Practical Refirigerator Poetry

I was introduced to Magnetic Poetry a while ago but it took me a while to buy a set. It's basically a lot of words, in form of small magnets that you can put together to produce meaningful/less sentences, phrases and poetry...


It's a very useful tool to keep yourself entertained, especially if one's the kind of person enjoying joining little pieces together (like jigsaw puzzles maybe) and a very nice socializing tool when there are people in the house.

Anyhow, I decided to take a picture of the poetry coming out my refrigerator and exhibit them. Some are my creations and some aren't. Enjoy!

Ms. Alma Garret

I've been watching the magnificent tv series Deadwood from the dvd's for a while now and I have to say it is the best production I've ever seen on tv. Last night I watched 4 episodes in a row and I've made it to the 5th episode of the second season. I'd really would love to read and learn about Deadwood, it's characters and it's setting from different web sites and write about it. That'll have to wait until I finish the second season though.


One of the characters in the show, Ms. Alma Garret, magnificently portrayed by Molly Parker deserves a special attention. So rare comes a combination of unique beauty and seriously great acting.

Happy holidays!

All my love

A fantastic and underrated Led Zeppelin song from their last album, In Through the Out Door. Youtube doesn't feature a live Led Zep video of this song (probably because the album was recorded in 1978 and the group disbanded after Bonham's death in 1980) however I managed to find a very good cover of the song by Ween. The altered intro is fantastic, the solo is also a little bit altered (read: butchered) and the vocalist is obviously not Plant but it's still definitely worth listening.


All My Love by Led Zeppelin (performed by Ween)
----------------------------------------------------
should i fall out of love, my fire in the light
to chase a feather in the wind
within the glow that weaves a cloak of delight
there moves a thread that has no end.

for many hours and days that pass ever soon
the tides have caused the flame to dim
at last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom
is this to end or just begin?
* chorus: all of my love, all of my love, all of my love to you. (repeat)

the cup is raised, the toast is made yet again
one voice is clear above the din
proud aryan one word, my will to sustain
for me, the cloth once more to spin

chorus

yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time
his is the force that lies within
ours is the fire, all the warmth we can find
he is a feather in the wind

chorus

Black

I finally managed to make my good friend Batur take me to Seekonk, MA where I bought myself a digital camera from best buy and a beginner's acoustic guitar from target. Ever since I've laid my hands on the guitar (2 days), this magnificent song by Pearl Jam is what I've been trying to play. It sounds pretty easy and the chords are very simple but even to create a tiny little resemblance to the way Eddie Vedder sings the song is very difficult.

I looked at a bunch of videos of the song and this one, performed recently (look at Eddie's hair) is by far the best one. It's calmer, the lyrics are more understandable and there's a very nice guitar solo at the end.

Here are the lyrics and up there is the video.
Enjoy!

Black by Pearl Jam
-------------------
hey...oooh...
sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
were laid spread out before me as her body once did
all five horizons revolved around her soul
as the earth to the sun
now the air i tasted and breathed has taken a turn
ooh, and all i taught her was everything
ooh, i know she gave me all that she wore
and now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds
of what was everything?
oh, the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything...

i take a walk outside
i’m surrounded by some kids at play
i can feel their laughter, so why do i sear
oh, and twisted thoughts that spin round my head
i’m spinning, oh, i’m spinning
how quick the sun can, drop away
and now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
of what was everything (note the lack of question mark)
all the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything...
all the love gone bad turned my world to black
tattooed all i see, all that i am, all i’ll ever be...yeah...

uh huh...uh huh...ooh...
i know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, i know you’ll be a star
in somebody else’s sky, but why
why, why can’t it be, why can’t it be mine

goodbye typepad

Although typepad is a very nice blog publishing enviroment, after a month of trial period I came to a conclusion that for my purposes, it's no different than free blog publishing sites like blogger. (Typepad costs 5$ per month). Tomorrow is the last day of my free period. Sometime in the next 24 hours this infant blog will cease to exist in it's old home.

Bold vs. Mild

As expected, there are plenty of coffee shops around Brown campus. I usually get my coffee from East Side Perks on Waterman st, between Thayer and Brook streets but as in the case with many people, from time to time I pay my dues to Starbucks on Thayer st as well.

I don't consider myself a coffee guy and most of the time I'm interested in the caffeine content (the more the merrier:)) rather than the taste. At Starbucks I, almost all the time, go for a tall bold coffee.

Today, the bold coffee was not ready (needed a few more minutes) and I didn't want to wait, hence I asked for a tall mild with a shot of espresso in it. The lady, to my surprise, told me that the bold means a richer flavor and usually the caffeine content is a lot more in the mild... Who would have known?

Anyway the point is, if you want to stay awake, go for the mild.

The Aftermath

As fantasy thrillers go (sorry but it's a shame to call them sci-fi), the movie War of the Worlds definitely stands out on its own. Never mind some of the absurd assumptions in the film's plot, I think Spielberg's approach to tell the story is a lot more unique compared to movies such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. In the latter ones, you get to see the story from a few people's point of views (usually containing the president of the USA). In War of the Worlds, you experience the story just as you would if it were real in this world. Tom Cruise, while trying to get his kids to safety, desperately struggles in an environment of complete unknowns and neither he nor the viewer gets a chance to understand what the heck is going on in the entire duration of the movie.

Speaking of these movies, what I would really like to see on the silver screen is a movie about the aftermath, explicitly trying to predict how people deal with the near-total destruction of the world if it had happened today.

I remember reading a book as a child that is parallel to this idea. It was by this Turkish author called Halil Ibrahim Balkas and the name is 7 Iklimin Cocuklari (the children of seven climates? - a somewhat crude translation). It starts with the invention of a special weapon that kills anybody greater than 15 years of age but the weapon itself doesn't do any physical damage. By the end of the first chapter practically every nation has this weapon, war breaks out - everybody dies - and the story begins as the kids try to reinvent what has been used before in their quest to take control of the planet again.

Sebnem Ferah

Good music that will stand the test of time... Iyi-kotu(dans pisti) by Sebnem Ferah

Puddle

Common courtesy is a very common way for a lot of people to have an understanding of how civilized a society is. One example of showing some courtesy is to slow down while driving if you are about to go through a puddle next to a sidewalk (especially if there are pedestrians around the area).I was walking on the sidewalk near where I work when a car ran through a puddle and practically showered me. I was pissed, I looked back to swear at the car, I first thought it was a taxi till I realized that it was a Brown SafeRide car.

I remember that this type of a thing happened to me in a lot of places in Turkey, even though I probably was raised in the most civilized city in that country. So I thought - we say American's are a lot more civilized and still same stuff happens to me there. I kept thinking a little more (which is pretty unnecessary but I can't help it) and reached the following conclusion.

Here, most of the people live in the suburban areas. Where I live, although I wouldn't call it a suburb, I can't call it a city either - especially compared to what we refer to as a city in Turkey, a lot of people drive everywhere unless you are a Brown student living around the campus. People here don't grow up hanging out in sidewalks, walking around somewhere and when they are driving, they don't see any pedestrians around. Simply put, people do not encounter a situation I described so often in their daily lives. Conversely, in Turkey people either live in the real rural areas or in very urban areas (however disorganized they may be), the latter being a home to most of the country's population. So the average Turkish driver encounters pedestrians almost everywhere except real industrial parks or highways, therefore they encounter the rain-puddle situation almost anytime they drive in the rainy weather.

You don't learn the common courtesy rules at school, you develop them through awareness. Turkish drivers go through a lot more situations to become aware of this common courtesy rule then their American counterparts, however they pretty much behave the same. Would Americans change their behavior if they lived in places like Turkish urban areas, that's a different and tough question to answer.