I am not dead...

[onager]

Just on the East Coast, visiting Mom & other relatives in the buckle on the Bible Belt. I've been here 2 days and am getting Jesus'ed to death already.

I am trying to be good and keep my gawdless mouth shut. Mostly. :evilgrin:

[toddaa]

1. Explain the Jesusing process in your family

In my family its long winded discussions about all the wonderful things the missionaries from their church are doing to fuck up other cultures.

[onager]

2. I'm not sure where to start...

Your experience sounds worse than mine. We visited some of my mother's friends yesterday who talked about their "missions" in Florida.

I almost piped up and said: "That's not a mission, it's a vacation."

And of course, before we ate there was "grace." In my family, we usually keep that short. This woman went on and on with it.

My immediate family very rarely does the "grace" thing, unless someone is visiting.

Those "God billboards" are all over the place around here. Offset by the even bigger and flashier billboards for strip joints, fortunately.

[Deep13]

3. Abe Vigoda isn't dead either, FYI. nt

[Synnical]

4. He's disabled his profile?

I so wanted his take on the Egypt situation!

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

[onager]

5. Huh? No, I'm still here!

:hi:

And thanks a lot to those who PM'd to make sure I was OK. I really appreciate it. I left Egypt in 2009.

My take on Egypt - I'm not a bit surprised. I talked to a lot of Egyptians while I was there, and never heard anyone say anything good about Mubarak. I've posted about this in some of the on-going Egyptian threads, so excuse the repetition if you see it.

Scanning web coverage, somewhere I read that these were "the first major riots in Egypt since 1977."

Well, that's a pant-load. I saw several major riots in Alexandria when I lived there, and Alex had a reputation for being a pretty laid-back place - sort of like L.A. or San Francisco in the U.S. Cairo had some serious riots.

Riots in Alexandria usually involved the Muslims and Coptic Xians fighting each other. Since these were Off-Brand Xians, Infidels, and Technically Non-White People, the Western media didn't give a damn.

One of the worst riots took place near All Saints (Coptic) Church in April 2006. That's the same church that was car-bombed just a couple of weeks ago, on New Year's Day. It wasn't too far from where I lived in Alex, and when I out for walks I often went down around that neighborhood. It had some great fruit/vegetable markets.

There were also major riots a couple of years ago, when Mubarak tried to discontinue the govt. subsidies on fuel and bread. He backed down pretty quickly and re-instated the subsidies. Then he just ordered Parliament to raise taxes on various items (mostly imports), to cover the subsidies.

[Kolesar]

6. Since these were Off-Brand Xians, Infidels, and Technically Non-White People,...

...the Western media didn't give a damn.

"crystal clear" meaning