From 1998 to 2001, readers in the United States had access to a unique vehicle for informative and insightful commentary that brought the world to their doorstep. But in addition to Salon, they also were getting sent these trashy emails from Egypt called The Weekly.

In the hope that someone will finally read them, we reprint some choice selections from The Weekly below.

1. Innovative Bundlings of Utility Services
2. Evil Russian Pixies Have Stolen My Innocence
3. The Photo Op
4. Karma Chameleon?

While showering one day in October 1998, I experienced spasms, temporary paralysis, and a strange feeling of numbness in the left side of my body. At first I thought I was having a stroke at the age of 28. But it soon became apparent that the water, the faucet handle, and the shower head were all electrified.

I thought a loose connection on the washing machine might be at fault, so I turned it off. But about fifteen minutes later I tried to wash my hands in the kitchen sink and got a shock from the faucet.

I began to suspect that the public works people working out front might be involved. I went out and asked to talk to the foreman.

"Excuse me," I offered in broken Arabic, "but there is electricity in my water."

"Yes, I know," he replied nonchalantly, "but it's only a little bit of electricity." I considered offering to let him use my toilet, thinking the experience might change his mind about the impact of a little electricity, but thought better of it.

He went on to explain that in the course of moving the underground pipes, the water flow had somehow come into contact with the electricity flow. It would be corrected shortly, he assured me.

I thought I should warn the doorman of my building, picturing some resident's pacemaker bursting out of his chest as he ran a bath.

"There's electricity in the water," I told him.

"Yes, I know," he replied, the elderly gardener gingerly handling the hose behind him, "but it's only a little bit of electricity."

All night the lights dimmed and brightened as we imagined our neighbors lighting up like Christmas trees in their bathrooms. Finally, at about 12:45 AM, fifteen minutes before the long-awaited MLS championship match was to begin on TV, the power went out entirely. I wandered into the street to see if the whole neighborhood was affected. It was. A second public works foreman came down the street and greeted me. "We had to shut off the electricity," he explained, "because there was electricity in the water. That's very dangerous!"

I didn't bother to explain to him that it had only been a little bit of electricity.

Lights went back on the next day with water and electrical service once more firmly resegregated. I have since postulated that the merging of the two was the result of some USAID contractor's proposal:

In improving utility service for customers, significant complimentarities can be achieved by leveraging resources already in place. We believe that by merging the water and electrical grids, we can create significant synergies between the two systems. Should this system prove as effective as we are confident it will be, additional complementarities could be researched, such as using public-private partnerships to integrate the water works with the newly-privatized telephone network. Having customers simply talk into their plumbing fixtures would not only save on infrastructure costs, but would obviate the need for the customer to purchase a costly 'telephone.'

Some months later, I was approached by an Egyptian colleague who lives nearby. "Rob, didn't you tell me about your water being electrified recently?" I had. "What did you do about it? Because now it's happening at my apartment." The public works people, apparently, were making their way up the street.

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The British Club, a rather bizarre institution located not far from our home, recently advertised a Russian theme night. A friend suggested we all attend, and on the appointed evening, we went to meet her there.

While Julie and I are paid members of the British Club, I am deeply ambivalent about the place. It is a simulacrum of a British pub dropped in Mohandiseen so that British expatriates have a proper place to get drunk. Middle-aged men feed their growing beer bellies and watch football on the satellite feed. Middle-aged women flit about braless in tank tops that showcase their unhealthy-looking tans, waving Tiparillos around and making declarations like, "oh, Tina, it's so completely fab to see you!" The food is authentically British, which is to say it's awful.

But the Club is nearby, they've got a nice selection of uncensored videos to rent and... well, they've got football on the satellite feed. We mostly go because a lot of our friends seem to like it there. Why they had a Russian Night I do not know, but I suspect a significant quantity of alcohol was involved in the planning process.

Photographic evidence: Evil Russian Pixies are real!

To me, Russian Night at the British Club was like visiting hell without ever having to leave Earth. The front entrance, normally guarded by a soft-spoken and generally pleasant bow-tied man, had been occupied by what appeared to be a clan of evil Russian pixies. Clad in a red sequin-encrusted Russian costume with what I presume was a traditional headdress, the chief pixie battled with me for several minutes in an attempt to force me to drink a shot of vodka. Pixie blood was nearly spilled in this confrontation, which, for me, evoked the Cold War. The normally pretty tipsy crowd was completely smashed by 8:00, thanks to evil Russian pixies pouring vodka down all the incoming gullets. Beer bellies already jiggled alarmingly with too-loud laughter and Tiparillos were being waved with a ferocity not usually seen until just before closing time.

Only too late do we realize that we needed a Legs Control Treaty, too.

The food was actually palatable, being something other than British food, but after dinner it turned out the evil Russian pixies were evil Russian dancing pixies. They boogied in a decidedly post-Soviet imitation of Las Vegas showgirls for the better part of an hour while scrums of the Queen's inebriated subjects wobbled to a rough approximation of the beat. The pixies had traded their faux-traditional sequined Russian costumes for faux-alluring sequined slinky dancing outfits. As it turned out, they were in pretty good shape, but this could not detract from the overall effect of latex-based rouge and substandard Soviet-era dental work. The wobbly Englishmen, faced with the unappealing prospect of going home with their over-tanned, braless wives, drooled and hooted as well as their sharply reduced motor skills would allow.

In the buffet line, Julie was hit on by a Russian guy with a haircut I hadn't seen since I last looked at my High School yearbook photo. His friend introduced himself as a Ukranian-trained Egyptian cardiologist. I made a mental note of where not to go in the event of a heart attack.

During dinner, a guy at my table shouted, "oh my God -- I swallowed my tooth!" He had apparently, um, swallowed a tooth. Ukranian-trained dentist, perhaps?

And the friend who invited us didn't even show up. She fell ill, which is hardly an excuse for leaving one's friends to fend for themselves in hell.

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I have a friend here who is in the Foreign Service. When Hillary Clinton came to town we got to talking about the fever that overtakes people at the prospect of being photographed with even insignificant politicians and policymakers.  In Washington you see a lot of these photos.  Here's Fred shaking hands with Senator Kennedy.  Here's Fred grinning a little too excitedly behind Boutros Boutros Ghali.  Here's Fred with Sandy Berger. 

We got to thinking: exactly what cache does having a photo of yourself with Sandy Berger convey?  "I am important because I once came into contact with the extreme periphery of the sphere of influence of someone who is on CNN on a regular basis"? 

Of course, this cynicism stems in part from the fact that neither of us are even important enough to have photos like these.  As we discussed the matter, an idea began to form: what if we took photos of us shaking hands with one another, signed them, and each hung them in our offices?  Would anyone dare ask who the other shmoe in the picture is?  Not likely.  Even if they did, I could say the photo was of me with David Greene of the US Department of State, and that would be true.  Better yet, I could say, "that's me with David Greene," and only when the visitor's face registered non-recognition, continue in a disbelieving tone, "...you know, from the State Department?"  David, of course, would be less fortunate. He would be forced to make something up.  But he's good at that -- he's with the State Department.

So we put on our best finery -- I only own one suit -- and set off to the Cairo Marriott in search of pretentious backgrounds.  David's wife Tricia snapped an entire roll of film. Here we are shaking hands in front of the faux-Greco-Roman statuary.  Here I am presenting him a plaque.  Or is he presenting it to me?  It's impossible to tell.  Here we are having a very serious conversation in overly large, gilded chairs.  Here we are sharing a knee-slapping joke. 

The photo session attracted a few curious glances from the genuine hotel guests, but it was well worth it. 

The photos were developed, we selected a suitably officious-looking specimen, and signed copies for one another saying, "Thanks for all your hard work.  Couldn't have done it without you."  It is a beautiful thing.

But is it art?

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In the social interactions of humans, there remain a number of phenomena that science has yet to explain. Why are yawns contagious? What causes mass hysteria? Who reads Family Circus?

Add to this category the fact that I always seem to remind people of a notorious figure of the moment.

This first became apparent during the 1988 Presidential election campaign. I was working as a messenger for a law firm, a job which involved a lot of public contact. I was often told -- sometimes by complete strangers -- that I was a dead ringer for Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. One teller at the bank would laugh herself silly when I would come to do my daily transaction; she pointed out the resemblance to a new co-worker each day until the entire staff of State Street Bank was calling me "Mr. Dukakis." None of them knew my name. They just called me "Mr. Dukakis."

When I tell this story now, people say, "how could anyone have thought that? You don't look anything like Dukakis." The answer, I think, is in the eyebrows. Mike and I share bushy Mediterranean sea-going eyebrows. We also share a salt-and-pepper (then still mostly pepper) hairdo that's been standard issue to white boys since the 50's.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Mike. I voted for Mike. But when people think of Mike Dukakis today, they visualize that photo of him sitting impotently in the tank, or they think of his shrill, isopropyl-swilling wife. Mike Dukakis projects the image of a well-intentioned loser, and one you wouldn't want to be cornered by at a party. If I'm going to project that image, I'd just assume do so under my own power.

As an aside I should point out that my Dad twice ran track against Dukakis in High School. In what now seems like a remarkable case of foreshadowing, Dukakis lost both times.

But as Mike Dukakis faded from the public eye -- and it took a little longer for us in Massachusetts than it did for the rest of you -- the resemblance ceased to be commented upon. I was safely anonymous until 1994.

In that year, the infamous freshmen Republicans of the 104th Congress came into power, led by the deeply hated Newt Gingrich. Suddenly complete strangers were stopping me on the street and declaring my uncanny resemblance to the profoundly evil congressman from Georgia. On several occasions, people pointed in my direction and cried, "Hey! Newt!" from across the street. Perhaps they believed I actually was Newt. The apex of this uncomfortable era was reached when a waiter in a Chinese restaurant stopped me on the way to the bathroom and cried in astonishment -- sounding like a Catskills comedian's bad imitation of a Chinese waiter -- "Newt Ginglich! Newt Ginglich!"

No doubt my plight was exacerbated by the fact that I was living in Washington at the time. But my brother, who looks enough like me that one of my guests at my wedding congratulated him on marrying Julie, was being stopped in supermarkets in New Hampshire with the same treatment.

Again, the similarities are definable -- the salt-and-pepper (now mostly salt) hairdo that's been standard issue to white boys since the 50's; the generous jowls; the 24-hour five-o'clock shadow. You could see where people were coming from.

Eventually ethics investigations forced the baby-eating Speaker to take a lower profile, and my long ordeal was brought to an end.

Until now.

In recent years my hairline has receded somewhat, and, in what may be a related development, my hair appears to be gaining volume of its own accord, a process which baffles me. Several people have commented, independently, that this lends me a certain resemblance to indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic.

I cannot explain this phenomenon. I can only say that I do not like where the trend is headed.