Get Down On Your Knees and Beg for Euros

Greetings, friends,
Just a quick note for my friends in Los Angeles; tonight (Thursday) is a rare screening of Dave Markey's "Desperate Teenage Lovedolls" (1984) and the sequel "Lovedolls Superstar" (1986) at the Egyptian on Hollywood Boulevard at 7.30. If you've never seen this film, you're missing a very important part of your local culture and the masterful acting of Jennifer Schwartz (who did a wonderful Patricia Krenwinkle in Ray Pettibon's "Book of Manson", edited by yours truly, who did a mean Old Man Spahn in the same flicker.) So come on down.

Still no plans for New Year's Eve...and it's growing nigh. Are ALL of you just hunkering down? Is there no celebratory relief from this unrelenting depression? Sheesh. If I spend New Year's alone in my apartment slaving over a hot computer, all your entreaties about my exciting future in LA are really gonna fall on deaf ears.

Anyway, I'm taking time out from my reading this evening to prepare you a lovely cold winter SCREED. I'm about half-done with Barry Paris' 600 page doorstop biography of silent film star Louise Brooks. It's no coincidence that I chose this time to read the definitive biography of Brooks, the rather tart Kansan who ran off to New York City to dance, fucked everything in sight, and thirty years later wrote the most incisive descriptions of Hollywood in the 1920s to come from the center of the movie industry. At the peak of her career in 1928, Brooks literally walked out in the middle of a film and moved to Berlin, where she entered 20th century iconography for good in Pabst's "Pandora's Box". Any of you who've been to my house have probably had an experience of varying intimacy with the photograph I have of Louise Brooks in this film, dancing with Alice Roberts while her new husband, Emil Jannings, looks on in dismay. Well, I'm looking forward to finishing this book and ranting about it some more.

Okay, I think everyone of you needs to go to this website:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/
and get your FREE credit report. It's not a scam; they just passed a law that you can check your credit once a year for free, and this is how it's implemented. You can see most of it online, and it's always fun to see how good/bad your credit's gotten, eh?

Because your credit could get a lot worse:
Krugman: Economic Crisis a Question of When, Not If
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
Reuters
New York - The economic policies of President Bush have set the country on a dangerous course that will likely end in crisis, Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman told Reuters in an interview.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112404V.shtml

Or:
Economic 'Armageddon' Predicted
By Brett Arends
The Boston Herald
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112804K.shtml

See, the rich bastards have already tucked everything away in euros, so what do they care? Let the dollar fall. I've made some serious attempts in the last few days to convert some of my loose cash into euros or Swiss francs; even the lowly Canadian dollar is pulling even with the useless currency of this morally and intellectually bankrupt country (ooh, that came suddenly, eh?) Maybe I should just start sending money over to Paris now.

Asia Irritated over U.S. Indifference to Dollar Fall
By Eric Leser and Martine Orange
Le Monde
After a new record on Friday, the Euro fell to 1.3250 dollars Monday, but pressure on exchange markets remains intense.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120204H.shtml

Dollar Hits New Low against Euro Despite Eurozone Call for Action
Agence France-Presse
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120804L.shtml

Dollar Plunge, Specter of the Crash
By Philippe Martin
Libération
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112904H.shtml

"NPR : Q&A: What the Fall of the Dollar Really Means"
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4186041>
*Listen to this story*
Please click on the headline to the story using a RealAudio or WindowsMedia player.

Is it any wonder that George W. Bush has suddenly acknowledged the existence of the European Union? It's like somebody gave the dolt a poke and said, "They're gonna own you."
Globalist: Peace signals from Bush wafting toward Europe
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/07/news/globalist.html

Meanwhile, with the money we have left, we can now make more intelligent choices about where to spend it thanks to this website (thanks, Geri):
Hard part is finding a blue grocer. Guess I'll have to do more
shopping at Costco.
http://www.choosetheblue.com/main.php

Or just go back to bartering...
Canadian Bank Machine Distributes Fake Money
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041202/od_nm/financial_cibc_dc

Well, and now for something completely different...for my friends from good old Berkeley, it's the bad 20 years after flashback (thanks, Michelle):
Aw, jeez... these crazy college kids today!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/06/BAGFFA6SSE1.DTL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, December 6, 2004 (SF Chronicle)
BERKELEY/Neighbors sue Cal student co-op
Patrick Hoge, Chronicle Staff Writer
First they flung chunks of a cooked pig at passing cars. Then another resident of the student housing co-op beheaded a chicken with garden shears, said shocked neighbors. And a few months back, a guy on the rooftop deck was heard yelling,
"Where's the heroin?"

HOLD ON, HOLD ON, go back and read the name of the reporter. Yeah, that's our Patrick, who actually lived through Barrington Hall. That he would help bring down another co-op boggles the brain cells.

Here's another blast from the past:
Neighbors Compare Co-Op to 'Animal House'
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041207/ap_on_fe_st/wild_neighbors

First of all, let's get some things straight. There were no "nude parties" at Barrington (at least that I was invited to.) People sunbathed in the nude, which last time I checked is still pretty common in California. Also, no one ever suffered an "LSD overdose", which is a physical impossibility. Yeah, a kid on acid did fall off the roof (or, if you believe Peter Spencer, was thrown off.) But Barrington wasn't closed for any of those reasons. It was closed because in the late 1980s, all those hypocritical hippies went straight, discovered REAL ESTATE and decided to deny their progeny the same fun, turning Berkeley back into the boring, uptight, faux-New England college town it was born to be. So good luck to the Chateau. I know we had fun stealing their ice machine, their furniture, etc. etc.

And forgive me for quibbling, but wasn't it a WASHER and not a dryer that Danny and Bill chucked off the roof?

PS Beth, right NOW I am listening to Sade.

Anyway, the whole gamut of Barrington Hall couldn't hold a candle to this depravity. This country is too retarded to be deciding global affairs (thanks again, Geri):
Catholics call it confession...
http://grouphug.us/

While Americans are secretly lusting after their neighbors and stealing boxes of paper clips they'll never use from work, the evil Russians are buying up euros and plotting the REAL end of the Cold War...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/23/business/dollar.html

Our allies, the Brits, are doing just like us and buying up cocaine:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,2763,1360194,00.html
British top Euro league of cocaine abusers
Alan Travis in Brussels
The Guardian
Britain now tops the Euro-league table for cocaine abuse which has reached levels similar to the US, according to a study published last night.

But I'll still stack them up against a dumb Southern redneck any day of the week:
Florida Couple Reports Stolen Marijuana to Police
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041204/ap_on_fe_st/marijuana_stolen

Anyhow, I give the Europeans more kudos for standing up to the Russians over the Ukraine. If you haven't seen much in these screeds about the Ukraine, it because I'm pretty conflicted about the whole business. The civilized part of me is always glad to see people tell their corrupt nose-picking government to fuck off. The vengeful Jewish 1/4 of me, however, retains my great-grandfather's old-score mentality about the Ukrainians, who forced him out in 1905, and 99 years later I don't mind seeing the Ukrainians get theirs. Any country stupid enough to support the Russians after what Stalin did to them (starving about 20 million Ukrainians to death in the 1930s) deserves whatever it gets. That said...
Moscow's 'hands off!' doesn't dissuade EU
International Herald Tribune
The determination by the Europeans on one side and the criticism by Russia on the other highlight conflicting views on Ukraine.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/03/news/europe.html

But really, it's a good business for the Ukraine, and a really good deal for Poland, which hasn't gotten to flex some muscle in that neighborhood since the 17th century:
Ukraine, Poland, and a free world
http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article.jsp?id=3&articleId=2251

These paranoia-inducers think that we've even got our oily American fingers in the Ukrainian pie:
Ukraine: It's Now or Never for Washington
By Mark Almond
The New Statesman
America's real aim in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics is to seize control of vital resources before China and India can challenge US dominance.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120404C.shtml

We're certainly not doing a good job of keeping them in our "coalition of the willing":
CNN.com - Ukraine votes for Iraq withdrawal - Dec 3, 2004*

We just can't win. The Europeans don't want our unregulated chemicals:
http://www.euobserver.com/?aid=17830

And we apparently can't stand the scrutiny of their justice:
Congress Seeks to Curb International Court
By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Measure would threaten overseas aid cuts to push immunity for U.S. troops.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112704E.shtml

They'd better hurry, because the European Union is making rapid progress to forming its own battle group:
http://www.euobserver.com/?aid=17811

My poor European friends, running the world is not easy, and it's not a job anyone sane would really want.
Europe pays the price for cultural naïveté
PARIS In the realm of European immigration, the damage done by the political correctness of the past is only now beginning to be felt.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/24/opinion/edpfaff.html

The Germans can't get it right:
http://www.euobserver.com/?aid=17930

Selling guns to China might not be such a hot idea...remember all the guns we sold Iraq back in the 1980s:
http://www.euobserver.com/?aid=17825

But we love getting donations of French explosives:
In a suitcase somewhere...
International Herald Tribune
Four days after police planted explosives in a suitcase, nobody knows where they went.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/06/news/france.html

Vive le screed!