There may be trouble ahead
But while there is moonlight, and music, and love, and romance
Let's face the music and dance.
Irving Berlin, 1936
He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
Bertold Brecht
Ah, if I were to live in Turkey, for sure I could not (easily) sleep tonight.
Therefore, for those visiting me a little more to read, maybe to think about and to reflect, perhaps even to laugh here and there.
Yes, those who have come to know me and my dearest friend - a writer who would not write for reasons I shall probably never understand -, a little better, and whose visits I do appreciate very much, will know that we do rather prefer to look on the bright side of life. And life is bright when we can celebrate our sense for humour, irony and well ... some sarcasm here and there.
Really happy Tetrapilotomos and I however are, when we can lean back.
Today could have become such a day. Burak Bekdil, this year's first Flann O'Brian Prize Winner, and Huysman-Wilde-Prize Winner Mustafa Akyol started a new competition.
The little difference: This time Mr. Bekdil started, Mr. Akyol replied; and, for sure, this time it will be Mr. Bekdil who will give a reply to this reply (if the circumstances will allow).
Allright, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy yourselves first here, then here.
* For those readers who unfortunately happened to miss the first competition it is highly recommended not to miss reading this and this.
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Good night, Turkey, and good luck! II
Those self-important fathers of their country
Think they're above the people.
(Euripides, c. 426 B.C.E.)
Hm, I do admit that I was very very close to withold what immediately follows, as I am not sure about its level of wisdom.
But why should a wise man be not wrong at the end?
Here we go, then:
. . . Why they're nothing!
The citizen is infinitely wiser.
Hm, being honest has produced a tiny dilemma: How to get the act together?
You see, the first two lines were thought as a lovely entry for this joke.
For a joke that tells what this blog's name promises: Omnium.
It tells all, about what can easily happen to everybody, if young or old, if white or black, if dark- or blue-eyed, if so-called Kemalists, secularists or Islamists, if followers of this Ism or that ideology, and whatever she or he may believe in, or not.
Having said this, I invite you to read:
With a little money in their pockets, they [two blacks] are walking down the street and run into a shop with a sign hanging on its window, that reads, “We make blacks white, guaranteed. Only $100.” However, one has $110 and the other $90. They make a deal: The owner of the bigger amount will go first and test it out; if he really turns white, he will give the remaining $10 to his friend so he can do the same. The first black man goes into the shop and leaves it after a very short time as a completely white person. His friend waiting outside is flabbergasted and immediately asks for the $10. But the answer he gets is like a slap on the cheek: “Go away, you dirty negro!”
With thanks to M. Nedin Hazar who "told" this joke, which is rather a dark parable getting close to the essential inheritent interior essence which is hidden in the root of the kernel of everything.
Read his complete article here.
Think they're above the people.
(Euripides, c. 426 B.C.E.)
Hm, I do admit that I was very very close to withold what immediately follows, as I am not sure about its level of wisdom.
But why should a wise man be not wrong at the end?
Here we go, then:
. . . Why they're nothing!
The citizen is infinitely wiser.
Hm, being honest has produced a tiny dilemma: How to get the act together?
You see, the first two lines were thought as a lovely entry for this joke.
For a joke that tells what this blog's name promises: Omnium.
It tells all, about what can easily happen to everybody, if young or old, if white or black, if dark- or blue-eyed, if so-called Kemalists, secularists or Islamists, if followers of this Ism or that ideology, and whatever she or he may believe in, or not.
Having said this, I invite you to read:
With a little money in their pockets, they [two blacks] are walking down the street and run into a shop with a sign hanging on its window, that reads, “We make blacks white, guaranteed. Only $100.” However, one has $110 and the other $90. They make a deal: The owner of the bigger amount will go first and test it out; if he really turns white, he will give the remaining $10 to his friend so he can do the same. The first black man goes into the shop and leaves it after a very short time as a completely white person. His friend waiting outside is flabbergasted and immediately asks for the $10. But the answer he gets is like a slap on the cheek: “Go away, you dirty negro!”
With thanks to M. Nedin Hazar who "told" this joke, which is rather a dark parable getting close to the essential inheritent interior essence which is hidden in the root of the kernel of everything.
Read his complete article here.
Good night, Turkey, and good luck!
The good news first. According to Erkan, Turkish bloggers are not longer banned from accessing to wordpress.
The . . . other (flash-) news:
MILITARY SAYS SECULARISM UNDER ATTACK BY “CENTERS OF EVIL” --The staunchly secular Turkish military said Monday that secularism is under attack by “centers of evil” in a strong warning one day ahead of the expected election to the presidency of a candidate with a background in political Islam. Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, chief of the military, said in a note on the military Web site that “our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who cannot embrace unitary nature of Turkey and (behavior of) centers of evil who systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic.”
[source: Turkish Daily News]
It seems, while Greece is burning (has been set on fire?), the Turkish people are sitting on a powder-keg . . . and . . . somebody else is sitting at the other end of the fuse.
Good night, everybody in Turkey. And good luck!
The . . . other (flash-) news:
MILITARY SAYS SECULARISM UNDER ATTACK BY “CENTERS OF EVIL” --The staunchly secular Turkish military said Monday that secularism is under attack by “centers of evil” in a strong warning one day ahead of the expected election to the presidency of a candidate with a background in political Islam. Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, chief of the military, said in a note on the military Web site that “our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who cannot embrace unitary nature of Turkey and (behavior of) centers of evil who systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic.”
[source: Turkish Daily News]
It seems, while Greece is burning (has been set on fire?), the Turkish people are sitting on a powder-keg . . . and . . . somebody else is sitting at the other end of the fuse.
Good night, everybody in Turkey. And good luck!
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Büyükanit or The Name of the General
Just about to assure you that the Turkish military (slogan: Peace at home – Peace in the World) have not yet changed their understanding of democracy, by recommending to read this and this, my closest friend happened to drop in.
- Ah, General Büyükanit remembering his people of what party is de facto ruling Turkey?
- General Büyükanit is doing nothing but his duty.
- Which is – according to George Bernard Shaw – what a stupid man always declares when doing something he is ashamed of.
- Let’s be serious, Tetrapilotomos. There have 46,59 per cent been voting for the AKP.
- Thus 53,41 per cent voted for a putsch. Which is, by the way, bigger a margin than George Bush once could let his little brother organise in Florida.
- What are you going to tell, then?
- Nomen est omen, would you agree?
- Hm.
- Nomina sunt omina?
- Yes, yes , ...
- So let's look at Büyükanit.
- Oh, please, Tetrapilotomos, no jokes with names.
- I am just trying to inform those of your readers who unlike you are fluent in spoken and written English, but like you do not speak Turkish.
- We shall speak about this later on; without any emotional blockade and off the records. Go on then.
- All right, to cut it short: büyük means great; anit means memorial; thus, Büyükanit means Great memorial.
- Ah, isn’t it nice to have - even being - one’s own memorial in one’s lifetime?!
- I have not finished, yet. Would you agree that language is magic?
- I do, for the first time after a long interval.
- Now, a Turkish native speaker would perhaps know better. But, one can read General Greatmemorial’s name Büyük-anit and/or Büyü-kanit.
- Interesting. And what does this teach my readers?
- büyü means sorcery / witchcraft / witchery / wizardry; kanit means evidence / proof / argument; thus, Büyükanit means f.e. Evidence of Wizardry.
- And what is the essential inheritent interior essence which is hidden in the root of the kernel of everything, and thus in your words?
- Depending on what spell General Büyükanit will be casting when it’s coming to presidential election, once the Turkish people might build him a memorial – perhaps even in their collective memory.
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