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All That Duct Tape For All Occasions: You should see the sleepwear. This Too Shall Pass: The Week In Review Monday, June 3 This week kicks off with the triumphant resurgence of duct tape! Overcoming the lull that followed its late-'80s pop-culture boom (credited simultaneously to the genius TV show MacGyver and to skateboarders everywhere), the silver sticky stuff is back and on the catwalk. Today's product placement award goes to the Sonoma couple who created their senior prom attire entirely out of a dozen rolls of duct tape, which This Too would have thought was clever if we hadn't seen exactly the same thing at a Halloween rave in 1998. TT's crack team of scandalmongers also revealed that Duck brand duct tape has been buying off prom-goers for years, daring them, for scholarship money, to attend their dances clad in tape--and it sponsors an annual duct tape fashion show in Toronto! Duct tape ... it really is good for everything. Except maybe sleepwear. Tuesday, June 4 Back in 1948, a guy wrote a book called 1984, in which he predicted a ludicrous future where the government would violate everyone's personal space with drugs and surveillance. Today, in Santa Cruz County, a woman who is 18 got into her Ford Ranger and plowed into a man who is 81. This act proves This Too's long-held theory that reverse digits hate each other. This Too advises that the injured man--a volunteer sheriff who was ticketing the Ranger for being parked illegally in a handicapped spot and whose knee now hurts--may want to keep an eye out for other 18-year-olds who've got his number. Also today, President George W. Bush finally admitted that global warming exists--and it's because of pollution. Environmentalists worldwide let out a collective sigh of exasperation that upped the atmosphere's CO2 content by 1.2 percent. Wednesday, June 5 This morning's discovery of the century's most important bassist, songwriter and Behind the Music interviewee Dee Dee Ramone dead in his L.A. residence cast a dark cloud over This Too's midweek. The news of Dee Dee's deeply clichéd drug overdose is doubly upsetting as it comes almost on top of singer Joey Ramone's cancer death on April 15, 2001. This Too is in deep mourning for the death of punk rock. Crap. Smuggler? Thursday, June 6 Awakening us slightly from our postpunk funk, This Too's emergency District Attorney fax line went into high alert today with the news that the flow of Bulgarian opium to San Jose has been nipped in the bulbous bud! It seems the alert agents of the San Jose Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested one Azar Lahidji (who's 52 and old enough to know better) for smuggling the opium concealed inside "hollow wall plaques depicting images of the Madonna and Child." All of this has left This Too utterly confused as to what, exactly, is the opiate of the people. Also today, E! Online announced Warner Bros. Pictures' activation of a live-action feature film based on the Hanna-Barbera supersiblings the Wonder Twins. The announcement took the form of ... a big derivative idea. Friday, June 7 Santa Clara's own Intel Corp. is leading Silicon Valley's stubborn unraveling of geek value. Instead of reporting up to $7 billion in profits this fiscal quarter, as the computer chip giant had planned, the company now expects to make only up to $6.5 billion, as reported today by the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal. This Too's heart goes out to Intel CEO Craig Barrett in his time of need. Barrett, who must already be mortified that he didn't make the San Jose Mercury News' Top 10 biggest-paychecks list, only made $19 million in 2001. This Too suggests Santa Clara taxpayers hold a talent show or a bake sale fundraiser. Saturday, June 8 Some Arabs are apparently taking a fascinating approach to handling that not-so-fresh feeling caused by much of the world wanting to detain and/or kill them. They are drinking cologne. They are then dying. Today, two more Arab cologne drinkers died, bringing the death toll to 14, according to the Arab News, Saudi Arabia's English daily. Thirty-one others only made themselves sick by guzzling the poisonous man perfume. Sunday, June 9 And finally, proving that it's not only humanoid teenagers who are resistant to common sense, Austin-based Cycorp Inc. (aren't those two "corps" redundant?) announced today that its $60 million 18-year-old project to teach a computer common sense has resulted in only minor advancements. Thus, they are taking the project to the Internet, where, according to CNN.com, Cycorp hopes legions will log on to share the world's collective wisdom. In 1986, the computer, named "Cyc," had gained enough knowledge to ask whether it was human. Presumably, Cycorp analysts then informed it that it was not human, it was an "inference engine." This Too predicts that the psychological damage this may have caused Cyc will result in pod-bay doors not being opened sometime, somewhere, in the not-so-distant future. Hamster Of The Week! This Week: Poochie Say hello and give a little gnaw to Poochie! He is 8 months old. Poochie loves his apples and his wood-chip-carpeted wire cage, but he loves it more when he is free to roam and chew on things like Mommy's bleach-free tampons or her matching imported, French, mosaic-topped side tables. Poochie is so sassy! Sassy, sassy Poochie! Next week ... pigeon of the week! I Saw You: Inept Supervisor Illustration by Jumma Jahdid I have been extremely patient with you--your clumsy command of the English language, your incredibly socially inept approach to your own employees and those completely moronic decisions you make. The fact that an amoeba has a higher IQ in one of its flagella than you do in your entire body really grates on my nerves! I've had enough of you! You know you don't belong in your position, and it shows in your own lack of confidence in your actions and decisions! SEND us your anonymous rants, love notes, or diatribes about your co-workers, bosses, enemies, secret crushes, or any badly behaving citizen who gets your dander up. Send to: I SAW YOU, Metro, 550 South First, San Jose, 95113, or email [email protected]. Send a letter to the editor about this story . [ Silicon Valley | Metroactive Home | Archives ]