This one's more about cleaning house than anything. Istanbul hasn't been the greatest place to be lately, what with the fascist PM telling the entire country they must bear three children and the Lira growing unstable. That in mind, we're off to a place even more unstable. 6 days in Israel, seeing big cities and small towns, and trying to figure out what everyone's so damn upset about anyway.

Here's some photos from the past few months or weeks. We leave in two days. Hopefully there'll be some exciting shit to report upon return.


The bar I DJ at has these fighter-pilotesque headphones.

And they feed me free beer all night.

Waffles after New Years, apparently.

Taking in a sunset two minutes from our place. We drank wine out of water bottles just to stay lucid, or something.

But I'm also scared of dogs. So I guess it's all relative.

In general, İstanbul scares the living shit out of me. Sitting for two hours in hellacious traffic will drive you bonkers, sure. But once that traffic breaks, the madmen who man Turkish mini-bus work out their aggression by taking the lives of their passengers in their hands and easily hit speeds of 120km/h on city streets. No embellishment necessary. Those motherfuckers are mental.

But as it usually does, global warming scares the shit out of me too. And it hit İstanbul pretty flagrantly a few weeks ago.

It snowed like hell through the weekend, prompting a city-wide blackout and an essential shut down of the city on Monday. Apparentlt İstanbul dedicates as much of it's budget to snow removal as Detroit does to anti-gun campaigns. But that's just a thought.

Anyway, all my classes were cancelled and I spent a good few hours watching the cabs try hopelesly to drive up the 15 degree hill that is my street. Fucking priceless. (Here's a thought-Canadian Tire ought to ship snow tires over here with a 500% markup. They simply don't exist.) At one point, some fuck even tried to PULL a car up the road made of ice. I only stopped laughing when I realized that this guy actually believed he could do it. Then I got sad for the state of the human race.

But anyway, not three days later all the snow had melted and we were walking along the sea in 16 degree sun. How does that happen? I don't know. It's not for me to speculate, just to wonder aimlessly about. I enjoyed the weather...I soaked it up, literally. It made me glad to be here, and the sun hasn't disappeared since. The other day it was actually HOT. In February.

But as the heat comes, I begin to get terrified, more terrified than I have been in this city when I think of what the heat will bring. And it's worse than callous minibus drivers. It's the goddamned B.O. on the buses that will surely follow me for years as all my past embarrasments have. So to the big boys over at CT and Gilette...Here is a market for the taking. You'd be saving more than one ex-pat in the process.

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On that Friday we decided to ferry it over to the European side and climb up some old tower. So here's the view on that righteous day.


And here, 18 seconds from our place on the Asian side is the view of the tower. Wooyeah.

And here I am chillin' beside a tank on a normal day in the 'bul. And as you can see, that shit doesn't scare me in the slightest. Something is wrong here.