MONDAY, APRIL 18 This week of galling politics, Evangelical hooliganism, and recessive evolution got off to a relatively benign start today with an evergreen question: What's getting American kids high? The answer came in triplicate, with three news sources citing three different intoxicants: methamphetamine, prescription drugs, and choking games. First is the Associated Press, which today published a study chronicling the steep increase of teen methamphetamine use, particularly among kids in the Midwest and Eastern U.S., where speed/crystal/chalk is reportedly on the brink of eclipsing pot as the teenage drug of choice. "I've talked to kids who've said it makes them feel like Superman," said researcher Carol Falkowski to the AP, which also cited meth's growing cache among teen girls, who appreciate the poison drug's power as an appetite suppressant. (Plus, every lost tooth is another few ounces off the scale.) Later this week, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America will release its 17th annual study on teen drug abuse, with the most-hyped finding being an explosion of prescription-drug shenanigans among American teens. According to the PDFA's findings, nearly 1 in 5 teenagers has abused a prescription painkiller, while 1 in 11 has abused such over-the-counter medicines as cough syrup, with "ease of access" (parents' medicine cabinets, neighborhood drug stores) cited as a driving factor of teen experimentation. Meanwhile, over in Idaho, Boise's KTVB News shined its light on the deadly intoxicant parents won't find crammed in kids' backpacks or hidden under their beds, and isn't even illegal: voluntary oxygen deprivation, the high-school party game wherein kids choke themselves or each other to induce a consciousness-draining swoon. This time-honored pre-narcotic intoxicant has come under fire for causing a number of deaths over the past few years, most recently in Nampa, where last week a 13-year-old girl was found fatally hanged in what authorities first ruled a suicide, until police reopened the investigation as a possible self-administered choking gone wrong. Condolences to the friends and family of Nampa's unlucky choker, and may God have mercy on a generation that spurns the soul-expanding, art-appreciation-enhancing properties of pot for the toxically artificial blood-buzz of meth.


TUESDAY, APRIL 19 Speaking of hot new drugs: Today brought the designation of a brand-new pope, as Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, a process that instantly transformed the 78-year-old Ratzinger from a German cardinal with doctrinaire tendencies and a Hitler Youth past into the literal successor to the apostle Peter, as well as the earthly embodiment of Jesus in defining morals, customs, and laws of the Judeo-Christian society, a position made endlessly more troubling by the 1870 decree of papal infallibility, which guarantees the pope's inherent correctness in all matters of faith and morality. Accepting his new powers on a Roman balcony, Ratzinger pronounced himself "a simple, humble worker"--a clever bit of smoke the pope followed with a fiery warning to the cardinals about "dangers to the faith," including but not limited to the "dictatorship of relativism" and the intrinsic evil of homosexuality. Lucky for all: At 78, Pope Benedict XVI is a papal pinch-hitter in the 11th-inning extreme, and no matter what kind of crap he tries to pull during his pope-time, he'll soon be replaced by another puff of smoke. (As for those former Nazi ties: If the good folks of Israel can accept Ratzinger's apologetic explanations, who are we to judge?)


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20 Speaking of homophobes in power: Today the Texas House of Representatives voted 135-6 to pass legislation barring gays and lesbians from becoming foster parents. In addition to excluding bisexuals and gays from the pool of possible foster parents, the Texas house bill would also invalidate existing gay-foster-parent arrangements, necessitating the forced removal of children from foster homes that include a gay, lesbian, or bisexual parent-figure. "I am just so hurt and surprised," said Eva Thibaudeau, a lesbian social worker who's foster-parented 75 children, to the Associated Press. "Especially now [when] we're facing an ongoing crisis of not having enough resources to take care of foster children." But the values-hoarding Texas legislature would brook no rational argument: "It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children," said Republican Rep. Robert Talton. "I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual." The moral superiority of heterosexual parenting will be cemented tomorrow with the discovery of two bound, gagged, and slightly emaciated children in a Bonney Lake, Washington garage, where police had been led by the 10-year-old boy's and 9-year-old girl's muffled cries, and where authorities soon arrested the bound siblings' father and stepmother on suspicion of unlawful imprisonment, first-degree criminal mistreatment, and first-degree assault of a child. (Horrifying detail courtesy of KING 5: On the hood of a car parked mere feet from the bound children in the garage, police found a copy of Parenting magazine.)


THURSDAY, APRIL 21 In other crap news, today the Washington State Senate rejected legislation to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians in housing, insurance and jobs, by a single mind-fucking vote. The villain in today's tragedy would seem to be the Microsoft-bullying Pastor Ken Hutcherson, a pro footballer of negligible worth until a God-sent knee injury inspired him to point his beefy brain at the Bible, from which Hutcherson continues to extract dangerously self-serving bullshit he fearlessly presents as fact. Conservatives who attack others for their private lives, sexual conduct, and choice of mates make their own private lives fair game. The occassional fall-from-grace of a Bill Bennett or a Jimmy Swaggart is one of the few benefits of the Fundamentalist Firestorm we're currently enduring. It makes us wonder if there aren't juicy tidbits about Washington State's own Pat Robertson floating around out there. Sports blunders? Inept recycling habits? Poor personal hygiene? Worse? Keep Last Days in the loop: lastdays@thestranger.com.


FRIDAY, APRIL 22 Nothing happened today, unless you count the theme-continuing condemnation made by Pope Benedict, who denounced a Spanish government bill that would extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Blasting the bill as "profoundly iniquitous," Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo--head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council on the Family, BBC News tells us--reminded Catholics that "legal" does not always mean "right," and warned Spanish Catholics in "every profession linked with implementing homosexual marriages" to oppose it, even if it means losing their jobs. The moral superiority and inviolable purity of heterosexual marriage will again be cemented later today by the New York Daily News report on the more than $800,000 reportedly paid by Paramount Television for rights to footage from the still-unscheduled wedding of convicted child-rapist Mary Kay Letourneau and her student/victim/babydaddy Villi Fualaau.


SATURDAY, APRIL 23 Nothing happened today unless you count reports on the arrest of the Wendy's chili woman, who made headlines last month for suing Wendy's after allegedly finding a severed finger in a bowl of chili, and who was arrested yesterday on charges of attempted grand larceny.


SUNDAY, APRIL 24 The week ends with a pair of deadly bombings in Iraq, where insurgents killed at least 21 people in Baghdad and provided a tragically fitting close to a week marked by huge kabooms: the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and the sixth anniversary of the Columbine massacre, two monstrous events that continue to offer invaluable lessons. Namely: Many of America's worst enemies reside within its borders, and if you push freaks too far, they'll start killing.

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