MONDAY, MAY 17 As usual, the week began with an Iraqi bang, as Izzadine Saleem, the sixty- something Shiite Muslim serving a monthlong stint as president of the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, was killed by a car bomb while waiting at a military checkpoint on the outskirts of the heavily fortified coalition headquarters. According to Iraqi officials, today's strike killed a total of nine people (including the bomber). According to U.S. officials, the attack bore the "classic hallmarks" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant with links to al Qaeda. And according to Reuters, the blast handily demonstrated the insurgents' ability to strike high-profile targets "in the shadow of what should be the most secure area in all of Iraq." Following the death of the Governing Council's president-for-May, the council moved on to the president-for-June: Sunni Muslim civil engineer Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, who will lead the council until the June 30 transfer of power or until he goes boom, whichever comes first.

-- Meanwhile, beloved comedian/Jell-O spokes-man Bill Cosby made a bunch of fresh enemies with a speech delivered tonight at a Washington, D.C., bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Continuing his longstanding battle against the use of ebonics by African Americans, Cos riled the crowd with an array of jaw-dropping quotes: "Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads.... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!" Stay tuned for highlights of the backlash....

TUESDAY, MAY 18 Today brought the breathtaking story of Roger Chamberlain, the man arrested in Broome County, New York, after allegedly slathering every inch of a Motel 6 suite with Vaseline. According to the Associated Press, Chamberlain's one-man Cremaster Cycle was discovered after he checked out of a Motel 6 north of Binghamton, New York, leaving the motel's cleaning crew to find every surface in the room--including the TV, mattress, bedding, towels, carpet, and furniture--covered with petroleum jelly. The motel manager then summoned the cops, who found a bunch of pornography and 14 empty Vaseline containers in the room's presumably Vaseline-slathered trash can. Police tracked Chamberlain to another nearby motel, where the 44-year-old Chamberlain--covered from head to toe with his beloved jelly--was arrested on charges of felony criminal mischief. Meanwhile, Chamberlain's former "Vaseline suite" remains unusable, according to the Motel 6 manager, who estimates the damage to the room and its contents at over $1,000.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19 Speaking of rented lodgings: Today the Associated Press revealed the last thing any sane person would even think about touching in a hotel room: the TV remote. "Think about it," urged the nameless AP writer. "Almost every guest in that room has touched it, the maid doesn't clean it, and the dirt and bacteria are invisible." These tragic allegations are confirmed by University of Arizona microbiology professor Chuck Gerba, who told the Arizona Republic he's even found fecal bacteria on remotes. "Just remember," said Gerba. "Every place you're touching, someone else did it before you."

-- To make matters worse, the preceding story boasted a link to a veritable library of germaphobe porn, with the majority of stories beginning with the word "Ew!," including "Ew! What's in Kitchen Sponges?" ("If you have used your kitchen sponge longer than two or three days, it's swimming with millions of bacteria, specifically E. coli, salmonella, or campylobacter") and "Ew! Never Eat Lunch at Your Desk" ("The toilet seat in the office bathroom is cleaner!").

-- Speaking of germaphobes: Today brought a wealth of heartfelt obituaries for Tony Randall, who earned his place in the pop-culture pantheon portraying finicky neat freak and seminal metrosexual Felix Unger on TV's The Odd Couple before dying in his sleep Monday night at age 84. The late Mr. Randall has always held a unique place in Last Days' life, as one of our earliest same-sex memories involves our curious admiration for the hair on Tony Randall's forearms. Yes, this is true, and yes, we wish it were not.

THURSDAY, MAY 20 Nothing happened today (unless you count the gorgeous Pasadena wedding of Last Days' best-friend-from-high-school-and-beyond Mindy, who today became the wife of the luckiest man in the world, Robert).

FRIDAY, MAY 21 Today brings a beguiling story of deliberate filth and accidental voyeurism courtesy of Hot Tipper Zach, who was just sitting down for a long night of term-paper writing when he spied from his window a woman sitting in Boylston Avenue's Tashkent Park. "Not an uncommon sight," writes Zach, "but then she whips out her tit and starts stroking it, apparently out of arousal and some kind of itching. Then, with her tit still firmly outside of her shirt, she moves on to her foot, which is caked with dirt, which she begins picking and stroking. She then brings the dirty foot to her face and begins licking it. And not just licking it--she was treating it as though it was the sweetest piece of ass she had come across in a good while, completely oblivious to the mid-evening dog-walkers and passersby all around her. I was completely fucking disgusted, but I couldn't take my eyes off it."

SATURDAY, MAY 22 Meanwhile in Saint Paul, Minnesota: A child-heavy crowd at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus performance was treated to the once-in-a-lifetime sight of celebrated Mexican aerialist Dessi Espana falling thirty feet onto a concrete floor and into the afterlife. Adding terror to tragedy, Espana's plunge was followed by the appearance of clowns, who bounced onto the scene to draw attention away from the fatally injured aerialist. "[My kids] were really distraught," said mother-of-two Laurie Burnham to the Associated Press. "Especially because the ringmaster started up again like nothing had happened." Dessi Espana is survived by her circus-performer husband, Ivan, and the pair's two circus-performer children.

SUNDAY, MAY 23 Once again, the week ends on a fittingly holy note, as Last Days closed our brief California visit with a day at the Getty Center, whose ample collection of religious paintings allowed us to indulge in our favorite spectator sport: comparing Annunciation scenes. For the heathens: The Annunciation is the biblical event in which the archangel Gabriel announces to Mary that she has been knocked up by God, and the scene has been painted to great effect by too many artists to name. The key to any Annunciation scene is the artist's characterization of participants, which ranges from dry 'n' devotional (angelic angel, pre-haloed Mary) to starkly psychodramatic (threatening angel, pissed-off Mary). The Getty's Annunciations ran the gamut, with the best in show by Cenni di Francesco di ser Cenni (militaristic angel, irritated Mary), Fra Angelico (demanding angel, "Who, me?" Mary), and Paolo Veneziano (earnest angel, surprised-but-honored Mary), while the least in show came from Godfried Schalcken (Michael Bolton angel, Brontë-sister Mary) and Dieric Bouts (Linda Hunt-ish angel, distracted Mary, who may be praying or might just be checking her nails).

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