MONDAY, JANUARY 26 This week of presidential tongue-lashings, would-be sacrificial killings, and the glorious intersection of celebrity look-alikes and public urination kicks off with the type of bad financial news that drives sane men to leap to their deaths from office windows and not-so-sane men to massacre their families before killing themselves. Specifically, today brought word of the layoffs of more than 60,000 U.S. workers, including 8,000 from Sprint Nextel, 20,000 from Pfizer, 7,000 from Home Depot, and 20,000 from construction-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar. The slaughter will continue tomorrow, with the announcement of another 11,500 job cuts, including 3,500 from glass and ceramics maker Corning Inc. and 1,500 from Target. The Pacific Northwest will be particularly hard-hit, with the week bringing the layoffs of an additional 5,500 people at Boeing and 6,700 people at Starbucks. "In the meantime," ABC reports, "a growing number of Americans are collecting unemployment and desperately searching for new jobs.... Beyond that, fear of layoffs is taking its own toll on the economy. Some workers who still draw a weekly paycheck are cutting back on their spending for fear of losing their job down the road. While they might be saving for that rainy day, their lack of spending is driving the country deeper into a recession and putting their own jobs in jeopardy." In other news, deep breaths help, as does the prospect of a president who can address the current crisis in complete sentences. "As with the millions of jobs lost in 2008, these are working men and women whose families have been disrupted and whose dreams have been put on hold," said Barack Obama today. "We owe it to each of them and to every single American to act with a sense of urgency and common purpose." The means of such action: a stimulus plan the president says "will put millions of Americans to work."
TUESDAY, JANUARY 27 In much better news: The week continues with some grade-A politicking in Washington State, where today in Olympia, Senator Ed Murray and Representative Jamie Pedersen introduced a measure that would secure "everything but [the word] marriage" for the state's same-sex couples. As the Associated Press reports, the new measure would "offer same-sex couples all the rights and benefits given to heterosexual married couples," making changes to all remaining areas of state law where currently only married couples are addressed, and adding same-sex domestic partners to state statutes ranging from labor and employment to pensions and other public-employee benefits. "Although we view this as an improvement that provides real and concrete protections to same-sex partners, it's an inadequate substitute for marriage," said Pedersen. "Our hope is that the continuing success of this legislation helps people understand what marriage is, and that it gets them more comfortable with treating all families with equality, dignity, and respect." Props to Pedersen and Murray for waging the messy and realistic battles needed to Fight the Good Fight, as well as for accompanying today's "everything but marriage" measure with Murray's to-be-filed-until-it-passes-whenever-that-may-be measure for full-on same-sex marriage rights. (It never hurts to ask.) Onward.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28 Today brings a tabloid-worthy saga from the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where a 31-year-old Seattle man stands accused of attempting to ritually sacrifice his girlfriend. Details come from the Associated Press, which identifies the would-be sacrificer as Oumar Lam, who prosecutors say attacked his 26-year-old live-in girlfriend in front of a candlelit altar, allegedly attempting to suffocate her with a pillowcase before cutting her throat, chest, and back with a knife while "yelling in an unidentified language." Thankfully, the woman was able to call 911, telling police she feared her boyfriend "was trying to kill her as part of a sacrifice." The woman underwent emergency surgery at Harborview and is expected to survive, while Lam was today charged with first-degree assault.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29 The week continues with the president's dramatic tongue-lashing of Wall Street, as Obama publicly blasted the financial sector for rewarding itself with more than $18 billion in bonuses while successfully begging taxpayers for a bailout. "There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses," said the prez, vowing to make government support for the industry subject to strict conditions on pay and other perks. "Now's not that time."
••Speaking of former Illinois politicians: Today also brought the long-awaited impeachment of Rod Blagojevich, with the Illinois State Senate voting unanimously to oust the governor from office over his abuses of power and barring him from holding any office in the state in the future.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30 Nothing happened today, unless you count Hot Tipper Louis's report of walking this evening toward the intersection of Bellevue Avenue and Olive Way on Seattle's Capitol Hill, where he was confronted by the sight of a woman who looked exactly like Whitney Houston urinating in the street. Dear Hot Tipper Louis: Thank you for noticing and sharing. Dear Whitney Houston: Stop urinating in our streets.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 The week continues with a thorough dissing of the GOP by Sarah Palin, who turned down an invitation to this weekend's annual winter retreat of Republican members of Congress (where she'd been invited to give "a morale-building speech") by claiming "pressing state business" required her to stay in Alaska. Lucky for all, the maverick Palin whinnied and kicked through all that state business in time to make tonight's Alfalfa Dinner in Washington, D.C., described by Reuters as a high-society, "closed-door roast of the city's political and business elite," which also held in its audience President Barack Obama. Bravo to Sarah Palin, whom Charles Mudede rightly christened "The American Insect Woman" on Slog, The Stranger's blog: "Pretty Palin wants to be where the lights are bright and the champagne is flowing, not where the lights are out and a bunch of sore losers are licking their wounds in the dark."
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1 The week ends with the final night of the Twilight Exit, the sweet and scraggly Central District bar-with-food that tonight hosted its last hurrah at its long-standing blue-painted home at Madison Street and 22nd Avenue. And while tonight's death will be followed by a near-immediate resurrection of the Twilight at Cherry Street and 25th Avenue, Last Days would nevertheless like to commemorate a funky couple of rooms that housed an unusually rich collection of moments in our godforsaken life, including countless boozy gatherings before the wall-sized mural of a Southern California sunset, numerous karaoke performances of Bobby Goldsboro's cancer ballad "Honey" (sorry), some drunken post-Brokeback-Mountain-at-Central-Cinema sobbing (there is nothing sadder than a gay man's wife), and one unforgettable afternoon when, originally scheduled to meet three friends, we instead got to tell two friends that the third friend had died. (RIP, Sean Ryan, and best of luck, new Twilight.) 
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