MONDAY, OCTOBER 30 The week began with a bracing call to arms from none other
than singer/actress/celebrity spokesmodel Cher. Discussing the forthcoming
presidential election on the music website Wall of Sound, the original Mrs.
Bono revealed that behind the plastic surgery that has given her the face of a
four-year-old lurks the heart of a revolutionary and the mouth of a drunken sailor.
“Has everyone lost their fucking minds? Doesn’t anybody re-member the illustrious
Reagan-Bush years when people had no money and no jobs? What has happened to people’s
memories? It’s like they have Alzheimer’s or something.” The razor-tongued Oscar-
and Grammy-winner then took specific aim at dumb old Dubya, fearlessly
declaring her dislike and distrust of Bush, before branding him both stupid and lazy. “I’m passionate about this because I’m so scared,” said the ass-kicking
geriatric. “I don’t want to see what happened years ago happen again. The idea
of old people eating dog food doesn’t appeal to me. Call me old-fashioned. I just
don’t like it.”
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31 Today, a Halloween story for the ages. This
afternoon on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, a pretty woman in her 30s visited
the Group Health Cooperative, for what she describes as “a routine
check under the hood.” Not until she was on the table and in the stirrups
did she realize that, because today was Halloween, she would be receiving a
pap smear from a doctor dressed as a bucket of popcorn. “She had
an overflowing bucket encircling her body, and a melting butter crown,” reports
our lucky gyna-girl, who also noted Dr. Redenbacher’s crafty deployment of pipe
cleaners with popped kernels attached on her crown and shoulders. So what
was it like to be prodded in the hoochie by a becostumed doc? “It was perfectly
fine, once I got over the shock,” says our lady friend. “Still, the doctor seemed
a little grumpy.” Last Days would like to say that, despite all the cruelty,
ignorance, and fear, the fact that we live in a world where a woman can receive
a pap smear from a grumpy bucket of popcorn makes us very happy to be alive.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 As the CNN of the alterna-slacker community, Last
Days has spent the past several years gussying up news events to entice even
the least connected and most shiftless of readers. To achieve this end, we are
often required to indulge in high dramatization, hyperbole, and haiku. However,
once in a blue moon, we are presented with a story so riveting that we need
do nothing but report it verbatim. Here is such a story, lifted directly from
The Guardian:
“The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, yesterday accidentally extinguished
Israel’s memorial flame for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
At a sombre ceremony in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Mr.
Schröder turned a handle that was supposed to make the flame rise. It went
out instead.
The Israel prime minister, Ehud Barak, who had accompanied the German leader
to Yad Vashem’s hall of remembrances, stepped forward to try to help, but was
unsuccessful. A technician eventually ignited the flame.”
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2 Speaking of staggering discoveries: Today the Associated
Press reported on the man arrested in Amarillo, Texas, whom police discovered
to have more than $8,000 wedged in his buttcrack. Thirty-two-year-old
Carlton Meridith was nabbed by Amarillo police on Tuesday after he was
caught smoking marijuana; a routine police search turned up a total of
$14,000 cash on Meridith’s person, including the aforementioned $8,000
in his buttcrack. “That’s 80 $100 bills,” said police Cpl. Brent Harlan, graciously
assisting those of us assiduously trying to form a cogent mental image of the
crack deposit. Mr. Moneybutt told his arresting officers that he made the $14,000
sponsoring a St. Louis rap group called Forty Caliber; St. Louis authorities
claim no such concert has taken place in recent months and that they were unaware
of any local band by that name. Meridith was booked and released on a marijuana
possession charge, while the money remains in police custody.
··Also today, Last Days could not stop thinking about that accidentally extinguished Holocaust memorial flame. Through sheer human ingenuity, we have been able to put a man on the moon, map the structure of DNA, and invent Liquid-Plumr Foaming Pipe Snake. Can’t we somehow manage to rig the Holocaust memorial flame so it can’t be accidentally extinguished? For an answer, Last Days consulted our smart handyman friend Andy, who shared our consternation. “All it would take is a metal pin restricting the movement of the flame’s control handle,” said Andy. Israel, take note.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 Today we could tell you about the midday rally led by Ralph Nader at Seattle’s Town Hall, where 1,200 Green Party
supporters whooped and hollered for the man who has led a vigilant and romantic
battle against America’s tired two-party system (and who, by the time you read
this, will be just another well-meaning schmuck smacking his forehead with disgust
at our choice for president of the United States). But instead we shall continue
our obsessing about the Holocaust flame fiasco. So, as the story goes,
the German chancellor (Why, oh why did it have to be the German chancellor?)
moved in to “turn the handle that was supposed to make the flame rise.” Can
someone explain to us why the level of the flame was made variable in the first
place? Do they raise the memorial flame on those days when they’re feeling extra mournful about the six million dead? Or maybe when the Yad Vashem house band
tears into their fiery rendition of “Free Bird”?
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 Does anyone else find it vaguely distasteful that
victims of the Holocaust are memorialized with a gas flame? Just
wondering.
··Also today: In an effort to cleanse our mind of our Holocaust flame obsession, tonight Last Days attempted to find distraction in television. However, we were promptly confronted by a disturbing new Burger King commercial, in which a tongue with an Indian accent stands at a podium to inform us of the deliciousness of Burger King’s new food products. Then came Saturday Night Live, which instantly reanimated our obsession with the Holocaust flame by reporting the story during “Weekend Update”, capping it with the funniest joke the show has made since 1979: “Upon realizing he’d accidentally extinguished the flame, the German chancellor offered these words: ‘Mein bad.’“
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 Today an obese man fell to his death from the Splash
Mountain ride at Disney World. Meanwhile, Last Days laid our flame obsession
to rest by composing this memorial haiku:
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