Holy Shit!

Nothing to do with Turkey, really, but sometimes I do get a question from a curious taxi driver, or there's a conversation with other expats, about whether I will vote in the upcoming election.

Truth be told, I believe that electoral and other representative political systems are anti-democratic, and for the sake of freedom, should be fought wherever they are found.

Ahhh, but there is such power in that which I have been programmed to believe is important...

So, I tended to think I would vote. I missed the last election, on account of traveling, and I logged a note somewhere in my brain that I should make up for that lapse in my civic duty by voting in the next one.

Course, then I read stuff like this:

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

That covers every election I have been legally eligible to vote in. EVERY. FUCKING. ONE.

The article is here, and I found out about it here...

If someone told me that, in order to select a new President, I should transform a glass of water into ice, with my mind, I probably wouldn't give them the time of day (least, not more than 10 minutes). Here I am, thousands of miles away, and I'm being asked to play craps (or worse, the lottery) with my vote.

I cast it, and maybe they'll count it.

So, the answer to the question is a definitive "no".

Thanks, Elwood.

This evening, as the sun was setting over the western Taurus Mountains, I took a sailboat out on the Mediterranean Sea. It was just a little Lazer, a learner's boat, but it was damn fun!

I haven't been sailing in about four years, when my sister and I took out my uncle's MC-Scow, and proceeded to capsize it multiple time on a blustery day at Cross Lake, in Shreveport, LA. The scow is a squirrely boat, unlike other sailing vessels. Designed with a flat bottom, the pilot is supposed to keep the thing on one keel or the other, for maximum effect.

Anyhow, that was a learning day.

I really learned to sail in a Sunfish on Lake Mauvaisterre, back in Jacksonville, and did a good deal more of it in Copper Harbor, MI, where Elwood and I lived and worked during the summer of 2000. It was mostly Elwood who taught me to sail, so, thanks.

Today's was a new experience. The Mediterranean was especially choppy (apparently, an Agean storm has things stirred up), but the wind was not fast, a steady 6 knots, and I puttered around for about an hour, as far from the coast as I dared venture.

No disco music.
No Russians in tacky bathing outfits.
No absurd job.

Bliss.

I was really rusty though. It's amazing how poorly a person can remember something that they never really learned to do confidently. I breezed of the dock, looked really good doing so, and didn't have any problems until I was about a half kilometer from shore, attempting my first tack. It went so poorly, that I decided to head upwind, and make a long series of close reaches and a lot of tacks for practice. Elwood and I had always tried to milk speed out of our boats, which was really hard in J'ville. Anyhow, the knack came back, and I began to get the hang of dealing with the waves and how to predict what pitching and rolling would do to my speed and direction.

I started to get... confident.

I had been heading southwest, for about a kilometer, and decided to turn around. I set myself up for a long, downwind tack, back in the direction the resort. I was feeling good, smart, and once I began heading east, decided to practice jibing. You know, just to get the hang of it, again.

In my life, I've taken three women out in a boat: my mother, my sister, and my first girlfriend, Kate Nelson. Jibing, a maneuver in which the stern (back) of the boat passes through the source of the wind as it turns, has always been a challenge for Sean. Pulling it off with an extra person consistently proved a disaster, and each of those women I share love with ended up in the water.

Not exactly proud moments.

Like I said though, it was just me, and I was feeling smart.

Of all the things Elwood taught me, knots, maneuvering, reading the wind, the love of sailing...

...today, I am most grateful he taught me how to right a boat.

False cognates...

My job has taken me away from Istanbul, again, after a four day visit which involved a job interview sandwiched between visits to the Istanbul Police Office (where I applied for and received a residency permit).

Still not sure if I got the job.

I should talk about the residency application process, sometime, but this isn't the post where I want to complain about Turkey's bureaucratic difficulties of Ottoman proportions. I'll just say, I was glad my friends Gregg and Emrah came along. Their commentary made the affair a good deal more fun.

Monday, I took the midnight flight to Antalya (48 minutes), was received by a bewildered driver at the airport ("Sean" sounds distinctly feminine, when Turkish logic is applied to the phonemes. Read it "se-an"), was then driven to Club Salima (50 KM from the Antalya airport), and by 2:30 was settling into my room at a Mediterranean resort.

I was excited!

The veil of expectations, however, was lifted the following morning. Although waking up to the sounds of children, blowing whistles and singing to club music, at 10 AM (which is an early hour, these days), didn't do much for my confidence in a pleasant stay, I think it was a scantily clad, obese Russian family that finally enervated my hopes.

At Club Salima, I'm that guy who thinks the whole place is retarded (or insane, or absurd), and who invariably (I try not to!) exhibits disdain in every movement, spoken phrase, or dip in the sea.

I'm reminded of Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation, because that is exactly how I feel.

It's been four days. I've gotten to know several of the staff, all good people who seem to have had their nerves frayed by a summer of working with the globe's neediest population: tourists. I've also met some Russian college kids, and though they don't speak any English, they were excited when I smiled at them, said "I like Russia", and gave them a thumbs-up. That, and I bought several rounds of vodka for the lot of 'em (and then suffered the worst hangover in years).

Today really tied it all together. Another beach-goer had seen me speaking Turkish with the staff, and then correctly surmised that I wasn't from around here. This Turkish man was doing his best to figure out what I was doing at a resort for Russians, Italians, and Germans, and tried a little of all three languages before settling into Turkish.

He asked me if I was an animatör.

I didn't understand, what could give him the impression that my line of work involved drawing, much less drawing cartoons. So, I offered him the side-to-side head shake and shrug, which in Turkish means, "I don't understand".

Again, "are you an animator? Do you do animation here at the resort?"

I told him "no", but also asked that he explain. The mimes that this request provoked took me off guard, as the man began jumping from side to side, jazz-hands in the air, smiling like a fool.

Then he said "animation man", several times, and it clicked.

A Turkish animatör is an entertainer.

"The patient is well and in stable condition..."

So says the doctor/spokesperson of the İzmir Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Hastanesi (what a mouthful, Izmir's 9th of September University Medical School Hosptial).

If you know Turkish, check it out.

For those of you with better things to do, here's the short story.

A 'misplaced file' in the university hospital redirected a 55 year old Turkish woman, Saadet Kılıç, from her scheduled cataract surgery. As a result of the confusion, her eyes weren't operated upon.

Instead, her uterus was removed.

Whoopsydoodle!

This seemed apt...

... hopefully, folks will forgive the language. I heard this here in Turkey, and the "n" word sometimes gets thrown around by Turks who have no idea of the baggage it carries. I figure, they wrote the joke, so it's a little dishonest to rephrase the thing.

A new agent was brought into Langley for training by the CIA. The program took years, and cost millions, as the agent was trained for all possible mission circumstances: jungle and arctic warfare, high an low elevation para trooping, airplane and helicopter flight, deep sea diving, Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, and Polish.

Weeks of his training emphasized the history and geography of Moscow. The agent became an expert in the Kremlin, and needed to be, as he would be a covert operative in the heart of Soviet Union. Studying maps, local stories and anecdotes, he was prepared to appear a native of Moscow, born and raised, and to reside in the city for five years.

The insertion itself was dangerous, involving (surprisingly) both a submarine and a high altitude jump. After his arrival in Moscow, the operative met his contacts, settled into his safe house, and took his first week to explore the city, finding it just as he had been trained to.

After receiving orders for his first mission, the agent stopped into a local pub, known as a gathering place for intelligence personnel from various agencies. It was a good place to get information.

The agent went to the bar and ordered a vodka, in fluent Russian. Striking up a conversation as the keep poured his drink, he felt confident that he would begin to glean information about the patrons. Setting down the vodka, the bar keep stopped the agent mid-sentence.
"Look, if you want to talk with your KGB friends, go over there, table is in the corner."

The agent was dumbstruck. "How did you recognize that I'm an agent?"

Cleaning out a glass, the bartender looked at him, "Your Russian is fluent, you know city and culture well. Only, we have not a lot of niggers in Moscow."

Reading this article, I remembered the joke...

If it's true, all I can say is, way to go, 'Red, White, and Blue'.

To avoid appearing a Rusky-phile, I'll add that Putin's idea of a measured response to conflict is, well, so much like Israel's that it confounds all notions of justice. I reckon Saakashvili got more than he bargained for, but it's all pretty complicated.

In high school, I remember studying a little-known kid named Gavrilo Princip, who somehow managed to spark The Great War by assassinating Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria. Beats the hell out of your best college prank. Chopping the history lecture down to size, EVERYBODY in Europe, and a number of others, decided to get involved in one of the largest land-grabs since the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889.

Quite a few parties involved, and a whole lot of oil, gas, and other stuff. Looks like we're getting ready to see how much like the 20th century we can make our 21st.

"My hands smell like poop."

Expatriate life involves new and exciting experiences for many of the most mundane of daily tasks. I've said before, that the main reason I travel is the puzzle that a new country presents for everyday tasks: using the post office, ordering food, asking directions, brushing my teeth, and yes, using the toilet.

Two friends and I kicked it up a notch, though, in the summer of 2005. We took a cross-Turkey hitch-hiking trip. It was a blast. I have no idea how many kilometers we covered, but if I ever find the map I kept, I'll try to post the route we took. I've linked a map of Turkey, so folks can at least get an idea of the scale. We started in Istanbul, and finished there, having visited Nevşehir, Malatya, Hasan Keyf (not shown), Urfa, Mardin, Batman (no joke, check the map), Tatvan, and then some other obscure places: Doğubeyazıt and Çalderon (basically, this place was Iran), before Diyarbakır, whence we took the train to the 'Bul.

Instead of the full three-week narrative, I'll put this out there in pieces, and I'll try to consult my friends to get up some pictures up, too.

This is a story from Mardin.

By the time we arrived there, we had been traveling for about ten or twelve days, and we had been exposed to a number of new foods, many truck stops, and less than sanitary conditions. We were all ill with something, and I was taking my turn with a stomach illness.

An Istanbullu friend had insisted we contact his family in Mardin, when we got there. On the day in question, a brother-in-law was giving us a tour of a Syrian Orthodox church, The Fourty Martyr's Church (click here for a crappy panoramic tour).

When I see churches in Europe, 'opulent', 'excessive', and 'huge', are all words that come to mind. I hear the message they tried to send to the infidel:

"Our God is a really, really big God, and he can squish you."

On the other hand, this church is older, by about five hundred years, than the oldest that I saw in Christendom. It spoke to me that day, three years ago, a message about community, tolerance, peace, and clean bathrooms.

I excused myself from our tour and entered the immaculately white-tiled restroom. Windows, carved into the rock above, illuminated the interior, and while walking through, the contrast of light and shadow danced in the room and from the mirrors. I checked each stall, as I am prone to do with an upset stomach, and found that there were no European-style toilets.

This was a squatty-potty day and it would be messy.

Diarrhea doesn't negotiate, really, so I counted myself lucky to have found a tiled hole, measured against the very real alternative of shitting my pants.
Skipping the details, lets just say I was happy to have gotten up and out of that situation having only soiled my hands. There wasn't any toilet paper, and if you check the picture, you'll notice the faucet at about knee-height next to the toilet. That's a pretty typical feature in Turkish toilet facilities, the idea being that water is cleansing. Indeed it is, and even though I had a wet bum, the alternative was, again, far more uncomfortable. I find that I am often willing to accept a poor option when the only alternative is a horrifying option. Given my overall feeling of discomfort and ickyness, I was really looking forward to a good hand-scrubbing.

I have a former room mate that consistently pointed out to me, that Europeans use paper on their backsides and that this doesn't clean everything. He always joked about European people, referring to them as "shitty-asses". It was cute, and I never bothered to mention that the bidet has a silent "t" because it is a French invention. In any event, water is a big part of Turkish backside-cleansing culture. Use a squatty-potty often enough, and one can learn to enjoy the intimate interaction with one's 'down-theres' that the quest for true cleanliness entails.

As I approached the sink, my heart, dare I say it, felt as though it had been flushed. In front of me were five immaculate sinks (again, there was the light and all that). Each sink had a soap dish, carved into the marble counter, and above each, on the wall, were attached plastic soap dispensers.

All shone with that shiny newness that accompanies never having held soap.

Cool...

I found this on the blog of a friend in Japan, and decided it's worth sharing.

It is a memory-enhancing method, that Chris is applying to language learning.

I'm going to try this out.

Update:
Actually, I'm going to use the free and open source version of the same program.

My first good haircut in Turkey...

... was followed immediately by my worst, by about six weeks.

I wish I had a camera to show it off, but then, I was actually so embarrassed by it, that I took the long way back to the hotel, through an alley from the barber's, and then, a construction site. I doubt it would have occurred to me to take a picture. I have found a limit to my self-deprecating sense of irony.

I don't know why I can't get a good haircut here, generally, because I have the vocab and always explain what I want. In June, I went to a place near the hotel, and felt dumb for doing so when I was charged 20 YTL for the cut. On reflection, in the mirror, I realized that the barber had done a perfect job: not too short, not cut like a soldier's hair, layered on the sides, reasonable bangs... it was... nice to look at, fitting my personal aesthetic and demanding no attention whatsoever.

Until, it needed to be cut again.

I figured, I had gotten what I paid for, the haircut I wanted.

Never before had I had that in Turkey. I even once cut my hair myself, with a beard trimmer, because I couldn't rationalize paying 5 YTL for another Amerıkalı saç tıraşı, the 'American haircut', the one that makes me look like I'm a Marine. Lately, I've been in the habit of fixing each trim at home with the same beard trimmer.

Nothing against Marines... I just don't want to look like one.

This, I always thought should be simple, but over and over again, I got the same result, no matter what I asked from a barber. If I insisted my hair be kept long, or asked for "just a trim off the top", the result was always the same. Sometimes, barbers would even sneak up on me, and achieve the crew-cut effect with scissors, what the electric clippers could do in a quarter of the time. Just so long as they gave me the Amerıkalı saç tıraşı, which must be what they thought I really wanted, even though I never said it.

Thus, I was so happy with my haircut of eight weeks ago, that I returned to the same barber, fully prepared to pay another 20 YTL. I don't care if that's too much, or even if they were ripping me off. You must understand, in my quest to maximize utility, my lowered expectations had finally found an appropriate balance of price and quality.

Something went wrong...

The barber who had cut my hair previously was busy, but we made eye contact on my arrival. I read in his gaze that I could trust the other barber to do the same, fine job he had done, the job I would ask for after sitting down, and the job this new barber actually began doing. In fact, it is the same, fine job, of the first barber, but with a tragic or ironic twist.

Actually, with a totally tragic faux-hawk twist.

One must understand, the Turkish barber shop culture is about comfort. The barber didn't just trim my hair. He shampooed and conditioned my hair, twice. He massaged my face and shoulders with lemon cologne. He lulled me into a sense of security, a feeling of comfort, and I let down my guard. Then, while my eyes were closed, he attacked me with hair gel, a blow drier, and then hairspray.

Having not used 'product' on my hair, since high school, I thought, "let's see how the pros do it".

There is a logical fallacy in abdicating one's habitually simple desires to the whims of 'experts'. These same experts lead the way in fashion trends that I never follow, advertising campaigns for products I never buy, and are the same people who brought us Crystal Pepsi.

The mistake was short-lived. Though I didn't have the courage to tell the barber to wash it all out, ten minutes later, I was in my hotel room doing just that.

Getting what you want, even if it isn't that complicated, can truly be an adventure in a foreign country. From now on, I'm trusting my hair to the beard trimmer.

The People I Meet When I Travel: The King of Bahrain

OK, so that's a lie, I didn't actually meet the king of Bahrain.

I did, however, become wildly inebriated within fifty feet of him.

I did not know he was there.

I was waiting for him to arrive, and my buddies were late pointing out that I'd missed him coming in.

Basically, I popped down to the hotel lobby because there was a lot of noise in front of the hotel. I was with two of the military intel people that help me pass the time, so I figured, "what the hell, let's see what this is all about".

There was quite an entourage. Security people kept wandering in, slowly. Some were dressed like tourists, except for their funny earpieces. Others had their suits. As more of these folks began to arrive, the lobby bar slowly cleared out, until only myself and my two pals were left. I actually missed his entrance because I went to the little boy's room.

If we were expected to leave, nobody said anything. Some security people just sat down next to us at the bar. I hope these people understood English, cause it would be nice to think that someone from the king's crew could follow our jibes.

Everyone comes from a birth canal, and each of those is pretty special, in its own right. So, I'm not about to regard someone who came from a 'royal' birth canal as particularly unique. Certainly, I'm not about to give any person absolute power on the basis that the birth canal from whence they were delivered is superior to those of other mortals.

In the case of King Hamad ibn Isa al-Khalifah, he was actually the emir of Bahrain, up until he changed his title to king. So much for divine right. Abandoning one's own ridiculous absolutist customs for those of the European middle-ages may, at first glance, seem desirable. Let's be honest though, everybody can see through what you're doing, and they still think you're a dick for it.

The ceremony with which the king departed the lobby drove the point home, for me. Everybody in the lobby stood (that is, everybody except me and the remaining intel guy). There were two rows of dignitaries, military men, and security, through which the king proceeded, on his way down to the hotel club. I couldn't see him until he was very close, and learning why had a pronounced effect on my reaction.

When I saw that the king comes up to about my shoulder, and has a striking resemblance to Ron Jeremy, well, I choked on my beer and began coughing... loudly.

The People I Meet When I Travel: Military Intelligence, The Translator

This sub-series of The People I Meet When I Travel will need to be broken down. There are twenty or thirty military intelligence people living in the hotel, somewhere above me. I've only spoken with some of them, I only know what one of them does, and, well, as is the nature of their work, I'm not really sure I know enough to write about.

They are fun to drink with, though.

As happens, when you combine alcohol and people, a chemical reaction takes place that can be observed in a person's increased comfort with their surroundings; inhibitions are reduced, laughter and merriment are easily achieved, and people talk more readily about what's on their mind.

I won't learn anything classified from these folks, cause they are, well, professionals. Also, I won't learn what they are doing here, or why their mission is a short-term one (Nov. 2007- Nov. 2008).

They do bitch about work though, about bosses (which are generals, in this case), about co-workers (I've met some of them, and yes, there are insane people in uniform), and about the logic of their mission.

Saturday night I got lit with the translator. He's an American, who went to high school in Turkey, knows Turkish fluently, and then returned to the states to attend the Air Force Academy. Much respect. Dennis is a husky guy, reddish hair, freckled skin, and when he speaks Turkish, it sounds like Ankara people speaking Turkish... so, it's a little weird to watch (as I imagine it must be weird when I speak).

He knows the language and the culture, and Turkish women, and he's great company because we can joke about all three. Dennis can also share anecdotes about the embarrassing ways that the American military, when it doesn't consult him, puts its proverbial 'foot' in it, while trying to accomplish some task requiring Turkish and American cooperation.

Something Dennis notices often, is the way Americans try to reward a job well-done, by a Turkish counterpart. Military operations have a number of local support staff, and sometimes, personnel want to express their gratitude to the natives. People's hearts are in the right place, the execution, however, leaves much to be desired. He explains:

I look over and Janet is pressing a twenty YTL bill into the hands of this hotel waitress, as she stands alongside two co-workers. Then, Janet just walks away, leaving the other wait staff hanging. Those were all people we see everyday., and all three had been serving our group that evening. AWKWARD!

What gets me, is that I'm the cultural/linguistic advisor. I write memos on this shit and circulate them through the office. I helped develop a whole protocol for appropriately acknowledging the good work of our Turkish support staff. I know the culture, and the language, and one might think that my area of expertise matters, but obviously, people can't be fucked to read that shit, and the result is that we look like we're out to award servility. This kind of thing is dangerous, it attracts greedy people, makes us look like snobs, and it smacks of the behavior of empire builders. Just, give 'em a fucking certificate or something, but stop tossing tax-payer money around!

I tend to agree.

Dennis is the only fluent Turkish speaker on staff with his office. He is also the only person there who has lived in Turkey for any amount of time. Next week he goes home, and there isn't anyone coming here to fill his shoes.

George Carlin introduced a list of oxymora to his stand-up act, and along with Jumbo Shrimp there was Military Intelligence.

I tend to agree with him, too.

The People I Meet When I Travel: The Turkish Envoy to Iraq

I met the Turkish envoy to Iraq on a flight to Ankara from Istanbul, in May. We were sitting next to each other, and when I noticed him reading an English newspaper, I struck up a conversation. I don't know what I said to get it started, and I never remember, so whenever I find myself in a situation to start talking with someone, I usually don't know what to say. I lucked out, anyhow, cause once he got his turn to speak, it turned into a mini-lecture, and I was saved all the effort of actually having to talk, or think about how fast an object free-falls.

He was on his way back to the capital from Baghdad, where he said the security situation was "improving". He and his staff never felt at risk, but it had taken time to get used to gun shots and explosions... which were a daily occurrence.

I didn't learn anything that research wouldn't turn up, but he had this matter-of-fact manner for describing the role of Turkey, vis-à-vis US foreign policy towards Iraq. He used terms like "mediator" and "intermediary" and "alternative voice", and discussed very honestly how Turkey's policy cues and talking points come largely from Washington. Perhaps, if he'd known the term, "step-and-fetch" would have been among them.

"Your State Department," he said, "needs Turkish diplomats to assert much of their agenda, because Iraqi's are growing tired of the American presence. It is an occupation, after all, and it helps if we can step in to make it look and feel less like that."

Iraq needs a lot of help, and Turkey has been doing a great deal of that, under the direction of the United States. He indicated that this kind of diplomacy was, obviously, very helpful for furthering Turkey's relations with their southern neighbor.

I assume there are additional, unspoken advantages, for both Turkey and the United States. I don't know what they are. I speculate, however, that one reason the House of Representatives abandoned its efforts to recognize the 'Armenian Question', as it's called in Turkey, as a genocide, has to do with our present interests in the region.

If the gentleman's demeanor was any indication, the Turkish government can do some serious bargaining with the US on a number of fronts. He seemed to feel pretty good about that.

I obviously don't understand Turkish politics...

Last week, there was a historic vote by the Turkish High Court, to decide a pending case against the ruling AK Party. The decision was, basically, a 'yea' or 'nay' vote to close down the party for being a threat to Turkey's secular constitution, or some such business. I could list the charges, but I don't want to bother. Sometimes, the absurd realities here are so numerous as to bore me.

For our purposes, the important details are, there are 11 judges, one abstained, four voted 'nay', and six voted 'yea'.

So, the party was shut down...

But NO! Apparently, having the majority of votes doesn't matter, and the party was not actually closed.

The article was in Turkish, and surely, the word "unanimous" was buried somewhere there, in reference to the necessary number of votes to pass. Least wise, there was some kind of explanation and I missed it. I think I had half-finished the article, when I realized there wasn't a closure happening and started over from the beginning. This is the problem when one reads a newspaper in a foreign language: details find the massive gaps in one's fluency.

Imagine reading:

During the baseball game between the Cardinals and the Cubs, as W*@^@! caught a &%^$ !@#$ from %$!@, a @#$! @#$%& %$!@ crashed into &%^$ @#$! @#$%& &%^$ and injuring left &%^$, DeRosa. The game @#$%& %$!@, ending @^@! 4-3 %& &%^ sixth %%$#.

Which would translate as:

During the baseball game between the Cardinals and the Cubs, as Ward caught a fly ball from Pujols, a meteorite crashed into left field, leaving a massive crater and injuring left-fielder, Mark DeRosa. The game was called, ending with a score of 4-3 in the sixth inning.


Sadly, all I walk away with is the score...

Bezbol...

I haven't met anyone in Turkey, that is, any Turkish people in Turkey, who understand or have an appreciation for baseball. I, myself, was never a devout and loyal fan of the sport, so I'm not really one to talk, but it is exactly the talking that exposes how baseball is an integral part of American life.

I have a number of Turkish friends, and I often use English to communicate with them. As a result, one of my primary tasks has been explaining baseball references. Almost always, I'll use one without realizing, and the puzzled expression on a friends face will cue an elaborate definition. Kenneth G. Wilson explains the conundrum of an American English speaker thusly, in The Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

The vocabulary of baseball, probably more than that of any other sport, is as popular in figurative use throughout the society as is the argot of the theater and other entertainments or the cant of the underworld. To strike out, to be a bush leaguer [or just to be bush], to balk, to bat three hundred [or, hyperbolically, a thousand], to give [or] get an assist, to pinch hit, to score, to shut out, to begin a whole new ball game, or to be off base, to be in left field, or to be a screwball, to have somebody throw you a curve, and many, many more words and phrases have come into the general vocabulary from baseball’s slang and argot, to a point where many people use them who may not really be very sure about the nuances of the game itself. Indeed, many people who have never even seen a major or minor league or college game, even on television, use baseball terms, probably some without even being aware of the origins of the expressions they employ. Some of these baseball terms have become Informal or Semiformal and Conversational in the general vocabulary (to throw someone a curve, to drop the ball), others remain slang (to whiff, to throw a slurve), and a few indeed may have reached full Standard status (to make a hit, to swing and miss). Use only the language your audience will understand.

I really appreciate his last piece of advice, to use "only the language your audience will understand".

Of course, I appreciate it only to the extent that I think it's crap. As a person who derives pleasure from language, from the use of language separate from meaning, I'd really have to dumb things down while speaking to most people in Turkey... and I would probably be a much less happier person, as a result. Also, I see it as my important contribution, perhaps, my calling from God, to bolster an English-learners vocabulary with essential baseball references and other flowery slang. English is, after all, the international language.

I decided to make a list of all the slang terminology I use, that I know comes from baseball. It was longer than I thought it would be:

ball park
base, first/second/third/home
bush-league
double (see 'bases')
charley horse
cover your bases
home run
league, in/out
left field, in/out of
play ball
play hardball
pickle, in a
pinch hit
pitching vs. catching
rain check
single (see 'bases')
step up to the plate
strike out
switch hitter
same team
touch base
triple (see 'bases')

I'm not even certain if this is the full list. I decided that, rather than defining them all, it would be fun to leave a reader to determine if they themselves know the meanings (or, just look them up here).

I had a proud moment, some months ago, when one of my room mates explained his chance tryst with a woman who was 'out of his league', describing the experience with just two words:
'Home run'.