By the pricking of my thumbs...

... gross semester this way comes.

To say I'm a little underwhelmed about the prospects for this semester would be like saying Pentacostal women have poofy bangs; harrowing indeed shall this semester be. I know this because I've done it before. Yes, Life in the Corn-ers, deja vu: Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, French and Readings in Turkish Literature. The sharp among you will remember that I didn't have Readings in Turkish Literature last semester--simmah down! gorry!--and that I had The Glorification of Jihad. You're right. However, this class is at the same time on the same day, taught by the same professor and has the same people in it.

Have any of you ever seen Groundhog Day?

Today was the first day back, and it was grim. My Turkish professor managed to plummet from his bicycle following a wipeout on ice over break, and watching him try to write his freaky-deeky Uralo-Altaic language on the board was like watching a six-year-old eat a pile of paint chips: you just can't look away, and you feel slimy inside for it. At one point today he handed out a worksheet with a bunch of people doing ridiculous things, and under each one was the action's name in English; we, apparently, were to go ahead and fill in the Turkish. I don't know about you, but never does a day go by when I don't use the word "lance" or "hurtle" in English. Needless to say, we were at a loss. His creepy Middle Eastern eyes glistened, and I thought with growing dread to the prescribed narcotics that swam lazily in his veins. Once he determined that we were developmentally challenged gibbons vocab-wise, he moved on to an excercise that was supposed to make us flex our verbal muscles again. He gave me a picture of a swarthy taxi driver waiting at his cab-stand and told me to make up a story about him.

Well. If there's one thing my friends and family have learned not to do, it's allow me to make up stories. I scribbled for ten minutes and then stood up in front of the other two people in my class to tell them the sordid story of Ahmet, the taksici:

Ahmet was born on a straw pallet in a remote Eastern Anatolian town that has more goats than people. His parents signed their names with their thumbprints, having never taken the time to learn to read or write. When he wasn't beating wolves off of his family's meager flock with rocks and a stick, he tended to his twelve brothers and sisters, one of whom was carried off by an eagle the size of a Shetland pony. When Ahmet was eighteen, he left his squalid malarial village for Istanbul, the Big Meat on a Stick herself, with about the equivalent of ten American dollars in his wallet. Within twenty minutes, he was broke and had to indenture himself to a taxi-stand so that he could afford his unheated seventeenth floor walkup that reeked of urine and tears. Some nights, after getting paid, he found comfort in the company of a Belorussian lady of the evening who had lost most of her teeth and most of her nose in a tragic pimp-beating. The rest of the money found itself in the hands of the local mafia, who threatened him with castration and horse sodomy.

Clearly, Abbas bey hadn't figured I'd talk about that.

And, of course, there's the office. Today, a young couple came in for counseling about their future. The strapping young lad wanted to know how long he could be gone outside the US and have his wife and child remain here. My steel-trap mind shot to the exact same conversation I'd had not all that long ago; lo! it was the same couple! I remembered them! They were advisor-shopping, hoping for a better answer! I suppose they hadn't reckoned on me being there half of the time the office is open every week. Foiled by that hairy mofo at the Front Desk yet again they were. Next time, a squirt-bottle emblazoned with a clown-faced mark o' the beast, filled with tepid water, awaits them. Bring it.

Tomorrow: work all day {somersault of joy!} and then the wretched Romance language that dare not speak its name. Restrain me, lest I harm myself in my Dionysian celebration.

It's good to be back, Bloomington.

Dom