MONDAY, MARCH 17 This week of visionary politics, hardcore pigeons,
and strategically fatal inventions kicks off today in Panama
City, Florida, where one girl’s spring-break dreams turned
into a Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit–worthy
nightmare. Details come from ABC News, which tracks the trouble to
Panama City’s Sandpiper Beacon Beach Resort, where an
unnamed young woman—an 18-year-old student at the University of
Alabama—was staying with friends during spring break. Early this
morning the young woman was making her way down a hallway at the
Sandpiper when she was allegedly grabbed by one of the hotel’s security
guards, who forced her into an unoccupied room using a hotel passkey
and raped her, after which the guard tossed the young woman off a
sixth-floor balcony. “She fell some distance to a metal roof that came
off the side of the building,” said Police Major Dave Humphreys to ABC.
“From there she fell to another roof that was lower, and from there to
a second-floor stairwell. These rooftops probably saved her life.”
Tomorrow police will arrest a suspect—29-year-old Shawn
Wuertly, a Sandpiper security guard whom police found hiding
in the woods and charged with rape. As for the young woman: She
survived and remains hospitalized in stable condition.
TUESDAY, MARCH 18 In much better news: The week continues with the
long and ambitious speech given by Democratic
presidential hopeful Barack Obama today in
Philadelphia. After acknowledging that “in the last couple of weeks…
the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly
divisive turn,” Obama unpacked a few decades’ worth of racially based
bias, superstition, and conflict, from the justified paranoia of
baby-boomer blacks, conditioned and impoverished by
generations of legalized discrimination, to the questionable paranoia
of economically depressed whites, fearful their
limited employment prospects will be further restricted by
minority-favoring affirmative-action quotas. “The real problem is not
that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job—it’s
that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing
more than a profit,” said Obama. “I believe deeply that we cannot solve
the challenges of our time unless we solve them together—unless
we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different
stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we
may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the
same direction—towards a better future for our children and our
grandchildren.” In a testament to Obama’s conviction and/or acting
chops, none of this made Last Days want to throw up. Obama ’08!
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 Meanwhile in Australia, an
elderly man executed the odd but inevitable, using plans from the
internet to construct a robot that he then programmed to kill
its creator. Details on the tech-savvy suicide come from the
London Times, which report 81-year-old Francis
Tovey constructed the killer robot in the driveway of his
Australian Gold Coast home in response to relatives’ suggestion he
enter assisted living. Notes left by Tovey revealed the inner workings
of the machine (a jigsaw power tool connected to a .22 semiautomatic
pistol rigged to fire multiple shots when triggered remotely) and
suggested Tovey chose to kill himself in the driveway to aid discovery
of his body, which he predicted would be seen by next-door workmen (he
was right). “There was no inkling of anything amiss,” said one of
Tovey’s neighbors to the Gold Coast Bulletin. “He was a really
marvelous man, an ideal neighbor, and I will miss him greatly.”
THURSDAY, MARCH 20 The week continues with one of the more
pathos-rich scenarios to unfold on a Seattle street since Last Days
watched that saltine dissolve in a shallow puddle near the corner of
14th Avenue and East Howell Street in late 2004. Today’s eyewitness:
Hot Tipper Melyssa, who writes, “This afternoon at
Third and Union, a pigeon was running around with a
syringe completely stuck through its head like
an arrow. The needle was stuck right under the pigeon’s chin
and extended about three inches out the other side. This tops the crow
I saw two years ago in almost the same spot feasting on a dead rat’s
eyeball.” Even creepier: Once Last Days posted Melyssa’s report on
The Stranger‘s blog, not one but two Slog commenters revealed
they too had seen the syringe pigeon. “I saw that
pigeon in about the same place a week or two ago,” wrote Andrew. “For
what it’s worth, it appears to be a chronic condition for this pigeon
rather than a fatal one.” “I, too, saw that same bird, or another one
with the same affliction, a week or so ago at the Third and Union bus
stop,” wrote DJ Girth. “Two junkies were laughing at it. It sort of
felt like they had something to do with it.” These reminiscences
brought a bracing rant from Greendyke: “Jesus fuck—this pigeon
has been walking around like this for three weeks and at least three
Sloggers have seen it and NO ONE in Seattle has helped it? I am ashamed
to be a human being.” Finally, key perspective was provided by Comte:
“You ever try to catch a pigeon? I personally wouldn’t feel all that
comfortable trying to wrap my hands around a squirming bird with the
business end of somebody’s works sticking out of it. And while it may
seem callous and inhumane, I would point out that the poor bird is
apparently surviving, so that says something for the resiliency of
Columba livia.”
•• Meanwhile in real news: Today brought the first step
toward closure in the case of Sukhvir Singh, the
Seattle cab driver and observant Sikh assaulted by an intoxicated
passenger last November, when 21-year-old Luis Vazquez repeatedly called Singh “an Iraqi terrorist” before bashing him into
the hospital. Today Vazquez pleaded guilty to charges of malicious
harassment, assault in the second degree, and reckless endangerment for
a hate-crime attack. (In addition, Q13 reports, Vazquez’s original
charge of assault in the third degree was increased by prosecutors to
assault in the second degree.) Due for sentencing in April, Vazquez
faces a potential two-year prison sentence; in addition to jail time,
prosecutors say they’ll also push for Vazquez’s payment of Singh’s
medical bills.
FRIDAY, MARCH 21 Nothing happened today, unless you count the
Associated Press revelation that the 2-year-old boy in
La Joya, Texas, who was found dead with a fatally fractured skull was
most likely accidentally crushed by a morbidly obese relative. Good
one, God.
SATURDAY, MARCH 22 Nothing happened today.
SUNDAY, MARCH 23 The week ends with Easter and a
day of hideous violence in Iraq, involving the
devouring of countless chocolate eggs and the death of at least 51
Iraqis, respectively.
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