INS

INS

Main Entry: INS

Function: abbreviation

1. Immigration and Naturalization Service; 2. inertial navigation system

Well, THAT explains it: INS has really molded itself to suit both definitions; now it is truly "Inertial Naturalization Service." Let me count the seconds until I get deported for this...

Non-American Myspace ends with catty hypocrisy

If I cared enough, I would come up with an artsier and less American (and less white, but that's a whoooole other topic) version of Myspace.

Reframing no.1: it is somewhat American to describe who you are through movies. I won't lie and say I haven't enjoyed quoting the same lines from certain movies repeatedly (Life Aquatic comes to mind here) -- that would be me assimilating. Growing up, I never watched the same movie twice. I didn't own movies I had already seen. Repeated viewing of a favorite movie was a habit I learned in the US (the paragon of all: Princess Bride taught me everything I needed to know about Americans' relationship with movies). Let's just say, there was zero chance for a Turk to come up with Netflix.

So now I have to wonder, of course, what a non-Americanized Turkish version of Myspace would ask for instead. Favorite soccer team, for sure. Favorite food. (Favorite music would only generate Americanized answers, of course.) Favorite Nasrettin Hoca joke, perhaps?

Reframing no.2: Favorite books. As an English teacher especially, I appreciate the assumption that everyone reads somewhat regularly. But let me limit what I wonder about and work with that assumption for a second. Why only favorite movies, music, and books? Why no room for favorite artists/artwork? If you want to know me and you believe you can know me through some pages on the internet, fine; go look up Carrie Mae Weems' work and Nikki S. Lee's Projects and ask me some questions about them. If you want to know me, go look at a world map, Google "birthplace of Homer," Google "capital of Turkey," Google "Ladino," Google whatever it takes for you to ask me more informed questions so we can have a conversation rather than a one-sided imparting of encyclopedic knowledge.

Meow.

Fine. I just finished watching "24," and if not my identity, I do define my Mondays through my favorite television show. Bite me.

I miss Bruno's!!!

I took myself out tonight to see Marcus Shelby et al ("et al" including the fantastic Olmos and Marcus). Hanging out chatting with one of the musicians after the show, I realized how much I miss Bruno's, which was my version of Cheers. I'd walk in and hear my name called by three different people (think "Noooorm!"). I could be sitting around doing nothing at home on a Monday night, and I'd walk over to Bruno's to hang out with the bartenders and see the jam session, hang out with Shelby in between sets so we could give each other shit, and any Tuesday was a good night thanks to the Jazz Mafia folks.

Get your shit together already, Bruno's...I miss live jazz I can afford.

Moving

I measured over seven years in psycho housemate drama (the 5-pairs-of-cops-in-5-years party was a good time), shenanigans that featured yours truly as Anais Nin, broken dishes, broken hearts, fulfilled hearts, secrets that shall remain secrets in my wine-dark room, whale sounds coming from a trumpet slowly starting to sound like a jazz tune, Nintendo until 3 am (mixed with a housemate having sex in the next room), Buffy marathons, rewinding, replaying, rewinding, replaying that one scene from Evil Pink (what? girls watch porn?!??), obsolete chore lists, spills on carpets, wooden beams on the ceilings, trips out the fire escape to the roof to have World Sausage & sunbathe when it was those three days of summer, spontaneous wine and cheese parties with the housemates, the brilliant line "Does anyone know a generous squid?" in response to an empty ink cartridge, many a night of standing in front of a fridge with barely any room and wondering aloud, "What shall I eat?", subletters gone awry, housemates grown friends, friends grown home, a home full of laughter (and forgetting, and nerdiness like this literary allusion)...

I think of all that my red walls have absorbed, and my eyes get ready to cry while my lips start stretching to smile...So I just sit here with this expression that must look nowhere nearly as graceful as La Gioconda's visage in its ambivalence, and notice my chest hurts the same way it does when I leave Turkey after each visit.