I nearly got kicked out of the house today for calling this a “Greek salad.” But that’s what we call it! Well, apparently around these parts it’s called a “Mediterranean salad” or even a “Turkish salad.” Tomato, tomahto. Normally I would make this salad (from wherever) with black olives, but one uses what one has in the house.

Anyway, this was my lunch today, and whatever you call it, it was awesome.

I have just about had it with this election. I find politics mind-numbingly boring as it is, and it’s not like I even have the right to vote here anyway. Yet about a hundred times a day we’re all subjected to the blaring music and propaganda of political vans driving by and advertising their respective parties over loudspeakers. From about 8:00 in the morning until sundown it hardly ceases. These vans are everywhere and there are seemingly endless amounts of political parties. Given the manic way they present themselves, they all seem somewhat nutso to me.

I wonder if they realise there is such a thing as bad advertising, as in, if I had the right to vote I’d be out there making note of which vans had the most obnoxious loudspeakers and I’d make a specific point not to vote for those parties. Seriously, I’m fed up. I wish they’d just hurry up and vote already so we can be done with the political message vans. I’m pretty sure by now everyone has heard whatever message they were going to hear (how could they not?) and can make their decisions in private without propaganda being blasted in through their windows during all the daylight hours.

If they start doing it at night I’m going to go postal.

Emirhan bought me some craft glue the other day, and I was intrigued by the design on the package. Specifically I inquired what the sumo wrestler was about. Emirhan shrugged and said it was probably about the Japanese thing. Er, what Japanese thing? Well, it turns out that in Turkey, most household-type glue is referred to as “Japanese glue.” I have no idea why, and Emirhan said he didn’t know either, only that it was commonly held that Japanese glue was higher in quality than glue from other places. I’d never heard this before. We certainly don’t call it “Japanese glue” in the United States. Is anyone else familiar with this term outside of Turkey?

It reminded me of the time, soon after I moved to the UK, when I discovered that the Brits refer to “the wave” (that rippling stand-up-and-raise-your-arms thing people do in stadiums) as “the Mexican wave.” This made me laugh heartily— what on earth could the wave possibly have to do with Mexico? As with the Japanese glue, no one could tell me the origin of the term, and it’s still a mystery. I’m still referring to these things as “glue” and “the wave” respectively, like a normal person.

How do they know what my agenda is? These online banking facilities are getting smarter by the day.

I hope everyone’s enjoying the summer— the weather has settled down a bit here and now we’re having unusually mild temperatures for this time of year, so I’m happy. The bazaar was humming today, and I brought a few pics back to show you.

[click on each image to see a larger version]

So assuming this is a motorcycle club, if we’re starting in Mexico and heading to…. London? Um…

I’m pretty sure they meant “warden” there, but I looked up this word “warder” and it turns out it’s an antiquated term for prison guard. Which still doesn’t lend any sense to the shirt, but at least you learned something today.

This one’s all over the place— I especially like the “Las Vegas, N Mexico” part. I might have actually bought this if it had been a bag rather than a shirt.

I guess Burning Sun 81 used to be a nerdy white Burning Sun.

Yeah, well, that’s what happens when three hearts overlap like that…

First of all, you’re way too young, and second of all, that’s illegal in most places.

Sure, that’s what they told jumpers 1 through 62.

This is just great— again, if they only made it in a tote bag. I love the “part of urban” right in the middle.

Okay, this is a maternity shirt, folks— oh dear. The weird part is, the text is actually where the baby bump would be, which means the arrow is pointing… er, below that. So I guess it’s the baby saying he’s with stupid down below. Note to friends who buy me gifts: I want one of these when I finally get knocked up.

This is scary on so many levels I barely know where to start. Normally I don’t have a thing about clowns, but combine that weird drawing with the word “crazy” and a clown that is gazing off into nothing and not even close to smiling… I don’t know, I think it’s got “Gacy” written all over it.

If you want to see more of these, the bazaar archive is here, and if you’d like to purchase a shirt or two yourself don’t forget to stop by the store and have a look around. Have a fantastic Thursday, folks.

I’ll tell you what, one thing that living in a tourist town has taught me is that when people are on vacation, they clearly feel a sense of liberation from any reasonable fashion decisions. Maybe it’s because they think they’ll never see anyone from here ever again, but whatever the case, you do see all kinds of crazy outfits here in the summer, ranging from the almost naked to the downright bizarre.

This lady… I wish I’d gotten a photo of her standing up, because I cannot describe just how short that “skirt” actually is, but perhaps you can get the idea from what you, ahem, see here. Mind you, if I had a body like that I might dress similarly (though I’d still cross my legs), and who am I to judge? But let me tell you, this was not exactly what I wanted to see five minutes before dinner. The guys may disagree.

Our old friend Carpetblogger has yet another great tale to tell, this time about the struggle between her dogs and the neighbourhood cats [story is SFW but has graphic descriptions of animal-on-animal violence that some may find disturbing].

The day I moved in, the Carpetdogs went batshit insane at 4am, which pretty much took seven years off my life. An orange tomcat had entered through a window I will never leave open again. I ran downstairs to see it flying through the air five feet above my head, looking for a ceiling escape hatch, like a feline Jack Bauer. It wedged itself in a window and wouldn’t exit via the door or other open windows, no matter how much I poked it with a stick and the dogs barked their heads off. Now my entryway smells like cat pee.

Aside from being funny, this story is also interesting for me because we have an issue with stray cats in Antalya, also. However, as most of the housing around these parts is of a high-rise nature, It never occurred to me that people who live on the ground floor might have to keep their windows closed due to potential cat infestation. I hope Carpetblogger has an air-conditioner— we don’t have one in our home, and with the temperatures up in the 40s, I can’t imagine not being able to open the windows. I look forward to hearing the updates to the Carpetdogs’ personal war on terror. Link

I have to get out of this thing about Sundays being a disaster. They always are— I don’t whether it’s just because it’s the first day of the new training week or what, but Sunday throws me, and that’s not a good habit to get into because 34 weeks from today, Sunday will be Marathon Day, and I can’t afford to have a bad day on that day.

I’m pretty sure it’s entirely psychological; I was supposed to start staggering my run lengths this week, having a 40-minute run today and 30-minute runs the rest of the week. So I knew today would be hard, but I made it much harder than it had to be by stopping after 12 minutes and walking. I’ve done steady 30-minute non-stop runs for two weeks now, so there was no reason whatsoever for me to give up after 12 minutes, except that I started all this self-talk about how 40 minutes is just forever and that I deserved to have a break. And I’m one of these people that once I take a break, it’s almost impossible to get my momentum back. So the rest of the run was more of a walk interspersed with pathetic joggy-type-bouncy stuff in 10-second intervals. It was unnecessary, and I came home feeling how I’ve felt the last 4 Sundays in a row: annoyed that I wasn’t firmer with my self-discipline. Let down. Disappointed.

So in light of today’s lack of events, I’m going to attempt the 40-minute run again on Thursday. Bet you I nail it, too— I always do fine from Monday onward. And I’ve got to do some hard thinking and work out a way to get past the Sunday mental block, because this just won’t do.

I also made a mistake with my music this morning. Up until now I’d been running with just a few long songs spanning 30 minutes, because then I can think of the run in terms of how many songs there are left to go. So today for my 40-minute playlist I decided to load up lots of little short songs to see if that was easier or more difficult than a few long songs, and since I’ve been really digging the new CocoRosie album I thought I’d pop all those little songs on with a couple of extras to pad out the time (the album is only 34 minutes long in total, spread over 12 songs). That experiment, too, was a disaster. CocoRosie is awesome music, but it’s awful to run to, and having to run for 12 songs is desperately depressing. I lost track at about the fourth or fifth song, and after that all I knew was that I didn’t know how many more songs I had to go, but it was like a million or something. I think it was soon after that when I gave up and started walking.

So tomorrow’s playlist is back down to only 4 songs, starting with a long one (11 minutes) and ramping down to the shortest one (4 minutes). I used this method three weeks in a row, and it worked, so I’m going back to it. I’m also ditching the CocoRosie in favour of some old-but-good Out Hud. We’ll see how it matches up next to The Chemical Brothers (that’s a hard one to beat).

I lost a couple more pounds this week, so that’s all good, but on the down side, I dropped the iron on my foot this morning. At first I thought my toe must be broken, but I’m changing my mind about that. It’s painful, but not broken-painful. I’ll see how it feels in the morning before making a decision about whether or not to run. I’d rather err on the side of caution, but I really don’t think it’s that serious.

So, I did better in Week 3 than Week 2, but Week 4 is off to a slow start (literally). Tomorrow morning is my beach run (toe permitting), and that’s my favourite run, so with any luck I’ll pull it together like I have every previous Monday and take over the world.

These weeks are flying by.

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According to the Turkish Daily News, this month sees the opening of Turkey’s first GLBT hotel, the four-star Planet Victorya in Kemer, about an hour’s drive from Antalya. TDN speculates that this could perhaps be in response to the European Union putting pressure on Turkey to show full respect for human rights.

I used to live in Kemer, and I think a gay hotel will do quite well there. Kemer is quite liberal-minded and a popular destination for gay travelers. There are a few gay-friendly hotels there already, but this will be the first facility which is geared specifically for the gay community.

The only thing is, I’d like to go check this hotel out, but apparently I can’t— the owner says they will only accept GLBT guests. I understand this is a common policy in GLBT resorts, but I think it’s ironic that by creating an environment where homosexuals can exclude heterosexuals, the gay community is leaving itself open to a situation where homophobes can then turn around and say, “if they can exclude us, we can exclude them,” and then no one is any more accepting of each other than they were before. I would think a better idea would be to have a policy similar to that which is implemented in many gay clubs— let anyone in as long as they understand that it’s primarily a gay environment and that any hateful or homophobic behaviour will not be tolerated and that everyone needs to respect one another.

After all, how does one determine who is gay and who is not? Would a man have to somehow prove it in front of the manager before he can check into the hotel, or would they take his word for it if he claims to be gay? It sounds ridiculous, and it is. I used to have a converse issue when I lived in England with a particular “couples only” resort that advertised their vacations on TV, with small print at the bottom of the screen that said “couples must be one man and one woman.” This infuriated me. I called the toll-free number and asked if my partner and I would have to show our genitals to the booking agent before we could go on vacation. What right do they have to demand to know my sex before selling me a service? I wasn’t the only one who was offended by this policy; the company came to national attention and it turned out that their policy was not intended to exclude gay or transgendered couples, but rather to keep pairs of single same-sex friends from checking into the resort thinking they were going to do some damage. I understand that the company has since revised their policy to allow couples of any gender/sex combination, which is great.

In any case, next time I’m in Kemer I plan to drop in at Planet Victorya and see if they’ll give me a tour of the place. I’ll let you know.

A few nights ago I was out and about in Antalya and met some English holidaymakers on vacation here. We started a conversation and had a few drinks… and it turns out that Janet and Kevin Dellar (pictured) have been together for 37 years and have been married for 30 of those years. They met in school when Kevin was 14 and Janet was 13, and have been inseparable since. They’re such a lovely couple and their family has such a wonderful group dynamic, it gives me hope that real love truly can make it through anything. They were inspirational to me— them having met and stayed together at such a young age makes a nice change from people saying that teenagers don’t understand what love is or that kids that age should be playing the field and trying different things. Sometimes when you’ve found the right thing on the first try, you’ve found it, and you don’t need to look any further. Why spend your life running around looking for some perfect person who’s already by your side? Best wishes to Janet and Kevin; may they have many more happy anniversaries to come.