MONDAY, JULY 21 This week of public-transit pedicures, perplexed
septuagenarians, and more creeps than we care to count gets off to a
disconcertingly brown start, courtesy of Hot Tipper
Marnie. “Shortly before 1:00 p.m. today, my fiancé and I
were exiting the University District’s Big Time Brewery after
securing a couple kegs for our upcoming wedding. On the street, we were
confronted by what appeared to be a homeless man, squatting between two
cars, shitting on the Ave. After speeding past the
man—whose bare butt was jutting out into traffic—we
made a left turn onto 43rd Street, where we were visually
assaulted again, this time by the sight of a guy stumbling
toward us who’d obviously and very recently pissed his pants.” Dear
Marnie: Thank you for surviving and sharing. According to the lore of
many cultures, being struck by bird poop is an unequivocal harbinger of
good luck. By our calculations, watching a hobo poop on the street
brings even greater luck, and all but guarantees you and your
fiancé a long, harmonious marriage. Even better, according to
Last Days lore, your subsequent sighting of the soggy-pantsed man only
enhances your fortune, guaranteeing that after a glorious stretch of
decades, you and your husband will die on the exact same day. Congratulations and good luck.
TUESDAY, JULY 22 The week continues with two of the week’s
newsworthy creeps. Creep number one: Warren Jeffs, the leader
and alleged prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, who’s currently imprisoned after being convicted
of serving as an accomplice to rape. Today, Jeffs faced further
charges, as he was indicted on a charge of felony sexual assault of
a child, following investigators’ discovery of photos of Jeffs in
intimate “matrimonial” embraces with several apparently underage girls,
and Jeffs’s journal entry purportedly indicating the marriage of his
15-year-old daughter to a 34-year-old man. Also indicted: five of
Jeffs’s followers, four of whom face charges of sexually assaulting
girls under the age of 17, while the fifth faces charges of failure to
report child abuse. Creep number two: Robert Soloway, the
29-year-old Seattle-based “Spam King” sentenced today to nearly four
years in prison for his merciless four-year spam barrage that
clogged countless in-boxes with tens of millions of junk e-mails each
day. At today’s sentencing hearing, Soloway said he was “sorry.”
WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 Speaking of creeps: Today we meet Mark Joe
Levison, the South Seattle man facing hate-crime charges after allegedly threatening to burn down the home of a 13-year-old
autistic boy. Details come from Stranger news reporter Jonah
Spangenthal-Lee, who shared details of the King County court documents
on Slog, the Stranger news and arts blog: “On July 8, around
11:00 p.m., Mark Joe Levinson yelled at his next door neighbor—a
mother of three children, ages 13, 10, and 2—to ‘keep your
fucking retarded son in the house or the backyard like a dog; if you
don’t, I’ll burn your room down.’ The mother called 911 and police
showed up at Levison’s door. Court documents say that when officers
arrested Levison, he ‘smelled of intoxicants’ and told the officers he
‘pay[s] $1,000 a month rent and shouldn’t have to see that idiot
spinning around and staring at my house.’ Levison is being held on
$25,000 bail. If convicted, he could face three to nine months in
jail.”
••In lighter news: This evening forced an aggressively
unpleasant experience upon Hot Tipper David, who was riding home
on a number 18 Metro bus when he noticed the gentleman on the bench
next to him pull off his work boots, remove his socks, and give himself
“the complete ‘Queen for a Day’ treatment, including use of a ‘pumice
wand.'” As David writes, “The skin was falling off his heel like
freshly grated
Parmesan cheese.”
THURSDAY, JULY 24 Speaking of wanting to die: Today
Washington State’s “Death with Dignity”
initiative—which would allow terminally ill people to end
their lives with legally obtained prescription drugs—officially
qualified for the November ballot. Power to the (terminally ill)
people!
FRIDAY, JULY 25 Nothing happened today, unless you count what
history will remember as the Critical Mass melee, an act of
civil disobedience turned bike-brawl Rashomon that’s explored in
all its community-damning messiness on pages 11 and 75.
SATURDAY, JULY 26 Today, Last Days turns to an issue near and dear
to our heart: John McCain‘s ever-growing stature as a bumbling, Mr. Magoo–style old coot.
Among McCain’s recent gaffes: confusing Somalia with Sudan, Germany
with Russia, and Sunnis with Shiites. In addition, the 71-year-old
McCain—who’s been hyping his allegedly superior expertise in
foreign affairs—has made multiple references to
Czechoslovakia (which hasn’t existed since 1993, when it
was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), and at least one
reference to the Iraq/Pakistan border, which hasn’t existed
ever. (“Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border,” ABC News was
required to report. “Afghanistan and Pakistan do.”) Details on McCain’s
spookiest senior moment come from the website Politico: Earlier this
month, McCain repeated a story he’s told many times over the years,
about his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he tried to
confuse his captors by swapping the names of his squadron mates with
the names of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The problem: In all prior
tellings of the story, McCain “always referred to the names he gave as
members of the Green Bay Packers.” Best of luck to Grandpa
McCain, who’ll be lucky to make it through debate season alive (and
unencumbered by manslaughter charges after mistaking the gas pedal for
the brake and plowing through an innocent farmers’ market).
SUNDAY, JULY 27 The week ends, horribly, with a grade-A American
monster:
Jim D. Adkisson, the 58-year-old unemployed mechanical
engineer who today walked into Knoxville’s Tennessee Valley
Unitarian Universalist Church—where more than 200
parishioners were gathered to watch a children’s performance of the
musical Annie—and allegedly opened fire. The
Associated Press reports two people were killed and five more wounded
before Adkisson was tackled by parishioners. As for Adkisson’s motive:
Clues come from the four-page letter he left in his car,
reportedly detailing his hatred of “liberals and gays,” along with his
plan to keep shooting parishioners until the police showed up and
killed him. “It appears he did choose that church intentionally,” said
police chief Sterling Owen to the AP, acknowledging the church’s
reputation for progressive social work and advocacy of liberal causes.
“We’re certainly investigating it as a hate crime.” As for Adkisson’s
future: He’s being held on $1 million bail on charges of first-degree
murder. Condolences to all, including Jim D. Adkisson, who looks like a
prime candidate for the morally bankrupt/emotionally gratifying death
penalty.
Send Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com.
