Last Days

MONDAY, JUNE 13 This week of unhinged shop clerks, hardcore wart removal, and freaky Canadian havoc kicks off with a thrilling update in the saga of Louis, the Boston terrier that went missing back on May 22 and inspired the most passionate lost-dog flyer campaign in Seattle history. This campaign saw photos of Louis’s mug and calls for his safe return slapped up on street posts from Georgetown to Ballard, with the carpet-bomb media blitz steadily drawing every Seattleite with eyes into the saga. Which brings us to today, when Louis’s owners finally got the tip they’d been dreaming of. “A homeless man called us around 5:30 pm saying that he thinks he found Lou,” reported Mike and Kendall on the official “Find Louis” Facebook page. “He led us to a wooded area along I-5 near Dearborn [and] pointed out a dog under a tree on a woolen shelter blanket. We immediately knew it was Louis. He went limp in our arms like a rag doll and we rushed to the emergency vet. Prognosis is good—he should have a full recovery. The man who called us wasn’t reward motivated, and when we gave him an appropriately generous gift, he, too, was over the moon. We are overwhelmingly happy and are so grateful for the outpouring of support.” Welcome home, Louis!

TUESDAY JUNE, 14 The week continues in the U-District, where today the controversy over “bath salts”—the low-rent “designer drug” that mimics the effects of meth and is illegal for sale in Washington State—boiled over into real-life conflict. The setting: Tom’s University Smoke Shop on the Ave, where a TV news crew tried to question a clerk about the shop’s sale of bath salts and were reportedly met with the fury of a thousand meth heads. “I asked why the store was selling the illegal drug,” reports KOMO Problem Solver Michelle Esteban. “That’s when the clerk exploded. ‘Get the (expletive) out of here, all right?’ As we backed out of the store, the clerk appeared to get more aggravated and began throwing punches at my photographer… Later, over the phone, the clerk’s boss told KOMO News the bath salts for sale at his store are different from the rest, as they’re made with legal ingredients.” Not helping matters: Toxicology reports suggesting the role that bath salts may have played in the tragedy of David Stewart and Kristy Samples, the Fort Lewis soldier and his wife who were found dead from gunshot wounds (with their 5-year-old son found dead in the family’s home) after a high-speed car chase this past April. The moral: Stay away from bath salts.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 The week continues with warty anarchy in the UK, where a South Yorkshire man found a novel cure for a problematic wart inside the barrel of a shotgun. “For five years, Sean Murphy was driven to distraction by a painful blemish that no amount of creams, ointments, or doctors’ appointments could cure,” the Telegraph reports. “So… he blasted it with a 12-bore shotgun. But not only did the blast take off almost his entire finger, it also left him facing 15 years in jail for the illegal possession of a firearm.” Long story short: Mr. Murphy told police he’d found the wart-curing shotgun “under a hedge,” and eventually pleaded guilty to theft by finding and possessing a firearm without a valid certificate. “Yesterday, with only a stump to show for the middle of his left hand, and a suspended 16-week prison sentence, [Murphy] insisted he had no regrets. ‘The best thing is that the wart has gone. It was giving me a lot of trouble.'”

THURSDAY, JUNE 16 Speaking of stupidly insistent violence, the week continues in Vancouver, British Columbia, whose downtown is a wreck following last night’s humongous hockey riot. Setting the stage for the riot: the City of Vancouver, which encouraged as many as 100,000 people to watch the final match between the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Final on giant screens placed in “designated fan zones” downtown. When the Canucks lost, downtown Vancouver exploded in violence, as “roving bands of anarchists and troublemakers bent on havoc set fires, broke windows, and whipped up booze-fueled mobs to create the worst riot in Vancouver’s history,” reports the Vancouver Sun. Over 150 people were injured (three seriously), and property damage amounted to millions of dollars. “Mayor Gregor Robertson said the lack of forewarning about ‘anarchists and thugs’ planning to bring hammers and Molotov cocktails to a public party may mean police will have to adopt new methods of intelligence-gathering,” reports the Sun.

FRIDAY, JUNE 17 Hot on the heels of last week’s story about a high-school yearbook recalled for accidental sexual content comes this week’s story about a high-school yearbook recalled over accidental sexual content. As history buffs will recall, last week’s story involved a high-school wrestler who allegedly exposed his junk in a group photo that was published in the school yearbook. This week’s story pushes the narrative forward into alleged porn. Our setting: Big Bear Lake, the California mountain town about 70 miles east of LA, where yesterday students at Big Bear High School were asked to turn in their yearbooks after school officials discovered a photo depicting two students possibly engaged in a sex act. As the Associated Press reports, “The background of a school dance photo shows a 17-year-old boy’s hand inside the clothing of a 15-year-old girl in a way that suggests sexual penetration.” Further details come from sheriff’s spokesperson Cynthia Bachman: “The photo was taken at a dance, and the suspect and victim are not the focus of the photo. They are in the background and likely didn’t know they were in the photo.” As officials told the AP, most students have returned their yearbooks for editing (wherein the pic of the alleged fingerbang is covered with another photo), and those who haven’t are being warned they could face charges of possessing child porn.

SATURDAY, JUNE 18 Nothing happened today, unless you count the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, where Ron Paul won (another) straw poll, sociopath Michele Bachmann delivered a high-octane speech, and a Barack Obama impersonator took the stage to poke fun at the president (illustrating the Obamas’ post-White House life with an image from Sanford and Son, for instance) before being pulled from the stage. “The episode served as a distraction from the GOP’s goal of nominating a candidate who can defeat the president in next year’s election,” reports CNN.

SUNDAY, JUNE 19 The week ends with Father’s Day, the annual remembrance and celebration of those dudes who brought us into being and, if we’re lucky, did the hard work of raising us right. Last Days is lucky, and our dad is a prize—a master of casual swearing, responsible financial behavior, and punctuality who’s figured out how to enjoy the vast majority of his time on earth. In addition to putting us through college and teaching us that adding lime and salt to an extremely cold can of Coors Light is like taking an insta-trip to the Bahamas, he was arrested as a teenager for attempting to run a frozen cow corpse up a flagpole. Happy Father’s Day!

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