MONDAY, MARCH 20 This week of abrupt and horrifying death kicks off with—surprise—an abrupt and horrifying death, albeit one that will be rendered largely unremarkable by the events that will unfold on Seattle's Capitol Hill approximately 100 hours from today. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now, Last Days is concerned solely with the saga of Larry Mugrage, the 15-year-old high-school freshman in Batavia, Ohio, who was fatally shot yesterday after daring to walk across a neighbor's exceedingly well-groomed lawn. Details come from the Associated Press, which reports the lawn in question belongs to Charles Martin, a 66-year-old man known in the neighborhood for his pristine front lawn featuring well-trimmed shrubbery and U.S. and Navy flags. But all hell broke loose yesterday afternoon when young Larry Mugrage cut across Charles Martin's celebrated lawn, inspiring Martin to allegedly whip out his shotgun and shoot the 15-year-old in the chest. At least Martin had the decency to call for help: "I just killed a kid," Martin reportedly said to his 911 dispatcher. He was right: Mugrage was soon pronounced dead at a local hospital, and Martin remains jailed on one charge of murder.

TUESDAY, MARCH 21 In lighter news, today the world was introduced to crystal meth's new best friends: baby boomers. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports that the number of people over 55 seeking treatment for meth addiction increased from 44 in 1992 to 693 in 2003. Further details come from the AP, which reports that the flood of baby-boomer meth heads—many of whom are seeking treatment after living with addiction throughout middle age—is becoming a crisis for many already overstretched social-service agencies. Even worse, treating older addicts is typically more expensive than treating younger ones, with "years of addiction and deep-seated habits" blamed for the extended care regimens frequently required by elderly addicts. Tiny upside: the birth of a fascinating new subgenre in the growing canon of methamphetamine literature, with oldsters offering wrinkly new spins on living with the devil of meth. The AP's representative protagonist: Mike Walls, a cross-country truck driver who "never envisioned his golden years as a fight with drug addiction when a friend gave him a plastic bag of crystal-like powder and a promise of youth nearly two decades ago." Now 55, Walls is an AARP-friendly meth poster boy, with rotten teeth, frayed nerves, and high blood pressure all brought on by his decade-and-a-half dance with Tina. Granted, it's easy to understand the appeal of crystal to the over-50 set—God knows a wee bump o' the meth might help anyone navigate Medicare's prescription-drug plans. But according to experts, older meth heads have a much harder row to hoe than their younger counterparts, with the drug's detrimental effects—kidney disorders, liver and brain damage, faces that look like Satan's drag strip—striking vulnerable older users far more severely. Add to these concerns the threat of roving bands of methed-up sexagenarian sex freaks, and the baby-boomer meth explosion sounds like a dire public crisis waiting to happen. Stay tuned.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 In relatively good news, today brought a finale to the legal saga of Michael J. Smith, the U.S. Army sergeant/dog handler convicted yesterday of criminally mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Among Smith's prison-guard achievements: directing his unmuzzled black Belgian shepherd to lunge at and lick peanut butter from prisoners' bodies, and competing with another soldier to see whose dog could scare a detainee into soiling himself first. Today brought Smith's sentencing, where the sullied sergeant faced the possibility of up to eight years behind bars. According to the AP, prosecutors urged the jury to sentence Smith to no less than three years, suggesting Smith's deeds threatened to undermine the United States' "standing in the world," while the defense pushed for Smith's immediate release, arguing that while the soldier had clearly made "mistakes" at Abu Ghraib, Smith believed he'd been following orders about "soften[ing] up prisoners for interrogation." In the end, Smith was sentenced to a scant but not insignificant six months, after which he'll be demoted to private and receive a bad-conduct discharge from the service. Sgt. Smith swallowed his punishment with insouciance. "Soldiers are not supposed to be soft and cuddly," said Smith to his jury, expressing his wish that he'd gotten his orders in writing. Good luck to Smith, who's not the first sick fuck to claim—perhaps even honestly—to have been "just following orders"; here's hoping his six months in the slammer teach him a valuable but nonfatal lesson about sadism.

THURSDAY, MARCH 23 After a week of right-wing griping over the media's alleged failure to accentuate the positive of the ongoing travesty in Iraq, it is with great ostentation that Last Days reports today's rescue of three Western hostages who'd been in the possession of an Iraqi guerrilla group for nearly four months. Congratulations to the "multinational military force" that stormed the western Baghdad house where Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden and Briton Norman Kember were being held hostage, and condolences to the family and friends of Tom Fox, today's rescued hostages' American colleague, whose tortured-then-dumped body was found in Baghdad on March 9. In closing, those perpetual pessimists at the New York Times pointed out that within one hour of the rescue, Baghdad was hit by four car bombs, which killed at least 23 people and wounded at least 48 more. Still, nice going on the rescue.

FRIDAY, MARCH 24 Nothing happened today, unless you count the first few hours of the CHAC dance party and whatever preparations and torments busied the mind of one terribly well-armed and ultimately suicidal freak.

SATURDAY, MARCH 25 Today brought one of the worst crimes in Seattle history to Capitol Hill, where an otherwise peaceful rave afterparty became the scene of a horrifying and heartrending tragedy. This tragedy is covered in-depth elsewhere in the issue; here, let us just express our shock and sorrow, and extend our most sincere condolences to the friends and families of the victims.

SUNDAY, MARCH 26 Nothing happened today, unless you count the citywide sorrow and obsession over the fatally fucked-up events of yesterday. While facts surfaced steadily about victims and killer, the motive for the massacre remained a mystery. The means, however, are apparently available to anyone who wanders into a guns-and-ammo expo with a checkbook. Renewed condolences to the victims' cruelly fucked-over loved ones, and may God have mercy on a society that affords even the most confused citizens easy access to high-powered weaponry.

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