Speaking of Istanbul

Here is what an Istanbullu is like...

IG Nobel Prizes

IG Nobel Prizes is an actual scientific award that was designed around a very interesting concept.

Wikipedia's definition is:
"The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think". 

... Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research. With the exception of three prizes in the first year (Administratium, Josiah Carberry, and Paul DeFanti), the Ig Nobel Prizes are for genuine achievements."

I think this approach - I mean - bringing humor into the area of science is something we deeply need. Because somewhere I think, without humor, we tend to decay; things where humor isn't involved tend to become inhumane.

And here is my favorite research topic that was awarded in 2008:

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.

Makes sense - eh?

How To Fish A Cat - A National Geographic Documentary

It's one of the many  interesting things about my new apartment block. We share the block with cats. They are allowed to enter the building as they wish, live there as long as they want. While feeding the stray cats is a common habit in this city - as matter  of fact it's an essential part of Istanbul's culture - I must admit I had never seen this nice tradition being taken to this extreme.


Anyway - I like cats; so no big deal despite the smell in the block.


Today, one of these cats sneaked into my apartment and found her way to my extremely small laundry room which has a corner in its end where a cat can perfectly fit in without being reached by any human being. 


At first I tried for many minutes to convince the extremely anxious cat to come out using my most charming voice to not much luck until the point I realized that the whole scene must be looking extremely bizarre. So I initiated the execution of plan B.

Right after this pic was taken, she ran back to her corner. Flashlight scared her a lot.





I went to the corner shop to get some frozen turkey döner. Here is what happened next:

Good bye Miss Cat. 

İçine Girdiğin Küçük Kaygan Delik

The title in Turkish above means "little slippery hole you enter". 

Nope, I didn't rip it off a poetic porn movie but from the lyrics of a rock song from three years ago sung and written by one of the most popular rock singers in Turkey named Şebnem Ferah.

Part of her lyrics is like that:

Merak etmeden duramıyorum, geceleri nasıl uyuyorsun?
Beni boşver kendine cevap ver lütfen bu kez dürüst olur musun?
İçine girdiğin küçük kaygan deliği yeni ve büyük bir dünya mı sandın?
İstersen bir aynayla yardım edeyim ama umursamazsın.

Meaning;

I can't help wondering; how do you ever manage to sleep?
Don't mind me, but answer yourself, and for once be honest.
Did you think that that little slippery hole you enter is a new big world?
I would want to help you with a mirror but you couldn't care less.

As soon as the song was released, it became a vivid discussion point especially on the boulevard press. Thanks to them, it didn't take us - the public- long to find out the motivation behind these lyrics. We found out, that the song was dedicated to the singer's ex producer who apparently had dumped her for another singer he had under contract named Ebru Gündeş.

Now, like many of my compatriots, whenever I hear this song, I think about Ebru Gündes's vagina. And Ebru Gündeş's vagina is perhaps the most successfully branded human organ. So successful you could easily create an artificial vagina brand named "LITTLE SLIPPERY HOLE THAT YOU ENTER PUSSIES".

Well on second thought, maybe the brand is a close second to Rasputin's dick.

( I think, this entry can well mark the start of a new category; newpeaksofoddity. I'm intending to share some of the odd thoughts that come to my mind here. It's very likely that it becomes my favorite category.)

Bad Eye

Today, I have come across a scene that would have been possible in only very few places on earth, fortunately or unfortunately including Istanbul.

A woman at her 40's is walking on one of the main shopping streets of Istanbul with her daughter. Very conservative in her moves, the mother looks quite poor and is wearing an old fashioned hijab. The uncovered daughter walking beneath her mother is throwing wannabe sexy smiles around; she is at most at her 15. The big inscription on her tight t-shirt says: "NO SEX CAUSES BAD EYE".

The incident looked so weird that I questioned whether or not it could have been that long since the last time I got laid. Or whether or not Istanbul is the bad eye itself.