++Magazine

Man will become better when you show him what he’s like – Anton Chekov

From the first time they had sex, he knew he couldn’t handle the fact she would have sex with other men once they broke up – Andrew McInteyre

One wing man ain’t enough, you need two wings to fly baby! – Stephane Mbeki

To have rules is good, to break them even better – Zeynep Aydin

I’m not born to be cool, I’m born to be happy – Nebil Guven

Listen to your heart, while using your brain – Evren Dogru

I’m overhearing a stupid conversation between a guy in his fifties and a lady who must be about thirty-five. They make me so sad. And happy again. She wants to get married with the guy but is complaining he hasn’t called in two weeks. So now she’s looking at other candidates. She says: I want to get married so badly but I just can’t find the right person. I found a guy who’s still in college, but he just wants to fool around with me. I don’t care if he’s a student or a garbage man. I just want to settle and have kids. Look at me, I’m still good-looking, but I don’t want my best years to go wasted on a no-good guy like you.

He’s working in the creative sector. I can tell by his grey beard and his Converse shoes under his skinny jeans. Not an attractive man though. More like that sad person that missed out his youth and is trying to relive it through his son’s clothes.

She asks him how his work is going and he answers that he’s having a hard time to get by. She tells him she’s not going to give him money again. Their love should not have financial strings, she says.

They’re trying to get in to a fight. I can feel the tension. They want an outburst so they can release themselves from each other. He doesn’t really care for her but he knows this is the best he can get. So he gets angry with her because she’s flirting with other guys. The phone rings and he asks ‘is that one of your lovers?’ The pathetic teasing continues. Oh my god. The drama doesn’t stop.

They are grown up kids. And the world is filled with people like this. When you’re younger a lot of people tell you that you will change and grow up, but when you’re older that excuse is gone. You are what you are. And most of the older people I’ve met haven’t changed since their early twenties. So don’t believe it when they say you will grow up. Look at him, with his grey beard trying to look wise, but in reality it’s a disguise for his lack of life experience. And she’s showing off her saggy breasts and her wrinkled tattoo on her arm. They were never able to change their lives the way they wanted so they changed the way they look. And look at them now. I’m so glad I’m not like them…

Why yes to Danish cartoons, but no to Mein Kampf? Why yes to criticizing the war in Iraq, but no to criticizing the Armenian genocide? And why are Muslims bad, but Christians godly? Where do we draw the line between what’s good and what’s not? Isn’t Mein Kampf just like the Bible or the Quran? Very important books to their followers. Don’t they tell us a lot about our collective past? Both of them are propaganda for ideologies that have little proven facts in reality. Well, actually I only can say that about the Bible. I haven’t read Mein Kampf, because well… it’s banned in Holland!

In Western Europe Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other exiles are seen as freedom fighters. Why? What makes them different then the Dutch Geert Wilders. Aren’t they all people saying things that go against the system of the country they live in? Then why are they trying to shut up their own Rushdie in Holland. Because he has weird hair and he reminds some people of a scary clown? Or is everybody scared that he will cause major slides in the Dutch political arena. Maybe turning Holland in to a right wing society. And we’ve learned one thing about democracy after Hitler. When you have the feeling it doesn’t go your way, stop it. By any means necessary. But hey, when somebody in Africa thousands of miles away from us is going to be silenced by their government suddenly they are heroes in our eyes. “Oh, how courageous! They say stuff that could get them killed by crazy black baboons”. Isn’t that what the inhabitants of the ‘civilized’ Western world think? Of course I realize my comparisons are more like apples and tangerines, but still there is definitely a Western arrogance here. Still, you can’t deny the truth. Well if you’re Bush or Berlusconi you can, but YOU probably can’t.

Look how the Western media is showing the news around the world. Turkey, China and other countries are like savages when they close down YouTube. Because we, the Western-Europeans, think highly of openness and freedom of speech. But in France I can’t say that the Armenian genocide never took place. And wasn’t it in Austria where they detained historian David Irving for denying the holocaust? Yeah, but you can’t compare these examples to the blocking of YouTube in Turkey. Insulting Ataturk or the Turks is not considered as a bad thing worldwide. In those wars mentioned before millions of people have died. Well, what’s more important is that a lot of Jews and Armenians died. People from nations with a lot of money and good lobbies. Maybe not the states themselves, but the people that fled those countries turned pretty rich. And the Turks? Oh, those poor Turks. Still trying to get in to the European Union to be used by their buddies. Before entering, they must of course accept the Armenian Genocide. Because that definitely happened, right?

I think it’s more like ‘If something is that bad, you can’t question it’. So then, we can conclude this is very much relative. Something may be bad for you or for Jews for example, but not that bad for others. Is there a group of people that decide then what the truth is and what we can’t question anymore? No! So we should be really open-minded and be able to question everything. Isn’t that democracy and freedom of speech? That’s why I don’t agree with the Jewish lobby and I don’t agree with Turkey blocking YouTube. They are blocking my right to think. I think people should be free to express their opinions. It shouldn’t matter if I agree or not. Hope my next post will be about what Mein Kampf has to offer the world!

Cem tried to cry, but he just couldn’t. His friends were complaining that being unhappy is so much easier than being happy, but he got mad at them because he thought his own suffering, the inability to be unhappy, was worse than their problem. One of his friends even said ‘If I had the strength I would be happy all the time, but unfortunately I can’t bring it up. I’m not trying to indulge in my self-pity. I just don’t think I’m capable of producing the hormones to be happy more than I’m unhappy’. He could be right, but Cem didn’t care. He was wondering why the last time he cried was already two years ago. Of course he cried in between, but that one didn’t really count he thought, because it was a physical thing and not an emotional thing.

He was very sick a couple of months ago and was throwing up for several hours. Just when he had the feeling that all the toxins and bacteria’s were gone out of his body, he also got diarrhea and while sitting on the toilet shitting, he held a bucket in his hands filled with puke. The sight of this in the bathroom mirror, which was located oddly on the same height as the toilet, made him sad but the physical pressure in his whole body made tears come out of his eyes. And some vomit out of his nose. He even was scared that urine would come out of his ears. But that didn’t happen obviously.

Cem had to dig deeper in his memories to find the last real cry. As expected there was love involved in this episode. For a couple of weeks he was madly in love with a girl, let’s call her Serap for privacy reasons. But the last week Cem had started to get annoyed by practically every thing the girl would say or do. To make matters even worse Valentine’s Day was approaching. While Serap was thinking of what they would do, Cem was concocting a plan to brake up with her. She had been a nag for a long time now and he thought it would be too hypocritical of him to spend a day dedicated to lovers with a girl he had started to dislike. Maybe even hate. On the day before the fourteenth she called him and asked where they would go to dinner the next day. Cem didn’t want to break up over the phone, but as her high-pitched voice penetrated his ears, he suddenly felt the necessity to break up with her, right at that moment. So that’s what he did. Needless to say she got very sad and started to cry, but Cem comforted her and told her she would find somebody who would love her like she loves him, that there are better guys out there and that he isn’t worth her. They hung up and suddenly Cem felt freedom like he hadn’t felt in months. His nostrils widened and a rush of air reached his brains giving him the feeling of being alive. This rush made him so happy that a single tear, out of happiness, sneaked out of the corner of his eye.

While Cem dug up this ancient memory, his friends were still arguing about who was the unhappiest of the group. Seeing them sad and almost depressed, made him very jealous of their emotional capabilities. One of his friends even started to scream and shout that he was clearly the unhappiest, because his parents, his two little brothers and his dog had just died a week ago in a freak BBQ-camping accident. Some of them nodded agreeing. But another friend claimed to be entitled to the crown of the unhappy. A while ago he and his girlfriend made a trip to his dad’s village in Anatolia. But on their way there they got stopped by two guys with big ass mustaches and a seventies model Mercedes. They were forced to get out of the car and undress in the bushes near by. While one of them was raping his girlfriend the other guy wanted to get raped by him. After the mustaches finished they left them and their clothes in the bushes. Everybody was moved by this story, but since they already heard this a couple of times, only a few of the girls started to cry. Seeing this, Cem finally got so unhappy because of his inability to cry, that he started to cry. And not just an I’m-a-bit-sad-cry, but more like a champagne bottle waiting for years to be uncorked. He cried his eyes out. He cried a river. No, he cried an ocean. The weeping continued for an hour or so and leaving the friends perplexed. When at last Cem stopped crying they voted and his friends unanimously decided that the unhappiest person in this group was most definitely Cem.