MONDAY, JUNE 8 This week of felonious theatricality, theatrical religiosity, and shocking bullshit kicks off with a surprise ending for a 21st-century villain: David Lee Gage, the 52-year-old Wichita man convicted last month of three counts of rape following attacks on women he'd found advertising in Craigslist's "erotic services" section. According to prosecutors, Gage's MO involved soliciting a woman online to arrange a meeting at a motel, where he'd flash a fake federal marshal's badge and threaten arrest on prostitution charges should the would-be erotic-service provider refuse to have sex with him. As the Associated Press reports, Gage was busted for just such a ruse in 1998, when he threatened to arrest an undercover officer working a prostitution sting and was convicted of falsely impersonating a police officer. This time, Gage didn't get off so easy, with a Sedgwick County jury finding him guilty of seven felonies, including three counts of rape, two counts of aggravated criminal sodomy, and one count each of aggravated robbery and aggravated assault, for which he was sentenced to 29 years in prison. Gage's sentence came to an abrupt but morbidly satisfying end this morning when he was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide. Condolences to Gage's friends and family, and congratulations to Gage's known and unknown victims, who have every right to give each other high fives today.

TUESDAY, JUNE 9 In much worse news, the week continues with an update on the brutal attack of a transgender woman at a South Seattle bus stop. Details come from the Seattle Times, which reports the attack occurred last Saturday afternoon, when the 36-year-old victim—who told police she's in the process of changing her "name and appearance from a man to a woman"—was waiting at a Metro stop on Rainier Avenue South near Franklin High School. Before long, she was accosted by a "group of youths," who uttered anti-gay slurs as they struck and kicked the victim to the ground, then tried to steal her backpack. Police arrived in time to catch and arrest one of the alleged attackers—a boy who, the Times reports, "later told investigators that his 'homies' started 'messing with the victim' because they thought the victim was gay." The boy was booked into the King County Youth Service Center for investigation of attempted robbery and felony malicious harassment, while police continue their search for the other attackers. On Thursday, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg will release a statement suggesting the case might be the first use of the state's freshly revised hate-crime law, which was expanded earlier this year to include protections for transgender citizens. Best wishes to the victim, stay tuned for updates.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 Speaking of hate crimes: Today the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was cursed with some real-time horror, as 88-year-old James W. von Brunn—a hardcore white supremacist with a vast virtual oeuvre of internet ravings against Jews and African Americans—entered the Washington, D.C., museum and opened fire. Slain at the scene: 39-year-old Stephen Tyrone Johns, a security guard who'd worked at the museum for six years. Shot in the face but surviving: von Brunn, who remains in critical condition after being wounded by some of Johns's fellow security guards. Should he recover, von Brunn is facing first-degree murder charges, with the slaying possibly prosecuted as a hate crime. The final word for now will come on Friday, when von Brunn's son goes public with his disgust and remorse. "I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father, who lost their life," wrote 32-year-old Erik von Brunn in a statement to ABC News. "My father's actions are unforgivable."

THURSDAY, JUNE 11 Nothing happened today, unless you count the ironic switcheroo saga of Johanna Ganthaler, the Italian woman who one week ago cheated death by showing up late for the doomed Air France Flight 447, and who today died in a car crash. Good one, God.

FRIDAY, JUNE 12 The week continues with a heartbreaking mindfuck as the Obama administration—after gaining power with a platform promising "fierce advocacy" for gay and lesbian equality—filed a brief in support of the patently bigoted Defense of Marriage Act. And not just any brief: Obama's Department of Justice seemed to go out of its way to present bigoted and retrograde arguments for maintaining marriage inequality, with the shameless political fuckover inspiring shock and awe among Obama's millions of gay and gay-friendly supporters. As usual, Andrew Sullivan is most eloquent: "There's a completely decent reason to keep DOMA in place for the time being, especially in the federal courts right now—where bad precedents could wound us in the future. But to file an actual brief restating some of the worst and most denigrating arguments against gay civil equality is just bizarre. They could have argued for a narrow ruling or kept the 'reasonable' arguments to a minimum. What they did—without any heads-up to any of their gay supporters and allies—is unconscionable. Citing incest precedents? Calling gay couples freeloaders? Arguing that our civil rights are not impinged because we can marry someone of the opposite sex? After refusing to do anything on DADT, after failing to lift the HIV travel ban, after punting on even pure symbolism like hate crimes—well, it's no way to treat those who worked their butts off to elect you... I'm baffled by this, I really am. The content of this brief is a massive political error from an administration that is making it impossible for its gay supporters to stay supportive."

SATURDAY, JUNE 13 The week continues with outrage in Iran, where the controversial confirmation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner of yesterday's presidential election drove thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Tehran, where crowds shouted "death to dictatorship," and inspired increasingly brutal suppression tactics from Iranian authorities; the history-interrupting, soon-to-be humanitarian crisis continues as you read this.

SUNDAY, JUNE 14 The week ends with a burst of biblically inspired lunacy courtesy of the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps's fag- and Jew-hating, funeral- picketing, casualty-of-war-celebrating gaggle of asshats who may secretly be America's canniest and most ambitious performance-art troupe, who spent the day picketing an array of Seattle locales. (For entertaining photographic evidence, see Slog, The Stranger blog.)

Send Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com.