It's been two long and shitty years, but I for one am STILL holding a goddamned grudge against the world for not blowing up into an kakocratic warlord deathscape on 1/1/2000. How dare the Earth not implode?! How dare civilization not collapse!? How dare it!?

I mean, I was actually PREPARED for Y2K. PREPARED, mind you -- and I'm never prepared for anything. Like, when I wake up in the morning, and the sun is shining in my face, I'm like, "How the hell did THAT happen?" That's what kind of unprepared I am.

But I was PREPARED for Y2K. Who wouldn't be? Christ, even SPOCKO was preparing for the End Times. Me, I had 6 months' worth of food squirrelled away in my garage. And water, and batteries, and all kinds of cool camping equipment. I had an escape route planned, with a map! And ron-day-voo points, and shit like that. I had diagrams on how to loot a Land Cruiser from the nearby Toyota dealership and equip it with a 14mm gun from the Presidio mounted on the roof.

And then nothing happened! I was pee-ohed, I'll tell you what. I even had a special hand tool I ordered off the Web for cracking open human skulls and scraping out the nutritious marrow. Now that there is still so-called law and order in the land, this expensive piece of gray-market materiel has NO CIVILIAN USE. I only bring it along now for an intimidation factor when we have investor meetings for Pigdog Journal. Can't let those VC carrion-eaters see you as weak! They'll dilute the fucking stock till it's worth less than a full set of '92 Yankees baseball cards.

But what was I talking about? Oh, yeah: Y2K. The worst part of the whole Y2K fizzle was that the years 2000 and 2001 were REALLY SHITTY. I don't know anyone who's enjoyed the new millennium in the slightest. Personally, I would have preferred backbreaking slavery in the BORAX MINES of Eastern Nevada under some nudist neo-Buddhist military oppressor sect than having to deal with what actually obtained during these bum years. Anything but this! Anything!

So that's why I'm kind of looking forward to the upcoming EURO CONVERSION on 1/1/2002. The Europeans are in for a shitocaust the likes of which the world has never known. Even in the DEEPEST, WEIRDEST Gary North fantasies, things wouldn't have been as bad as they're going to be in Europe next year. CHAOS! MAYHEM! BUTT-NAKED SWEDES in TECHNICALS with CROSSBOWS raiding the SORBONNE for TOP RAMEN and SEX SLAVES. That's what I'm talking about.

The deal is that 12 countries of the European Union will be scrapping their old, worn-out national currencies for the new UBER-CURRENCY, the NWO (pronounced "EN-wo" -- short for New World Order). OK, it's actually called the "euro", as in "eurotrash", but the whole thing stinks of the Council for Foreign Relations and the Rockefellers. I am DEAD SURE the entire thing was engineered by Dick Cheney at the annual Bohemian Grove Burning of Dull Care.

Because why would anybody want to do this? What the hell kind of good is it to replace 12 currencies with 1 meta-currency? Who will benefit? Not that I care one way or the other about existing European currencies -- no emotional attachment either way. But have you seen Italian money lately? It's obscenely filthy and tattered. Dear God! The entire M1 of the nation must be systematically run through the crotch of a fat Milanese stripper's sweaty G-string and then chewed by slobbery wolverines. It's just foul -- they NEED some new currency there, bad.

[You know who really needs a currency overhaul? The Yap Islands. They're the loincloth guys from the encyclopedia who have to roll a 6-foot stone wheel down to Starbuck's each morning for a latte and croissant, and get a handful of gravel in change. The stone-wheel money idea has been great for REALLY strengthening the thighs of Yap Island strippers, as well as stimulating research into stronger and stronger elastic waistband technology, but it's a system in need of a modern overhaul.]

But there's just not a good enough reason to replace the 12 European currencies. There's just NOT. The only point I see is putting that usurious bastardo Thomas Cooke out of business once and for all, which is a valiant and worthy goal but not really worth all the trouble that it's going to cause.

Which is to say, a LOT. Of trouble, that is. Because as of this writing, over 99% of all merchants and banks in Europe are totally unprepared for the upcoming fiduciary apocalypse. "Money? Changing? Huh. News to me!" said the president of Credit Lyonnaise Jacques Bivouac in the French newspaper Le Monde, scratching his balls lazily.

OK, so nobody ever said that, and my percentages are made up, but the ACTUAL numbers from Europe are really startling. Those goddamn Eurocreeps have no idea what's going on, and they don't seem to care! I would look up some actual numbers for you, if you're bent on me having some kind of FACTS for backing up my irresponsible statements. Let me just say this: millions of people! Gargantuan numbers of monetary units instantly worthless! Large percentages of population totally shitface unaware!

Europe really isn't built for this kind of massive overhaul. The base characteristic of the European psyche is GRAVE LAZINESS mixed with a healthy swirl of LIBIDINOUS LIBERTINISM. German, Italian, French, Spaniard, I don't care! All they want is booze and sex! They go to sleep under a tree in the middle of the day, wearing big sombreros! When they hell are they going to switch all the ATMs to putting out euros instead of francs or pesetas? Never, that's when. 2008, maybe, if they get around to it and there's no porn on TV that day.

The upshot is that come 1/1/2002, when the new "enwo" is supposed to start rolling out, NOBODY will know what the fuck to do. The old money, which as I've mentioned is so disgusting nobody wants to touch it, will still be valid for two months, but that's a MOOT POINT. Because by that time Europe will have collapsed into POST-INDUSTRIAL CHAOS, with rampaging hordes tearing down cathedrals and castles in order to fashion stone wheels to trade on the underground Yap Island currency market. There will be no food! And no water! And no one will have tips to pay to strippers! It's going to be horrible!

The English, of course, opted out of this round of Euro conversion, being a nation of big prissy assholes and jingoistic soccer hooligans. They're feeling pretty smug right now watching the hullabaloo on the continent, and they're probly drinking bad beer and singing dumb anti-Euro songs to the tune of "Amazing Grace" ("No eu-ro/No eu-ro/No eu-ro/No euro") as we speak.

But they shouldn't be smug for long, the dumb pasty bastards. Because the other big monument to European Union, the Channel Tunnel, is like a RAVENOUS HORDE SUPERHIGHWAY. Don't they know that when the already-fragile half-assed governments of Portugal, Germany and Belgium collapse, all those filthy looters are going to come charging RIGHT FOR the White Cliffs of Dover... by the MILLION! Christ, they were barely able to keep out a few hundred starving political refugees -- what makes them think they can defend against the mighty AMON THE THIRD and his ARMY OF BEASTMEN?

I guess my main point here is this: DOOM and DESPAIR. Everyone is FUCKED, including us here in the good old USA, because once the European markets collapse into blood-gurgling madness, the rest of the world is not far behind. My only advice is to join an outlaw motorcycle gang as soon as possible. We can expect a Second Dark Age to happen within a few days of Jan 1. -- say around January 8th, just in time for Elvis's birthday.

Which to me is a cheerful thought. I might just get to use this skull-cracker tool yet.

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burton@pigdog.org