Shades of Pat Robertson: God mad at America, New Orleans, and black people?

[JW]

So says Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, who also says God wants a chocolate New Orleans. Personally I think he has misread God. If God is mad at black people, why would he want a chocolate New Orleans again? Why not caramel pecan? Or strawberry? Or lime sherbet? Or French vanilla?

http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-22/1137439449238130.xml&storylist=louisiana

Mayor: New Orleans to be "chocolate" again
1/16/2006, 1:16 p.m. CT
By BRETT MARTEL
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mayor Ray Nagin told a crowd gathered at City Hall for a Martin Luther King Day march that New Orleans will be "chocolate" again.

"We ask black people ... It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans — the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," Nagin said Monday. "This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."

The city was more than 60 percent black before Hurricane Katrina displaced about three-quarters of its population, but spared several predominantly white neighborhoods.

Along Martin Luther King Boulevard, a grassy median near a King statue and memorial was cleaned up and landscaped in advance of the parade that ended there Monday. Still, many of the buildings nearby, including a major public housing project, remained abandoned and in ruins, still bearing horizontal brown water stains left behind by flooding.

Several blocks from the end of the parade route — an area that normally would have been immersed in music and teaming with neighbors socializing and children eating cotton candy — old wooden shotgun homes that had been inundated with up to four feet of water for more than a week after the storm sagged on their foundations. Some had collapsed and others appeared to be on the brink, with roof shingles missing and siding partially peeled off and dangling.

A light breeze periodically brought whiffs of rot and garbage.

There were piles of debris on the sidewalk and one man in a white T-shirt, walking in the direction of the parade route, was the only sign of life for a quarter-mile.

"It used to be thousands of people hanging out on the streets, getting ready for the parade with their kids and stuff," said Charles Jones, who was selling red candy apples and blue and pink cotton candy out of an old metal shopping cart near the King statue. "Kids are all in school somewhere else now. It's not really a family event today. Just people who've been able to come back, working. It's really sad."

Charles and his wife, Darlene, lost their Ninth Ward home in Katrina's flooding. They have moved in with relatives in one of the areas that was spared. They live with three families in one, three-bedroom house, Darlene Jones said.

"It's depressing to see how slowly the city is coming back, but I believe it will," she said. "It's like trying to eat red beans and rice somewhere else. It just doesn't work."

Jones said her family lost a total of seven houses in eastern New Orleans and the Gentilly and lower Ninth Ward neighborhoods.

Yet she smiled while talking about her periodic trips to Canal Street in the heart of downtown. And she was thankful to still have her job as a florist. She had even put together an arrangement in front of King's statue.

"There are sections of the city that are alive," she said. "Each week I go down to Canal Street and I see more and more lights, and it makes me feel like my city is going to come back."

222

http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-22/113744454565950.xml&storylist=louisiana

Nagin: God mad at America, but also at blacks
1/16/2006, 2:40 p.m. CT
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mayor Ray Nagin suggested that recent destruction from hurricanes Katrina, Rita and other natural disasters is a sign that "God is mad at America," and also mad at black communities for tearing themselves apart with violence and divisive politics.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin said as he and other city leaders commemorated Martin Luther King Day. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

Joking that he may appear to have "post-Katrina stress disorder," Nagin, who is black, talked of an imaginary conversation with the late civil rights leader. They "talked," he said, while he was thinking Monday about what to say at the ceremony outside City Hall to kick off a walking parade in King's honor.

"I said, 'What is it going to take for us to move on and live your dream and make it a reality?' He said, 'I don't think that we need to pay attention any more as much about other folks and racists on the other side.' He said, 'The thing we need to focus on as a community — black folks I'm talking about — is ourselves.'"

Nagin told the crowd that he also asked, "Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?"

The reply, he said, was, "We as a people need to fix ourselves first."

A day earlier, gunfire had erupted at a traditional second-line walking parade to commemorate King's birthday. Three people were wounded in the shooting in broad daylight amid a throng of mostly black spectators, but police at the scene said there were no immediate suspects or even witnesses.

Nagin said King would not have worried less about those committing crimes than about the good people who knew what was right but lacked the courage to do it.

"It's time for all of us good folk to stand up and say we're tired of the violence. We're tired of black folks killing each other," Nagin said.

Nagin also recounted his disappointment with state and federal officials in the days after Katrina, wondering what King would have thought at the sight of so many people stranded at the Louisiana Superdome and the city's convention center for days after the storm, stuck in sweltering heat and lacking adequate food, water and bathrooms.

And, he said, King would have been disappointed at police in suburban and predominantly white Gretna, who turned back people who tried to walk across the Mississippi River bridge in the days after Katrina. Nagin once again accused Gretna officers of using attack dogs and machine gun fire in the air to turn people back, although Gretna officials have disputed that.

But Nagin also said King would have been dismayed with black leaders who are "most of the time tearing each other down publicly for the delight of many."

"Dr. King, if he was here today, he would be talking to us about this problem. The problem we have among ourselves," Nagin said.

[Tekneek]

Yet another person invokes religion and deities to somehow lend support to their personal beliefs. Welcome to 2006.

[Tigercat]

The streets of the French Quarter taste nothing like chocolate at night. In fact, I would rather not detail what they taste like. Chocolate would be a welcome change.

[heybrad]

Maybe I'm just a racist honkey, but I get the feeling MLK would be rolling over in his grave hearing his name being used to talk about a "chocolate city".

[Solecismic]

http://www.f5wichita.com/issues/2005-07-21/images/flicks-charlie-2.jpg

Sorry, whitey, there's no place for you in the chocolate city.

It's sad that this assclown is fighting for his political life at the expense of hundreds of thousands of people.

[PilotMan]

How would this go over if a mayor said that his city should be more vanilla? I am amazed at the hypocrisy of this country. This is a comment that does nothing for the 'color-blindness' that we are supposedly trying to reach.

[Rizon]

God seems to be pissed at everybody. Maybe God should just chill.

[Deattribution]

How would this go over if a mayor said that his city should be more vanilla? I am amazed at the hypocrisy of this country. This is a comment that does nothing for the 'color-blindness' that we are supposedly trying to reach.


There's be riots across the said city, and the said mayor would be impeached or assasinated.

It's a sad state of affairs, and even more pathetic for the day the person decided to use his propaganda trash.

[Karlifornia]

Ray Nagin's "I Have a Dream" speech

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as
the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow
we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous
decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of chocolate slaves
who had been melted in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a
joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the chocolate still is not free. One hundred years
later, the life of the chocolate is still sadly crippled by the manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the
chocolate lives on a lonely candy shelf of poverty in the midst of a vast confectionary of
material prosperity. One hundred years later, the chocolate is still languished
in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own
land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When
the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a
promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a
promise that all men - yes, chocolate men as well as vanilla men - would be
guaranteed the unalienable rights of unsweetened,semi-sweet, and the pursuit of
sweetness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note
insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this
sacred obligation, America has given the chocolate people a bad check, a
check that has come back marked "insufficient flavor."

But we refuse to believe that the candy bowl of justice is bankrupt. We
refuse to believe that there are insufficient flavor in the great vaults of
opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check
that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce
urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to
take the tranquilizing drug of corn syrup. Now is the time to make real the
promises of democracy.Delicious Democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark(chocolate) and
desolate valley of segregation to the milk chocolatey path of racial justice. Now is the
time to lift our nation from the caramel of racial injustice to the solid
rock (candy) of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of
Wonka's children.

It would be fatal (diabetic coma) for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.
This sweltering summer of the chocolates' legitimate discontent will not pass
until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen
sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hoped that the chocolate
needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude
awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither
rest nor tranquility in America until the chocolate is granted his citizenship
rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to melt the foundations of
our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the
warm,gooey threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of
gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us
not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of
bitterness and hatred (this works on it's own). We must forever conduct our struggle on the high
plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the
majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous
new militancy which has engulfed the chocolate community must not lead us to
a distrust of all vanilla people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced
by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied
up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is
inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always
march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the
devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be
satisfied as long as the chocolate is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of
police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy
with sugar, cannot gain lodging in the vending machines of the highways
and of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the chocolate's
basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

(edited for length...let's listen to the end)

Let freedom ring, from Hershey, Pennsylvania, to Ghiradelli Square

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow
freedom ring - when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when
all of God's children - chocolate men and vanilla men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words
of the old (stale) chocolate spiritual: "FatFree at last! FatFree at last! Thank God Almighty,
we are fat free at last!"

[Eaglesfan27]

I guess I better move out of the city :(





I've heard Nagin say some stupid things the past few months, but this takes the cake.

[albionmoonlight]

:-(

[Desnudo]

If New Orleans didn't have a completely insane mayor, it wouldn't be New Orleans.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Ray Nagin has lost his mind. I have been in the same room as the man twice in my life, and I wanted to slug him both times (although it was about a much smaller matter). After reading this, I wish I had. :(

[Flasch186]

what an idiot.

[albionmoonlight]

When I read this last night, I was tired, so my response was :-(

Now, having thought it over, I realize that my response is actually ::really fucking angry::

One of the sad things about this is that, after visiting our families there over Christmas, Mrs. A and I have been racking our brains seriously trying to find a way to move back to New Orleans permanently--even though the move would really cause a huge number of complications for us professionally. It's been keeping us up nights.

Then to hear this just makes me feel like a sucker for even considering it. Hey, Mr. Nagin, if you don't want us and our professional degrees to come back and help rebuild the City, then we got your message loud and clear.

Dr. King cared about helping black people--all people--improve their lot in life. Mayor Nagin (and lots of the other leaders of the black community in New Orleans) honestly care more about keeping the black community there concentrated and poor so that they can use it as an easily manipulated power base. I don't know how a human being can go from preparing 20,000 body bags to "how can I cram my voters back into the ghetto" so quickly and coldly, but maybe I am assuming too much of these leaders by my phrasing of the question.

[albionmoonlight]

dola--

Or, as one member of another message board said to help put in perspective just how hateful and ignorant Mayor Nagin is:

"We ask white people ... It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans -- the one that should be a white New Orleans," Duke said Monday. "This city will be a white majority city. It's the way God wants it to be. .."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/365000/images/_366114_david_duke150.jpg

[Honolulu_Blue]

This man is a moron.

[Buccaneer]

Mayor Nagin (and lots of the other leaders of the black community in New Orleans) honestly care more about keeping the black community there concentrated and poor so that they can use it as an easily manipulated power base.
That has been happening in politics for a long time now. It comes under the guise of the federal govt politicians "caring" in order to get power and votes. It has worked, so why change success? Back in my time of the post-Civil War ;) , they were called 'carpetbaggers'.

[albionmoonlight]

That has been happening in politics for a long time now. It comes under the guise of the federal govt politicians "caring" in order to get power and votes. It has worked, so why change success? Back in my time of the post-Civil War ;) , they were called 'carpetbaggers'.
I agree with you, though something about it seems more wrong on the local level--or at least more visceral. If you are a national political figure, then these people are just numbers to you. But a mayor or a local "church leader" looks these people in the eyes every day. They actually see and hear and smell the human beings that they are keeping down in order to keep themselves in power.

[Eaglesfan27]

When I read this last night, I was tired, so my response was :-(

Now, having thought it over, I realize that my response is actually ::really fucking angry::

One of the sad things about this is that, after visiting our families there over Christmas, Mrs. A and I have been racking our brains seriously trying to find a way to move back to New Orleans permanently--even though the move would really cause a huge number of complications for us professionally. It's been keeping us up nights.

Then to hear this just makes me feel like a sucker for even considering it. Hey, Mr. Nagin, if you don't want us and our professional degrees to come back and help rebuild the City, then we got your message loud and clear.

Dr. King cared about helping black people--all people--improve their lot in life. Mayor Nagin (and lots of the other leaders of the black community in New Orleans) honestly care more about keeping the black community there concentrated and poor so that they can use it as an easily manipulated power base. I don't know how a human being can go from preparing 20,000 body bags to "how can I cram my voters back into the ghetto" so quickly and coldly, but maybe I am assuming too much of these leaders by my phrasing of the question.
I was really angry as well. I tried to make a joke out of it, but I have been contemplating whether we should leave the immediate New Orleans area or not, and this is just one more thing that pushes me towards leaving the area in the next 6 months or so.

[LloydLungs]

The weird thing is, I think Nagin was relatively sane before the hurricane happened -- still an extremely clumsy politician (not necessarily a bad thing) but sane. Nagin got elected in the first place on support from the white minority in the city; most of the hard left and probably the majority of black votes went to Pennington, and all the attacks on Nagin were from the left.

Now, with the radically changing demographics of the city and his previous center-right supporters having seen him completely unable to handle a crisis, he knows they're going to come up with their own candidate. So, if he's going to get reelected, it will be by bringing back poor blacks who supported Pennington in the last election, and by pandering desperately to them. Being a clumsy politician, he cannot pander without sounding like a complete idiot. And I guess that is what you got here.

It's pretty embarrassing. We need to have some elections here, pronto.

[Ryche]

I would think god wanted New Orleans to be French since they were the ones who established the city. Maybe god is punishing New Orleans for turning its back on its French heritage?

[albionmoonlight]

http://www.nolafugees.com/archive/issue%202/chocolatecity.html

[Mustang]

God was pissed at Canada.. New Orleans was just unfortunately in the way...

[JonInMiddleGA]

I guess the thing that surprises me most is that anybody is surprised by his comments.

Well, I mean, I'm surprised he said them out loud but that he was thinking pretty much this ... I mean c'mon, does this really surprise anybody.

And if it doesn't, then why does it really matter if he said it out loud (instead of just thinking it & framing his actions accordingly)?

The thing that would worry me if I lived down there is that Nagin still seems slightly more rational than former Mayor Marc Morial (now head of the National Urban League).

[Anthony]

Ray Nagin has lost his mind. I have been in the same room as the man twice in my life, and I wanted to slug him both times (although it was about a much smaller matter). After reading this, I wish I had. :(

you barely look equipped to slug a 10 year old, man. calm down.

[Wolfpack]

you barely look equipped to slug a 10 year old, man. calm down.

Yeah, but he can probably take out a number of five-year-olds.... :)

[Tigercat]

Nagin is making me Hungry/thirsty these days: (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/17/nagin.city/)


"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said.

[Mustang]

"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said.

Even better if you say that in the voice of Jackie Chiles...

[sterlingice]

http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/compromise.jpg

SI

[Ryche]

The only punishment inflicted by God was on a city built in a hurricane prone area, under sea level, without adequate protection and without plans to deal with the inevitable.

[GrantDawg]

The only punishment inflicted by God was on a city built in a hurricane prone area, under sea level, without adequate protection and without plans to deal with the inevitable.

God doesn't like heavy lifting.

[Warhammer]

I just want to know if he was talking about having Sexual Chocolate in his city...

It is sad that people are actually buying his cover story that he selected chocolate because you need some milk to make chocolate.

It is sad that in 2006, people still actively use race for political gain.

It is sad that in 2006, people claim that any natural disaster is because God is mad at (fill in with selected population).

It is sad that in 2006, people will listen to this garbage and decide this is someone worth voting for.

[Raiders Army]

So if my wife and kids get killed it was because God hated them or what they were doing. Whatever.

When are his 15 minutes of infamy up?

[Pumpy Tudors]

you barely look equipped to slug a 10 year old, man. calm down.
His guard was down, and his dick was in a sandwich. I could've taken him.

[KWhit]

So if my wife and kids get killed it was because God hated them or what they were doing.
Yes. God hates everyone who dies.

[JW]

Great column by New Orleans Times-Picayune writer Chris Rose.

http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-5/1137567673272460.xml

Does anybody happen to have an Everlasting Gobstopper handy?
Mayor Wonka and the Chocolate City
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Chris Rose
I wake up in the Chocolate City mad as hell.

It's like this: I'm supposed to be on vacation this week, cooling my heels, and then our mayor, Willy Wonka, loses his grip in public again and that's hardly headline news in and of itself, but this time he really lets one go.

I mean, he really gasses the place up, if you know what I mean. Now, how am I supposed to sit this one out?

First thing I do, I follow the mayor's lead and call Martin Luther King Jr. Of course, it takes a while to get through because he died in 1968 so he still has one of those avocado green rotary dial phones on his kitchen counter and no call-waiting.

As you might imagine, his line was pretty tied up Tuesday morning.

"King!" I holler when I finally reach him. "What in blazes are you thinking? You're writing speeches for Wonka, and the best you can come up with is 'Chocolate City'? Meet me at CC's Coffee House, bruh. Pronto. We gotta talk."

"I'm tired," he complains. "I had a big day yesterday."

"We all had a big day yesterday, King," I tell him. "Eleven o'clock. Be there."

Then I call God.

Of course, my call gets answered on the first ring, but it's some lackey working out of a phone bank in Singapore. We tangle a bit; she's giving me the runaround about him being busy and can she help me, and I'm wondering: What's with authority figures these days?

"Just who does he think he is, he can't take my call?" I say. "What, He's Dan Packer now? PUT HIM ON!"

I finally get him, and I calm down a bit because he's got that comforting voice, kind of like Barry White, but I'm still all dandered up and I tell him: "11 o'clock, CC's. We gotta talk."

He starts to make excuses, tells me he's got lunch at Ruth's Chris with Pat Robertson, but I'm all over him like white on rice.

Unless it's brown rice, of course.

I suppose it could be brown.

Anyway, I wear him down and he finally admits that he thinks Robertson is a lunatic blow-hard who's always asking God to take out some foreign leader or burn down a place like Oklahoma because there are sodomites reportedly living there, so he says to me: "All right. Chill, amigo. I'll be there."

So me, King and God all meet up and I'm ready to tear into these guys about the advice they're giving Mayor Wonka, who's gone all Shirley MacLaine on us and has had almost five months to compose himself since his multiple-meltdown and the best thing he could come up with was this?

We're standing in line to order, and I let loose: "All right, you knuckleheads, which one of you wrote the 'Chocolate City' thing?"

They are aghast at my strong language, "knucklehead" being the harshest term our mayor can come up with to describe the dirtbag, scumbag, dope fiend gangbangers who have run roughshod over this town for the past decade making us the Killing Fields of America.

Knuckleheads. Yeah, that's great, like they're the Three Stooges now. "Hey, I'm gonna cap yo ass with my 9. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."

Anyway, King waves me off. "Can we order before we get into this?" he says.

The barista, one of those bright and perky UPTOWN people -- and I think you know what kind I mean -- says "Hey, guys, what can I getcha?" and sure, she acts all Ladies' Auxiliary toward us but we all know -- me, King and God -- that all this white girl really wants is to grab up as much property as possible in the Lower 9th and build a couples resort and day spa.

Me, King and God -- we're not stupid.

King orders first. "Coffee," he says. "Black."

Well, do I need to tell you: The whole shop is paralyzed into the most uncomfortable silence you ever heard.

"Jesus!" I mutter under my breath, and God pokes me in the eye. "Watch it, knucklehead," he says.

The barista, she goes, "nyuk, nyuk, nyuk," and I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have gotten out of bed; I should have just stuck to my original plan to meet Kafka for racquetball at noon.

Coffee. Black. This King guy, he just doesn't get it. Then it turns out he's just joshing around. Suddenly he breaks the uncomfortable silence and screams: "I'LL HAVE A CREAM!"

And he starts wagging his finger all around like he's back at the Lincoln Memorial, and he starts yelling: "And my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their coffee, but by the content of their character."

God, he cracks up at this. He starts nudging his elbow into my side and he's practically got tears in his eyes.

"What are you, Chris Rock?" he says. "That's hilarious, King. You are one loco dude!"

They do that knuckle-knock thing, and God orders. Café au lait -- who would have guessed?

So we sit and I ask them: "Guys, what's the deal? Wonka says he consulted with both of you before that blasted speech yesterday. Tell me you're not behind this Chocolate City thing. It's tearing us apart!"

King falls silent; he's eyeballing all the Uptowners like they're going to steal his hubcaps.

God pipes up: "Listen, hombre. Me and King, we had nothing to do with that speech. We told Wonka to go with a unity theme, black and white together as one. We did have this thing about Oreos in it, but we scratched that long before the final draft.

"Your boy, Wonka, that was all off the cuff, man. Extemporizing, you dig? He was off the script on that one. Completely off the reservation."

This gets King's attention. There's another uncomfortable pause as the whole place goes mute again.

"Sorry, cats," God says. "Poor choice of words. My bad. But listen: You people have got your race thing so screwed up down here that even I'm having trouble concentrating. You've got to get your house in order, folks. Your boy Wonka is walking around tossing matches on kindling. If you don't watch out, the whole place is gonna blow.

"And that will put us all out of work," he says, and he pushes his chair back and stands up.

"Gotta vamoose, bruh!" He says. "Been real, but there's mucho work to be done in the Chocolate City. Hasta la vista."

Silence again.

"All right, I'll take the bait," I tell him. "What's with all the gringo lingo?"

He looks at me like I'm crazy. He reaches into his wallet, grabs a card and hands me one before he rolls out the door.

The card, it says: "God & Sons Roofing. Reasonable Rates. Fully Insured. Habla Español."

I look at King. I stutter, "Did you know. . .?" But he's just shaking his head at me.

"Go figure," he says. "But it makes sense, when you think about it. His son's name is Jesus. The stepfather was a carpenter. All of them living in a Kenner hotel without electricity and running water like it's no big deal. It just goes to show, you never can tell. I guess you really need to be careful about what kind of assumptions you make about people."

We both take a sip and pause for a moment, and he adds: "And God, for that matter."

I nod at him over my tall glass of milk. "Now you're talking, King," I tell him. "Now you're talking."

[sterlingice]

I enjoyed that :)

SI