It’s been over a week since my last blog post.  This probably makes me a Bad Blogger, but whatevs.

It’s also been a little over a week since I flew back from the Middle East.  I had a slow weekend that involved going few places and seeing no one, and then it was time to go to work on Monday.  Needless to say, as I mentioned in my last post, returning to work was not something that I was actively looking forward to.

My office was a mess.  I had been running a workshop right up until I left and had left a couple of piles of things in my office to deal with when I got back.  Normally, when I go on vacation, I try to leave the house or my office in as good a shape as possible, so that when I come back I don’t have exactly the kind of reaction that I had when I walked into my office on Monday: “Oh, fuck.”

My office is still a mess.  There’s still workplace drama.  It’s like the never ending cycle of birth, death, rebirth, and the occasional Bollywood epic describing it.

What my being out of the way has meant, however, is that I haven’t been able to touch base on what one friend called Celebrity Death Fest 2009.  (Yeah, it’s kind of a tasteless term … but it does have its merits.)

All over the Middle East, the one thing everyone wanted to talk about was Michael Jackson … but not for the reason that I thought.  In addition to the obvious question (“What do you think about Michael Jackson dying?”  Seriously, folks, what answer is there to that question??) came this stumper: “Was Michael Jackson Muslim?”

Before you give yourself whiplash trying to figure out where that question came from, lemme ‘splain: when Jermaine made the public announcement of MJ’s passing, he ended with a prayer to ‘almighty Allah.’  Jermaine is Muslim.  Michael … I never heard nothing about.

However, since the Muslim world loves a good conspiracy theory bar none (they include themselves–most of the theories involved local politicians I’ve never heard of, and some of them weren’t about which ones had slept with Sylvio Berlusconi), this was immediately taken as a Sign that the entire Jackson family was Muslim and that the Islam-hating Western media had covered it up.

Clearly they’ve never seen Janet.  Or maybe they ought to, I dunno–depends on whether you think Islam is pro- or anti-feminist … and whether you think Janet is pro- or anti-feminist.  She’d certainly present a different face of Muslim women than a woman in a burqa, that’s for darned sure.

In one of my more sardonic moments, I responded to someone in the Istanbul bazaar, “Right now, the public face of your religion is Osama bin Laden.  Do you really think a gender neutral accused child molester is a step in the right direction?”  Fortunately for me, his English wasn’t good enough to understand most of what I said.  (It was kind of tasteless … even if there’s just the faintest hint of truth in there.)

As for what I think … well, the sad truth was that the likelihood was that his story wasn’t going to end well.  I feel sorry for the guy.  He was surrounded his entire life by people that wanted stuff from him, and he was always alone.

I never got asked what I thought about Farah Fawcett, Billy Mays, Karl Malden, or Ed McMahon.

Anyway.  It’s still hotter than blue blazes here in Texas (everyone in Turkey kept apologizing for the heat–I finally had to break out with, “It’s 44 at home!  It’s only 36 here!  We’re loving it!”), with no end in sight.  If anyone has sway with the Powers that Be, some rain would be great, mmkay?

And maybe some throat lozenges … I think my long-anticipated summer cold might finally be materializing.

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