MONDAY, JUNE 9
Eleven months ago, Pennsylvania engineer Bob Long was hailed as "the man behind the miracle" of the Quecreek Nine, the Pennsylvania coal miners rescued from a flooded mineshaft last July. During the rescue, 37-year-old Long used a global-positioning satellite system to determine the placement of a lifesaving air hole drilled for the workers trapped 240 feet below the earth. After the rescue, Bob Long earned the spite of some in his close-knit community by inking a high-dollar movie deal with Disney about the ordeal--a controversial arrangement criticized for both its perceived opportunism (Long was one of hundreds of rescue workers who worked to free the miners) and greed (for his story, Long received $150,000--the same amount given to each of the rescued men). But tonight Bob Long silenced those who would accuse him of opportunism and greed by fatally shooting himself outside his Pennsylvania home, making a widow and orphans of his wife and three children, and providing Disney with a fucked-up new twist for its film.

TUESDAY, JUNE 10
Today in Ontario, an appellate court ruled that Canada's heterosexual definition of marriage violated the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms--and was therefore unconstitutional. Following the ruling, two Toronto men tied the knot in Canada's first legal same-sex wedding. According to the Associated Press, Michael Leshner and Michael Stark, a couple of 22 years, exchanged rings at a civil ceremony attended by dozens of friends, Leshner's 90-year-old mother, and at least one pro photographer, whose full-color shot of the smooching grooms adorned the front page of Ontario's London Free Press, drawing passionate letters both pro ("It was a beautiful picture of a couple in love") and con ("That is not love, that is a sickness"). But what exactly does today's ruling mean? According to gay-reporter extraordinaire Rex Wockner, "There is nothing to stop American gay couples from hopping across the border and getting married--full, real marriage." This fact was reiterated by Evan Wolfson, executive director of the U.S. organization Freedom to Marry, who told Wockner, "This is not just signing up on a list. [Americans who go to Canada and get married] are as legally married as any people on the planet, even if they face uncertainty or discrimination back home in the U.S. The Canadian decision is going to give us a tremendous opportunity to show non-gay Americans that the sky doesn't fall when same-sex couples are married." Cheers to Love, Canadian Style, jeers to the inevitable proclamation by some Religious Righter blaming Toronto's approval of gay marriage for the city's affliction with SARS.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11
From the greatest country in North America we turn to the worst babysitter in the world, identified this afternoon near Seattle Center, after the wayward sitter ignored a stop sign, mowed down two pedestrians, then crashed into a building--all while driving a car owned by and containing the baby of her employers. The Seattle Times provides details of today's traffic terror, which began when police saw a newer green Volkswagen speed past a stop sign at First Avenue and Denny Way. After being pulled over, the driver--a 21-year-old woman, with a toddler girl on the seat beside her--took advantage of a lapse in the officer's attention by speeding away, leading cops on a chase down Mercer and onto Fifth before plowing into a pair of pedestrians crossing the street and then slamming into the side of Zak's Fifth Avenue Saloon. The injured pedestrians (a husband and wife in their 50s) and the miraculously uninjured toddler (who had neither a car seat nor a seat belt) were taken to Harborview Medical Center, while the (unlicensed) driver was arrested on suspicion of felonies including eluding police and vehicular assault.

··Speaking of taking care of children (however negligibly): She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens, when her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes. Where was she to go? What was she to do? She was out on her fanny. So over the bridge from Flushing to the Sheffields' door--she was there to sell makeup, but the father saw more. She had style, she had flair, she was there. That's how she became the Nanny.

THURSDAY, JUNE 12
Nothing happened today (unless you count Reuters' report of the 43-year-old man in Berlin placed in psychiatric care after being found living with the rotting corpse of his 58-year-old, dead-for-a-month roommate, or the Tacoma City Council's praiseworthy display of good sense and good taste in rejecting a bid to direct $500,000 from the city's general fund to help cover cost overruns on the Chihuly Bridge of Glass).

FRIDAY, JUNE 13
Today brought a fascinating Seattle Times story about the badass blood nun of Bremerton. The saga of Sister Jackie Hudson first made headlines last October, when the 68-year-old Dominican nun and two of her Christian siblings (Sister Carol Gilbert, 55, and Sister Ardeth Platte, 67) were arrested after a controversial protest at a nuclear missile silo in northeastern Colorado. According to the Times, the three sisters--dressed in white inspection suits adorned with the initials CWIT (for Citizens Weapons Inspection Team)--cut down three sections of a fence around a nuclear missile silo, painted crosses on the silo cover with their blood, and used a ball-peen hammer to make dents in the silo cover and the railroad tracks leading to the silo hatch. In April, after six months awaiting trial in jail, the sisters were found guilty of damaging government property and obstructing national defense, felonies that boast maximum sentences of 30 years. On July 25, Sister Jackie Hudson will leave her Bremerton home and report to Denver for sentencing, with prosecutors seeking a sentence of five to eight years. Despite international cries for leniency, Jeff Dorschner, spokesperson for Denver's U.S. Attorney's Office, defends stiff punishments for the uppity nuns. "During a time of heightened state of alert, an alarm goes off that the perimeter has been breached at a nuclear weapons silo," explained Dorschner to the Times' Janet I. Tu. "When the military responds to that alarm, they see three unknown people wearing chemical-weapons suits. Through a loudspeaker they gave instructions to the unknown individuals. Those instructions were not followed." Dorschner's defense is legally irrefutable. Still, whenever radical nuns arm themselves with ball-peen hammers, humanity wins.

··Speaking of the triumph of humanity: Two weeks ago, Last Days swore off any further reportage on the surly blood-and-tissue vandal indelicately known as the Human Scab. But that was until we received today's Hot Tip from Tanya, who was returning to her car in a Broadway parking lot this afternoon when she spotted a guy--"with one giant scab on the back of his head, and another on his neck"--crouching by her car and defecating. "The sight that was left behind," wrote Tanya, "will haunt me forever."

SATURDAY, JUNE 14
Today Last Days attended a performance of Crispin Spaeth Dance Group's latest work, Double Down. It was very good, and featured a minimum of perpetually wounded public defecators.

SUNDAY, JUNE 15
The week ends with Father's Day, the United States' day of observance honoring those men who impregnated our mothers, provided us with food and shelter, taught us to fish/pitch/drink/duck, and, if we're lucky, paid for college. Thanks, dads.

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