MONDAY, MAY 10 After so many years spent detailing horrible instances of child abuse, Last Days feels a moral obligation to share the occasional story suggesting the parent-child relationship can foster something besides malice--a fact made wonderfully clear by today's Reuters report on Tyler Moon, the seven-year-old boy in Canberra, Australia, who trudged through 1.3 miles of rugged bush with broken ribs and collapsing lungs to get help for his dad, seriously injured after his all-terrain vehicle overturned 120 miles south of Sydney. "He was always a hero in my eyes," said Tyler's mother to reporters today. "He's now just a hero in everyone else's eyes."

TUESDAY, MAY 11 In far worse news: Today an al Qaeda-linked website posted a video of an American man in Iraq being beheaded by his masked Iraqi captors. Last Days is far too wussy to watch the video ourselves, so for details we turn to CNN, which reports the video begins with the captured American identifying himself as Nicholas Berg--a 26-year-old "independent businessman" from Pennsylvania. Berg is pushed to the ground and then (mercifully out of the picture) "heard screaming," after which one of the captors holds up Berg's severed head. The armed, masked captors allege that the U.S. refused an offer to exchange Berg for prisoners at Abu Ghraib, claiming Berg's beheading was retaliation for U.S. prison abuses and issuing a direct statement to President Bush: "The worst is coming and, God willing, the tough days are still to come. You and your soldiers will regret the day that you touched the ground of Iraq."

--Meanwhile back in the U.S.: Nine former students at a Roman Catholic school for the deaf filed a lawsuit alleging torment, beatings, and rape at the hands of nuns who ran the now-defunct Boston School for the Deaf between 1944 and 1977. The Associated Press reports that the plaintiffs include three women and six men between 41 and 67 years old, all speech- and hearing-impaired, who allege they were subjected to an array of physical and sexual abuses while attending the school from age seven to 16. Meanwhile the defendants are split between two groups: those accused of participating in abuse (specified in the suit as fondling, rape, and rape with a foreign object) and those accused of ignoring abuse, including at least 14 nuns, a priest, a male athletic instructor, and a former top official of the Boston Archdiocese. Addressing the allegations, an attorney for the school told the Associated Press: "Our guiding principle here will be to conduct our investigation and deal with this with sensitivity, respect and dignity." (Last year, the archdiocese dispensed a sensitive, respectful, and dignified $85 million in settlements to more than 550 people who say they were abused by Roman Catholic priests.)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 12 Speaking of clergy abuse: This morning at a religious festival in Cualac, Mexico, a priest fatally shot a mayor. Reuters reports the deadly interaction was sparked after the priest and mayor got drunk and began punching each other. After an exchange of blows, Father Lorenzo Cuellar whipped out a 9 mm pistol and fired four bullets into Lorenzo Ruiz Villareal, mayor of Chalpatlahuac, an indigenous town nestled in the mountains 138 miles west of the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo. "It seems they were arguing, these two men," said Guerrero state spokesman Jesus Nava. "They had words and the priest shot the mayor." The priest was arrested by local authorities--but not before he also shot the mayor's son, who is expected to make a full recovery.

THURSDAY, MAY 13 Today brings a beguiling Hot Tip from Hot Tipper Pierre, who was walking down Third Avenue toward the corner of Stewart when he almost tripped over a prosthetic leg. "Not some ghetto leg, off a mannequin or something," writes Pierre, "but a really nice titanium deal, with a decent shoe attached." The mystery thickened with the arrival of a middle-aged Latino gentleman, who approached from the opposite direction and laughingly gave Pierre the skinny on how the leg came to be litter. According to the Latino eyewitness, the saga began with a "very vocal disagreement" between a very haggard couple, with the haggard woman accusing the haggard man of "fucking around on her." After slapping her allegedly low-down man, the woman yanked off his prosthetic leg and proceeded to clobber him with it. As the alleged victim attempted to hop away to safety, the still-furious woman threw his leg as far as she could in the opposite direction--which is how it came to land in the path of Hot Tipper Pierre, who reports, "It made my day."

--Meanwhile, over on Third and Union: Hot Tipper Shelly--who happens to be pregnant--had just sat down to enjoy her lunch when she noticed a "friendly seagull" standing nearby. "At first I thought, 'How cute, I'm near nature!'" writes Shelly. "But after two bites of my turkey sub, this bungholey seagull swiped the whole thing out of my hand!" Shelly's sandwich landed a few feet away in a flower bed, but she promptly retrieved it and hucked it back at the offending gull. "You cannot steal food from a pregnant woman and think you're not gonna pay," writes Shelly. "Plus, I think this seagull was part of the Ivar's gang, which tends to attract highly aggressive, fat-eating bastards."

FRIDAY, MAY 14 Nothing happened today (unless you count Hot Tipper Donovan's gruesome public-grooming sighting in front of Seattle's Best Coffee on Broadway, where Donovan was assaulted by the sight of a "tweaked-out street-trash couple caught in a moment of primatelike grooming," as the girl strained to pop a huge zit on the guy's forehead).

SATURDAY, MAY 15 Nothing happened today (unless you count the mini-drama sighted by Hot Tipper April, who was standing at the corner of Broadway and Denny when she saw a one-legged hobo drop his crack pipe, only to be mocked by a merciless two-legged bystander).

SUNDAY, MAY 16 The week ends on a fittingly holy note with an unprecedented act of public-grooming contrition. Readers will recall the two-week-old grievances of Hot Tipper Rachel, who reported being forced to watch a woman shave her legs and bikini area in the ladies' shower at the Ballard Pool. "I hope that skank has an opportunity to read this, so she gets the message to clean up her body hair at home," fumed Rachel, whose dreams came true today as Last Days received a contrite email from the skank herself! "What can I say?" writes admirably responsible Hot Tipper "Trixie." "I had a hot date with the boyfriend after our swim and I wanted to present him a well-trimmed bikini area. Please accept my apologies."

Dear everyone: Over the past few years, I've hosted a bunch of annotated screenings of Showgirls, the peerless cinematic failure directed by Paul Verhoeven and produced by MGM. A couple months ago, MGM tracked me down--not to sue, but to have me contribute a commentary track to the special edition Showgirls DVD to be released at the end of July. Before this DVD renders me obsolete, I'm hosting one last Showgirls blowout at the Showbox on Wed, May 26. For tix and info see Ticketswest.com.

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