Last Days

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30 This week of felled felons, stupid
surges, and cocaine-crammed chickens kicks off in Wisconsin, where
today a 17-year-old girl was charged with a short stack of crimes after
allegedly using Craigslist to rob men looking for sex. Details come
from charging papers obtained by the Smoking Gun, which claim the girl
placed an ad last month in the “Adult Gigs” section of the online
classified site, offering sexual favors in return for an apartment. Men
who responded to the ad were allegedly lured to a Fond du Lac motel for
what they assumed would be a sexual liaison, but were instead attacked
and robbed by the girl’s male friends. As the Smoking Gun reports,
“When questioned by police, [the girl] admitted orchestrating the
strong-arm robbery scheme, but told [detectives] that ‘she would not
consider herself a pimp but a “skank agent,” meaning
that she was an agent with skanky friends.'” One such “skanky friend”
was apprehended in the scheme: an 18-year-old female, who is facing
prostitution charges for allegedly having sex for money with a man who
answered the Craigslist ad. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed skank agent
has been charged with soliciting prostitution and armed robbery.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1 The week continues in Seattle’s Rainier
Valley, where early this morning a Seattle police officer brought an
end to the manhunt for Maurice Clemmons, the fugitive
suspect in last Sunday’s murder of four Pierce County police officers
in a Parkland coffee shop. Details from the official SPD news release,
which describes how Officer Benjamin Kelly fatally
shot Clemmons after he aggressively defied routine orders:
“[Officer Kelly] ordered the person to stop. He ordered the person to
show his hands. That person would not show his hands and also began to
run away counterclockwise around the vehicle. As the officer was
drawing his gun, the suspect reached into his waist area and moved. The
officer [who reportedly now recognized Clemmons as the fugitive
suspect] fired several times striking the suspect at least twice. The
suspect went down near some bushes on the north side of the street.
Shortly thereafter, he was taken into custody. Seattle Fire Department
medics responded and pronounced the suspect dead at the scene.” RIP and
good riddance to Clemmons, whom we’ll continue to identify as “the
suspect” despite the coffee shop barista who
identified a photo of Clemmons as a photo of the shooter and the
handgun found today on Clemmons’s person and verified
by serial number as belonging to one of the murdered police officers.
Later today, President Obama will weigh in via official White House
statement: “The president is deeply saddened by the tragic killing of
four police officers this week in Lakewood, WA. His thoughts and
prayers are with the families of these brave Americans who put their
lives on the line to protect their fellow citizens.” Five hours later,
he’ll announce his plan to send 30,000 more brave Americans to fight in
Afghanistan.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 Speaking of domestic terrorists
(Clemmons, not Obama; what kind of turncoat do you take us for?): The
week continues with another wave of charges against Nidal
Hasan, the U.S. Army major, behavioral psychologist, and
would-be Muslim jihadist facing 13 charges of premeditated murder
following last month’s massacre at Fort Hood. Today brought Hasan an
additional 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder,
relating to the 30 soldiers and two civilian police officers injured in
the November 5 shooting. Speaking to the Associated Press, Hasan’s
attorney said today’s charges “may not affect Hasan’s punishment if he
is convicted,” as premeditated murder already carries the death
penalty.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3 The week continues with scientific
confirmation of the common-law assumption that all men watch
porn. Doing the confirming: Montreal researcher Simon Louis
Lajeunesse, who launched his project hoping to interview men in their
20s who’d never been exposed to porn—but he couldn’t find any.
“Guys who do not watch pornography do not exist,” said Lajeunesse to
the Vancouver Sun, which reports the researcher then focused
his study “on the habits of 20 university students who consumed X-rated
material and the impact on their sexual identity and how it shapes
their relationship with women.” What Lajeunesse found: Most boys seek
out pornography by age 10 (around the same time they become curious
about sex), and they aim for what they like, quickly rejecting images
found offensive (examples cited: bestiality, violence). “As adults,
their sex lives were pretty conventional, almost identical to their
parents,” reports the Sun. “In fact, the men distinguished
between fantasy and reality; ‘they did not want their partners to look
like porn stars,’ [Lajeunesse] said. ‘Well, maybe in their bed once or
twice, but not in their life.'”

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4 Today we turn to the sexy celebrity news
item that hovered over the week like gossipy smog: the ongoing saga of
Tiger Woods, the suddenly embattled golf superstar who
finally broke his silence two days ago, when he took to his website to
apologize for his role in the continuing hubbub surrounding his
mysterious car crash, mysterious facial lacerations, mysteriously
golf-club-wielding wife, and not-so-mysterious extracurricular lovers
lining up to offer evidence of how much he loves to fuck. “I
have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of
my heart,” blogged Woods, instigating the first real-world
consequence of this negligible news event: a “volcanic” eruption of
Google searches for the word “transgressions,” as
people tried to figure out what the hell Woods was talking
about/apologizing for. As the ladies of The View noted today,
transgressions can refer to a wide range of behavior, from violation of
faith to violation of social norms to violation of the law; leaving
sexually explicit voice mails for an extramarital lover qualifies as at
most two out of three. Beyond the buzzing over the contents of Woods’s
vocabulary was the buzzing over the contents of his car, with police
photographs of the golfer’s wrecked SUV capturing a paperback book
scattered among the shards of glass on the backseat: John Gribbin’s
Get a Grip on Physics, which has enjoyed a surge in sales
since being showcased in a celebrity crime scene. Contacted by the UK
Guardian, the University of Sussex–
instructor-turned-hotshit-author said he was “delighted that anybody’s
reading my books. I just wish it was one that’s still in print.”

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5 Nothing happened today, unless you count
the 32-year-old Guatemalan man apprehended today at Washington Dulles
International Airport, where he was allegedly trying to enter the
United States with 60 grams of cocaine (estimated value: $4,300) hidden
inside a fully cooked chicken.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 Nothing happened today, unless you count
the Seattle Seahawks’ last-minute clobbering of the San Francisco
49ers.

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