The Friends of California Libre...

15 October 2005

Raquel Welch in White Latex

Greetings, friends,
I hope you all got your ya-yas out for the Day of Atonement. I know I did.
Jewish mystics to Madonna: Lay off our sage!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051009/
od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_madonna_rabbis

I also sincerely hope I wasn't the only person who watched "E=mc²" this week on PBS. This was one of the best documentaries I've seen in ages (and I see great ones all the time...the only thing interesting on that box). It inspired the Sexy Scientist title of this here screed. By dramatizing Einstein's own life and the lives of the scientists who made his discovery possible, it was not only a cheap kind of soap opera, exactly what our friend (and my favorite uptight religion) SCIENCE needs to pump it up, but it was also positively Raquel Welch in White Latex sexy. Not only were they able to makeover Einstein's poor wife Milena Maric into a suffering but hot mother-of-two physicist, they even sexed up dowdy Austrian Jew Lise Meitner, who first split the atom. That said, I could scarely believe how turned on two hot French scientists got me, Emilie du Châtelet, the brilliant lover of Voltaire who helped disprove Newton's theory of force (and thus put the ² into E=mc²), and Madame Marie Anne Paulze, the wife of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who helped the doomed Parisian tax collector prove the conservation of matter (i.e. matter cannot be created or destroyed...that glass of water you drank this morning was pissed out by many, many dinosaurs millions of years ago.) For your erotic pleasure I've enclosed images of these sexy scientists.

I was pleased to learn that Einstein had his revelation regarding the Theory of Special Relativity standing on a hill in Zürich, looking at the many large clocks (which are still dominating the Zürcher "skyline") and wondering with a friend how time is related to the light leaving each clock face. It was then he realized that light is not relative, but time, turning the problem of space and distance on its head.

For those of you in the Los Angeles area, this show will be rebroadcast on KCET 28, 16 October (Sunday) at 3 PM, and on KOCE 50, 19 October (Wednesday) at 8 PM. The rest of you can check: www.pbs.org

Anyway, I'm still naive enough to believe that science got us into this mess, and science can get us out.
Survivor's Guide to the Energy Crisis
By Jeremy Rifkin
The Boston Globe
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/101405EB.shtml

Not that there isn't room for plenty of absurdity...like a real time map of incoming UFO reports across the United States (thanks, Miles and Geri):
http://www.ufomaps.com/

And now for something completely different...more absurdity:
Remains of Star Trek's 'Scotty' headed for space
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051014/
od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_doohan

But why knock down my heroes, especially ones like James Doohan (who I used to goggle at as a tot in the Toluca Lake "Vons")? With that in mind I'm sending along a link to an amazing article by Joe Carducci about Naomi Petersen, a photographer who documented the punk scene here in LA and died too young; it makes a nice contract to the piece of shit about Ray published in the New York Times, and if you read the whole thing (long) you will know as much as anyone about Black Flag and the early scene (thanks, Mike):
http://209.193.84.198/naomi/naomi.html

Some go, and some go on, and the recent award of the Nobel Prize thrilled those of us who demand danger in their writing:
Pinter: Silence in Plays, Rage in Politics
The Associated Press
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101305S.shtml
Man of Peace: Harold Pinter, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
By John Pilger
t r u t h o u t Perspective
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101405D.shtml
** Luminaries applaud Pinter's Nobel **
Leading lights from the world of theatre hail playwright Harold Pinter after he wins the Nobel literature prize.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4339894.stm >

Although most of my writing, other than these SCREEDS, is living only on this computer, there is plenty of righteous anger in there as well. I salute all those, even this cranky Turk who takes metaphorical revenge on Europe...
Turks embrace novelist's war on EU
International Herald Tribune
Some critics will be quick to dismiss "The Third World War", a new futuristic novel by a 30-year-old Turkish writer, Burak Turna, as the wild imaginings of a conspiracy theorist and literary shock jock - and in many ways it is.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/12/news/novel.php

Reading this I had a sudden fantasy number, where my friend Petek uncurls herself from a difficult yogic position and then goes on a rampage in Vienna. I know what she's thinking right now..."Ridiculous!" Beware the slighted Turk...
How the dreaded superstate became a commonwealth
The question to ask is not what Europe will do for Turkey, but what Turkey has done for Europe
Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian
This week, the European Union did something remarkable. It chose to become an all-European commonwealth, not the part-European superstate of Tory nightmares. You see, the main effect of the bitterly contested opening of membership negotiations with Turkey is not to ensure that Turkey becomes a member of the European Union, which it may or may not do 10 or 15 years hence. The main effect is to set the front line of enlargement so far to the south-east that it ensures the rest of south-eastern Europe will come into the EU - and probably before Turkey. There's a nice historical irony here. Turkey, which in its earlier, Ottoman, form occupied much of the Balkans, and therefore cut them off from what was then the Christian club of Europe, is now the European door-opener for its former colonies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/
Column/0,5673,1585806,00.html

Anyway, I haven't heard from some of artist friends in a while...busy, busy, busy, I hope, making the world safe for easy living:
Art relieves constipation, lowers blood pressure
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051014/od_afp/
afplifestylearthealthoffbeat_051014141429

The other day I listened to a very sour English couple make this remark about Portugal: "A lovely place, that, if you like cork trees, olive trees, and white trash European tourists." I wonder how they fit into this equation? Anyway, this remark and the whole sexy theme of these SCREED inspires me to clean all the various weird overseas news out of my inbox. So let's take a trip...

Let's start in Germany, where the deeply insightful mag Der Spiegel interviewed America's favorite war criminal, bringing us geopolitical insanity for almost four decades:
SPIEGEL Interview: Henry Kissinger on Europe's Falling out with Washington
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 82, talks about the
risks of the war in Iraq, clashes with Europe and China's future role
in global politics.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,379165,00.html

If that doesn't rile you up, perhaps the Catholics among you will take offense at this Dublin bookie's interpretation of the Last Supper:
Photo: Irish bookmaker blasted over 'Last Supper' advert
http://in.news.yahoo.com/050930/137/60dh3.html

Meanwhile, at the Vatican, God is in a much more serious business than bookmaking:
First day of school for aspiring Vatican exorcists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051014/od_nm/pope_exorcism_dc

The English have their own priorities:
Britons are Europe's most prolific shoplifters
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051005/
od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_crime_britain_shoplifters

In China they have their own problems...
Farmer eaten by own animals
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051011/
od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_china_bears

The French, in contrast, have no such squabbles with their pets:
Paris patisserie specialises in canine delicacies
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051011/
od_afp/afplifestylefrancefoodanimalsoffbeat_051011102742

Oh la la, how can any animal-crazy culture be so envied by another animal-crazy culture?
French bashing alive and well in parts of America
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051006/
od_afp/usfrancebashing_051006175943

Maybe it's just a misunderstanding over the mysterious French humor:
Fury over chocolate version of Verdun memorial
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051006/
od_afp/francewwichocolate_051006172515

And with that, it's brie and baguette time for Joel!
Vive le screed!

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