MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 Last Days begins the week by answering the question trembling on the embarrassed lips of international news illiterates everywhere: Where is East Timor and what the hell is going on over there? Formerly a possession of Portugal, East Timor is a small half-island off the southeast coast of Indonesia that has been annexed by Indonesian military forces since 1976. The bloodbath currently soaking the region began in response to an August 30 referendum, where the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly (78.5%) to sever ties with Indonesia; within hours, anti-independence militias were roaming the streets, burning houses, and shooting anyone they believed had supported the move toward sovereignty. Tonight, after a week of escalating bloodshed, rampaging refugees, and near-anarchy (more than 170 people were slaughtered today alone), East Timor declared a state of martial law. One week from today, the United Nations will commit to dispatching an international peacekeeping force to help bring an end to the horrifying carnage. Having completed this foray into Current Events 101, Last Days can return to our primary subject matters: the presence of naked people in Seattle public parks, and the number of penises Kevin Spacey placed in his mouth en route to his heterosexuality-confirming interview with Playboy.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 Speaking of Spacey, today Last Days received local confirmation of the Oscar-winning actor's wayward sexual proclivities. A local man, who shall remain nameless, shared his story of hooking up with the then-unknown Spacey in New York in the mid-'80s -- a fascinating tale of on-street cruising, mediocre coupling, and post-coital reading of a Christian Science text by Mary Baker Eddy. For the record, Last Days takes no pleasure in outing homosexuals -- only in outing shameless, creepy fibbers.


WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 It's a story made in Last Days heaven: the fire-breathing trannie on the power lines. Before sunrise this morning, Ara Tripp, a 38-year-old post-operative transsexual from Olympia, scaled a 180-foot electrical tower near the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge. As pre-work traffic grew heavy, Tripp began her death-defying performance: stripping to the waist, dancing, and spitting flames as 120,000 volts of electricity surged past her ankles. Tripp's booberrific display -- designed to protest discriminatory laws that forbid women to go topless -- stopped traffic for miles, and prompted Seattle City Light to disconnect power to thousands of Eastlake and North Capitol Hill customers; unfortunately, it also forced the dispatching of an emergency helicopter to transport an injured traffic victim to the hospital (bad trannie!). According to Tripp's friend Robin Toye (quoted in the Seattle P-I), Tripp hoped her rigorously planned stunt would lead to her arrest and eventual appearance on radio and television talk shows. It's too soon to tell if Tripp will land on Jerry Springer's stage, but her dreams of arrest came true at 9:03 a.m., when she descended the tower and handed herself over to Seattle police, who booked her on misdemeanor charges of trespassing and indecent exposure.


THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 Today the computer world braced for what many considered to be the dry run for Y2K: 9-9-99. Analysts feared today's digitized date might be read as "9999," the code number used by many older mainframe computers to shut down their systems. However, despite the hype, absolutely nothing at all interesting happened, so let's never speak of this again.

··Speaking of hype adding up to nothing: Tonight was the MTV Music Awards, and hordes of the music world's hottest stars descended upon New York City's Metropolitan Opera House to show off their fancy duds, lip-synch their hit songs, and treat each other like shit. Most of the abuse came from host Chris Rock, that foxy wise-ass who's meaner than a junkyard dog and five times as funny (unless the dog happens to be wearing big floppy shoes, in which case Rock is only one and a half times as funny). Rock's prime barbs were directed at the Backstreet Boys ("Don't you remember Menudo? Don't you know how this story ends??") and Jennifer Lopez's ass. Suspiciously absent from Rock's comprehensive shit list was multiple winner Lauryn Hill, who has apparently achieved a nearly Cicely Tyson-esque level of irreproachability. Thankfully, dumb geriatric honky Paul McCartney got in an inadvertent jab at the divine Miss H., introducing her to the stage as "Lawrence Hill -- I love him!" and offering further proof that Mark David Chapman shot the wrong Beatle.


FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 Today was Rosh Hashanah, and across the globe Jews and those who love them rang in the New Year by sounding the unblemished ram's horn and dipping apples in honey. Fortunately, the much-feared RH2K problem -- where Torah-ready computers recognize only the last two digits of year number 5760, inspiring Babylonians to re-destroy the Kingdom of Judea -- failed to materialize. "We're very relieved," said Seattle Rabbi Matthew Richter.


SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 Forget Bumbershoot; today Last Days hauled our ecstatic ass 32 miles south to the Northwest's true arts festival: The Puyallup Fair, where cuddly farm beasts, puke-inducing amusements, and deep-fried everything conspire to create a cultural experience that leaves those snootier festivals choking on their overcrowded dust. Highlights from the unfortunately nicknamed Pu-WOW-Up include Elmer, a 2,340-lb. Red Holstein cow with deep brown eyes and bright yellow slobber; Hobby Hall, the collectors' display emporium featuring an absolutely terrifying assortment of what appear to be sexually abused dolls; and the Extreme Scream, a hydraulic-powered, free-fall ride that shoots riders eight stories into the air, then sends them plummeting -- screaming and occasionally soiling themselves -- back to earth, all for only $10. But the fair isn't all goofy fun and games: Things get sexy with the coin-operated Jiggle Foot Massage (a ferociously vibrating foot rest that, curiously, makes users' nipples erect), then soulful with the computerized handwriting analysis, where a bleeping robotic machine looked deep into Last Days' penmanship and determined that we have "a real zest for living." The Puyallup Fair continues through September 26.


SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 Two weeks ago in this paper, Jim Anderson published a charming step-by-step guide to citizen's arrest. Today, Jim's tips were thrillingly put to use by a freelance crimebuster in Seattle's University District. The scene of the crime was the Safeway store just off the Ave., where, in the beer aisle, our intrepid citizen spied a "gold-chained, J. Crew-sweatered frat boy" pocketing three bottles of Red Hook E.S.B. The citizen considered alerting store personnel, but the sticky-fingered frat rat was already hauling ass toward the exit, and there was no time to lose. Following the thief into the parking lot, the citizen ordered him to return to the store. "What'd I do?" the imposing thief demanded. "You know what you did!" countered our hero as he led the rat back into the store, pulled the beers from his pocket, and pronounced the words every human being on earth longs to say: "You're under citizen's arrest!" Authorities were called, the frat boy was booked, and the attending cops were dutifully impressed: "We've never actually dealt with a citizen's arrest before." Brace yourself, coppers. Citizen's arrest is sure to become the Macarena of the new millennium.

Hot tips, please.

E-mail lastdays@thestranger.com or call the 24-hour Hot Tips Hotline at 323-7101 ext. 3113.