Tunisia

Tunisia is a small country wedged between Labia and Algeria.

Hahaha.

Tunisia was home to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, humble moisture farmers and guardians of Luke Skywalker, before they were cut down by Stormtroopers. It is a hot, dry place, with two suns and lots of Womp Rats (It's not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters) and motherfuckin' Tuskan Sandraiders, you know the guys that hold their guns abover their heads, in the hills, and go "aaaar aaar aaaaar".

So many people prefer the old Star Wars to the new ones. I am one of those people. I also prefer the old Tunisia to the new one. The old one was the home of the city state called Carthage.

Carthage was were Hannibal was from. Hannibal crossed the alps with elephants just so he could fuck up the North Italians.

Now south and north Italians say that they are different. And they may be. But there is one defining character that both north and south Italians share - they are creepy, creepy bastards.

Take Oktoberfest for example. The middle weekend of this celebration of all things barbaric is populated by Italians. Italian males. Italian drunk males. Now these guys are bad drunks. And they are downright creepy. They grope anything with a pulse and perform a two handed chest to crotch CPR on anything without.

In 1910 there were more than 100,000 Italians living in Tunisia. Imagine the level of creeping they bestowed upon those lovely, naive, Berber and Arabic girls. My goodness.

In the 1940's there was a big battle fought there between the Axis (Germany and Italy) and the Allies (us). How did the Italians ever convince the Germans that they were on the same page? The Germans are cold and dispassionate and big and Bavarian (unless they're not from Bavaria) and the Italians are the opposite. I think that if the Germans won the war they would have quite quickly forgotten their creepy southern ally.

Modern day Tunisia is a testament to authoritarianism. Nobody speaks out, there are no coups or riots (that we hear of). Independent thought is stunted by media censorship equaled only by China. There is little dissent.

But, remember when Hannibal crossed the Alps? With Battle Elephants! I love the old Star Wars.

Turkey

The men in Turkey have hairy arms. The men and women in Greece have hairy arms, but I think that the women in Turkey don't and that the men take it out. I have never been to Greece or Turkey.

I have come across alot of Turkish men. Not in bath houses and not in a wrestling setting, but in Germany. And the UK. In Germany we know that Berlin is the world's second biggest Turkish city, second only to Istanbul. The Turks there make kebabs and they sell them for nothing, relatively.

In Berlin you can leave the house with five euros and have nine beers and a kebab whilst walking the streets and seeing the sights.

The Turks pride themselves on being a secular nation with a muslim majority. The Turks I have met have been hard working. They have worked hard to provide me with a kebab. They work hard to suppress any potential uprising amongst their Kurdish population.

They also worked hard when fighting for the Ottoman Empire during World War 1. It was the Turks who repelled the invading ANZAC force. Much blame has been put on the English command for that defeat, that national baptism of fire, but not very often does one hear praise forthcoming for the Turks who were defending their land.

When Australians started going en masse to Gallipoli for ANZAC day the Turks thought we were coming to apologise for the invasion. Honestly thought that.

I wonder if it ever crossed anyone present's mind?

Also, despite the obvious, the Turkey, gobble gobble, doesn't hail from Turkey, kebab. Massive case of mistaken identity, but basically Guinea Fowl, from Guinea, West Africa, were traded by Turks from Turkey to the Poms from England. The Poms, from England, fucked up again and named the birds after the traders. Calling Guinea Fowls, from Guinea, West Africa, Turkeys because they were traded by Turks from Turkey. Turkeys as we know them today were from the Americas, and when Europeans 'discovered' them the birds were mistaken.

So something birds were mistakenly called Turkeys, traded by Turks, which were in turn mistakenly named and were indeed Guinea Fowl from Guinea.

I had originally started this post with the proposal that Turkey be called 'Muslim Chicken'. By this I meant the bird and not the place, but that didn't make any sense.


Gobble gobble.

I am a fair believer that arm hair is a good indicator of the proliferation of other body hair. My famous Guatemalan friend, Pedro Pablo Mendez Gonzales, always championed the investigation of a girl's eyebrows and ankles, not for body hair but as an indication of where her coming years would aesthetically take her.

I have heard only good reports from people who have visited Turkey. I have never visited Turkey, albeit with my lips, teeth and digestive system.

And I must say that I recommend it to anyone.

Turkmenistan

In classic Gravy fashion I undertook a project, got a little bored and let the world get in the way of my completing it.

But I'm back.

In relation to a previous post I just spent sometime with a man from Zambia. He was 40 something, with eyes that almost popped out his sockets. He was a copper miner and he invented a very lucrative way to chemically strip the mineral from his country with sulfuric acid. Nevertheless the lucrative chemical mining process fucks the surrounding water table.

But I digress. He was vivacious, with an infectious high pitches laugh, a snore like a hippo being chainsawed and the propensity to snap photos at an alarming rate. He came to see the snow, and see the Swiss Alps he did, he came to duty free shop, and in the tax haven of Andorra he bought more lenses than a Chinese optometrist and he came to bang prostitutes.

He did.

He told me that Zambian emeralds are more expensive than diamonds, the really good ones. I questioned his visiting Switzerland and Andorra considering he was in the business of digging things up. He also told me that Zambia was a stable country, with some kind of democracy, a short and gore light civil war and a moderate rate of AIDS.

I told you so.

Turkmenistan, on the other hand, is fucked. Since the death of its "Glorious Leader for Life", Turkmenbashi, (Big-T) the country has made the slightest of improvements. Under Big-T the country, which is one of the worlds largest gas producers and near to China the worlds largest gas consumer, and its countrymen suffered abject poverty.

Big-T and his family lived large with quite an impressive investment portfolio, including properties in London's Mayfair.

He also renamed the months after himself and his family, renamed the sea after his long deceased mother, built the most elaborate of monuments to himself, including an ice palace in the desert and plastered the country with his own image.

The most interesting part of his reign, however, was the publication of his book. Called the Ruhnama it is not only mandatory reading for all Turkmenistan's citizens, it is still the sole reference for school and university exams, and even needs to be learnt for driving tests.

It basically outlines how amazing Big-T is (was) and how sweet the Turkmen are. And that Big-T better be obeyed or else. If you read it three times you gained automatic heaven entry.

And here are all these other Muslims blowing themselves up for the same privilege.

Big-T wisely spent his country's gas revenue on launching the book into space once. Just because he could and the book said that nobody else could say that he couldn't.

All of the girls in Turkmenistan have mono-brows.