MONDAY, MARCH 10 This week of new sins, impeachment-worthy lies, and
the resurrection of the most horrific scenario in Last Days’ history
kicks off in Colorado, where an epic battle’s raging over the
discolored hide of a miniature poodle. On one side is the poodle’s
owner, Joy Douglas, who claims poodle Cici is known
all over Boulder for her pink fur, a symbol of Cici’s
stature as a “breast-cancer-awareness dog.” On the
other side is Boulder Valley Humane Society, whose
officials told Boulder’s Daily Camera they received numerous
complaints about the artificially colored canine before citing Ms.
Douglas for violating Section 6-1-14 of Boulder’s city code, which
prohibits the dyeing of fowl and rabbits. According to
animal-control officials, this regulation was originally passed to
deter citizens from dyeing chicks and bunnies around Easter. But now
it’s being used against impassioned poodle-owner Douglas, who faces a
possible $1,000 fine and is fighting it all the way. “Cici is being
stripped of her civic duty,” said Douglas, who says she’s never used
chemicals to achieve her breast-cancer-awareness poodle’s pinkness
(it’s done via staining with beet juice and Kool-Aid). Douglas also
contends that as her poodle is neither fowl nor rabbit—the only
species name-checked in the statute—the whole charge is bunk.
“If it’s really true that you can’t put beet juice on your
dogs, then the law just needs to say that,” said Joy Douglas,
in the quote of the year so far. Douglas pleads her case before a
Boulder Municipal Court on April 7.
••Speaking of cute but essentially meaningless statutes:
Today the Vatican issued a list of new mortal
sins. For those unfamiliar with the intricacies of kinky,
kinky Catholicism, mortal sins are those with the power to damn
your soul to Hell, should you die before confessing such sins
to a priest. Making today’s list of new mortal sins: genetic
modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the
environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming
obscenely wealthy, and taking drugs. Mysteriously unmentioned: public
flossing, “upper decks” (look it up), and conspiring to hide the
predatory sex crimes of fellow clergymen.
TUESDAY, MARCH 11 Speaking of newsworthy sins: Today the United
States basked in the stink of a big political sex scandal, as media
outlets across the nation ran as hard as they could with the story of
Eliot Spitzer, the “straight-arrow” governor
of New York named yesterday in a federal investigation into a
“high-priced prostitution ring.” What distinguishes the Spitzer scandal
is its cartoonish hypocrisy: Prior to being identified as a ready and
willing john, Attorney General Spitzer used the state’s organized-crime
task force to ostentatiously bust two prostitution rings; in addition
to being a husband and father of three, Spitzer was the type of guy
who’d spend thousands of dollars on a hooker the night before
Valentine’s Day. After yesterday’s public apology and today’s media
blitz, tomorrow Spitzer will bring the hubbub to its natural end,
announcing his resignation as governor and slinking off in shame with
his heroically stoic wife, who deserves at least $50,000 cash right
now.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 The week continues with the resurrection of the
most horrific scenario in Last Days’ history. We’re speaking, of
course, of the bonding of human flesh to inanimate
objects, first popularized by the morbidly obese woman in
Florida who had to be surgically removed from her sofa, and brought
screaming back to life today by the woman in Kansas whose skin grew
over her toilet seat. Details come from the Associated Press, which
identifies the woman as 35-year-old Pam Babcock, a
reported child-abuse survivor driven by phobia to spend the past
two years in the bathroom of the mobile home she
shares with her 36-year-old boyfriend, Kory McFarren.
“It just kind of happened one day,” said boyfriend McFarren to the AP.
“It was a safe place for her.” According to McFarren, Babcock’s first
year of bathroom living was relatively normal, with Babcock moving
around, bathing, and changing clothes, and McFarren supplying her with
food and water. But on February 27, McFarren noticed Babcock “acting
groggy” and called police, who arrived to find Babcock sitting on the
toilet with atrophied legs, her sweat pants down to mid-thigh, and her
skin grown around the toilet seat. “We pried the toilet seat off with a
pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” said Ness County
Sheriff Bryan Whipple. “The hospital removed it.” With Babcock’s skin
and toilet seat successfully separated, all eyes now turn to Kory
McFarren, who says he tried to coax Babcock out of the bathroom daily
but could face charges for allowing his girlfriend to become affixed to
a toilet seat. Stay tuned.
THURSDAY, MARCH 13 Nothing happened today, unless you count the
release of a Pentagon study confirming that the
alleged “direct link” between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda—a
connection touted as fact in the pro-war rationale of the Bush
administration—was nonexistent. As the AFP
reports, the Pentagon studied more than 600,000 official Iraqi
documents and thousands of hours of interrogations of former Saddam
Hussein colleagues, and unequivocally failed to find any connection
between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Today the haggard remnants of the Bush
administration did its best to bury the study, rejecting traditional
models of dissemination (press releases, public web postings) for a
limited release available by “individual request” and through the mail.
We are not making this up.
FRIDAY, MARCH 14 The week continues with what we’d be tempted to
call a mind-blowing lesbian potboiler if it didn’t
involve, you know, the loss of actual human life. Details come from
KIRO, which reports the saga
commenced last night, when
36-year-old Michele Burton and her boyfriend met
33-year-old Amber Debord at the Bethel Saloon in Port
Orchard, WA. As Amber Debord told investigators, she was hoping to have
a lesbian relationship with Burton, and the women and the boyfriend
eventually made their way to Michele Burton’s house on Panther Lake.
According to court documents, Burton’s boyfriend walked in on the two
women naked and kissing in bed; Debord allegedly responded to the
interruption by “getting violent” and threatening the boyfriend, who
fled the residence. Later, police received a 911 call from a hysterical
woman who reported, “Someone is dead.” Deputies arrived to a horrible
scene: Michele Burton, lying in the front yard with fatal stab wounds
to her neck, hands, and feet, and Amber Debord in the house covered in
blood. Debord was arrested, charged with first-degree murder, and
remains in Kitsap County jail in lieu of $500,000 bail.
SATURDAY, MARCH 15 Nothing happened today (because too much happened
on Wednesday).
SUNDAY, MARCH 16 Nothing happened today (unless you count the
flash-mob pillow fight that got Ballard all feathery
this afternoon).
Send Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com.
