··Following the miracle of birth comes the crappiness of death: Today brought the sad, sudden news of the death-by-heart-attack of Joe Strummer, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the punk-and-beyond pioneers the Clash, who were, for an unforgettable number of years in the late '70s/early '80s, "the only band that mattered." The Clash's greatest commercial success was their late-career rock-ditty-turned-eternal-frat-boy anthem "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" but the band's artistic zenith is more difficult to pinpoint, with rock crits splitting hairs between the beloved masterpiece London Calling, the shamelessly sprawling Sandinista!, and the still-scary (and ultimately definitive) debut. For Last Days, the Clash were that rare band we loved as much as an adult as we did as a kid (after a next-door neighbor loaned us Give 'Em Enough Rope at 12). In addition, the Clash provided us with what remains our most cherished concert experience, via a semi-surprise 1983 show in El Paso, TX, through which the band was passing while en route to the ill-fated US Festival, and where a young Last Days was happily splattered by a bunch of Joe Strummer's saliva before being knocked unconscious by a stage-diver's boot. R.I.P., Mr. Strummer.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24 Hot on the heels of last week's alleged Lamb-of-God rape comes a far more heartwarming story of the intermingling of human genitalia and animals. Today's tale comes all the way from Norway, where a young mother who saved a newborn litter of puppies from starving to death by nursing them herself told reporters she "has no regrets" regarding the act of mammary altruism that saved eight puppies and made this full-service Florence Nightingale the victim of jokes and judgments the world over. "I've heard that some people thought it was disgusting that I would nurse [my son] and the puppies at the same time," said 23-year-old Kine Skiaker to the newspaper Aftenposten. "I just have to tolerate that, and can only say that I washed myself thoroughly after I'd nursed the puppies."
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25 Today was Christmas, the day Americans expect to be given what they desire by people who claim to love them. And while we didn't receive our ultimate Christmas wish--for Jennifer Lopez to get arrested, tried, and convicted of first-degree murder in a state with the death penalty--we happened to stumble upon a bit of daytime TV so rich and hilarious we accepted it as a gift from God. The show belonged to Maury Povich, the hideous husband of Connie Chung, who today earned a permanent place in Last Days' heart by hosting the show entitled "I'm Terrified of Chalk, Hair, and Circus Clowns!" in which a variety of guests attempted to overcome their violently irrational fears with help from Maury and "motivational expert" Gary Coxe. Watching a fully grown man run screaming from a clown was a pleasure Last Days never anticipated; getting to witness this man overcome his fear and willingly hug a clown (!) turned the pleasure to epiphany. However, the true star of the show was the woman whose fear of chalk was so acute she dropped out of high school--and nearly scratched her eyes out when confronted with the dreaded stuff on a previous Maury show. But thanks to Gary Coxe's motivational treatment, this woman could not only stand in the same room with chalk without screaming, she actually wrote "I Love Maury" with chalk on a chalkboard! Thanks to every single person who made this absolutely magical hour of television possible.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26 Back to the real world: Today Last Days finally perused Tuesday's endlessly troubling, gazillion-word-long Washington Post article by Post staffer Barton Gellman, surveying the state of the nation in the face of inevitable terrorism. Unfurled beneath the headline "In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished" (a masterful bit of grammar strategy, trilling with passive-voice plainspeak and explosive understatement), Gellman's article gave readers a terrifyingly thorough understanding of the multitude of risks facing citizens of the United States from our nation's many mortal enemies, who've proven themselves willing to do anything to end (or at least significantly complicate) the lives of as many Americans as possible. Among Gellman's revelations: In late 2001, the Bush administration erected the "Ring Around Washington," a provisional defense against nuclear attack on the nation's capital. Designed to detect nuclear weapons prior to detonation, the Ring underwent a "large-scale operational trial" with mixed results: In some cases, detectors failed to identify dangerous radiation; in others, they sent false alarms, misreading low-grade medical waste and "ordinary background emissions of stone monuments." (Monuments fart; who knew?) "Until we can change the law of physics, we're not going to make the detectors a great deal better," said a "knowledgeable official" to Gellman, who went on to sum things up with this typically terrifying sentence: "More than 15 months into the war with al Qaeda, U.S. exposure to ruinous attack remains unbounded."
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27 Today Last Days continued to beat ourselves bloody before the pornography for pessimists that is Bart Gellman's Washington Post article on the United States' "security deficit" (yet another ingenious euphemism, this one credited to an unnamed "current official"). "The gravest risks from al Qaeda combine its affinity for big targets and its announced desire for weapons of mass destruction," writes Gellman, before handing the mic to retired Army General Wayne A. Downing, who served as Bush's deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism until July 8. "Most sobering to me," said Downing, "was [al Qaeda's] research on chemical weapons and radiological dispersion devices, and their fascination with nuclear weapons. These guys continue to go back after targets they have tried to get before. That's why I expect they're going to go back to Washington." Downing's expectation was confirmed by a current Bush official, who told Gellman, "They are going to kill the White House. I have really begun to ask myself whether I want to continue to get up every day and come to work on this block."
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28 Nothing happened today (unless you count Last Days' continued walloping of our pessimism G spot via the classic cycle of cynicism justification, employing such self-aggrandizing, responsibility-diminishing questions as "If this is what the government's willing to admit, can you imagine the shit they're not telling us?" and "Why shouldn't I stay drunk for seven weeks straight?").
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29 Nothing happened today.
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