Last Days

MONDAY, MAY 11 This week of dancing pixies, violent diarists,
and mercilessly tossed waffles kicks off today with a hope-bestowing
Hot Tip from Hot Tipper Jim Tom: “Today I accidentally left a
copy of The Spanish Anarchists from the Seattle Public Library
on a planter outside Seattle First Presbyterian Church. As the Bible
says, the wages of being an idiot and leaving a library book in a
public place is a hefty replacement fee that you really can’t afford.
So thank God for the library-book messiah who washed clean my
sin and returned the book to the library. This may not be paperworthy,
but it does suggest that a human exists in Seattle who isn’t a complete
asshole.” Hallelujah—thanks for sharing, Jim Tom, and
confidential to everyone else: If you know a Seattleite who deserves
public props for not being an asshole, let us know at lastdays@thestranger.com.

••In other library-related happenings: Today also brings a
report from Hot Tipper Chance in NYC, who was working on a paper
in the Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library (“the one from
Ghostbusters!”) when he noticed “a man with a
small-but-I-wouldn’t-call-it-portable television plugged into one of
the outlets, watching Harry and the Hendersons, politely muted,
while he diligently yanked hairs from his nostrils. I am filled with a
sense of pride that my newly adopted city is so great that it can
provide an elegant, world-class research library open to everybody,
diligent scholars and public nostril-foragers alike.”

TUESDAY, MAY 12 The week continues with Last Days ignoring
the heart-crushing ABC News report on the state school for the mentally
disabled in Corpus Christi, where night-shift employees stand charged
with orchestrating brutal “fight club” sessions between underage
residents and filming the carnage on their cell phones, to focus on the
far less upsetting report filed by Hot Tipper Endresen: “I was
walking home just after 5:00 p.m. this evening when I saw an
attractive twentysomething woman on East Olive Way near
Boylston, smiling and quietly talking to herself. I didn’t think
anything of it until she began deliberately obstructing my path by
twirling and dancing in front of me. ‘Do you ever feel like life is
like a musical?’ she asked. Her pupils didn’t look huge, and she was
way too graceful to be shit-faced. ‘I’m like a Michael Jackson
video!’ she exclaimed, before dancing away down Boylston toward East
Pike. Thank you, dancing street pixie, for making my day.” (Thanks as
well to the universe, which was thoughtful enough to send the
dancing pixie woman into the path of someone sympathetic to her cause,
rather than one of the zillions of people who would’ve been tempted to
greet her obstructive dancing with shoves and/or pepper spray.)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13 Today brings news of the bullet-ridden
brouhaha that went down yesterday at a South Carolina Waffle
House, where an altercation over breakfast led to the arrest of a
gun-wielding waitress. Details come from Columbia’s WLTX News,
which identifies the key participants as Crystal Samuel, a
Waffle House customer who’d hoped to obtain an “All-Star” breakfast of
grits, sausage, toast, eggs, and a waffle, and Yakeisha Ward,
the Waffle House waitress at whom an exasperated Samuel threw a
waffle. “I did actually throw some food,” says Samuel to WLTX, “but
it didn’t hit her.” Things got rowdier as the women took the dispute
outside, where, according to police reports, waitress Ward procured a
gun from her car, filled it with ammunition from her trunk, and opened
fire. “Investigators say Ward’s gun discharged during the altercation,”
reports WLTX. “They say a bullet fragment struck Samuel in the arm.”
Before being apprehended by (blessedly nearby) deputies, Ward
reportedly also hit Samuel in the head with the gun, and soon enough
found herself arrested on charges of assault and battery with intent to
kill. The 29-year-old Ward has since been released on $500 bond and has
returned to work at the Waffle House.

THURSDAY, MAY 14 Today we travel 20 miles north of Seattle to
Lynnwood, Washington, where a 78-year-old woman stands accused
of administering ongoing beatings to her 84-year-old husband, who
reportedly suffered a fractured wrist, several broken ribs, and a
shattered pelvis. Further details come from the Everett Daily
Herald, which reports the woman allegedly told police she pushed
her husband down and hit him with a bowl and a metal pipe because she
believed he cheated on her several times during their marriage. (A
witness also told police the woman admitted to kicking her husband
three times in the groin over the last six months because she believed
he’d had an affair 35 years ago.) But the majority of potentially
incriminating info came from the woman’s diary, which reportedly
described how she hit her husband with a carpet sweeper and chased him
with a knife, alongside statements like “I beat him again” and “I told
him it would be worth going to jail just to watch him bleed to death.”
Arrested last month, the woman was charged today with second-degree
assault and remains in jail in lieu of $70,000 bail.

FRIDAY, MAY 15 The week continues with a reasonable
approximation of closure for the friends and family of James
Paroline, the decorated
Vietnam-veteran-turned-beloved-community-leader who was killed during
an altercation at a South Seattle traffic circle last July. As a
cell-phone video played today in King County court reminds us, Paroline
was standing near the traffic circle he’d lobbied the city to install
in his Rainier Beach neighborhood when Brian Brown—a 29-year-old
man called to the scene by two young women arguing with Paroline over
traffic cones—approached and punched him; Paroline fell to the
ground, struck his head on the pavement, and died. As the Seattle
Times reports, today Brian Brown was sentenced to more than 11
years in prison for second-degree murder. “I never intended to cause
this,” said Brown at his sentencing. “This is something… I will
relive for the rest of my life.”

SATURDAY, MAY 16 Nothing happened today, unless you count the
44th birthday of SpaghettiOs (born on this day in 1965), the
143rd birthday of root beer (born on this day in 1866), or the
25th birthday of the ghost of Andy Kaufman (whose human source
died on this day in 1984).

SUNDAY, MAY 17 The week ends with a
once-in-a-lifetime-if-there’s-any-mercy-in-the-world sighting reported
by Hot Tipper Cate: “Last night, amid the typical Sunday-evening
Belltown douchebaggery, I observed a highly intoxicated middle-aged
gentleman, presumably on heroin, loitering near Second and Bell,
where he pulled down his pants not to poop, but to give himself some
ass play while simultaneously smoking a cigarette and jerking
off. When he was finished, he wiped his filthy hands across his
face, collapsed in an exhausted heap on the ground, and waited,
patiently or perhaps unconsciously, for the paramedics to show up. I
love working in Belltown.”

Send Hot Tips and nominations for props-worthy nonassholes to lastdays@thestranger.com.