MONDAY, MAY 28 The new week found Last Days lounging in a patch of sunshine in front of the Seattle’s Best Coffee in Westlake, where we overheard a burly fellow with zero-percent body fat confide to his smaller companion that “wood is a complex carbohydrate.” We admit this eavesdropped advice improved the taste of our enormous vanilla milkshake immeasurably.

• • Also today, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported
that late Friday night the police swooped into the first stop of the “Angry
White Male Tour” at the Ballard Firehouse and confiscated a tombstone purported
to have graced the grave of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. Shane Bugbee,
ringleader of the tour, which boasts live punk rock performances and a display
of art and oddities, said the gravestone was a fake. “It’s a really rude,
exaggerated piece of artwork,” Bugbee sputtered. Confiscating it “is the
silliest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Sillier than wearing a vest stitched out of a woman’s torso, Shane?

TUESDAY, MAY 29 More inspired butcher news! Today the Associated Press reported the case of Bernard Perez, a 20-year-old charged with killing two people so that he could live in their New York apartments. Unlucky authorities found Perez lounging around one of his ill-acquired lodgings early Monday morning; they also found a victim’s severed head stored under the sink.

• • Also today: Four followers of Osama bin Laden were found guilty in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Reuters
reports that the deadly blasts–which took 224 lives–were part of the Saudi
super-villain’s worldwide scheme to snuff out Americans. A Manhattan
federal jury convicted 24-year-old Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-‘Owhali, 27-year-old
Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 40-year-old Wadih El-Hage, and 36-year-old Mohamed Sadeek
Odeh of every charge lodged against them.

• • Also today, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-2 in
favor of allowing professional golfer Casey Martin the right to use a
golf cart between shots. (PGA rules require all golfers to walk during
competition.) Twenty-nine-year-old Martin, who claims to suffer from a congenital
circulatory condition that makes walking excruciating, said, “This is a big
win for me, but I’ve still got to be hanging in there, working hard.” Yeah
right, you big baby.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 30 Today at Sequoia National Park, “President” Dubya slipped on a green forest ranger’s coat, stood in front of some huge trees, and allowed photographers to record his image as he announced new measures to tidy up America’s national parks. Courtney Cuff, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, told Reuters,
“It’s one baby step with so many steps backward.”

• • And it appears that the faux tree-hugger’s 19-year-old
twin babies, Jenna and Barbara Bush, are following their pop’s unsteady
steps into substance abuse. Today Reuters reported that both of the darlin’
gals are under investigation for allegedly trying to buy alcohol in an
Austin, Texas, Mexican restaurant yesterday. Confidential to Jenna and Babs:
Your father is the leader of the free world. We know this is depressing,
but if we can face the painful truth, so can you.

• • Overheard at Dan & Rey’s Market in Belltown as
a silver-coifed matron in a linen suit pushed open the doors:
“How wonderful! They’ve finally feng-shuied the convenience store!”

THURSDAY, MAY 31 Today Hot Tipper Brian W. provided invaluable
insight as to why Last Days is driven to near-homicidal distraction by those
damn fiberglass swine currently defiling our streets. “While waiting
in line at Monorail Espresso,” wrote Brian via e-mail, “a bike messenger asked
out loud, ‘When have you ever seen so many pigs downtown?’ There was
a moment’s pause before almost everyone in the line shouted out in unison, ‘WTO!’ It seemed like street poetry.” Thanks, you crazy beatnik!

• • Also today, 13-year-old Sean Conley of Aitkin,
Minnesota, won the U.S. national spelling bee, ending a seven-round shootout
with the word “succedaneum.” Reuters reports that Conley is a computer
genius who taught himself to read at the age of two. Last Days reports that
“succedaneum” is a thoroughly useless synonym for “substitute.” The young man
won a $10,000 grand prize, an encyclopedia, and a set of Great Books of the
Western World.

• • Also today: The Macon Telegraph reported the gloriously
horrific story of the 47-year-old Texas woman who got her bottom lip gnawed
off while she slept. Although the woman’s family believes an “unknown chemical”
is to blame, the woman admitted to police that she frequently allowed her one-year-old
poodle, Shorty, to lick her lips after she drank sweet tea. She also
confessed that the hellhound had taken her false teeth out of her mouth
several weeks earlier and had chewed them up. Police detective Karen Stokes
said that the woman dosed up on the antidepressant trazodone and drank
sweet tea shortly after 10:00 p.m. on May 24 and woke up the next morning to
find her bottom lip missing. After searching in vain for the missing
lip, the officers checked the fluffy fiend’s mouth, where they found telltale
traces of lady lip. The unnamed woman was treated and released from the
Houston Medical Center, where she will soon return for reconstructive surgery,
creating a new lip with skin from her buttocks.

FRIDAY, JUNE 1 Nepal’s royal familywas virtually wiped out late today
when the heir to the throne, Prince Dipendra, shot and killed King Birendra,
Queen Aishwarya, and several other family members before killing himself, Reuters
reported. Nepal’s Interior Minister Ram Chandra Poudel said that up to 11 people
had been killed in the shooting, but gave no further details. And while Last
Days was unaware that Nepal had a royal family, we deeply grieve their
passing.

SATURDAY, JUNE 2 Late last night, a suspected Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 90 others when he blew himself up in a crowd of teenagers outside Pacha, a seaside nightclub in Tel Aviv, Reuters reported today. Searching for a lip in a woman’s apartment is funny; searching for arms and legs in smoking rubble is not.

• • Also today: A five-day standoff in remote northern
Idaho ended peacefully when the five armed children who had been
holed up in their ramshackle house agreed to leave after hours of negotiations
with police, friends, and family members. The plucky young’uns were immediately
handed over to teen pop impresario Lou Perlman, who will produce the kids’ debut
album, Hands off My Maw!, by mid-July.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3 Today a record 12 Tony awards were bestowed upon
The Producers, Mel Brooks’ smash musical starring Ferris Bueller and
that big annoying gay guy.