Author Archives: edrevets

Apr 18 2012
27 Comments
Fiction, Humorous

An Example of a Cover Letter with Ideological Overtones

The most noble of scavenging birds of prey. A worthy master.

To Whom it May Concern:

I was rooting around in a dumpster when I found a good piece of chewed gum in a receipt from your store, American Eagle. I am passionate about scavenging birds of prey, so needless to say I was intrigued by the company name. The next day, I concealed myself in a bush for several hours. When someone passed by, I frightened them by leaping mightily and yelling “booga booga booga.” I then demanded to know what American Eagle is. An oily teenage boy told me it is an apparel store that can be found at my local mall, Walnut Springs.

For the next thirty minutes, I loitered suspiciously around the Walmart parking until I found a sneaker clad man who wasn’t paying attention while putting his groceries in his trunk. While he was distracted with unloading his Go-Gurt and Cheetos, I slithered snake-like into his backseat. When the sedan began moving and reached the main road, I bolted upright, hissed, and commanded him to take me to Walnut Springs Shopping Center. The man complied.

Once there, I slithered out of the sedan—it was green—and made towards the entrance of the great temple of consumption. Heat rose off the asphalt and sweat accumulated the corners of my body. I almost didn’t make it, but finally I reached the gates of Babylon itself and entered with the rest of the sausage people. Once inside, I found a crude map-like representation of the holy shrine, and deduced that American Eagle was even closer than I imagined. It was right behind me.

Good God what horror. You declare yourself worthy to name yourself after the greatest and most noble scavenger of all time, and yet what kind of frivolous merchandise do you peddle? Jeggings? Skinny Jeans?  Shirts emblazoned with nothing more than pathetic incarnations of the American Eagle logo? The walls covered with scantily clad adolescents cavorting at various music festivals, suggestive twinkles in their eyes…the whole thing was a disgrace. Only I know what secret these young gods held: it was that they had taken part in the communal pissing-on of everything that is good and noble.

For that reason, I’m applying to work at American Eagle in some sort of ideological reconstructive capacity, with the title of Master Re-ideologist. I will have the creative power to redesign any aspect of American Eagle that I see fit and sack anyone who does not meet my standards. Your company, dear sir or madame, is quite frankly an abomination. You are lucky that I’ve come along to save you from the destruction and/or complete loss of your own souls.

We’ll be in touch.

Best.

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Apr 17 2012
31 Comments
Three minute read, Travelling

The Highlights of Istanbul, Now With Clever Wordplay

So pretty it’s disgusting. At Gulhane Park. 

You can do fun things to the word Istanbul, like turn it into Istanbrew, Gristanbul, Istangourd, Grumpstanbul, etc. This is the part of the story where I modify the word Istanbul and describe different aspects of my trip.

Istanbloom: I think I finally realized it was spring when I saw all those dang flowers peeping everywhere. I attempted to deal with the tulip madness by taking pictures. In fact, I took many boring flower pictures, all of which my family will be forced to view.

Sweetstanbul: Oh sweet tooth, how we tickled and fed and indulged you in this fair city. We sunk our fangs into the chewy but oh so delicious Turkish delight with wild flavors such as kiwi and pomegranate, accented with the most pistachio-y pistachios I had ever tasted. Do I even need to describe the baklava, whose layers were drenched in sin and delicious in every incarnation? Even the angels would have wanted and been denied a bite of my baklava.

Nutstanbul: The Turks like their nuts. Daily I thanked Jesus and the lucky stars that I am nut allergy free and was able to stuff my gob with every nutty creation imaginable.  If they could, I think the Turks would pave the streets with hazelnuts and pistachios and build their homes with walnuts.

Istanhill: Because it was hilly. Duh.

Istanbus: I was very impressed with Istanbul’s public transportation, which included busses, ferries, metros, and funiculars, all of which could be paid for easily with the Istanbulkart. Because waxing poetic about public transportation can get boring if not weird, I will quickly move on to my next topic. Just know that the busses had screens in them telling the passengers both the current and the upcoming stops. Okay, moving on.

Bluestanbul: The Bosporus and the Golden Horn were so blue! Blue blue blue! While sailing to the Black sea on a Bosporus cruise, I couldn’t stop thinking how jewel-like the water seemed as the light refracted through the waves and pierced into the deep. We could see jellyfish. They are my friends.

Istanpuff: The Ottoman sultans loved their puffy clothing. Based on the sheer size of the clothing on display at Topkapi palace, it was clear that the sultans’ bodies, when cocooned in their palace garb, bore only a passing resemblance to a human figure. Everything from their ridiculously huge turbans to their pointed shoes was an exercise in puffiness.

The Fortress of Rumeli is more like a big park. Great for kids and conquering Istanbul.

Histanbul: The place was disgustingly full of history. I couldn’t spit without desecrating a famous landmark that was named something ridiculous and looked like it came from a fantasy novel. Around every corner there was a mosque, church, church-mosque, or doner stand that seemed beautiful and worth visiting.

Blisstanbul: Because Istanbul restored my faith in cities. It had been so long since I’d enjoyed spending time outside in a metropolis and felt comfortable in my foreign woman skin. When I think of Istanbul I think of colors and peace and happy and days spent watching the waters and the people flow by. And the trees were good too.

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Apr 16 2012
24 Comments
Egypt, Travelling

Traveling: Useful for Watching the Humans

Oh you know, I was just floating down the Nile on a ship.

On April 16th, 2012, at approximately 12:03 pm, I returned at last from a journey that spanned a total of 1190 miles (1927 kilometers), and approximately 4 millennia, stretching from Istanbul in the north to Aswan, Egypt in the south, from the time of the mysterious Pharaohs to the more familiar civilizations of modern Turkey and Egypt.

Though I remain pale as an alabaster rose I do, however, sport the beginnings of a shapely frecklestash.

I saw the sultans’ puffy pants and the bare breasts of ancient Egyptians; the pith helmets of eager yet uninformed tourists, and the North Face jackets of unhappy American families. I sampled the modern cruise cuisine of Egypt, tasted the street fare of Istanbul, dined from the secret recipes of palace chefs, and ate starches whenever possible.

My sperries received a beating from all of the walking and then another lashing from me for being a mediocre shoe. My clothes are stinky and there is multinational grit in my purse.

So what did I do after all, in the grand scheme of time and space? What did it mean to travel to distant lands, even farther from my already distant home and sleep in beds that were not my own in places where I didn’t know who washed the sheets?

What does it mean to sit in a shady park full of blooming tulips and look out over the Bosporus, commenting on the rooftops of strangers in a country where I could not pronounce anything correctly?

For me, as an alien, these journeys give me a chance to deepen my understanding of human culture, helping me to better imitate it in my own life. Witnessing other humans acting in a way similar to humans in my region increases my functional knowledge of their kind. As I view the holy places of civilizations long past and watch others imagine the hope and desperation of those who surrounded the temple walls, I learn the act of historical empathy from the humans themselves, one of the most difficult emotions to mimic.

I am more than a little humbled by the grace of the mother queen, who granted me the privilege of leaving my base and seeing a timeline of human history that spans four thousand years. It is also fascinating to think that I am in some ways a continuation of that same history, because we plan to wipe out the entire human race and bring all of it to an end.

More on the trip and its starches to come soon.

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Apr 07 2012
36 Comments
Food, Travelling, Two minute read

Oh My God It’s Breakfast in Istanbul

I almost left my camera next to the plate on the right.

This is Istanbul, the city of beautiful street cats, the city coveted by empires over the centuries, the city of the Dardanelles, of eggplant, of sultans, of pretty silk scarves, of hills and bridges. This is the city of every kind of public transportation: ferries, trams, metro, trollies, busses, and funiculars. This is the city of roasted street chestnuts and bad haircuts.

I arrived yesterday at 2 am after our flight was delayed from Cairo. At one point, a voice had came over the loudspeakers and said, “The new time for the delayed flight to Istanbul will be announced….later.” It was never announced.

Nevertheless, we made it to our fun-sized hostel with fun-sized rooms and bathrooms, where your bum touches the door as you pull up your pants. And today, we ate breakfast. Oh the glory.

I believe in love, laughter, and breakfast. Sweet Lord in heaven is there anything better than getting up early in the morning bright, when mouth-breathing tourists like ourselves haven’t begun mobbing around the city? Is there anything fairer than  winding down and around the hilly alleys of Istanbul lined with Smartie colored houses, and entering an establishment with yellow walls and cozy tables ? Is there anything better than being hungry for breakfast, the meal that will determine the rest of your life?

And what a treat this was, selected with the aid of the gentlemanly restaurant manager himself. I had never seen so many tiny dishes at a breakfast before. We ate cheeses, jam, butter, nutella, peanut butter, honey and cream, omelette, olives, hard boiled eggs, yoghurt and cucumber, and pure joy.

Anything was possible with this breakfast. Butter and jam, cheese and jam, nutella and jam, peanut butter and jam. Cheese. Egg and cheese. Egg and cheese and salt. Egg and cheese and salt and tomato. Egg, cheese, salt, tomato, and nutella.  And so on. I could fulfill any dream I had, go past any horizon I saw. With regard to bread toppings, the sky was the limit, and I was in outer space, blowing moon bubbles with aliens.

After a while you stop trying to taste every possibility and instead just be with the breakfast and attempt to become one with the essence of the little dishes and the toppings. I failed, yet I shall try again. Mark my words, I shall try again.

And now, we’ll get a coffee and discuss what we want to eat for lunch. This is the nature of vacation.

For those who are curious, we ate at a place called Van Kahvaltia Evi in an area called Cihangir. See a review here (it’s the first place. And the website istanbuleats.com is awesome).

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Apr 05 2012
35 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read

The Greatest War on Earth

the loathsome slivers in all their glory

The war between us and our nails began long ago, even before our ancestors dragged their scaly bodies onto the face of the earth. They are our greatest foe, even when compared with Iran and McDonald’s, trespassing on the only thing we can really claim for our own, our bodies. We beat them back endlessly with crude weapons and still they thrust forth with new strength, feeding off our very meals.

Despicable, loathsome, and repulsive, they are a repository of filth of every kind and deep within them breeds the very scum of the earth. The sight of them can make grown men shriek and children weep. In the right circumstances, they induce nausea, fatigue, and premature labor.

And yet we tolerate them, watching as they creepily grow longer and longer until we can take it no more and destroy them, cutting them from our flesh after we have softened them with a warm shower. But they always return.

The pain of fingernails’ existence drives some to madness, weakening their mind until they bite and nip at their fingers until their very bodies bleed and they taste sweet iron on their tongues. Others try to disguise the nails with lacquered paints and frilly designs, even covering up the painful reality with plastic imitations–anything to hide their true nature.

Industries have grown up around them: their suppression and removal. They are a liability to their keeper, easily becoming a source of indescribable pain. The sounds they make– the clicking and the clacking, the gnawing and munching of their incapacitated victims– fill the air with the crazed din of an insane asylum.

For a time they are windows into the body itself, but grow disgusting all too soon—tainted with the everyday wear of life, collecting beneath them the salt of the earth and the stew of the lunch and the peel of the orange. Our fingernails and toenails are our most dedicated and successful foes. My entire life I’ve been fighting them, cutting them back, even down to the quick, feeling the sharp sting of pain until I cry out and I feel I’ve defeated them at long last. This time they will not grow back.

But they do, and I find myself in the same shameful position only two weeks later, if that. I have even slammed my finger in a car door, unconscious attempting to rid myself of the foul parasites once and for all. After weeks of hiding my mangled finger in a brace, I took it off only to see the nail growing back, ever persistent, its shape leering at me in a grotesque grin. I got on my knees and prayed to all that is holy to take this burden away from me. I only heard faint laughter from the other room, my sister watching Arrested Development.

Will I never be free?

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