MONDAY, MARCH 26 The week began with a bang for two-month-old Juhi Srivastava and her mother, Shilpi, when a four-foot-long metal bar fell off the troubled Alaskan Way Viaduct and, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, clattered to the ground mere inches from their noggins. Since the Ash Wednesday earthquake, authorities have expressed increased concern about the Viaduct, because it is built on loose fill that might liquefy during a stronger quake. Says the rattled mom about her near-death experience, "It was really scary."

·· Also today, in a move that shocked absolutely no one, Harley Lappin, a federal prison warden in Indiana, has told PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that the organization cannot compel condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to have a vegetarian dinner for his last meal. The animal-protection group had sent a letter asking that McVeigh not be allowed to take even one more life in his last meal. Interestingly, the federal government has not carried out an execution since 1963, when convicted kidnapper-murderer Victor Feuger was hanged in Iowa. For his last meal, Feuger chose an olive with a pit, reportedly saying that he hoped a tree that symbolizes peace would sprout from his grave. Last Days predicts that when taciturn psycho-cracker McVeigh is finally planted, his earthly remains will sprout nothing but protein-rich worms.

·· Also today, the British army sent in bulldozers to dig a mass grave the length of a football field for up to 500,000 infected farm animals in its latest attempt to bring the foot-and-mouth epidemic under control. European political leaders are panicked about the disease, which threatens the livelihoods of farmers and tourism operators. Said Conservative MP John Redwood, "Tourists do not want to come and see the deathly pall of smoke hanging like some painting of Dante's 'Inferno' across the hills and valleys." Maybe Europe just needs to get more creative with its marketing strategies. Gosh, we know plenty of dirty hippies... ah, pardon, we mean tourists... who flock to godforsaken Nevada for the deathly pall of smoke at Burning Man.

·· Also today, U.S. authorities announced that they have broken up an Internet child-pornography ring based in Russia. The atrociously monikered Blue Orchid site operated from March to December last year, and sold several hundred videos featuring the sexual abuse of young Russian boys. Just before the website was shut down, the group had begun making child-porn films to order, charging $5,000 per video. We are appalled. It's creeps like these who ruin decent porn for the rest of us.

TUESDAY, MARCH 27 McDonald's Canada is being sued for $11.2 million by a traumatized Toronto family, Reuters reported. The family claims that a severed rat's head was found nestled among layers of special sauce in a Big Mac that was about to be eaten by a nine-year-old girl. After biting into the sodden patty, Ayan Abdi Jama noticed the remains of the recently departed rodent, "complete with eyes, teeth, nose and whiskers," says the claim. Ted Charney, the lawyer for the family, said, "From a parent's point of view, how would you feel if you watched your child take a bite out of a rat's head?" For $11 million, Last Days would happily watch our kid tongue-kiss the damn thing.

·· Also today, a young monk was arrested on a murder charge in the beating and stabbing death of a nun he worked with at a private religious school in Miami. Police said 18-year-old Mykhalo Kofel, a Ukrainian national who was a monk in a Byzantine monastic order, confessed to breaking into 39-year-old Michelle Lewis' home with the intent to kill her. The police declined to discuss a motive, however. Is it just us, or does it seem that the news of late has been teeming with tainted meat and monks run amok? It's giving us the willies.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 The willies abound in a chilling videotape set to be the "star witness" at the trial of two therapists charged in the death of Candace Newmaker, a 10-year-old girl who suffocated last April while in the midst of a so-called "rebirthing." Jeane Newmaker, the child's adoptive mother, paid psychotherapists Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder $7,000 to cure Candace's reactive attachment disorder. During the rebirthing therapy, the child was wrapped in a blanket, upon which counselors pressed down to simulate contractions. The girl told her therapists that she could not breathe and was going to die, but the therapists responded, "You got to push hard if you want to be born, or do you want to stay in there and die?" According to an investigator, there was a 20-minute lapse between the time that Candace's last breath could be heard and the time she was unwrapped. Craig Silverman, a Denver attorney and former prosecutor, said of the macabre videotape, "It's like a snuff film." It's murderous New Age mumbo-jumbo like this that causes Last Days to view anyone with an "I brake for angels" bumper sticker with deep suspicion.

THURSDAY, MARCH 29 An embarrassed Washington, D.C. police force vowed to sniff out officers responsible for sending hundreds of racist, homophobic, and vulgar text messages over their patrol-car communication system.

Terrance Gainer, assistant chief of police for the District of Columbia, told Reuters that about 10 percent of the 3,600-member force were thought to be involved in the cyber-scandal. In an inadvertently hilarious understatement, he added that some messages (like "Let's go buy some dope" or "Let's go beat this person up") "seemed to" relate to illegal activities.

·· Speaking of illegal activities, Last Days woke up this morning, drank a cup of milky green tea, kissed our dog, and stepped outside to discover that our car had been stolen--right in front of our Ballardian shack. In case any loyal readers should see a gang of wayward youth chugging along in a white Toyota van with a 497-KEV license plate and a pink "Princess" bumper sticker, could you make a citizen's arrest? We aren't sure what a citizen's arrest is exactly, but we'd still be enormously grateful for the gesture.

FRIDAY, MARCH 30 Today we suddenly realized that our favorite black sweater was in our car that was stolen.

SATURDAY, MARCH 31 Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president and tyrannical architect of genocidal ethnic cleansing, was finally arrested in a tense nighttime raid and taken to jail, Reuters reported. The move put Milosevic behind bars on suspicion of abuse of office; he is also wanted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in Kosovo. The commando raid on Milosevic's compound came just before the expiration of a deadline set by the United States for Yugoslavia to cooperate with the UN tribunal or face severe economic sanctions.

SUNDAY, APRIL 1 Undoubtedly, the rest of the world went about its business today. We can assume that lots of healthy babies were born and their soggy afterbirths enthusiastically consumed. We can probably presume that a woman somewhere sat on her husband's best friend's face while thinking about what it would be like to have wings. And maybe, just maybe, somebody laboring in a light-bulb factory made up another "How many________does it take to... ?" joke. Astoundingly, all of this proceeded despite the fact that our car was stolen.

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