From the Apr 8 – Apr 14, 2004 issue

Columns

Last Days

by David Schmader

MONDAY, MARCH 29 The week begins with an answer to a question that has been skulking around Last Days' brain for weeks: Namely, who did Mel Gibson envision as the target audience for his Passion of the Christ, in which the most eloquent peacemaker in history is reduced to a wordless hunk of bloody meat? Early guesses at the answer (barely dormant anti-Semites? blood fetishists?) were today relegated to the dustbin as Reuters revealed the true identity of The Passion's most passionate demographic: guilt-ridden criminals. Following last week's Passion-inspired confession of a man in Texas, who admitted to murdering his pregnant 19-year-old girlfriend (whose death authorities had officially ruled a suicide), today brought news of another do-badder driven to confess by Gibson's gore-fest. According to Reuters, 41-year-old Norwegian neo-Nazi Johnny Olsen presented himself to Oslo authorities after seeing Gibson's Tenderizing of the Christ to take responsibility for a pair of previously unexplained bombings in Oslo during the mid-1990s. Police charged the repentant Olsen with arson, and Gibson's bloody Jesus smiled beneath his festering welts. (The fact that Jesus also aimed his art at criminals is duly noted.)

>>Speaking of Jews: Today Last Days received an e-mail from a reader who objected to our humane obituary for executed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound, sexagenarian paraplegic killed by an Ariel Sharon-directed missile on March 22. Unfortunately, we accidentally deleted the polite and well-written e-mail (whose main point was the suggestion that the only ink-worthy victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are Jews) and so we must respond to the reader here. Dear reader whose e-mail we accidentally deleted: What's important to remember is that there can be more than one victim in a situation--and being a victim doesn't preclude one from being a bully. There's also a distinction to be made between being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic--take it from Last Days, who will forever be riotously supportive of the Jewish people's natural place in and crucial contribution to the 21st-century world, yet continues to grow increasingly ambivalent about the Chosen People's wouldn't-wanna-live-there homeland. Thanks for writing.

TUESDAY, MARCH 30 Today brought a face-stingingly weird story from San Diego, where a pair of citizens recently fell victim to an absolutely horrible conglomeration of circumstance. According to Reuters, the saga began last September, when 35-year-old Michael Todd Howard arranged a meeting with a woman he'd met in an Internet chat room catering to rape fantasies. As arranged, Michael Howard "broke" into the woman's apartment after nightfall and proceeded to beat and sexually assault the 25-year-old woman inside. Tragically, the would-be fantasy rapist entered the wrong apartment, and thus attacked the wrong woman, who "believed she was going to be killed" before she managed to temporarily incapacitate the unknown intruder by "attacking [his] testicles." Following the impromptu testicle attack, Howard asked the victim for the name she used in the chat room, only to be informed that the woman had never visited a chat room and didn't own a computer. Today Michael Howard pleaded guilty to a charge of residential burglary, and now faces an expected sentence of one year in jail and probation.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31 Speaking of sex crimes and cyberspace: Today brought some fascinating background to the case of Ronald Young, the 41-year-old Key Peninsula foster father charged last week with 30 counts of first-degree child rape, eight counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, and six counts of first-degree child molestation. Today the Seattle Times reported on the spooky postings left by Ronald Young over the years on the Internet. Tacoma police have confirmed that Young used the name "Homeanon" to write of his battle with his sexual urges for children and to post photographs of sex acts between men and boys. According to the Times, Young's anguished testimonials took place primarily in newsgroups catering to Christian pedophiles, with "Homeanon" (detectives believe the pseudonym refers to Young's residence in Home, WA, and his desire to remain anonymous) detailing his "minute by minute" struggle with his urges, and characterizing himself as a "boylover that has devoted my life to boys and introducing the love of Christ to them." More disturbingly, "Homeanon" also posted dozens of pornographic photographs, many featuring Young's foster children, sometimes in settings so graphic they reportedly offended other pedophiles in the newsgroup. Ronald Young remains in a Tacoma jail pending $2 million bail.

>>Meanwhile in Pennsylvania: A 15-year-old girl in the town of Latrobe has been arrested for allegedly taking sexually explicit photos of herself and posting them on the Internet. According to state police, the girl took photos of herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts, then sent the photos to people she met in Internet chat rooms. According to the Associated Press, the investigation is continuing as authorities attempt to identify all the people who received photos of the underage entrepreneur. Stay tuned.

>>And finally: Today in Fallujah, Iraq, Iraqi rebels ambushed a pair of SUVs containing four American contractors, whose burned, mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets by a frenzied crowd before two of the corpses were strung up from a bridge. Meanwhile, north of Fallujah, a bomb exploded under an M113 armored personnel carrier, killing five U.S. soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division.

THURSDAY, APRIL 1 Hot on the heels of last week's item about the systematic devaluation of African-American women, today brought a heartening story from the halls of Atlanta's Spelman College, where students at the historically black women's college organized to protest the "misogynistic lyrics and [video] images" of hiphop superstar Nelly, scheduled to appear at a bone-marrow drive organized by the rapper's charitable organization, 4 Sho 4 Kids, on the Spelman campus on Friday. Particularly distasteful to the Spelman students is the limited-release video for Nelly's "Tip Drill," featuring a slew of sexually suggestive scenes including footage of the 29-year-old rapper swiping a credit card down a woman's ass crack. Which brings up the question: How much pro-bone-marrow altruism does it take to outweigh boilerplate sexism? The answer may never be known, as MTV News reports that when word of the protest got to Nelly's foundation, it canceled the bone-marrow drive. Sorry, cancerinos.

FRIDAY, APRIL 2 "Dear Last Days," read the letter from Kim. "Sorry to see the misinformation in your March 19 entry regarding the AAJA Cranium tournament. According to my sources, the Stranger team lost in the first round to the mayor's office, with the real winners being Amazon.com in first place, MSN Money in second, and the Tacoma News Tribune in third. I hope that you have enough integrity to publish a clarification on this matter. I have a bet going that you don't, otherwise you would have told the truth in the first place." Dear Kim: As it turns out, not only do we have enough integrity to publish a clarification, we originally lacked enough integrity to knowingly publish a lie. Thanks for writing.

SATURDAY, APRIL 3 Nothing happened today (unless you count... nothing).

SUNDAY, APRIL 4 The week ends with a fresh blast of bloodshed in the Middle East, as the rioting supporters of an anti-American cleric killed eight U.S. troops and one Salvadoran soldier in four Iraqi cities Sunday. Meanwhile, two Marines were killed in a separate "enemy action" in al Anbar province.

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