MONDAY, OCTOBER 7 The week
begins with a thrilling retort to a previous Hot Tip. Readers will
recall the recent item sent in by Hot Tipper Sean, who was loitering near
the corner of James and Broadway two weeks ago when he saw a male-female couple get out of a car and retire to an apartment, where the sexy pair promptly got
down to making big noisy love. “The blinds are rattling, furniture’s moving, and
the girl is just letting loose,” wrote Sean, who nicknamed the lucky lady “the
Perfect Girl,” due to her habit of repeatedly crowing “Perfect!” during the
act of love. As our earlier item attested, Sean’s flattering moniker proved short-lived,
as two nights later, Sean saw his Perfect Girl “sucking tongue on a different
dude at the goddamn B&O.” Well, today Last Days received word from none other
than the Perfect Girl herself, who wrote to blast Sean for tattling and to clarify
Last Days’ interpretation of the events that made her Seattle’s anonymous celebrity
du jour. “I’m the perfect girl, I really am,” wrote the Perfect Girl. “And I’m
pretty fucking pissed at this Sean jerk for ratting me out. If either of those
guys had been my boyfriend, I’d be doing some serious apologizing right now.”
As for Last Days’ offer of congratulations for the Perfect Girl’s “streak of good
luck and/or sexual compulsion,” the Perfect Girl writes, “It was definitely a
streak of good luck. I’m far too lazy to be sexually compulsive.” Thanks to the
Perfect Girl for setting things straight.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8 Today brought the publication of a fascinating
Seattle Times story about the battle over free speech,
separation of church and state, and the very existence of God playing out in front of the Redmond Regional Library.* The saga began
two years ago, when Issaquah resident Matthew J. Barry noticed that a
number of memorial tiles in front of the Redmond library bore pro-Christian
messages such as “God Can Change Life.” A longtime proponent of the
separation of church and state, Mr. Barry contacted the King County Library
System, who informed him that library grounds serve as a public forum, where
the county is unable to restrict speech. So Mr. Barry contacted the Friends
of the Redmond Library, the nonprofit group responsible for selling the
six-by-six-inch memorial tiles. Upon learning of the Friends’ hands-off approach
to content on the memorial tiles, Barry bought four, emblazoning them
with such Christianity-countering slogans as “Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Thor,
& Brahma. They’re All Myths,” “Evolution is a Fact. Read About It,” and our favorite, “God Kills Babies. Read 1 Samuel 15:3. And God Is Love?”
Writing about his protest-by-engraving in the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s
newspaper, Barry said he never would’ve dreamed of placing such inscriptions
on a library’s grounds under normal circumstances. “However,” wrote Barry, “if
Christians (or any other religious folks) decide to shove their religion
down my throat, and if the government facilitates their efforts, then I’m going
to play ball, too. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” As complaints about
Barry’s contentious tiles rolled in–mostly from well-meaning citizens perturbed
at having a beloved family member’s memorial placed so near a reference to murdered
babies–the county placed a disclaimer plaque on the library wall that read,
“The views expressed on the tiles are those of the sponsors, not the King County
Library System.” But news of the free-speech battle continued to spread, with
the Friends of the Redmond Library besieged by so many requests for vulgar inscriptions
that they pulled the plug on the entire memorial-tile fundraiser last month,
leaving hundreds of blank tiles unsold. As for Barry’s now-legendary “God Kills
Babies” inscription, the Friends are considering moving the high-octane tile
away from its more benign neighbors. Stay tuned.
*News agencies love to report misdeeds occurring in or around libraries, hoping the Madonna-Sodom dichotomy of innocent libraries and criminal sin will give their stories extra oomph. Don’t be fooled. Libraries are far from the rarefied cathedrals of secular humanism they pretend to be, while librarians are the shadiest creatures this side of the Russian mob. Scratch the adamantly bland demeanor of any librarian and you’ll find trails of broken hearts, bathtubs full of meth fixings, and covert careers in porn. You can’t even get a job interview at a library unless you’ve gone to jail twice. Trust us, and beware.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 The week continues with a disgusting Hot
Tip from Hot Tipper Wanda, who had just finished lunching at Ha Na
on Broadway when she saw two young women–“pierced, with bad makeup”–walking
down the street before her. “One of the girls told her friend to wait for her,”
writes Wanda. “She then proceeded to vomit on the side of a tree.
And not just a little puke–an enormous amount, so much that I was afraid she’d
pass out in it.” Wanda’s concern grew as the sickly miss walked a few steps,
then puked anew all over another tree. “I don’t know what that
girl ate,” Wanda writes, “but I feel really sorry for those trees.” Thanks to
Wanda for sharing, and our condolences to those unfortunate outdoor Vivace patrons
forced to watch Pukahontas in action.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10 In other tree news: Today the Associated
Press reported the story of the unidentified male environmentalist in
Corralitos, California, who died after falling out of a giant redwood tree in which he had been living for several weeks.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 It’s official:
After days of “solemn debate” in both the House and the Senate, today the U.S.
Congress approved a resolution authorizing President Bush to use
military force in compelling Iraq to get rid of its biological, chemical,
and nuclear weapons. “The days of Iraq acting as an outlaw state are coming
to an end,” said President Bush to the Associated Press. (And the days of the
United States acting as a heroic world power under the guidance of the least
trustworthy leader in our nation’s history have just begun, says Last Days to
you.)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 Nothing happened today (unless you count
the second anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of
Aden, an al Qaeda-linked atrocity commemorated and perpetuated tonight in Indonesia,
where an exploding car-bomb ripped through a Bali nightclub, killing at least
188 people and injuring at least 300 more).
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13 Speaking of violence and nightclubs: Today
Last Days received a voluminous Hot Tip from Hot Tipper Nick,
detailing the shit that went down just after 2:00 this morning on the
street outside the popular gay nightspot R Place. In a walloping 1,300-word
e-mail, Nick gave us a blow-by-blow of the brawl that embroiled upwards of 15
participants and eventually summoned a half-dozen wailing police cars. Long
story short: After a pair of bickering patrons–described by Nick as a twentysomething
light-skinned black man and thirtysomething pale-skinned white woman–were
booted out of R Place, they started fighting, eventually instigating
a rumble between the man’s and woman’s respective friends. Sadly, space limitations
require us to excise 98 percent of Nick’s colorful commentary, not to mention
his extravagantly detailed sartorial critiques of each and every one
of the rumble’s main participants. Apologies to our readers, and our thanks
to Nick.
Send your Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com.
