Climbed into a dead-horse belly.

(2/10/05)

As I hit my alarm this morning, I thought: man, I'd nuke an orphaned minority whale for Christ to sleep in this morning. My alarm is set to go off with the radio, and I've deliberately chosen the most obnoxious station I could find: NPR in the morning. This morning's serving of "effed up" was something that sounded like an ermine being brushed briskly on a dull cheese-grater with a lively jazz beat in the background. The entire experience was like taking a slow-sheet enema without the sticker I always make the nurses give me. (The last one was an octopus with a band-aid on his tentacle: it said "Be Nice To Me Today: I've Just Had An Enema.")

Once at my place of employment, I found that the entirety of Indiana University's internet capability had gone down like a tube-topped truck-stop "entertainer" on 'ludes. At 9:30, a young woman came into the office and said that she'd had an appointment scheduled for 9:30ish with one of our advisors. I had no choice but to believe her. She sat and stared at me for quite some time, which was unnerving, what with how I was weaving an effigy of her out of human hair to burn later. She finally decides to speak. I transcribe our conversation in its entirety below. No, I am not making this up.

Needy South Asian Female: So, how often do you work at the library?
Me: [looking up from hair-doll] Guh?
NSAF: I just saw you there last night.
Me: You mean the Main Library?
NSAF: Yes.
Me: I don't work there.
NSAF: Yes, you do.
Me: Oh, THAT must be why I am so weary that I am seeing traces! I've been working there while I am sleeping!
NSAF: Huh?
Me: Nothing. Well, like I said, I don't work there.
NSAF: Well, it's your brother then.
Me: If by "my brother" you mean "other things that I don't have, to the best of my knowledge", then, yes.
NSAF: But you look just like him!
Me: Fancy that. I also look like a Turkish man's brother-in-law, a Kuwaiti woman's uncle, and lunatic Iranian mullah.
NSAF: Are you SURE you don't work there? I just saw you last night.
Me: [hoses student down with clown squirt-bottle]

What I am going to have to do is this. Since I have [apparently!] a generic look, I am going to shave one half of my face and leave the other to grow. The hair that grows there I will plait into attractive braids, which will be adorned with shiny things like beads and bits of sea-glass. I will wear utterly unmatched clothing; for example, I would wear yellow wellies, sweatpants and a savar-kinees with a yarmulke on my crown along with my backpack made of rodent pelts and sewn together with hair donated from Tibetan nuns. I will allow my thumbnail and my pinkie nail on each hand to grow ridiculously long, and I will file them to razor points. I will also get a tattoo of a tear on my cheek. Then, and only then, will I stop looking like people everyone knows. Until that blessed day, though, I must content myself the only thing that will make this all seem irrelevant: Afghani opiates.

Three days ago a Turk comes in to the office. His name, amusingly, is "Horizon Hero-Stone." This is because [Dom launches into lecture-mode! hide the children!] Turks, up until the 1920s, had names in the Arabic style. In other words, where one might be "Muhammad bin-Hussein" in the Arab-speaking world, you'd be "Mehmet Huseyinoglu" in Turkish. When Ataturk became the first President of Turkey, he required, upon pain of death, for every male citizen of the Land of the Galloping Mare's Head to choose a surname for himself. Most of them, while amusing to the Anglophone ear, are just names of that man's profession or his father's profession. For example:

Helvacıoğlu: Son of a helva (almond dessert) maker
Değirmenci: Miller
Ekmekcioğlu: Son of a baker (bread maker)
Dinçer: Robust soldier
Kuşçu: Bird-seller

But some of the people got creative. For example:

Akarsu: Running Water
Yıldırım: Thunderbolt
Çolak: A war injury; it's to be crippled by having your arm cut off just below the elbow.
Akargün: Daybreak
Erdoğan: Rising Soldier
Öztürk: The True Turk (or "pure")

Ok, enough of that. So anyway, Horizon bey comes to the office with a wee bag. He greets me warmly, as always, and we exchange pleasantries in Turkish before I begin to ask if I can help him. From the bag he takes a baseball cap and a jersey. "These are for you, biraderim", he said.

{moistness in undergarments!}

After willing the mist that had formed instantly when he said that back into the recesses of my eyes, I saw that they were artifacts from Horizon bey's school in the motherland, Marmara Üniversitesi. Located on the European and Asian shores of the Big Meat on a Stick, İstanbul, Marmara University is one of the leading schools in the country. My first non-perishable present at the Front Desk! So I immediately start gibbering like a mentally-challenged seven-year-old who is trying to learn !Kung because I am overwhelmed with emotion at the gesture; this, and I was trying desperately to think if I had done something with Horizon bey that would warrant such a gift. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I realized I was doing something very American: trying to justify a good gesture. Maybe he just liked me. Maybe he got them and thought of the bearded Turk-wannabe in International Services. Anyway, the thought makes me swell up inside with happiness and pride in my work. Perhaps, though, the swelling is from the bizarre Tibetan food I'd eaten for dinner. Yak backs up on you something fierce.

(2/11/05)

Of course, today I got to Turkish class and asked if the ridiculously small amount of work that we had to do for homework was my imagination. It was. Apparently I'd not read the bottom of the assignment email that detailed how we were to have answered like twenty questions on something crappy and hopelessly complex that I totally hadn't read. This knowledge comes about ten minutes before class commences. So, like a good ninja, I bowed my head and awaited the blade. Instead of a good old-fashioned draft-horse raping, though, we listened to my favorite Turkish folk song ever and tweaked out on some Arabesk music from the willy-wags of Eastern Turkey. One more hurdle before this weekend officially begins: Osmanlıca, the dread dead language. And if you think for one moment that I am not going to be spending most of this weekend unconscious, you've been gargling with bong-water. Well, except for the times when I am doing the metric ton of laundry I have built up and cleaning our scurvy man-house.

And blogging. Oh yes, blogging. Two, three, maybe even four. I've been wicked and I must pay.

Oh, and helvacıkbağım için: zaten seni özledim.

Have a good one, Indiana.

Demir