WORM FOOD I'm so digging on the nostalgia of the bomb ...

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I'm so digging on the nostalgia of the bomb shelters, magnetic bracelets and this new and old crisis. ["The Coming Petrol Collapse," Oct. 26]. To beat it all, I'm watching Grease and wondering, what the fuck ever happened to apple pie America? AIDS fucked up sex. Drugs fucked up our parents. Oil fucked up government. Meth labs are fucking up our kids. Whatever happened to beauty school drop-out girls who hoped for a Frankie Avalon to tell them to go back to high school. Those were the days, huh? Stop, drop and roll.

The biggest news you ever heard about was how Kanicky maybe got Rizzo pregnant. Meanwhile, in my little life, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find work. Outsourced jobs and imported labor and all this mediocre shit I've tried like Houdini to escape. Today, not by letter, but by email mind you, the head of the English department sends me a letter all about how I'm a senior in college and how I should consider joining the Alumni association and make a contribution back to my Alma Mater.

So what do we new graduates have to look forward to? An oil crisis, unemployment and a damn fine wrestling match to get our friends out of Iraq and to elect another government here. Something's gotta give with all the doomsday naysayers, war-mongerers and power whores.

The first thing we need to do is legalize some drugs and get these nuts sedated. Can't a guy be happy for two goddamn seconds without some street preacher yelling about the end of the world? Everybody is a street preacher these days.

Goddamn it, I just want to dance! Now open up Studio 54 again and relax for a minute. Fuck and make some more kids. Sober up when they get about 12 and find out all your secret sins. Then, like every other generation before us, hand this shit off to them and let them worry about it.

It'll all be over soon enough and the world will end when you die. As far as you'll be concerned anyway: worm food.

JWB, via email

BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

I liked the face-off between C.J. Sullivan and Dave Hollander enough to read more ["Can Thomas and Brown Save the Knicks?", Nov. 2]. Sports commentary as a two man peeing contest? Who knows? Worth a trial. And I know C.J. (from his writing) to be fair and upright. I don't think he'd respond to ethnic taunts by introducing Hollander's skull to an empty Heiniken's bottle. At any rate, I give him the benefit of a doubt.

Dan Cameron Rodill, Manhattan

OLD FART QUOTIENT

The timing could not be worse for trashing the Village Voice in the context of the East Village Other ["50 Years of Solitude," Oct. 26].ÊAt one point it looked like New York Press was going to give the Voice a much-deserved run for its money--now that is so over, and NYP seems ready to follow in EVO's footsteps. You've let the good people go while keeping the ones you should cut loose. If youth must be served, why are Russ Smith and Jim Knipfel still around? Their old-fart quotient is way high. Worse, the paper keeps getting thinner?

John Sandman, via email

JACK ULYSSES STRIKES BACK

Ms. Rachel Roberts wrote a letter in last week's paper criticizing my zealously subjective characterisation of a conversation I had one evening in Ramallah, calling it "a letter about hedonism and polygamy. ["Imperrialist Pigs," Nov. 2]. I feel that Ms. Roberts is mistaken.

The goal of the piece, excerpted from a longer essay entitled "The Electric Mosque," was to view Palestinian people as human beings with a very different yet evolving culture; as opposed to terrorists with a population nuke or child-like victims. This is why I, as someone who does believe in the state of Israel but is strongly opposed to the occupation of the Palestinian Territory, am disgusted with organizations like the ISM and Peace Now. I do agree with civil disobedience but these organizations have obfuscated the horrifying corruption and violence of the PA (be it under Arafat or Abbas), which has led to the rise of Hamas and the near destruction of the secular moderate Palestinian movement best represented by people like Mustafa Barghouti or organizations such as Al-Haq. To speak, as Ms. Roberts does, "of the infrastructure Palestinians have created for themselves" is absurd considering it has been entirely financed (and almost entirely built) by the USAID, the EU, the UN, Japan ad China, with the PA serving only to siphon off money.

I think it is insulting to speak of "the hundreds of Israelis who support Palestinian resistance" when there are over a million Arab Israelis who overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle. Additionally the vast majority of the Israeli people want an honourable and just peace with the Palestinians. The disagreement is about how to get there.

J.E. D'Ulisse, Rome