KingBurgundy.com

Late breaking news

I've been saving this stuff up for a week or so, haven't had a real chance to post it. By now you've probably heard about it, but just in case, I have to spread this:

Jon Stewart was on CNN's crossfire last week. It was just fantastic. The culmination being when he called one of the hosts a dick. ;) You can watch it here.

The following week on his show he had lots of fun things to say, here's an example.

Lastly, you can read some about it here.

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Next on the list is a really neat "controlled impact test", i.e. a plane crash test. View the pics and movie here

And how about some Zero G Cat tossing!!!

Alternate download site for the Zero G Cat tossing.

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Finally beat Knights of the Old Republic for the Xbox. Great game. Such craftsmanship.

Check out my brother's website

So Joe has been an utter slacker and still hasn't sent me the pics from the California trip, but he does have some of the pics and movies up on his website. Feel free to visit his site and click on "California Trip" to view those pics. You can also check out some of his artwork/paintings/photography etc while you are there, like this one:

Oh, and here are a couple of sample pics from the California Trip, first we have me lounging on a couch:

Next up is Joe Driving:

Bigger versions of all the above can be found at his site, http://www.sparklingseahorse.com

Joke!

How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

None. There’s nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness.

-- John Cleese

Before Sunrise/Sunset

So, kind of late to the party, I finally saw Before Sunrise(made in 1995 for those similarly late to the party) last night. What a fantastic movie. Immediately afterwards I watched Before Sunset, which just came out this year and is a sequel picking up nine years later. Also, a fantastic movie, possibly even better than the first. I'm filled with positive emotion at the moment. Of course, tomorrow it has the potential to turn into negative emotion since I have no one to share the positive with at the moment, haha, but so be it. :) Anyway, 5 stars on both movies. Also, as an aside and a reminder to myself, Julie Delpy has a beautiful voice, I'm going to have to listen to her album.

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Bush Vs. Bush. Yes, what could possibly be better than 2000 era Bush debating with 2004 era Bush. Download the video at that link and watch it, I highly recommend it. :)

Eastern Turkey, Kebab Tour 2004 – Part III

So Kerry clearly won that debate last week, regardless of what some pundits refuse to admit. I just had to get that off my chest.

Anyway, click below for the final part of the current Toby travel letter series:

Eastern Turkey, Kebab Tour 2004 – Part III

Celil and I arrived in Kars and started looking for a hotel. We found one that was very nice, but seemed a bit expensive to me. I wanted to look some more. We passed up the hotel that Ann and I had stayed at before and I found myself wondering how I ever managed to stay in that rattrap. We went to a three-star place and I asked the receptionist how much a room was. He told me it was Seventy million ($45) for two nights. I thought that was a good deal because I’d looked at the room and it was very nice. Celil said it was almost as good as a Motel 6 room (but that is great over here where cheaper places don’t even have a TV or extra blankets). So we went up and put our stuff down. After a couple minutes the phone rang and the guy at the desk said, “Oh, so sorry. The room is actually 70 million for EACH night.” Nice try, buddy. How many other tourists fall for that one? I guess he figured that since we were already there I’d just say ok. But we walked. And lucky we did because at the first hotel we looked at the receptionist/imam (he had a big beard) told us a shared taxi could take us to Ani (the site we wanted to see the next day) for $10 each. The ass at this hotel we were unceremoniously leaving had told us that there was no such thing, but he’d be happy to arrange a private taxi for us, for which I’m sure he got a good commission. As we walked out the front door a man was coming out of another hotel and asked us if we’d like to go to Ani the next day. There was his car right there and he had just been talking to other people in this other hotel. We said yes, and he asked us where we were staying. I said that we were going back to the first place we’d looked at (imam man’s hotel) and so he gave us a ride. So everything was arranged and I was happy. Celil celebrated by climbing on the window to get a better view of the castle on the hill. He couldn’t quite get a grip on the wall.

That night we looked around the town. In the dark it didn’t seem as dirty as I remembered it. But then it rained and the streets filled with mud, and I said, “Oh yeah. This is it.” It was such a switch from the baking temperatures and no cloud in sight weather of the southeast we’d just come from, but it wasn’t an unpleasant change even for a desert rat like me. We had to get up early the next morning to go to Ani, an old Urartian city right on the border with Armenia. Five years ago there were soldiers everywhere and half the place was off limits. It was difficult to take any pictures too. Now the soldiers are gone and the whole place is pretty deserted. There’s a village just out in front of the walls where the locals were mulching hay and collecting cow dung to use as heating fuel during the winter. I asked Celil if he could smell waffles now, but he said it smelled more like the bathroom of a soup kitchen than a waffle house. The cows that produced the heating material were grazing inside the walls, casually walking through a city whose newest surviving building dates from 1100 AD. The ruins themselves consist of little more than some churches, a mosque and the walls of the fortress all made from red and black sandstone. There are many mounds under which I’m sure lay considerable historical treasures, but since relations with Armenia were so bad for so long (the border is still officially closed) no archeologists have been able to do any serious work at this site. The Armenians are working on their side though. They’re digging huge rock quarries into the side of the river-carved gorge that separates the two countries. I think they may be doing it just to ruin the view from the Turkish side, but perhaps I’m being overly cynical. We climbed the minaret of the great Seljuk mosque on the Turkish side of the gorge. There was once a machine gun nest up there, but now there are just some old scraps of birds’ nests and cigarette packets probably left by the soldiers. It’s very picturesque and I took quite a few photos. Celil climbed out onto the walls of the fortress, but since the mortar was crumbling and I didn’t want a thousand year old thousand pound cut stone landing on him, I asked him to go only as far as he could jump back if need be.

When we got back to Kars we looked around in the daylight that was left. We went up to the old castle and out the back door to see some old storage bunkers from WW I. There are still bombed-out houses up on the hills that can be seen, and some old Ottoman hamams along the river. There are some Russian orthodox churches left from that occupation and a Roman era bridge. We saw a line of geese in single file being led up a hill by two kids. When I was getting ready to take a picture, they saw me and started waving. The geese dutifully stopped and munched grass until the picture was done. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see in this town except the shops that sold honey straight from the honeycomb and kept the bees right in the shop window. I couldn’t figure out if that was to advertise freshness, or as a warning to any would-be Winnie the Poohs who may want to go sticking there hands where they weren’t wanted.

After Kars we began our return west and stopped in Erzurum for one night. It’s an interesting city but not one that I particularly needed to see again. I only stopped there so Celil could say he’d been there and to break up an otherwise very long bus ride. The nice thing about Erzurum is that most of the best landmarks are Seljuk, and the Seljuks definitely had a flair for designing unique buildings. There were some interesting medreses, mosques a castle and a set of three tombs. Around the tombs were three little girls who could only say hello and goodbye. So that’s what they said. Over and over and over again. There were other people picnicking around the tombs and they kind of laughed, especially when one of the girls wanted to shake my hand. Celil got that on film and it’s one of the funnier things taken this summer. We left that and ran into a guy who claimed to be another student trying to get enough money to go to the US. He was a carpet shop tout, as he freely admitted when I asked. I told him he needed to practice more because he admitted that way too fast. More stealth, less honesty. I told him I’d already sent two kids to the States twice and couldn’t afford any more. He didn’t know what to say so he left. I bought a picture made by a painter who first paints the picture on water and then puts a piece of paper on top to absorb the floating paint. Ahmet told me it’s called ebru art. It’s pretty cool anyway, and every picture is unique because it can’t be copied the same way twice. The artist learned how to do it here in Istanbul and he gave me the address of his teacher’s shop. You may all be getting one of these for your next holiday gift. Erzurum is also famous for its black amber prayer beads. For the Holy Roller who needs to be able to coordinate prayers and fancy dinner dress. Celil got some for his mother, and the guy who made the beads gave me a piece of unworked stone. I could really fly in the face of tradition and make a little goat’s head or pentagram out of it, but for now it’s just sitting on my desk.

Next up was Sivas, a larger city further west and the only place left in Turkey that I had never been to but wanted to see. As a matter of fact, out of Turkey’s numerous provinces there are only five I haven’t been to, and they’re in the extreme northeast and southeast along the Georgian and Iraqi borders respectively. Sivas has always been a point of interest because of the Seljuk architecture there. Celil had come here for a handball tournament earlier in the year, but as we looked around the historic old center of the city, he told me that none of the guys had seen that part. They had been right across the street, but didn’t think there was anything to see behind all those trees. Only three of the most well preserved medresses in the world (two of which were now converted into tea gardens and a bazaar). But I made sure he saw it all. Then after our history lesson, we went and played Counterstrike again and I killed him 49 times. I had planned a couple of day-trips from Sivas, but on our second day there Celil got pretty sick. It had started the night before, but now it was much worse and there was no way he would be able to get on a bus for several hours. So after getting him some stomach medicine from the pharmacy I set out to explore the city some more. I can’t sit still very long, but he was happy to sleep. When I got back, I dragged him out to eat something light and then we went back to the hotel to watch the Turkey-USA basketball game. We bet for an ice-cream. If Turkey had played a zone, I probably would have had to pay up. As it was they didn’t, and I got my ice cream bar. There was a similar result the next night. Yum.

On the third day, Celil felt better but I gave him an Imodium to pop just in case. We were headed to Kangal, a little farming village in the middle of nowhere but with one very special spa about 15 km. from town. The name of this health spa is Balikli Kapilici, and it’s famous for it’s man-eating fish. What you do is get into this pool (women have a separate one) and sit still. After a few minutes little fish come up to you and start eating whatever dead skin they can. They especially love feet. There’s nothing that tickles more than a fish nibbling on your toes. At first Celil wouldn’t get in. He looked around at all the kids and old men in there and figured it was one giant petri dish. I’m sure it was, but we’d come more than two hours to have fish eat us and I wasn’t about to be stopped by a bit of pee in the pool. I figured if I could handle Alabama public pools I could handle this. Eventually Celil did get in, and the fish were very happy because they all went over to him and stayed on his back and feet no matter how much he moved. He must have been extra scaly. After we left the mini-piranhas behind we went back through Kangal and I noticed a giant banner advertising “Modern Scientific Circumcision.” I was so glad to know that now they had a modern scientific method, presumably using anesthetic, instead of the rusty pruning shears and the stick in the mouth they apparently had been using. Some ideas come slower than others.

That night I packed Celil off to Duzce. Halil had been asking when he would come back, but Celil didn’t seem in any hurry. No wonder. It was hazelnut-picking time and Celil’s family had that rather large hill full of nut bushes just waiting for someone. Celil was it, and his brother made it clear that his assistance would be welcome. I was welcome too, but since I have an allergy to manual labor I was excused. I went on my second day trip from Sivas to Divrigi (div-ree). Again I had to go through Kangal, and past the “Modern Scientific House of Pain,” and then on for another hour and a half. When I finally got to Divrigi, it was lunchtime and so I looked for somewhere to eat. The only thing in Divrigi other than cows and chickens is a very old Seljuk mosque and hospital complex. It’s not exactly a center of tourism, and the local fare reflected that. In the end I had some soup and rice at a little corner dive. Cost: $1.40. Then I walked up to the mosque. Surprisingly enough there was a couple there from Britain. He was a historian working on a project in Ankara and his wife was just biding her time before they went back to England. The place seemed shut, which was disappointing, but as we were walking out of the courtyard the imam drove up. Ever seen a little man in a nightdress and beard on a motor scooter? Then you’re missing out. He opened the building and gave us a guided tour of both the mosque and the hospital. The British guy’s Turkish was a bit better than mine and between us we worked out everything the imam was telling us. Very interesting. We both agreed that this was the best Seljuk building either one of us had ever seen in any country. We were, of course, invited to drink tea and had a good (but not too detailed) discussion of the mosque in Turkish society and the problems faced by religious schools these days and their lack of acceptance by the government. In the end, I felt no sympathy for the imam’s view of things (I’ve become incredibly hard-line against all non-academic religious education that has an influence on kids), but it was still interesting to hear what he thought about it all.

The following day I left Sivas and headed towards Ankara. But before I got there I stopped off at a little town called Yozgat and took a taxi to see the old Hittite capital city of Hattusas. It’s up in a little mountain valley and there’s almost nothing left now except a few tunnels, gates, temple foundations and inscriptions cut in the rock. Still, it was fascinating to think that this was the place from where armies issued forth to fight Ramses II way back in 1250 BC. My driver told me that it has been added to tour group itineraries recently, and that was evident by the number of big Germans and camera-laden Japanese piling on and off buses all up and down the huge hill upon which the city rests. These tourists can spend an entire day looking at this place, and archeologists working there can spend years, but I spent exactly one and a half hours and it was plenty. I’m not so impressed anymore by outlines of walls on the ground, and I was happy to let the driver cruise past a few “temples” labeled on the map. I was ready to get to Ankara. It had been too long since I’d had a cheeseburger.

I got on another bus and pulled into Ankara at about 9:00 at night. That was not a happy trip, but that whole mess belongs in a separate letter about Turkish buses in general. I took the service bus from the terminal to the center of town. One other passenger who got off with me asked where I was going. I said I needed a hotel, so he politely pointed across the street and said there was one. Yes, and it’s the Radisson. I may have moved up the chart as a tourist, but I’m not at the top yet. I walked a bit until I found the cheaper hotels I remembered from my previous trips to Ankara. I chose a good, clean one and after putting my stuff down, I went downstairs and asked the doorman where the nearest McDonald’s was. He told me to go straight down the street about two kilometers and I couldn’t miss it. But somehow I did, and I wound up in downtown on Saturday night surrounded by people going to bars, not fast food restaurants. As my stomach clenched and my search became ever wider, I spotted a couple with McD’s cups in their hands. I passed them and went down the road they had come from and found myself in a large square. It was then that I glimpsed a hint of red coming through the trees across the street. As I neared it, I caught sight of yellow and knew that my search was near an end. As I came around the trees and saw the friendly glow of the sign, I was overcome and had to rejoice in prayer. And so it went:

Our Father, who art in Oak Brook, Illinois*
Ronald be thy name
Thy Big Macs come (with two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a
sesame seed bun)
May the beef be well done
To kill e-coli that keep us bedridden
Give us this day a Supersize fries
And forgive us our calories, as we forgive the counter staff whom lawyers say are responsible for
putting these unnecessary calories in us
And lead us not into Burger King
But deliver to us our food in two minutes or less
For thou art the king of the fast food world, with lobbyist power, and a clown forever,
Ahem.

*(Oak Brook, Illinois is the world headquarters of McDonald’s)

So after giving my thanks, I entered those hallowed linoleum halls and indulged myself. I indulged a lot over the next few days, and spent my time exploring Ankara better than I ever had before. It’s not quite as boring a city as I had once thought, but it still lacks the personality of Istanbul. It’s also the capital of Ataturkism on Earth, and that gets old after a bit too. I spent a lot of time watching the Olympics. The opening ceremonies were great except for Bjork, that no-talent hack from Iceland who warbled on for five minutes about people’s sweat being salty. I couldn’t figure out why she’d be licking people’s sweat, but that’s her business. I just didn’t want to listen to it. After a few days, and the end of the swimming, I decided to pack it in and come back to Istanbul. I had never come back early from a summer break before, but I figured some time at the pool wouldn’t be that bad. Of course, I did get bored and so took off to Bodrum on the Aegean coast for a bit later on, but that’s really neither here nor there. It was a last minute decision just for fun, and I didn’t even take my camera or visit one historical site.

All in all, it’s been a remarkable summer. I did what I like most, and I’m up to thirty countries now (one for each year). I feel like a collector, but I have a long way to go to catch Papa in Rome. I was glad to be able to show the boys around to some places that most Turks, let alone foreigners, never get to. And let them see that Turkey really is a very contrasting place, and not quite as homogeneous as everyone likes to think. This was my last big trip around Turkey, but I’ll be back someday. Things haven’t changed out in the east much, but given another twenty years and EU membership, we’ll see what happens. Maybe by then I’ll be in that high-end tourist category, but I think I’ll still be praying to Ronald.