i think most of you here in amsterdam already know about one of the things i’m spending a lot of time on lately, so i haven’t yet posted about it. but i’m having a lot of fun, and getting pretty excited about upcoming shows, so i thought maybe it was time to post the flyers. and the websites: www.contrast-site.nl and www.myspace.com/contrastnl.
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Channel T is not exactly one of the major players in the Turkish television business. And the niche station, tucked away in a commercial area of Istanbul, has made headlines primarily because of the woman who runs it, Seyhan Soylu. Often simply called "Sisi" by the press, the 36 year old is a former police officer and journalist, a transsexual and the enfant terrible of Turkey.
At 20, the son of a diplomat and graduate of a police academy had a sex change operation. At 22, Sisi appeared on the cover page of an issue of Playboy, and since then she has developed an interest in politics on a bigger scale. As an employee of "state services," Soylu allegedly took part in the overthrow of fundamentalist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in 1997. Last September, the eloquent blonde with the tattooed upper arms was even arrested and briefly detained on suspicion of membership in Ergenekon, a shadowy, ultra-nationalist organization Ankara believes has plotted to overthrow the government.
So perhaps it comes as no surprise that Sisi also happens to be the force behind the country’s most controversial television program. For weeks, a reality show dreamed up by the head of Channel T and called "Tövbekarlar yarisiyor" ("Penitents Compete") has been at the center of public discussion. The show focuses on 12 atheists and several religious dignitaries, including a Catholic and an Orthodox priest, a Muslim imam, a Jewish rabbi and a Buddhist monk.
Religious Authority: "A Debasement of Religion"
For eight weeks, the clerics, acting independently of one another, will try to convert the atheist candidates to their respective faiths. The program will include face-to-face conversations, group question-and-answer sessions and visits to mosques and churches. If the holy men manage to convert a participant, the participant wins a trip to the applicable holy site. A freshly minted Muslim will make a pilgrimage to Mecca at the station’s expense, a Jew will go to Jerusalem, a Catholic to the Vatican and a Buddhist to Tibet.
It sounds like a joke, but the show’s creators at Channel T are perfectly serious. "We selected our 12 atheists from more than 200 applications. We already have a commitment from the Vatican, which plans to send us a priest," says Soylu in her office in Istanbul’s Güngören neighborhood. A rabbi and a Buddhist monk have also been recruited. Initially, the station had difficulty signing on a representative of Islam, but it eventually found a Tunisian imam willing to tackle the challenge.
Soylu says the religious authority had been hesitant about permitting a Turkish imam on the show, but that’s putting it mildly. The Office of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in Ankara reacted angrily to Channel T’s announcement about the planned program. "Not a single imam" would participate in this "frippery," outraged Diyanet President Ali Bardakoglu said in a TV interview. The show, he said, is nothing but a "fatal error" and, what’s more, represents a "debasement of religion."
Mustafa Çagrici, the supreme mufti of Istanbul, who, like Bardakoglu, is among the more moderate voices in Turkish Islam, fears the demise of the Eastern world. Experimenting with god, he says heatedly, is detrimental to public harmony.
"We Want to Help People Find God"
Soylu, who sees herself as a "devout Muslim with non-dogmatic views" in a country with a population in which 99 percent share the same faith, has launched a counterattack. "Where is the problem? We don’t want to incite a religious war," she says. "We want to help people find God."
If the program does indeed end up offending religious sensibilities, the station can expect to be slapped with a fine by the agency that regulates the Turkish media. In the worst case scenario, it could face the loss of its license.
Ironically, Turkey’s media watchdogs have been dealing with increasingly absurd programs for some time now. In the battle for viewers, Turkish channels are outdoing each other with distasteful programs like "Ver coskuyu" ("Come On, Give Me What You’ve Got"), in which candidates are showered with small bugs or given electric shocks while singing a song. In another show, which has been accused of sexism, a man faces off against 50 blonde women in a test of knowledge — eventually he wins, exposing the blondes as intellectually inferior.
Sisi’s show about atheists and religion is relatively harmless by comparison. Turkish sociologist Nilüfer Narli even feels that it satisfies a social need: the "growing curiosity about other religions." Meanwhile, it remains unclear when exactly "Penitents Compete" will air. The station had announced a September premier at first, but now an advisor to Channel T says that it will not be launched before October — after Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.
That much consideration is a must.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
so, hazenstraat (where we live) is officially now the 10th street. our shopkeepers had festivities today, which are still going on. we went down for a long while – had a few drinks, chatted with a whole lot of neighbors. a couple of friends came by and helped take off the wooden floorboards of our roof so that it’s ready for construction work. i tried to get some work done on a few personal things, but was only partially successful.
tonight we’re going to cafe mono for a subgenius party. i missed the last one, which was apparently in the winston kingdom and involved stage acts and everything. don’t know where they’d put that in mono, so i suspect it’s just an excuse to enjoy drinking with likemindedly freaky folks. so off we go. i’m hoping that if mono is still ignoring the smoking ban, that at least the excessive "in your face" has worn off. last time i was there it was painfully smoky and i couldn’t breathe. literally. i left pretty early.
tomorrow i will HAVE TO SERIOUSLY buckle down. there’s a shitload of stuff to do, and i’ve spent most of today shindigging. 🙂
updating… i’ve been very busy, doing various things. here are a few of them:
allergy testing – again. results (preliminary) tomorrow, but it seems like i’ve reacted to a bunch. the german doctor said in dutch to his colleagues, while examining the initial reactions on my back, "this is an ideal canditate for this type of examination…" while enumerating the many locations where i’d reacted. should be an interesting meeting tomorrow.
work. just very busy. did you really want to hear about it?
flamenco. i’ve chosen to stay in the beginner’s classes again, for the lower stress level. otherwise it’s going fine. i bought a large strip of vinyl at the flooring store the other day, so that i can lay it on the floor and practice at home. this is pretty exciting, since the nails on the bottoms of flamenco shoes had been previously the main reason i never do.
band. i’m doing live keyboards for contrast while their usual member is away on a long trip. first show is nov 8th, 2nd act before faith and the muse. so we’ve been practicing! this week i finally was able to take the keyboard home with me so that i can get some more intense time to work on it. i think it’s going pretty well so far…
house. nothing significant since the party, although this weekend we need to get the wooden parts off of the roof and move things on each floor in order to clear space so the contractors can work on the windows. i’m not sure why the roof needs to be done THIS weekend, since to my knowledge, they haven’t even given us the bid yet for that part. but they start on the windows next week.
travel & visitor. i went to paris for my birthday (right after the wonderful party) and then matt’s mom was here for a week.
social. soundgarden, friends/neighbors dropping in, movies (i saw public enemies – kind of disappointing, even if johnny depp IS a hottie).
there’s definitely more, but for the life of me i can’t remember what. in the evenings, to unwind, we watch downloaded tv series. we’re in season 3 of weeds right now.
this weekend, in addition to the things mentioned above, my old assistant paloma is dj’ing at cafe schiller on friday, so i hope to go; saturday is the hazenstraat celebration of being the 10th street – so the 10th of the 10th; and sunday a friend from maastricht, sofia, will be in town, so i hope to see her for a while.
next weekend, matt and i will fly to lyon to see our friends annemette and steen, and we’ll drive with them to carcassone for the weekend. yay, french food with danish buddies!
there’s the quick summary for today. 🙂 or this month, whichever…
At work, I see examples of this grammatical error ALL THE TIME. I don’t mind it too much when it’s verbal, but it drives me crazy when it’s written. And so…
If you can’t say, "the white one belongs to I," then you can’t say "the white one belongs to Emma and I," either. I think we can all agree that you can’t say the first example. Therefore, you can’t say the second either. It’s not really all that difficult. I believe we all learned it when we were about 6 years old.
But just to get grammatical on your asses, "I" is a subject, which performs the action of the verb, and "me" is an object, which receives the action.
Best regards,
me.
ps. no, this is not actually directed at anyone here… unless you deserve it.
on my walk home yesterday, i took a different path than usual through the vondelpark. and saw what looked like CHICKEN OF THE WOODS, otherwise known as SULPHUR SHELF. yum. i didn’t look too closely, because there’s nothing that looks remotely like it (that’s orange like that) and i didn’t have a knife with me. i didn’t want to bring attention to it. i’ve found it here in the netherlands 2 other times so far. the first time was in maastricht, where i found 2 patches, picked one, was stopped in the park by a park maintenance guy, who told me that it’s poisonous (yes, but only in some people), and the next day both trees on which i’d found it had been mercilessly chopped.
the 2nd time was also in the vondelpark, about a year ago, but when i went to pick it up less than an hour later, it wasn’t there anymore. so i was very nervous it wouldn’t be there this morning. but it was!!!!
i didn’t take a picture, because i wanted to be quickly in and out of there, but here’s what it looks like, for those who don’t know it. delicious sauteed with butter and salt.
yum yum yum. i can’t wait for dinner tonight!!!!
i’m feeling very good… this week i decided to try and understand my finances a bit. my colleague who does the accounting recommended her financial guy, and i called him. he was just over to get an overview of our situation, mortgage, insurances, etc. etc…. he’ll contact me next week with his recommendations. it would be cool if i’ve got anything i could invest now, with the market so low. then i could be rich!!! 🙂 kidding, kidding, but it’s nice to be trying to get a handle on another of these confusing life things. it’s important since i don’t have any kind of pension yet, for example.
so. this morning i went again to the allergist. it turns out i reacted to:
i was really angry at them, though, because after giving me THIS list, i asked if i could also have a list of what all they tested. they DIDN’T test for the things the dermatologist specifically wanted to know about: OTHER types of metals. i haven’t worn anything with NICKEL on my skin since i was too little to know better, but DO wear a good amount of silver, titanium, and a little platinum. this had been requested. they chose, "in their expertise on likely causes" not to test these things now, because there wasn’t enough space on my back. so now i have to wait again until september, and do this again.
another whole week of discomfort and no showers. thanks, assholes. thanks for listening to your patient, again. hell, thanks for listening to your patient’s other doctors, again. fucking hell.
in the last series of doctor visits regarding my skin problems, it was decided to have me get full allergy testing. today was the first day. i got to the VU medische centrum at 8:45, had a coffee in the brasserie, then up to dermatology by 9:00, for my 9:10 appointment. sat in the first waiting room until 9:30, was seen into an appointment room, interrogated by two assistant doctors, who then brought in a head doctor briefly, who said, "ok, then we’ll go on with everything." then back into another waiting room for about 20 minutes, then told that because they wanted to test so many things on me, it would require more than fits on one back, and we’d do it in two batches. waited a little more, then shown into a dressing room, to remove shirt & bra. then a nurse applied patches all over my back.
i’m not allowed to take a shower. no sweating. on wednesday i’ll go back, they’ll remove these ones. then thursday we’ll put on the other ones (which will involve pricking), then monday i’ll go in again. then various followups with dermatologists.
these ones include my food sensitivities. as a result, i reek of garlic. not kidding. the whole room smells of it. my colleagues can smell it. and my body is reacting. my wrist and neck (and various parts of my back) itch, there’s a horrible taste in the back of my throat, and i keep sneezing and coughing. i have a post-nasal drip that wasn’t there this morning. so, basically – yep, looks like i’m allergic to something back there.
yikes. i feel pretty crappy. it will be interesting to find out which things i knew already, or suspected, and which ones i’ve never suspected. they’re doing a full general one, plus various ones i mentioned contact with while we did the questionnaire.
Spidertangle 