20-word Fiction: The Farmer's Market

We went to the farmer's market; my grandmother died of a heart attack. we forgot to get the beets. THE END.

(This is a work of fiction; we hear beets are popular in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland.....)

(10 for 10; 2nd Entry): Our Most Popular Blog Entries: Silly Dog Photo to Fill Space

Greetings to our blog readers in Guatemala, Slovakia, and Saudi Arabia.........whoops, sorry about the hot dog image!

In our ten years of blogging, we have often been surprised and some times stunned by which entries prove to be more popular than others. When I posted an entry about hot dogs, as in two dogs dressed like hot dogs (center image), on August 18, 2009, from a small town library in North Carolina, I never could have imagined that it would yield more hits than any entry we posted before or since.

Because our blog is, for some reason, popular in Russia and Ukraine, I suppose it's not shocking that our blog entry with a quote from the legendary gymnast Svetlana Boginskaya, (top image) who competed for the Soviet Union on her native Belarus, became popular, but it's still surprising that it got over 5,000 hits.

Another popular entry with a quote from a celebrity was one from Feb. 9, 2009, featuring reality tv show Heidi Montag ("The Hills") who endorsed John McCain for president, and that apparently wasn't enough for the Republican Arizona senator to get enough votes to win over Barack Obama.

Our second most popular entry featured Mr. Potato Head (pict. bottom), which still seems popular almost five years after its posting as it inches towards the 20,000-hit mark.

Here are our most six most popular blog entries, with links to those entries (alas some photos from the entries have been removed from the net):

1. Silly Photo to Fill Space-Hot Dogs. Aug. 18,2009. 21,464 hits.

2. Bonus Silly Photo to Fill Space-Mr. Potato Head. Dec. 10, 2010. 19,985 hits
http://nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com/2010/12/bonus-silly-photo-to-fill-space-mr.html

3. PSA-Don't Drink and Drive. May 27, 2010. 13,240 hits.

4. Quote of the Day: Heidi Montag. Feb. 9, 2009. 7,928 hits.

5. Quote of the Day: Svetlana Boginskaya. April 19, 2012. 5,250 hits
http://nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com/2012/04/quote-of-dayweek-svetlana-boginskaya.html

6. Political Confusion Test (21 of 21)_ The Oak Ridge Boys vs. The Village People. Aug. 14, 2009. 5,142 hits

http://nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com/2009/08/political-confusion-test-21-of-21.html

10 for 10: The Nine Countries Outside America Where Our Blog Is Most Popular

Our original blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time," which is still up and existent http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com 

....will be turning ten years old on Sept. 21t. So to honor the occasion, we are posting 10 entries on both blogs commemorating the anniversary.

We start here with a round-up of the nine countries outside the United States where "The Daily Vampire" has had the highest number of hits from. We do want to take a moment to recognize people from smaller nations, such as El Salvador, Gabon, and Laos, where we have seen hits from over the years. But, as one would expect larger countries are in the top nine. We have been stunned by how popular both blogs are in Russia and Ukraine, and we are grateful that Turkey, the country of my late father, is in the top nine for this blog.

The images we have chosen to represent three of the countries on the list are of Misha the Bear (or Mishka) who was the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, Karagoz and Hacivat, two beloved Turkish shadow puppets which have been in existence since Ottoman times, and a still from Federico Fellini's 1969 film "Satyrican" for Italy (alas, the Italian director's name is one we have frequently spelled incorrectly!)

While we are at it, let's take a moment to salute Italian female tennis player Flavia Pennetta for winning today's U.S. Open finale.

Here are the countries and the number of hits from each one:

1. Russia 29,585

2. United Kingdom 27,223

3. Canada 17, 098

4. Germany 15,121

5. France 7,495

6. Australia 7,256

7. *Turkey 2,586

8. Ukraine 2,493

9. Italy 2,371

Celebrating International Literacy Day with Stephen King

Greetings to our blog readers in Italy, Ukraine, and Sweden.

We are thrilled to see that someone from the coastal African nation of Gabon has checked out our blog!

Today is International Literacy Day, so we thought we'd post a random list of ten novels we need to read again as we listen to Depeche Mode:

1) Misery. Stephen King. 1987 (pict. top)

2) Choke. Chuck Palahniuk. 2001 (pict. center)

3) Bright Lights, Big City. Jay McInerney (pict. bottom)

4) The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1925.

5) The Chosen. Chaim Potok. 1967.

6) The Hours. Michael Cunnigham. 1998.

7) The Breakfast of Champions. Kurt Vonnegut. 1973.

8) Netherland. Joseph O'Neill. 2008. (The author is half-Irish, and half-Turkish)

9) Deliverance. James Dickey. 1970. 

10) Chilly Scenes of Winter. Anne Beattie. 1976.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com

http://www.internationalliteracyday.com

http://www.jaymcinerney.com

http://www.hplct.org (Hartford Public Library; McInerney was born in the Connecticut capital)/

Our Top 10 Favorite NPR Series: Catch The Moth

Greetings to our blog readers in Germany, Greece and Ukraine........hopefully, those of you in Greece are recouping from the economic fiasco as well as one can.

Here are our ten favorite National Public Radio (NPR) shows, some of which we tune in on out of town public radio stations since they don't air here in Virginia.

The images are in reference 1) a moth is for The Moth Radio Hour, Rachel Dratch of "Saturday Night" fame is on this week's show; 2) the '80s Journey record is for "Sound Opinions,"  a show in which Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis decide which new records are worth listening to (they both happen to loath Journey; we don't); 3) Serbian food, which we are not using for "The Splendid Table," but rather "The Dinner Party Download," which ranks fourth in our top ten.

Here is the list:

1. The Moth Radio Hour

2. Sound Opinions

3. This American Life

4. The Dinner Party Download

5. Radiolab

6. Snap Judgment

7. Studio 360

8. The TED Radio Hour

9. On the Media

10. Only A Game

http://onlyagame.wbur.org/

http://themoth.org/radio

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

http://www.soundopinions.org/

East Coast NPR stations:

http://www.wnyc.org (New York)

http://www.whyy.org (Philadeplphia)

http://www.wamu.org (Washington, DC)

http://www.ideastations.org  (Richmond, Va.)

http://www.wfae.org (Charlotte, NC)

 http://www.wfpl.org (Louisville, Ky.)

Top Ten Things We Should Blog About More in 2015 (our tenth anniversary year!)........: Soccer and Politics

Greetings to our blog readers in the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Vietnam, three places where we are surprisingly more popular than we could have ever expected! Perhaps, you guys will catch up with Slovenia (for my fellow Americans who flunked geography that's a former Yugoslav republic, yeah, that probably doesn't assist you any.......)

For the 109th time this year, we once again make fun of Cong. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va; pict. top) who is apparently fighting for companies like Amazon who don't have to pay taxes. Assuredly, this means he will have to take Jeff Bezos out for pizza the next time he's in Washington, D.C., where one may also run into Vice President Joe Biden (pictured bottom, hopefully, those of you going to Princeton University know he's the second man in charge at The White House.).

The man in the middle is Chelsea star Didier Drogba, a star player from the Ivory Coast, who also had a stint with the Istanbul soccer powerhouse Galatasaray, our favorite team. And, since the men in red and yellow tied Ankara GB 1-1 on Thursday, we presume, he is greatly missed.

Here are the top ten things we SHOULD blog more about in 2015, a year in which we will mark our tenth year of blogging!:

1. European soccer

2. Fox News nonsense

3. Israel/Palestinian nonsense

4. Cong. Bob Goodlatte

5. The Rev. Johnny Robertson of Martinsville, Va. (our favorite crazy Baptist minister)

6. Joe Biden

7. Taylor Swift

8. "Family Circus"

9. Global Warming

10. The death penalty/doing my laundry (tie)

Our Top Sunday Washington Post Comics of the Week for Dec. 7th

Greetings to our blog readers in Lithuania, Ukraine and Georgia!

There are many comic strips which don't get into even the largest American newspapers, such as "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee," Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog," "The Flying McCoys," "The Fusco Brothers" and "Strange Brew," but here is a sample of comic strips which are in the "Washington Post."

The large metropolitan newspaper serving the nation's capital as well as much of Virginia and Maryland has an eclectic mix of legacy comic strips like "Beetle Bailey" and "Hagar the Horrible" as well as nationally established comic strips such as "Zits" and "Pearls Before Swine" as well as some trendy comic strips with cult followings like "Prickly City" and "Reply All."

"WUMO," a single panel import from Denmark, is perhaps our most favorite comic strip in the Sunday edition, but this Sunday's comic strip featuring a failed effort by a teenager to leap from the moon to earth didn't work for us, but some of our usual favorites, like "Lio," "Brewster's Rockit" and "Sherman's Lagoon" once again made the proverbial cut.

"Lio" focused on the title character having a false sense of confidence with his new paint by the numbers (hence the reason why we have the late Bob Ross for our top image), "Doonesbury," which came in second, focused on panels dedicated to each of the strip's anchor characters, and "Brewster's Rockit" featured a major brewhaha over a workplace coffee maker aboard a spaceship (Captain Kirk would be proud).

"Dustin," which has nothing do with Dustin Hoffman (bottom image), examined a father and son debating if an older man and a younger woman were romantically involved like the late Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were back in the day or if they were father and daughter.

Meanwhile, "Sherman's Lagoon" also focused on dating, but for this comic strip, Jim Toomey had Sherman the Shark and Mrs. Shark going out on a date as a married couple who know each other just a bit too well.

Here is our top ten:

1) Lio

2) Doonesbury

3) Brewster Rockit

4) Dustin

5) Pearls Before Swine

6) Knight Life

7) Sherman's Lagoon

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Foxtrot

10) Judge Parker

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Survey of the Best Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post (Oct. 19th edition)

Greetings to those of you reading this blog in Germany, Ukraine and Cyprus, and special greetings to those of you have just joined us after watching the Florida gubernatorial race debate between incumbent Rick Scott (R) and his challenger Charlie Crist (D) or for those of you who are already bored with the World Series, which is starting tonight.

This week, we really liked the "Pearls Before Swine" take on the old Abbott and Costello skit "Who's on First," but it was a week full of great comic strips in the Sunday Washington Post. The Danish import WuMo had Yoda, Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh meeting in the children's section of a public library, perhaps they were in Hartford, Conn. (we have a gag about how we are posting from the Hartford Public Library even though we've never been in that building). "WuMo" got second place in our survey.

The bronze medal went to Turkish weightlifter Naim Suleymanoglu, no, we just said that to keep you from daydreaming; it actually went to "Rhymes with Orange" which features selfies from the whole family. We're sure our friends at the Urban Dictionary who have coined terms like 'shoefie' and 'brofie' got a hoot out of the Hilary B. Price strip (http://www.urbandictionary.com) The selfie gag is the reason why Kim Kardashian is in our top image slot.

We also enjoyed the educational comic strip "Mark Trail" which focused on various spiders like tarantulas (pictured center) and scorpions; the strip revealed that some spiders actually dine on fish?! Perhaps, they would like Red Lobster.

The cutting edge comic strip "Candorville" had a take on man seeing a shrink, and for that we are featuring an image of Lucy from "Peanuts," a nice comic strip that will probably be in newspapers until the year 2073, when Lucy will be 116 years old.

Here is our top ten:

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. WuMo

3. Rhymes with Orange

4. Speed Bump

5. Sherman's Lagoon

6, Dustin

7. Lio

8. Big Nate

9. Mark Trail

10. Candorville

http://www.hplct.org/ (The actual web site of the Hartford Public Library)

http://www.slcpl.lib.ut.us/ (The actual web site of the Salt Lake City Library in Utah; they have 12,711 followers on Twitter)

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://marktrail.com/

http://rhymeswithorange.com/

http://www.candorville.com

Quotes from Off the Beat Path (6 of 6): Alice Cooper

Greetings to our blog-readers in Iceland, The Netherlands, Austria, Ukraine, Israel and Turkey.

We hate snakes (well the poisonous ones and pythons), but that's the case with the American '70s glam rock/heavy metal star Alice Cooper, who will be playing at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC, on Oct. 22.

Here is his quote from the singer best known for "School's Out" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy":

"The most joyous times of the year are Christmas mornings and the end of school."


http://www.alicecooper.com

http://www.greesnborocoliseum.com

The Olympic Lists (8 of 10) Balkan and Black Sea Regions Combined

There are six countries in the Black Sea: Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia. As all of you know, the Olympic games are being held in Sochi, Russia, which is right across the sea from Trabzon, Turkey, one of the largest cities on the Black Sea.

Balkan nations consist of the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey among other.

We are combining the two regions for this list:

1) Alisa Agafonova. 23. Turkey. Ice Dancing. She is pictured here with partner Alper Ucar. Agafonova is a Ukrainian who gained Turkish citizenship to compete with Ucar.

2) Alexandr Smyshylyaev. 25. Russia. Men's Free-Style Skiing.

3) Alxandra Jekova. 26. Bulgaria. Women's Snowboarding.

4) Zoltan Kelemen. 27. Romania. Men's Figure Skating.

5) Panagiosta Tsakiri. 23. Greece. Women's Cross-country skiing. She was the flag bearer for Greece.

6) Dmytro Pidruchnyi. 22. Ukraine. Men's Biathlon.

7) Tina Maze. 30. Slovenia. Women's Alpine. She has won two gold medals.

8) Iason Abrahamshvili. 25. Georgia. Men's Alpine.

9) Andrea Komsic. 17. Croatia. Women's Alpine Skiing.

10) Vuk Radenovic. 30. Serbia. Men's Bobsledding.

http://www.bulgariaski.com/

http://www.goturkey.com/

http://www.visitgreece.gr/

http://www.visitrussia.com/

Soccer Week (8 of 8): Suppose They Gave a Soccer Game in Cyprus, and No One Cared (plus 11 European teams you've never heard of)

Hmm....we were going to post a photo of Trabzonspor's Turkish soccer player Yusuf Erdogan, but what we got were photos of Turkish Prime Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is about as popular amongst Turks abroad as Porky Pig cartoons are in Dubai (forgive the political humor).

At any rate, this image is of Marco Streller, the Swiss international and captain of the Swiss team Basel, which is ranked 51st in UEFA club standings. He kicked the winning goal for Basel in the Champions League. Basel went into London on Tuesday and shocked the global soccer community with a 2-1 win over Chelsea.

Our lead though is in reference to today's soccer game in Limassol, Cyprus, between traditional Turkish soccer power Trabzonspor and Appolon Limassol, the team that surprised Europe last year by reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League.

Even though Cyprus is just across the sea from Turkey, Trabzonspor traveled quite a ways for the game as Trabzon is located in northwestern Turkey.

For those who feel asleep in your history class at Cornell University (next time we'll pick on Princeton), Turkey and Greece had a short, but ugly war over Cyprus in 1974. Even though I was four years old at the time, I remember the Cyprus War quite well, or at least as well as the Vietnam War, for my late father Mehmet Gokbudak hailed from Turkey.

Thankfully, no one on either side of my family died in Famagusta or Hanoi.

Before we get to the ten European soccer teams you've never heard of, let's look at some scores that will help you the blog-reader get through this entry:

UEFA Champions League:

Sociedad (Spain) 0 Shkhar Donesk (Ukraine) 2

Chelsea 1 Basel 2

Benfica (Portugal) 2 Anderlecht (Belgium) 0

UEFA Europa League:

Apollon 1 Trabzonspor 2

Dynamo Zagreb (Croatia) 1 Odessa (Ukraine) 2

PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) 0 Ludogorets (Bulgaria) 2

Standard Liege (Belgium) 1 Esberg (Denmark)  2

Freiburg (Germany) 2 Liberec (Czech) 2...........tie game

Rubin Kazan (Russia) 5 Maribor (Slovenia) 2

Now here on the 11 teams you've never heard of:

1. Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine): This was considered the second biggest upset in the Champions League. Brazilian international Alex Teixeira scored both goals for the Ukrainian club in their 2-0 win in Spain).

2. Basel (Switzerland)

3. Benfica (Portugal): They are seemingly a team which always sneaks up on other teams in European play.

4. Anderlecht (Belgium)

5. Apollon Limassol (Cyprus): "The Daily Hurriyet," an English-langauge newspaper in Turkey said Trabzonspor won in 'Greek Cyprus,' but we don't like to get into politics here. Well, at least, not when we are writing about soccer. Gaston Sangoy (Argentina) scored for the Cypriot team in the team's close loss to Trabzonspor.

6. Trabzonspor (Turkey): This squad is one of only two teams outside of Istanbul that has won a Turkish domestics championship; Bursasapr from Bursa is the other team.

7.Dyanmo Zagreb (Croatia)

8. Ludogorets (Bulgaria): Amazingly enough Virgil Misidja a Dutch international player for this Bulgarian team kicked in the second goal in his native country today to help Ludo upset PSV Eindhoven 2-0.

9. Esberg (Denmark): Not to be confused with Swedish team Elfsborg, which is also in the Europa League, this Danish squad celebrated a road win in Belgium thanks to the game-winning goal from Musaga Bakenga, a Norwegian player of Congolese heritage.

10. Rubin Kazan: This team which plays in the Tartar region  of Russia boasts Gokdeniz Karadeniz, one of Turkey's better exports. Today, he scored a goal today in their win over Maribor of Slovenia.

11. Maribor (Slovenia): Today's lop-sided loss to Rubin Kazan was apparently closer than the score sheet indicates. Maribor is a competitive team from the former Yugoslavia and today the team saw a goal from Slovenian national Martin Milec.



http://www.turkeyfootball.blogspot.com

http://www.turkish-football.com

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

http://www.trabzonspor.org.tr (in Turkish)

http://www.russianfootballnews.com

http://www.apollo.com.cy

http://www.uefa.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Lech Walesa

Today, we begin our month-long series of quotes from famous people associated with eight of the 16 countries participating in the Euro 2012 soccer championships, which most people here in the United States will probably follow as closely as water polo, with the exception of rabid D.C. United fans of course!

We start with a quip from Lech Walesa, 69, the Nobel Prize winner and former prime minister of Poland, one of two countries along with Ukraine that is hosting the cup.

Walesa was born in 1943 in the north central Polish village of Popowo. He came to prominence by leading the anti-communist solidarity movement in the 1980s, which lead to him winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Walesa then became the first prime minister in post-Iron Curtain in Poland in December of 1990; he held the post for five years.

On a personal note, we had also hoped that Turkey (my late father's country) had qualified as well as Slovenia, since we really wanted to quote philosopher Slavoj Zizek again (he is always amusing).

But, Walesa is a vintage persona in himself and here is his quote:

"He who puts out his hand to stop history will have his fingers crushed."


http://www.dcunited.com

http://poland.travel/en-us

http://www.zizekstudies.org

Quote of the Day/Week- Chris Rock

Today's quote of the day/week comes from Chris Rock, 47, who was one of the subjects of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' excellent photography "The Black List" at the National Portraits Gallery, that ran until April 22nd.

Rock is a comedian/actor/film producer who grew up in New York and became a 'not ready for prime time' player on "Saturday Night Live." Rock is one of the few "SNL" alumni who became famous in spite of being on the show rather than being on it because his presence on the show was limited to stint appearances and bit parts.

But, Rock made a stellar comeback on the standup comedy circuit, and by 1998, he was a full-fledged movie star. Rock who has appeared in such films as "New Jack City," "Dogma" and "Bee Movie" also played a fictional president in the film "Head of State," which makes this quote, from when George W. Bush was president, quite ironic, as well as the fact that Barack Obama is now the leader of the free world:

"A white boy that makes Cs in college can make it to the White House."

SIDEBAR: Well, we apparently jinxed tennis star Serena Williams as she was upset in her French Open opener to Virginate Razzano, 29, a virtually unknown French tennis player. We also goofed when we said that Williams had advanced to the quarterfinals of the French Open, as it was the tourney was not even underway! But, thankfully, no pays attention to blogs. Having said, thanks to those of you in Indonesia, Taiwan and Ukraine who stopped by here today!

http://www.chrisrock.com

http://www.washington.org

http://blacklistphoto.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Stefania Fernandez

And, we fully expect that this image of Stefania Fernandez, Miss Universe 2009, will boost out hits total for the day and week. Fernandez, 21, is one of many women from Venezeula who have won the coveted Miss Universe pageant, which we believe is one of Donald Trump's media entities.

Sadly, on Dec. 17, another former Miss Universe/Venezuela 2001 Eva Ekvall, died of breast cancer at age 28 in Houston.

Fernandez became the first woman crowned Miss Universe by a title-holder from her country as she recieved the crown from Dayana Mendoza, Miss Universe/Venezuela 2008.

Though she is perhaps not as politically active as many American celebrities like pop-star "American Idol" winner Kelly Clarkson who endorsed the libertarian-leaning Republican candidate Ron Paul today, it is widely believed that Fernandez opposes the policies of eccentric, far-left president Hugo Chavez.

Fernandes is actually of Ukrainian heritage.

Here is her quote:

"We've already reached the same level as men."