MONDAY, MARCH 19 Last Days begins the week offering thanks to the many Hot Tippers who wrote in to inform us that Lesotho is not, in fact, an oceanic sweatshop trawler where Third World laborers are forced to work in unsafe conditions for negligible wages producing T-shirts for Old Navy. Lesotho (pronounced: le-zoo-too) is a landlocked southern African country approximately the size of Maryland where many citizens work in unsafe conditions for negligible wages producing T-shirts for Old Navy. Thanks to our helpful readers for putting this blue wedge in our trivial pie!

··Also today, Adrian Matthew, a high-school basketball coach (and colossal dumbass), was charged with "luring and enticing children" after he allegedly smoked the kind weed with four students before a state playoff basketball game, Reuters reported. On February 28, the phys-ed teacher, who coaches a boys varsity team in Lenape, New Jersey, invited the students--a 15-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl, and two 17-year-old girls--to his groovy pad where he allegedly smoked them stupid before driving them to the big game. Sadly, Reuters declined to report whether the sporty stoners were then able to dribble their way to victory.

··Also today, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer breathlessly reported that fiendishly clever cyber-terrorists critical of Kirkland have posted names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, and purported Social Security numbers of the sleepy hamlet's police officers and city officials on the Internet. The site, posted anonymously, does not exactly encourage violence. But its text suggests that any resulting harm to law officers is "not our problem."

··Also today, Last Days was amused and confused by an anonymous Hot Tipper who wrote in to describe an event called "The Brides of March." Seems that an undisclosed number of puppet-making, art-car driving, Fremont-Fair-y types garbed themselves in white wedding gowns and gathered at Westlake Center where they posed for photographs with confused tourists. The troupe of brides marched en masse to Nordstrom Rack to register their patterns and then on to the Seattle Art Museum to meet their mutual mate--the Hammering Man. After the ceremony was completed and a few brave brides attempted to consummate the marriage, they immediately sued for divorce on the grounds that the Man is a cold, stony, rigid, heartless, uncommunicative workaholic who never came home.

TUESDAY, MARCH 20 Thirty-two-year-old Abraham Abdallah, a high-school dropout and lowly busboy, allegedly stole millions of dollars from the accounts of 217 of America's wealthiest people including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, director Steven Spielberg, CNN founder Ted Turner, Disney CEO Michael Eisner, and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, Reuters reported today. "He used the Internet. He was very creative and very innovative. He was very persistent," said New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Help us reason through this, please. What's the point of stealing a juicy chunk of Oprah's riches if you're still carrying her dirty dishes into the kitchen? Damn, boy, go buy an island or something.

··Also today, the Vatican acknowledged a damning report published on March 16 in the National Catholic Reporter that some priests and missionaries were raping nuns and forcing the victims to have abortions, Reuters reported. The Vatican said the issue was restricted to a certain geographical area, but the report cited cases in 23 countries, including the United States. The report describes the plight of one mother superior who complained that the priests had made 29 of her nuns pregnant. Bill Ryan, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "The stories are horrifying and disturbing to say the least."

··Also today, perhaps the previous item might help explain the horrifying and disturbing billboard Last Days just saw on Elliott Avenue that nearly caused us to veer into oncoming traffic. The Sears studio-looking photograph of a smiling priest seated in a white wicker settee holding exactly 11 babies purports to be an advertise- ment for something called "Priests for Life." As if this image weren't disquieting enough, it also reads, "Who will be the next life to set the world on fire?" What is this ad for exactly? Procreant priests? A potentially aborted Christ child? Infant arsonists? The mind fairly reels.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21 In a jaw-dropping statement on MSNBC's Hardball program, "Vice President" Dick Cheney said that new nuclear plants could reduce greenhouse gases better than the United Nations' "seriously flawed" Kyoto global-warming treaty, Reuters reported today. "If you're really serious about greenhouse gases, one of the solutions to that problem is to go back, and let's take another look at nuclear power, use that to generate electricity without having any adverse consequences.'' Presumably Cheney does not consider the 1979 near meltdown of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant that spewed out low-level radiation an "adverse consequence." Since Last Days lived within the 25-mile evacuation radius of this radioactive event and fully expects to one day birth mutants, we beg to differ.

THURSDAY, MARCH 22 Every once in awhile, a news event will come along that simply defies comprehension: The Dutch airline KLM was fined $14,340 Tuesday after it shredded--yes, shredded --440 Chinese squirrels in April 1999, Reuters reported today. The court ruled KLM staff at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport had no choice but to kill the animals, which had incorrect documents for their onward journey to the fur trade in Greece. But it reprimanded the airline for the poor treatment of the squirrels in the days leading to the slaughter, when they were kept in cramped cages without food or water. KLM spokesman Hugo Baas told Reuters the airline was considering donating a further 15,000 guilders to an animal cause such as the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. "I share the fierce emotions which people had when they heard about it.... It sent shivers down your spine."

FRIDAY, MARCH 23 It was such an intoxicatingly beautiful spring day today that Last Days fled our suffocating shack and went to the park where we spied a towheaded toddler on the swings. Every time her father pushed her, she emitted a high-pitched squeal of delight so piercing, primal, and contagious that we were overcome with sympathetic laughter. The higher she went the more she screamed, and the more she screamed, the harder we laughed. We're lucky we got out of that park alive.

SATURDAY, MARCH 24 Today we saw a panty-liner floating in a puddle in Puyallup and it struck us as just about the saddest thing ever.

SUNDAY, MARCH 25 Tonight Last Days crouched close enough to lap at the television screen when our movie-star boyfriend, Russell Crowe, won his first best-actor Oscar for Gladiator. Although in his vaguely gothic velvet tuxedo and weird, greasy coif he looked a little bit like Eddie Munster, we still thrilled to his every word. "If you grow up... in the suburbs of anywhere, a dream like this seems... completely unattainable. This moment is directly connected to those childhood imaginings. And for anybody who's on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage, it's possible." Isn't that touching? Also, was it just me, or could everyone see Jennifer Lopez's nipples through her dress?

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