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All That

This Too Shall Pass: The Week in Review

Monday, June 17

THIS TOO's message for today, as always: Send money! We consulted with our favorite Wells Fargo banker in our new mission to buy a house (as we've heard that with real estate comes power). It turns out that not only would the house we could afford be very, very, very tiny; it would also be located in Kentucky. This Too isn't even sure how to find Kentucky, because during our last Juneteenth celebration we renovated our map and threw away all the states that never really ratified 1862's Emancipation Proclamation or 1865's 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

Speaking of Kentucky, Ohio's Board of Education has been considering teaching creationism as an alternative to evolution. In response, Scientific American published a giant rant today called "15 ANSWERS TO CREATIONIST NONSENSE." The magazine soldiered through many Darwinian points in extremely small type. While This Too applauds the magazine's vain devotion to logic, we have this advice for Scientific American: God-crazoids from Ohio can't read nonfiction.

ALSO, a man from Panama (this is not a palindrome) who allegedly killed a judge escaped from prison in Costa Rica over the weekend. He headed through the jungle back toward Panama and swam across the River Terraba, where today, in a disturbingly karmic turn courtesy of the animal kingdom, he was promptly eaten by a crocodile.

Illustration
Coffee Thief

Tuesday, June 18

BERKELEY has tried to do a lot of terrible things in the past--gas the world with patchouli, gas the world with BO. This Too has somehow managed to forgive these things. But, trying to jail people for selling NONHIPPY COFFEE, which some sick Berkeley lawyer proposes in a voter initiative, as Local 6 reported today, is not in any sense OK. It's time California gets rid of ungrateful, overly politically conscious and environmentally aware Berkeley. For chrissakes, coffee is one of the extremely few high points of living.

On that note, This Too feels closer than we've ever felt before to the astronauts on the SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR today, as they are stuck in space and all they want is coffee, CNN reported.

ALSO, officials in Alaska said today that biologists tried to scare off a COW MOOSE with firecrackers, consequently and unintentionally igniting a 92,000-acre wildfire. This Too is completely in love with the term cow moose and hopes to use it several more times today.

Wednesday, June 19

Somebody call the Christian Coalition! Everything they thought they knew is wrong, according to a new report issued in the Journal of Applied Psychology, which points out that SEX AND VIOLENCE DON'T SELL. Apparently sex- and violence-heavy TV programs are so compelling that viewers IGNORE THE COMMERCIALS. Said one of the researchers, "People who watch violent programs are thinking about violence, not laundry detergent or soda pop."

Thursday, June 20

This Too is feeling violent about the insider-trading charges swirling around domestic diva MARTHA STEWART. We subscribed to your magazine, got your sheets at K-mart, watched you bake cookies with COLIN POWELL --we lavished you with all that love and money, and still you need to job the market with your boy-toy stockbroker PETER BACANOVIC? Well, if they send you to jail, we'll bake you a lovely summer raspberry upside-down egg-white layer cake with a hand-hammered antique file inside.

ALSO: First STEPHEN AMBROSE, then DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, now the Bard himself, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Turns out, according to some clever scholars, Bill DIDN'T WRITE that 578-line FUNERAL ELEGY that's been popping up in your better anthologies lately. Some guy named John Ford did. Of course, Bill never claimed authorship, he's dead. But misguided lit professors who ran the elegy through a database in the mid-'90s thought they saw the hand of Hamlet's creator. Luckily, everyone agrees that Shakespeare is still the real author of the immortal line "Now is the winter of our disco tent."

Friday, June 21

Today, in an effort to scare the begeebers out of This Too, the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal reported that "THOUSANDS OF TINY WASPS will be released next week across portions of Santa Clara County in an effort to combat an infestation of another insect, the glassy-winged sharpshooter." Eek! We're moving to Kentucky.

Saturday, June 22

Advice maven ANN LANDERS (née EPPIE LEDERER) passed away today, leaving millions clueless about how to handle philandering husbands, wandering wives, deadbeat son-in-laws, unannounced houseguests and unscrupulous wedding caterers. Always ready to fill the breach, This Too offers the following condensed wisdom: DUMP THE BUM, go to confession, grow up, stand your ground, and call the Better Business Bureau. And when you send the money, send small, nonconsecutive bills.

Sunday, June 23

Los Altos genius JOHN VINSKO has cracked the riddle of the San Francisco Chronicle--the paper is shamelessly begging for gay love. "Leave it to the Chronicle to feature bare asses on your front page," he wrote in a letter to the editor that ran in today's paper. Vinsko referenced a June 16 front-page photo with naked asses belonging to people who swim in Big Sur's NEW AGE weirdo camp, the ESALEN baths. "No doubt, a nod to your homosexual readers," Vinsko explained in a stunning moment of analytic clarity that brings great PRIDE to the city of Los Altos.


Jupiter

Orbits of Eeee-vil

WASHINGTON, D.C.--In a joint press conference this week, NASA confirmed that a planet just like Jupiter has been found in the distant constellation Cancer, and the White House announced that it has been added to the list of potential targets for a pre-emptive military strike, right after "Iraq, Iran and South Korea, and before the Falkland Islands and the Islands of Langerhans."

Homeland Security chief Tom Rush explained, "With more than 60 countries worldwide acting together to strike at the heart of American democracy, it's obvious that they're getting outside help." According to Rush, the usurper planet is part of a new, deadly nexus of nefariousness--the so-called "Orbits of Evil."

In addition to the upstart faux Jupiter, certain planets in our own solar system have been targeted for intense scrutiny. "Well, obviously, Mars," said Rush. They been spoiling for a fight since the Big Bang. Then there's Uranus. The name alone is an affront."

Although only a Suborbit of Evil at this time, the moon is also being monitored. "They're spying on us nightly," said one NASA official. "Sea of Tranquillity, my ass."


Illustration
Illustration by Jumma Jahdid

I Saw You: Lost Love

It has been four years since we held both hands, facing each other ... seeing with every sense because this would be the last time. Ever. Oh, and I remember months later, a frantic message on my answering machine from you: "This isn't how it was supposed to end up." But I was over indecision, heat and the crazy desperate needing of you. I settled for the boy that adored me and never said no, still never says no. I yawn, but I'm content. My heart doesn't leap, but it doesn't tear apart either. But at night, you plead with me in my sleep, and I wake up with a foggy memory of gray-green eyes the color of the sea.


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From the June 27-July 3, 2002 issue of Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper.

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