According to the Wahington Post, President Reagan’s attempts
at conciliation with the Soviet Union in Geneva in 1985 included
a vow that the U.S. would join the USSR in case Earth was invaded
by aliens from outer space.

from the Panic Encyclopedia (edited by Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker, and David Cook)

Found this hilarious book from 1989 during a heavy anti-clutter session this weekend. It’s out of print, but available for free download (after informal registration) here and a pretty weird reading. The book is in retrospect a very innocent and nostalgic compilation of some symptoms and phantasms of the eighties, a time when one could phantasize about cyberflesh or speak about post-xxisms without flushing.

As for the clutter: I found it tremendously useful to set some quantifyable goals for myself (I tried to get rid of 10% of everything, tossing 80 books and 200 LPs along the way). It’s odd that it always feels deliberating once you got rid of stuff, but that the act of getting rid is so hard.