Silly Photo of the Day- Day Without Shoes Day 2013

 

Even though we are politically liberal here at "The Daily Vampire" (apologies to Oak Ridge Boys fans), we are not inclined to take part in Day Without Shoes Day, although we are taking a yoga class at the Northern Arizona Yoga Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., later today (this is a joke: Though there is an actual place called the Northern Arizona Yoga Center, we don't live anywhere near Flagstaff_ not even in the same time zone).

 

The day is meant to recognize starving children in places like Ghana, Guatemala and Tahiti (well, we suppose rich people also go around barefoot there).

 

With this in mind, we are featuring an image of the British women's beach volleyball player Zara Dampney, who has one of the few professions where one can go to work barefoot every day!

 

SIDEBAR: On a more serious note, we want to take a moment to recognize the three people killed and scores more who were injured in yesterday's bomb blast at the Boston Marathon. For me personally, this brings to mind Amanda Rigg, a 22-year-old Australian tourist who was killed in Istanbul, Turkey, on Sept. 10, 2001, the day before September 11th. I was in close proximity to that blast and I will never forget it. We wrote a story about Rigg in a 2011 entry here:

 

http://nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com/2011/09/ten-years-later-remembering-australian.html

 

 

Other links:

 

http://www.northernarizonayogacenter.com

 

http://www.onedaywithoutshoes.com

 

The Weekly Grocery List

In the early days of our blogging ventures, we used to simply post grocery lists as we couldn't conjure up anything else back in that stone age era of 2005.

Today, there are simply too many things going on at once and we have more competition thanks to Facebook, Twitter and my friend Chris Knight, who reportedly has the most popular blog in the world (that is a joke, but he gets more hits than we get).

Hence, we are returning to the grocery list. And, these are items that we either need to get at the grocery store or we added to fill space; here we go:

1. Tomatoes (Our friend Bruce Piephoff from Greensboro, NC, has a great song called "Home Grown Tomatoes")

2. Oatmeal

3. Milk

4. Nutella (we went with an image of the Turkish equivalent Cokokrem to be original)

5. ice cream

6. bananas (America's favorite Costa Rican import, after coffee)

7. Sunday Washington Post (Love 'Date Lab' and Keith Knight's Comic Strip "Knight Life")

8. shaving cream

9. apples

10. cat toys

..........There you go!

http://www.theknightshit.blogspot.com

http://www.ulker.com.tr

http://www.facebook.com/brucepiephoff

Billy Bragg on the Death of Margaret Thatcher

Yesterday on his Facebook page and his official web site the unapologetic left-wing folk/rock English singer Bill Bragg who was getting ready for a concert in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, issued a statement of the death of long-time conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, also known as 'The Iron Lady.'

Bragg was heavily critical of Thatcher and in 1985, he released a powerful ballad "Between the Wars" about what he perceived to be her neglect of the working class and a useful war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

Here is Bragg's statement:

"This is not a time for celebration. The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough form one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of descent affordable housing; of why domestic growth is driven by credit; not by real incomes; of why tax-payers are forced to top up wages; of why a spiteful government seeks to penalise the poor for an extra bedroom; of why Rupert Murdoch became so powerful; of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society.

Raising the glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate---organise."

Bragg comes to America with concert dates that include a concert at the Eagle Theatre in Iowa City, Iowa, on April 15th.

The American right-wing Republican political figure Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, who ran unsuccessfully for president last year was quite different in his remarks regarding Thatcher, who was called the 'Demir Leydi' in Turkey.

Gingrich tweeted yesterday that: "Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul and Ronald Reagan changed history. The world would be a different place without them."

SIDEBAR: On a personal date, I was very saddened to hear about the death of American filmmaker Les Blank who died at age 77 after a bout with cancer at his home near San Francisco. His landmark films included "Burden of Dreams" (1982) about eccentric German film director Werner Herzog and his grand efforts to put the epic film "Fitzcarraldo" with the late Klaus Kinski. I had the change to meet Blank in person and talk to him over the years. As one person said on his Facebook page today: "An artist may die, but his art never does."

http://www.billybragg.co.uk

http://www.twitter.com/newtgingrich

http://www.lesblank.com

Remembering Rogert Ebert- the Great American Movie Critic

With an image of the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah, we are honoring Roger Ebert. He was an inspiration to all of us 'movie people,' and his show "At the Movies" which he hosted with his fellow Chicago film critic the late Gene Siskel gave attention to many small films such as "The Brother from Another Planet," "Paris, Texas" and "Roger and Me."

He also championed films such as "Aguirre, Wrath of God," "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Monster" while remaining  equally outspoken about movies he despised, such as the infamous rape revenge movie "I Spit on Your Grave!" (1978; amazingly enough, it was remade just a few years ago).

I had the chance to meet Ebert at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville some 20 years ago, and I am very thankful I had a few minutes to tell him how much I admired him.

Here is one of his more famous quotes:

"No good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short."

Let the final credits roll for this remarkable man.

http://www.virginiafilmfestival.org

http://www.saltlakefilmsociety.org

Top 10 Things 2 Do List for the Next 2 Weeks (or so...........)

Here is a look at ten things that we must do or ought to do within the next two weeks; for those of you in Dubai, Tax Day here in America is April 15th (that will be on a similar list on my sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" http://wwwpoliticscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

This is not to be confused with my sister's blog, well actually she doesn't have one.

Here we go:

1) Wheel alignment (that is the reason for the Model T Ford, though my car is considerably newer than that)

2) Watch the Chelsea-Rubin Kazan soccer game on tape (Gokdeniz Kazadeniz, is a Turkish player who plays for the Russian team Rubin Kazan based in the Tartar region of Russia)

3) Make hotel reservations

4) Go to North Carolina

5) Go to the state DMV

6) Read "Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss (pictured bottom, well if it wasn't obvious)

7) Go through the comic books

8) Pay the light bill

9) Buy groceries

10) Take a Body Flow or yoga class at the gym

Tilly Gokbudak is NOT Moving to Bulgaria (It was an April Fool's Prank)

For those of you in El Salvador, Dubai and Sri Lanka who read this blog on a daily basis, it is time to fully fess up. Though the American College of Sofia in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia is a real place, I have not accepted a job as an English teacher there. In fact, I have not been to Bulgaria since our family traveled through there en route from Belgrade, Serbia (it was the capital of Yugoslavia then) to Istanbul, Turkey, when I was a child in the 1970s.


We also need to add a correction to yesterday's piece as the national airlines of Bulgaria is actually called Balkan Bulgarian Airlines; perhaps they can find you a flight from JFK or Dulles to Sofia or Varna (another Bulgarian city).

Approximately 11-14 people fell for my prank yesterday, but it is nothing compared to what my good friend and fellow blogger Chris Knight of Reidsville, NC, did for April Fool's Day of 2009.

For that prank, Knight convinced people all over the globe that a radical minister named the Rev. Johnny Robertson from the Church of Christ in Martinsville, Va., created an unholy scene in Vatican City, of all places!

Here is a sample of that entry (we will post a link bellow):

"Johnny Robertson has been arrested in Vatican City following what is being called a 'coordinated and persistent' attempt to threaten Pope Benedict XVI within the very Papal Apartments of the Apostolic Palace."

Knight said in a April 9, 2009, entry that he received messages from both the State Department and Vatican City expressing concern about the 'incident.'

http://theknightshift.blogspot.com/2009/04/breaking-hard-johnny-robertson-arrested.html

http://www.theknightshift.blogspot.com


http://www.air.bg/en (Balkan Bulgarian Airlines)

http://www.acs.bg (American College of Sofia)

http://www.bulgaria_embassy.org (Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, DC)

http://www.allaboutclowns.com

Tilly Gokbudak is Moving to Bulgaria in August

All of us here at "The Daily Vampire" are pleased to announce that our managing editor Tilly Gokbudak, who happens to be me, is moving to Sofia, Bulgaria, to teach at the American College of Sofia.

He was accepted there for a full-time position teaching English, and Gokbudak will also travel to his late father Mehmet Gokbudak's native Turkey to assist elementary school teachers teach English in the provinces of Edirne, Tekirdag and Kiriklareli.

Turkey and Bulgaria share a common border, and there many ethnic Turks in Bulgaria.

But, we are happy to announce that this blog will not discontinue in any way.