chai and delicious kepabs on the roof-top terrace of the popular Sultanahmet eatery Doy Doy, where you gaze at the Bosphorus in one direction and the gleaming domes and jutting minarets of the Blue Mosque in the other.
Dinner at Doy Doy
- Hanging out with a United Nations of fun fellow travelers, especially the Aussies Phil, Ian, Lee and Wendy, the Dutch Ana, Russian Sasha and Brit Emma. Not to mention the lovely locals at Cheers Bar, the mini-mart, shops and streets and, most importantly, Kalpten, a Turk via Bulgaria, with whom I spent a few memorable days, walking, eating, boating and chatting up Herman Hesse and American hip-hop videos.
Some of the nightly gang at Cheers Bar
- Aya Sofya. Beats out the Taj Mahal with a slam dunk in my book. A marvel in which to waft and wonder.
- Renting a motor scooter in Goreme, Cappadocia, in Central Turkey (actually, Central Anatolia), and tearing through cemeteries, hilly switchbacks and country roads, girdled by the Gaudi-esque dreamscape of natural volcanic formations, referred to by the locals as “fairy chimneys.” And my cave hotel in Goreme, the Legend Cave Hotel, with a split-level room I could have lived in for weeks.
The cave hotel
- My faithful Sultanahmet pal, the stray mongerel I tagged Red Tag for the plastic tag stuck on her ear by the city. A tired old thing that liked to collapse on the cobblestone at every chance, Red Tag sat by me on the bar patio, followed me to my hotel and wagged her tail whenever I appeared. I gave her belly rubs.
Red Tag, Queen of Sultanahmet
A Turkish cover band manhandling AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” on a public stage set between two of Istanbul’s major religious monuments, Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque.
The wild hillside necropolis in the Eyup area on the Golden Horn. Here, I visited the Sultan Mosque — “the first mosque constructed by the Ottoman Turks following their conquest of Constantinople in 1453,” according to a Web source — and the Eyup Sultan Mausoleum, packed with head-scarfed worshipers. I did this after I wandered my way into the slaughterhouse on the mosque grounds, where I cringingly watched two sheep die at the knife as their butcher prayed aloud to Allah. The killings were hillel, or clean. I finished this amazing day zigzagging the hillside cemetery and gazing out at the shining Golden Horn waters.
Hill studded with Ottoman graves in Eyup on the Golden Horn
Doomed, poor babies
- Cheap street food, especially endless simits, corn on the cob, grilled fish sandwiches, doner and mussels stuffed with spiced rice and cheese and drenched in lemon juice.
Turkish friend Kalpten and one big simit
Stuffed mussels, two for 1 Turkish lire, or about 82 cents
Spending two hours in a dusty little shop near Taksim Square in the Beyoglu area ogling hundreds of Turkish movie posters and finally, after much toil on the part of me and the poor shop boy, buying seven at $4 a pop. A steal.
Extending my trip by three days, because it was just too fantastic and I never wanted to come home.
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Istanbul, easy on the eyes (easier on the soul)
I’m holding my latest trip close to my heart for a little longer. I don’t want reality’s toxic oxygen to touch it and curdle it. I might scribble about it here in coming days, but for now it’s all mine.
Words are hard; pictures are easy. Below is a dense smattering from two weeks in Istanbul, with snappy sojourns in Gallipoli and Goreme, Cappadocia.
My list of favorite cities demands rejiggering. Paris is now in a dead-heat with Istanbul. They hit me like a swoony drug.
And a couple from Cappadocia in Central Turkey (dreamy bliss):
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Things to die for
Burn me up and hurl the ashes to the wind.
(Preferably by the Golden Gate Bridge, not in Texas. Please.)
That’s what I’ve instructed my family to do with me when I croak. My Dad jokes that he’ll just flush me in powder form. That’s good, too, as long as I swirl down a toilet in Paris. There’s the rub, pop. Enjoy the trip. I will.
The famed joint I visited outside of London in 2004.
I’m all deathy again. Mostly because an article in The New York Times science section recently lead me to two places: Funeral Consumers Alliance at funerals.org and Mark Harris’ newish book Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial, which I own but haven’t yet read.
(Even so, I’m sure it can’t beat my favorite funeral book, and one of my favorite death books, Jessica Mitford’s classic “The American Way of Death.” Just how sick am I?)
Both the site and the book court you to better ways of burial/disposal. Embalming — totally unnecessary, even Victorian-barbaric in my mind, pointless and, worse, terrible for the environment. My favorite proposal is Harris’: to have your cremains dropped into the sea in a “reef ball,” all about which you can, and should, read here. Talk about sleeping with the fishes.
A reef ball. Zany.
Talking about death, but of the non-human variety: I drove to Shreveport, La., for a story a couple days ago, and I’ve never ever seen so much ROADKILL. Dogs, cats, possums, armadillos (which I’m now convinced are born dead, as I’ve never seen a live one, except in cartoons), skunks, squirrels and, really weird, giant birds. I’m surprised I didn’t see giraffes, wildebeests, dolphins. The birds, by the way, were buzzards that nibbled and tore at the dead beasts, and were then squashed themselves by vehicles roaring at 70 mph down interstates and farm roads. Splat.
And on the grisly topic, Tammy the Rat Made of Magic, killed her first huge water bug last night. Reddish-brown, shiny and fat, it was a shelled behemoth, a baby lobster crittering across my concrete floor.
Until it met the unrepentant jaws of Tammy. Crunch, slurp, crunchcrunchcrunch. As legs fell off and Tammy chewed away, a rusty slop hit the floor. By then even I was repulsed, and I snatched the hulking shell away from the rat. No longer is Tammy a virgin to the wild. She is a killer. And she’s full.
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Turkey calls
If the hectoring carpet salesmen leave me largely alone, my journey to Turkey will have far better odds of flat-out rocking.
Really, sir, “my friend,” I don’t need a carpet. I will let you lead me to your shop, where, of course, we will sip hot apple tea and talk about our families and countries for what feels like eternity. But I am buying nothing. I will allow you to do this once, perhaps twice. After that, talk to the hand. Or the foot. Don’t squander my time, and yours, friend-o.
These three blameless tourists got trapped by their new bestest friend in the middle.
I almost strangled half dozen carpet-hawkers during my last Turkey trot, in 1999, a quickie of four days in Istanbul. (For a dead-on account of what it’s like dealing with Turkey’s ubiquitous, indefatigable, irrepressibly annoying carpet guys, click HERE). It snowed one day, dripped and drizzled the next. Finally, our last day rewarded us with glorious springy skies and climes. Gorgeous. I walked the city for eight hours straight, barely stopping for snack or sip.
That night, we went to the city’s most famous old Turkish bath. The guy washed me like a dog — buckets of water dumped over me to rinse the soap and shampoo — then scraped about a pound of nasty dead skin cells off my body with a spatula thingadooey. After that, we went to a bar and smoked a hooka with a needy, affable guy named Ali, who clearly wanted to be adopted and taken home by a pair of young Americans. Ali: the human puppy.
Turkey it is for the spring trip. Russia was a growing pain, like a tumor. The costs, the bureaucratic hurdles, the 1989-style Web sites, etc.
From Istanbul, to which I plan to devote a week, I will branch off southwest to the battle grounds of Gallipoli and Troy, then southward down the Aegean coast to the Roman ruins of Ephesus, then due east to Cappadocia.
My first nights in Istanbul will be at the Hotel Poem, a sweet boutique hotel in the heart of Sultanahmet, which is historic Old Istanbul, mere strides from the Blue Mosque, Hippodrome, Hagia Sofia and the blue, spangled waters of the Bosphorus.
Blue Mosque
I’m already there, in a waking dream.
Now. Who wants to rat-sit a toothy, toothsome little girl named Tammy?
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Take Friday off — it’s World Rat Day
Tammy, the greatest living rat in the galaxy, has learned many things in her 10 months of life: the joys of hummus and belly massages, that sofas can be reduced to rubbish in mere hours with dedicated industry, that coffee is hot and unsavory, that the Tooth Fairy is a lie.
Her latest epiphany is that soil in a potted plant makes a cozy napping spot. She used to dig it up, crunch the leaves, even climb the small tree’s trunk and get stuck up top, causing firemen to be alerted for a rescue that trivializes the profession.
Tammy caught in the napping act, startled awake:
And then stretching and yawning like a jungle cat, giant, ferocious, bizarre:
She remains a furry demon with a big, curious mind of her own. What she doesn’t know is that World Rat Day — which the late Becky and I missed last year — happens Friday.
Read about the goofy, Web-generated holiday here.
Heck, everyday is Rat Day at Casa de Chris. She has free run of the place once I get home from work, then she’s plopped back in the cage at bedtime. She watches Asian movies, sips wine, gambols up and down the stairs, chews books and DVD boxes, steals whole pages of newspaper in her teeth and drags them to wherever she’s nesting that day.
She’ll have a babysitter this weekend — the kind, kooky Courtney — while I see some of the family in Jersey.
Then, in May, it’s off to Turkey. I’ve scratched Russia. Longish story coming later.
A top e-mailed story at The New York Times this week is “It’s Not You, It’s Your Books” by Rachel Donadio.
It’s a good bit about using what someone reads, or doesn’t read, as a litmus test for potential romantic partners. Many people do this, be it with movies or TV shows. A woman has to like, if not love, “Annie Hall” in my relationships, for instance.
But one part of the article rubbed this book-snot wrong: “Let’s face it: this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period.”
Hmphh! Meet that “rare” guy.
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From Russia, with angst
I’ve been exasperating every co-worker within earshot with my splendid all-new Russian accent. It’s a fine thing.
Admittedly, since I only acquired it about a day ago (it may have installed itself in my sleep), this mellifluous tool of rolled R’s and nasal O’s needs tuning and practice. But it’s pretty terrific already. I sound like a cross between Harrison Ford in “K19: The Widowmaker” and Borat, with an exhilarating drizzle of Yakov Smirnoff that brings it all home — home to Mother Russia.
I plan on learning three and a half Russian words before I visit Russia in May, relying mostly on my new accent to pull me through sticky situations, such as common greetings, ordering borsch and vodka, securing Hermitage tickets and bribing the police.
It’s a musical gift, my Russian accent. I consider it an art, demanding cultivation and honing, and commanding respect. And yet this thing, so full of loveliness and joy, is met by colleagues with snickers, scoffs, head shakes. Swift slaps are not uncommon.
They are mistaken. Clearly they are poisoned by jealousy. A Russian accent this crisp and authoritative isn’t heard with regularity in our parts. The intimidation factor must be formidable. For that I apologize.
Still, I must practice. (Aye moost prakteez is more like it. See?)
The journey itself — two fat weeks in early spring, after the arctic thaw, we hope — takes me to the usual suspects: Moscow and St. Petersburg, with sojourns to grassy towns in the so-called Golden Ring outside Moscow. I will wear a hat made of moose flesh.
KGB! Pravda! The Kremlin! Red Square! Lenin’s tomb! The Museum of GULAG History!
(Today’s lesson: GULAG is an acronym for “Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitel’no-Trudovykh Lagerey i koloniy,” or in English: “The Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies.” Thanks, Wikipedia!)
Russia, already, is a pain. In affairs of international bureaucracy, namely acquiring a tourist visa, demands are high and strenuous. First, I must get an “invitation” from a hotel or a company that does these things for a $30 fee. Then I have to fill out a detailed two-page visa application which costs another $131 to process at the Russian Consulate in Houston.
Is the Cold War still a’crackle? Putin seems to think so, and accordingly we all pay. The visa application wants to know if I’ve ever abused drugs (is vodka a drug?), if I have any specialized skills or training related to fire-arms, explosives or biological and chemical materials (maybe) or if I’ve ever suffered a mental disorder (no comment). I also had to list every country I’ve visited in the past 10 years (which to my surprise tallied 19 nations).
Plenty attracts me to Russia, but it almost seems like its government discourages visitors.
Then you read sketchy news at tourism sites, such as the two places where you shouldn’t drink the water are Moscow and St. Petersburg. Delightful.
And these fun facts:
“Groups of children and adolescents have been increasingly aggressive in some cities, swarming victims, or assaulting and knocking them down. … Some victims report that the attackers use knives.”
“Foreigners who have been drinking alcohol are especially vulnerable to assault and robbery in or around nightclubs or bars, or on their way home. Some travelers have been drugged at bars, while others have taken strangers back to their lodgings, where they were drugged, robbed and/or assaulted.”
“Unprovoked harassment of racial minorities is not uncommon and may occasionally involve violence. Travelers are urged to exercise caution in areas frequented by ‘skinhead’ groups and wherever large groups have gathered.”
“A common scam in Russia is the ‘turkey drop,’ perpetrated mainly against foreigners at crowded tourist destinations. Generally, two or more individuals working together attempt to lure a pedestrian into a confrontation after catching his/her attention by dropping a conspicuous wad of currency on the ground. Typically one individual ‘accidentally’ drops the money on the ground in front of the pedestrian, while the second either waits for the money to be picked up by the pedestrian, or picks up the money himself and offers to split it with the pedestrian. The individual who dropped the currency generally returns around that time, aggressively accusing both his cohort and the pedestrian of stealing the money. This provokes a confrontation that may cause the pedestrian to remove their wallet to prove their innocence, generally resulting in the pedestrian’s money being stolen.”
“It is not uncommon for foreigners to become victims of harassment, mistreatment and extortion by law enforcement and other officials. Police do not need to show probable cause in order to stop, question or detain individuals.”
- “Extortion and corruption are common in the business environment. Threats of violence and acts of violence are commonly resorted to in business disputes.”
Best vacation ever!
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A tale couched in rattitude
I own a way overpriced purple sofa that appears to be made of cloth, foam padding and the same junk synthetic cotton wisps you find in bootleg Shrek plush toys at itinerant carnivals.
It’s about 10 years old and starting to wear, disgorging its gimcrack guts. I replaced it as my main couch last year with something better, spiffier. I relegated it to the downstairs, a space filler, a token of tackier times.
My rat Tammy has at last discovered the ragged purple dinosaur. Just hours after meeting it, Tammy, who looks like this …
… did this:
I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. Instead, I broke out in one-man applause. I think a nice Italian cheese is in order.
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Air Kisses
It took about a week to rinse myself of the freak-show spectacle that was Mini-KISS, the all-little people tribute band that “performs” KISS songs, full
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