title, what title?

Genelkurmay'ın direktifi ile Mehmet Ali Birant'ı servis haberlerle bir anda terörist ilan eden basından ne kadar midem kalktıysa alkol yasaklarının gündemde olduğu günlerde aşağıdaki haberi ( http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25445738 ) manşet geçen NTV de o kadar midemi kaldırdı: Birisi içki masasında bir cinayeti itiraf ediyor. Ne suç işlenirken, ne azmettirilirken içki yok işin içinde. 4 Milyarlık Galataport ihalesini 700 milyon dolara alan bir holdingin haber portalı ise bu haberin Türkiye'ye sunduğu en önemli 8 haberden biri olduğunu düşünüyor. Aklıma ne geldi: VITO CORLEONE (after Bonasera kisses his hand) Some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But uh, until that day -- accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.

Contrary to what creationists want you to think ( Banana: The Atheists' Nightmare ), the delicious starch cubes once looked like this: Thanks to a thousand years of best Genetic Modification by small farmers, the seeds were gone. As a result, all the bananas you eat are more or less the fruits of the same plants, which have been asexually produced over and over again. I came across a similar case of wild origins of a well-known European plant in my recent visit to Erzurum. Favorite of pie-makers across the western world, Rhubarb looks clean and nicely shaped like this: Virtually unknown in western Turkey, the wild cousin, or perhaps ancestor of Rhubarb is known as Işgın in Eastern Turkey: To close the this curious circle, the Wild Rhubarb is known as the Mountain Banana in Eastern Turkey.

This ( http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/05/18/mireille-silcoff-baz-luhrmanns-great-gatsby-and-the-schlock-of-the-new/ ) is the most fitting review in my opinion of the movie otherwise known as Luhrman's Great Gatsby, or as Mireille Silcoff calls it aptly: a book which has, over the years, seemed to subtly presage the state of America in a slightly different way every decade; a book which Luhrmann has here reduced to the depth of blingy video game. For a more respectful homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald and cinema here's The Ballad of a Thin Man from I'm Not There with Cate Blanchete as Dylan:

And all began the year Hip hop went commercial.  This was Hip hop before that bling bling sh*t got a hold:

Or in other words: Allegro energico, ma non troppo. First movement of Mahler's 6. Simply my favorite piece of music. 

German Music has a tradition of hitting the perfect balance between disillusionment, cynicism and that weird hope that follows from realizing that it does not matter all that much. Perhaps this goes back to Nietzsche, I am not sure. Jetzt! was a seminal German Indie-Rock band that linked historically the experimental revolution of the Neue Deutsche Welle  and the Hamburger Indie-Rock revival of the 90s. Geographically it linked the jingle-jangle sound of the British music to German Music. The song "Kommst du mit in den Alltag" has recently became my 30-year-old blues anthem. Since I could not find any English translations of the lyrics, I thought I'd better share this German gem with English speakers: once you told me, you'd leave this city, the life in the city, just made you weary, you were never there, where your dreams are, you may not yet know where, but here are they not for sure... Is this all, what life has to offer: Care to join the dullness...

Left, Sarphan Finance Park Hotel, Istanbul. Right Ryugyong Hotel, Pyong Yang, North Korea. It doesn't get any uglier than this, does it?

Endüstriyel kesim tesislerinde boğazı kesilip kanı akıtalarak ölüme terke edilen, daha düne kadar süt emen hayat dolu bir kuzunun 500 gramı için Turkcell bir bedel biçmiş bile: 24 dakika konuşma http://www.sahinsucuklari.com.tr/tr/kurumsal/tr/kurumsal/duyurular/41/41.aspx

Ne yazık ki bir kadın olarak dünyaya gelmediğim için hiçbir zaman Mustafa Kemal'i onlar kadar sevme fırsatım olmayacak.

Dank der Uploads von Plattenkompanie auf  Mixcloud ( link ) habe ich die fantastische Welt der deutschen Alternativmusikszene entdeckt. Ich kannte mich gut aus, mit der 70er und 80er Jahren der deutschen Musik. Aber bis heute wusste ich überhaupt nicht, was die Alternativmusikszene in Deutschland während der 90er getan hat. Ich kann nur sagen, dass ich viel verpasst und viel nachzuholen habe. Die Band, die mir am meistens gefällt, ohne Zweifel, ist Blumfeld. Ich habe wirklich eine Gänsehaut bekommen, als ich  ihr Lied Verstaerker das erste mal gehört habe: Wer sonst schreibt Texte wie diese hier: Jedes Bild ist wie ein Messer ein Gebrauchsgegenstand und lesen meint hier denken mit anderm Verstand indem man ließ und was begreift sich und den andern, sucht und findet (das ist Arbeit) das Gefundene mit-teilt und verbindet (das ist Technik) gemeinsam eine Welt erfindet (vielleicht Liebe) und wer das nutzt macht sich verdächtig wird unberechtigt Ladendieb genannt s...

Zamanım olsa detaylı okumak istediğim iki düşünür var: Antonio Gramsci ( wiki link ) ve Michel Foucault ( wiki link ). Gramsci özellikle Faşist İtalya hapishane döneminde yazdığı günlüklerde kapitalist sistemin kültürel hegemoni kavramı ile nasıl yönetimi elinde tuttuğunu irdelemiş. Foucault ise ünlü Panopticon ( wiki link ) tasarımı üzerinden güç algısının nasıl yaratılıp devam ettirildiğini incelemiş. Son yıllarda özellikle Almanca konuşan entellektüel dünyada bu iki düşünürün Neo-Liberal Hegemonya'yı anlamak üzere kullanıldığını biliyorum. Türk akademisinde nasıl bir algı var bilemiyorum, ancak ülkede olanlar bu bakış açısıyla daha net anlaşılabilir diye düşünüyorum. Bir zamanların Beyaz Türk portali Ntvmsnbc'nin cumhuriyet mitinglerini sunuş biçimi ile başlayan, geçenlerde Da Vinci'nin ünlü çıplak resmini sansürlemesi ile ( link ) ayyuka çıkan, Türk hapisanelerindeki açlık grevini tamamen görmezden gelirken ana sayfaya Clint Eastwood'un kızının Obama'ya oy ...

Hatay'da emperyalist oyunlar oynanıyor ( link ). Bu sefer figüran değil, sahne arkasındayız. Nedense Bob Dylan'ın Highway 61 Revisited şarkısının sözleri aklıma geldi: Bir sonraki Dünya Savaşı'nı çıkarmaya çalışan Gezgin kumarbaz çok sıkılmıştı, "Daha önce böyle birşeye kalkışmadım" diyen Tertipçisi önce koltuğundan düşüyordu, "61. Otobanda, beyazlatıcıları güneşe yaydık mı, Hallederiz kolayca bu işi de!"

What the f!*k should I make of the Opening Ceremony? New York Times describes it aptly as a " Bollywood version of a sixth-grade play. " I call it -excuse me for not being humble- an overblown, self-congratulatory,condescending, revisionist, provincial Eurovision show. New York Times describes my prime discomfort far better than I can: "Britain offered a display of humor and humbleness that can only stem from a deep-rooted sense of superiority." But there were three things that made me write this post, rather than ignoring the opening ceremony like the Eurovisions. First and foremost: The elephants in the room, which go by the name of Colonialism and Imperialism. They define the celebrated "achievements" of UK as much as Industrial Revolution. At least in Sydney the Aborigines played an important part. In London, it was as if the hardworking people of the Great Britain achieved everything by their bare hands... Sorry, but placing some actors of Afric...

Ayhan Sicimoğlu Türkiye'nin en az deodorant kullanan Avrupa ülkesi olmasına karşı haklı bir kampanya başlattı (Link: https://twitter.com/ayhansicimoglu/status/218245972868870145 ). Dün tweetlerini okurken 2 Temmuz olduğu gerçeği kafama dank etti ve tüm ülkeyi saran iç bulandırıcı bir koku sardı her yanımı (link: https://twitter.com/actoker/status/219754790912131072 ): Yanmış çocuk cesedi kokusu . Bu kokuyu çıkarmak için yetkili tek organ olan meclisde ise ağız kokusu hakimdi dün. AKP İzmir Milletvekili Ali Aşlık Sivas sanıklarının en az yananlar kadar masum olduğunu buyurmuş. Kimsenin masumiyeti için konuşmak haddime değil ama emin olduğum iki şey var; kimse Sivas'ta yakılan 15 yaşındaki Menekse ve 13 yaşındaki Koray Kaya kadar masum değildi ve bu ülke ağız, barut ve ceset kokuyor.

My goal is to finish Joyce's magnum opus before the next Bloomsday. The Germans got it right once again. "Know thy self!."

"Six Four" - "23" - "Candle" - "Never Forget." These words does not exists on the Chinese side of the internet. In these wild days of the Internet, it seems like what does not show up in your search results, is simply not there. So the Chinese authorities are using the very same routers and servers that made the so-called "social-web revolution" possible to erase an authentic People's revolution in the Peoples Republic of China... In case you have forgotten, in the middle ages before Twitter and Facebook "revolutionized" the "way we interact" or before the "Arab Spring" brought fresh winds of "democracy" to the "suppressed" people of the world the fire  it was still possible to gather hundreds of thousands of people around the common cause of ending repression. In case you have forgotten, or never heard of it, its name was Tianenmen: Source: (Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty Im...

On world poetry day I listed some of my favorite poets. To my shame I forgot to add the great American poet Allen Ginsberg to the list. In my biannual "I've-got-to-update-my-mobile-playlist" routine, I format my mobile memory -I am sooo happy not being shackled to itunes btw-  and sift through my music library, looking for new discoveries and re-affirm the classics which are always included in the list. The unusual, one-time duet of the Clash and Allen Ginsberg titled "The Capitol Air" is one of those classics. Ginsberg sings one of his acerbic social critiques with the Clash in the background. I found out recently that this delightful punk rock-poetry coming together was not one time. In 1982 movie Poetry in Motion 20 contemporary American poets sang their poems. Ginsberg was once again reciting his poems with punk rock in the background. I had quoted the Turkish singer/songwriter Sezen Aksu in my entry for World Poetry day: Poetry is dying out...

This is so gruesome and disgusting that I want to puke. Some researcher in Switzerland proposes caressing the new born calves for few hours every day, so that they become accustomed to humans. This supposedly reduces the stress the animals suffer when they undergo otherwise pleasant tasks like castration, earmarking, getting burnt with numbers that calves go through as they grow up. What for? So that their low level of stress makes their meat more tender and more tasty when they are brutally murdered by the same people who caressed them as a calf. Surely, meat is murder . ( Original Article in German )

Does he look like the composer of not one but two of the most famous bass lines in popular music? Well, he does not. Rather, he is the composer of of three of them.

When the name of the great Mexican Revolutionary Zapata is the name of the production company that promotes a once-popular Turkish Schlager- arabesque singer.