Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

Still strapped with work, and worse, with spotty access to the Web. In the meantime, enjoy this, via e-mail from Issandr (who I guess is too concerned about his credibility to post this kind of thing).YMCA

Cheery pop and images of destruction. Just what we all need to feel better.Via Abu Aardvark…Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Nancy

Completely overwhelmed with work these days, pissing my employers off by procrastinating and redesigning this blog twice in about as many weeks while deadlines sail by. No more. While I’m buried under work, have a look at this. I laughed. Lots.

Issandr has a nice obituary at The Guardian’s blog site. I’m still away from Egypt; I’d appreciate it if any friends reading there could save me obituaries from the Egyptian press.Technorati Tags: Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt

And now, for something completely different…

“About 200 Kiss fans protested Saturday in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to demand that the band be inducted into the hall.”—AP

Reviving this from two years ago because it recently came up in conversation and because it’s still funny. Originally from The New York Observer.Write your own Thomas Friedman column!1. Choose your title to intrigue the reader through its internal conflicta. War and Peasb. Osama, Boulevardierc. Big Problems, Little Women2. Include a dateline from a remote [...]

Reviving this from two years ago because it recently came up in conversation and because it’s still funny. Originally from The New York Observer.Write your own Thomas Friedman column!1. Choose your title to intrigue the reader through its internal conflicta. War and Peasb. Osama, Boulevardierc. Big Problems, Little Women2. Include a dateline from a remote [...]

Cairo Cab AnnalsI’m weary of being preached at. I spent last evening speaking with “an admirer” (not a member, mind you) of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was, as all the Brothers I’ve met have been, very nice, highly educated, very intelligent, and very politically savvy. I was slowly working the conversation round to the substantive [...]

Technorati Tags: Egypt, sufism, dance, religion, sufi, islam

Look, Ma, no Photoshop! Thanks to Lawrence for going out of the way to take this picture.Technorati Tags: Egypt, Pyramid, Pizza Hut

I think I’m in love…These days, being a Muslim woman means being saddled with what can only be referred to as the “burden of pity.” The feelings of compassion that we Muslim women seem to inspire emanate from very distinct and radically opposed currents: religious extremists of our own faith, and evangelical and secular supporters [...]

Saidi bluesman, at Makan performance space, Saad Zaghloul, Cairo.

I’m against censorship on general principle, but this is an exception. Bravo, Misr! I read the book. It was a piece of crap, a total waste of time. The movie can only be worse. The people of Egypt will be no poorer for never having seen it. I suspect the censors thought the movie could [...]

Two contradictory takes, both equally true of Cairo:I.The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked [...]

This just sent to me from a cousin in New York: Laura Bush invited American poet Sharon Olds to speak at the National Book Critics Circle Award in Washington, D.C. this year. Here’s an excerpt from Olds’ RSVP. The last line is poetry. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your [...]