MONDAY, MARCH 21 As always, the week kicks off with the enemy of all humankind, reviled by everyone from Bob Geldof to Garfield: Monday, which was today experienced in all its optimism-obliterating menace by the Pierce County construction worker who went to work and wound up in the sewer. Details come from KING 5, which reports the 37-year-old worker with Coluccio Construction was attempting to repair the University Place sewer line when his safety harness disconnected and he was plunged into eternal brownness. "You can imagine what's down there," said Bob Atkinson with Pierce County Public Utilities. "Everything that's in a sewer. Everything's gooey, slimy, smells terrible..." After washing downstream for nearly three-quarters of a mile, the worker ended up "trapped in a 4-foot sewer pipe with less than 18 inches of breathing room with 15,000 gallons of waste water per minute gushing around him," KING 5 reports. "After about half an hour in pitch black and raw sewage... rescue crews pulled him from the pipe. He was exhausted and had a split lip and broken tooth, but all in all a very lucky man." Even luckier: all the people who made it through their Monday without being cast into a sewer.

TUESDAY, MARCH 22 The week continues in downtown Seattle, where this evening nearly two dozen supporters of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) rallied outside the West Precinct in the first of a series of demonstrations aimed at countering the unfair characterization of the SPD as a bunch of trigger-happy, Mexican-piss-stomping choke-holders whose practices demand investigation by the Justice Department. "The vast majority of officers do a really fine job," explained one attendee, an officer's wife, to The Stranger's Cienna Madrid (as reported on Slog). "It's unfair to judge a thousand men and women on the actions of just a few. It hurts their feelings. And you know what? That affects their job performance. It's a vicious cycle." Further insight into the SPD's image problem came from Dusty Pruitt, president of the Seattle Police Family Support Group, who told Madrid how negative media attention "affects [officers'] families... The positive stuff doesn't make the media. It's just a few isolated incidents. Cops saving puppies doesn't make the news." Confidential to SPD spokesfolk: Please alert Last Days to the next instance of a police officer saving a puppy. We swear to God we'll report it. (And seriously, deep thanks to the many, many members of the SPD who perform their jobs without resorting to excessive violence, racist rants, or unjustified fatal shootings.)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23 From demoralized public servants we turn to extinguished megastars, as today brings the final hours on earth for Elizabeth Taylor, the child-star-turned-Oscar-winning-actress whose singularly glamorous life as a movie star, serial divorcée, Michael Jackson enabler, tabloid staple, and history-making political activist came to an end today at age 79. As is often the case with dead old legends, whatever sadness today's loss engendered was obliterated by the avalanche of commemorations for Taylor's glorious life. Last Days' abridgement: Blessed with the most gorgeous head ever placed on a Caucasian woman, Taylor quickly distinguished herself as a first-rate film actor and exemplary movie star, introducing herself with National Velvet, winning best actress Oscars for Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and lighting up the screen with too many notable roles to mention (including Cleopatra, Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Wilma's mom in 1994's The Flintstones.) In her spare time, she got married, with her decades-spanning string of ex-husbands leaving her with the full name Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky. Most importantly, she was the first star to speak publicly about AIDS. Even better, she never stopped, devoting the last third of her life to AIDS activism: speaking before Congress, calling out progress-blocking politicians by name, and helping to raise more than $100 million to fight AIDS. "Elizabeth single-handedly made the war on HIV/AIDS cool for Hollywood to embrace," wrote Dana Miller in Los Angeles's gay magazine Frontiers. "Our community owes this incredible woman a debt of gratitude we can most certainly never repay."

THURSDAY, MARCH 24 In worse news, today we turn to the saga of Jeremy Morlock, better known as the US soldier sentenced to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing Afghan civilians for sport. As the New York Times reports, the sentencing went down yesterday in a military court at Washington's Joint Base Lewis-McChord: "Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, one of five soldiers from an Army Stryker brigade based here who are accused of staging combat situations to kill three civilians in Afghanistan last year, told the military judge presiding over the case that the deaths were neither justified nor accidental. 'The plan was to kill people, sir,' Specialist Morlock told the judge at the start of a court-martial... Specialist Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, is the first of the five to face a court-martial." Along with his guilty plea—which covered three counts of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder and assault—Morlock agreed to testify against other defendants in the case, who include a ranking officer who allegedly served as the sport-killing's ringleader and has steadfastly maintained the killings were part of combat operations.

FRIDAY, MARCH 25 Speaking of humanity-damning massacres, the week continues with a grim anniversary. As countless citizens will remember forever, it was on this day in 2006 that a deranged man with a pistol-grip shotgun and a semiautomatic handgun hunted down guests at a Capitol Hill house party. Fatally shot: 14-year-old Melissa Moore, 15-year-old Suzanne Thorne, 21-year-old Christopher Williamson, 22-year-old Justin Schwarz, 26-year-old Jeremy Martin, and 32-year-old Jason Travers. As for five-years-later reflection: It's still horrifying. The subhead to Eli Sanders's 2006 Stranger piece nails it: Kyle Huff Never Found a Place to Fit In. Last Saturday Morning He Murdered Six People Who Had. Condolences to all.

SATURDAY, MARCH 26 In better news, today brought a humongous protest in London, as nearly half a million people took to the streets to protest brutal budget cuts to jobs and services. No one was massacred.

SUNDAY, MARCH 27 In worse news, the week ends in Libya, where the struggle against Muammar el-Qaddafi got a human face thanks to Eman al-Obeidy, the 26-year-old law student who yesterday burst into the Tripoli hotel housing members of the foreign press to tell how she'd been raped and beaten by members of Qaddafi's militia. "After struggling for nearly an hour to resist removal by Colonel Qaddafi's security forces, she was dragged away from the hotel screaming," reports the New York Times, with verification provided by video of the altercation, which was posted to the web and shows an agitated Obeidy being forcibly silenced by hotel guards and waitstaff. "In a news conference on Saturday, [officials] said that Ms. Obeidy was in the custody of Libyan police detectives who were treating her as a sane person with a credible criminal case of abduction and rape," reports the NYT. By today, government officials were smearing her as a drunk lunatic and well-known whore. Today, the Washington Post interviewed Obeidy's mother, who says the government has offered her daughter money and a new house to change her story—an offer Obeidy has refused: "I will die rather than change my words," she said. By tomorrow, five men will be arrested in connection with the rape. Stay tuned.

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