Last Days

MONDAY, MAY 25 The week kicks off with two huge
kabooms. The first occurred underground in North Korea,
where a world-infuriating second round of nuclear testing was carried
out not far below the surface of the country’s northeastern region. The
second kaboom took place outside a Manhattan Starbucks, where a
low-grade explosive device (believed to be a “glorified firecracker”
rather than international terrorism or anticorporate activism)
shattered the windows and singed the outside wall of one of the chain’s
Upper East Side outlets. Also, it was Memorial Day.

TUESDAY, MAY 26 Nothing happened today, unless you count the
announcement of the Supreme Court of California’s decision to uphold
Proposition 8, the voter-approved ballot measure restricting the
state’s marriage rights to heterosexual couples. In a kicky twist,
today’s decision does nothing to the 18,000 same-sex marriages
performed during last year’s 18-week window of legality other than
render them legal-only-in-California novelty items. As half of one of
these 18,000 incriminatingly arbitrary marriages, Last Days looks
forward to the unrelenting legal challenges Prop 8 is doomed to face,
beginning with tomorrow’s announcement of the federal lawsuit filed by
attorneys David Boies and Ted Olson (who famously fought on opposite
sides of 2000’s Bush vs. Gore ballot battle) seeking to invalidate
Proposition 8 on the basis of constitutional guarantees of due process
and equal protection.
Hurrah, onward, and for now, here’s a
celebrity quote to illuminate the glorious fact that marriage equality
has made the leap from fringe concern to mainstream civil-rights issue,
from the culture-shaping hiphop mogul Russell Simmons on the
Huffington Post: “In my heart, I know that marriage equality for every
human being isn’t a question of if, but only a matter of when. I ask
those who feel that giving freedom to others somehow binds you, to
please take a good look at what you are standing behind… And to my
brothers and sisters in California, I’m there with you every step of
the way until that day comes.”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27 The week continues with day number three
of a creeptastic child-custody battle in Canada, where the
mother and stepfather of two young Winnipeg children face accusations
of racist teachings and failing to provide adequate care after their
daughter repeatedly appeared at her elementary school with
white-supremacist symbols drawn on her skin. As CBC News
reports, the 8-year-old girl and her 1-year-old brother have been in
the care of Child and Family Services since March 2008, with the mother
and stepfather’s battle to regain custody finally commencing this week.
During Monday’s proceedings, a social worker told how the young girl
spoke of this being “a white man’s world” and provided graphic
descriptions of how to kill nonwhites. On Tuesday, another social
worker told of her first meeting with the parents, who claimed their
daughter was “famous for lying” and had likely drawn the
neo-Nazi symbols on herself. And while the mother told social workers
she had no idea why her daughter would refer to the family as
“skinheads,” extended family members later told the social worker that
the parents shaved their heads, shaved the little girl’s head, and
described themselves as a skinhead family. Court proceedings are
scheduled to continue into June.

THURSDAY, MAY 28 The week continues with the formal
coronation of the Northwest’s latest living legend, a
new-millennium Seattle superhuman blending the laid-back star quality
of Sir Mix-A-Lot with the how-is-he-still-alive wonderment of Slats.
Last Days is speaking, of course, of the Capitol Hill man who was
shot in the head and went back to bed, first introduced to
Stranger readers by news writer Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, who
shared details of the police report today on
Slog-the-Stranger-blog. The specifics: At around 10:30 p.m. last
Friday, the 25-year-old man was sleeping in his East Harrison Street
apartment when someone fired a bullet into his bedroom.
According to the police report, the bullet penetrated the wall of the
man’s apartment and struck him in the head, but the shooting
victim felt “well enough to sleep through the evening.” The next day,
the man finally got around to notifying police, who searched his
bedroom and found a “.22 or .25 caliber” bullet lodged inside his
pillow. As for the man: He sustained only minor injuries and declined
medical attention. As for the bullet: Police determined it came from an
adjacent apartment, knocked on the door, received no answer, called
in a SWAT team that found no one, and ultimately left a note for the neighbors to contact the East Precinct. Stay tuned, and
congratulations, bulletproof sleeper.

FRIDAY, MAY 29 Speaking of local notables: We continue with
the would-be gun-wielding zombie apprehended tonight by Seattle
police. Details come from KOMO News, which reports the would-be zombie
first drew attention when he walked into Capitol Hill’s Metro
Clothing store wearing “all black, knee pads… a gas mask, and
carrying what looked to be a machine gun,” as well as an artillery vest
apparently rigged with a grenade and a knife. And while our black-clad,
gas-masked, grenade-laden man was merely taking part in the
Friday-night “zombie crawl” sponsored by Metro to promote next
weekend’s Crypticon Horror Convention, at least one bystander thought a
real-live masked gunman was entering the store and called police. “A
dozen police cars converged on the scene and officers ran into the
store, guns drawn,” reports KOMO, adding that officers arrested the
would-be zombie gunman but quickly let him go after confirming his
zombie qualities were a put-on and his mini-arsenal all toy. “I was
surprised,” said one-named zombie-walk-organizer Seage to KOMO. “I
didn’t expect anyone to be arrested being dressed as a zombie because
we did this last weekend. [There were] a dozen of us walking around in
full zombie gear—blood, guts, and nasty skin hanging off and it
just went fine.”

SATURDAY, MAY 30 The week continues with a humongous march
for universal health care through the streets of Seattle and a
private demonstration for readily accessible marijuana onboard
King County Metro, the latter of which was reported by Hot Tipper
Ethan: “Immediately after boarding the #48 in Ravenna, I noticed a
man across the aisle measuring out dime bags of what looked to
be part shredded newspaper and part low-quality marijuana.” Did he have
a scale or was he just eyeballing it? “Eyeballing it,” said Ethan. “He
got off around 50th.”

SUNDAY, MAY 31 The week ends with the tragic last day of
Dr. George Tiller, the Kansas physician who spent the past three
decades risking his life and enraging abortion-rights opponents by
performing legal late-term abortions at his Wichita clinic. This
clinic was bombed in 1986 and became a crime scene in 1993 when Dr.
Tiller survived a shooting by a “pro-life” terrorist in the parking
lot, but through it all, Dr. Tiller carried on—until this
morning, when the 67-year-old doctor attended morning services at the
Reformation Lutheran Church, where he was fatally shot. By end
of day, police will have apprehended a suspect: Scott Roeder, a
51-year-old Kansas man with a history of anti-abortion activism and
mental illness, who’s being held on suspicion of first-degree
murder.

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