MONDAY, MAY 1 This week of dumb excuses, just retribution, and upsetting Metro bus rides kicks off today with "A Day Without Immigrants," the national pro-immigration (or at least anti-anti-immigration) protest that brought over one million people to the streets of cities across the country. Meanwhile, the nation's newspapers front-paged a story that would have dominated any other news day: "America's Gas Pinch Won't Ease for Years," crowed the Seattle Times; "Officials Predict Years of High Gas Prices," barked the Baltimore Sun. While headlines varied, the story stayed the same: "High Gas Prices Will Last Years, Bush Aides Say," reported the Los Angeles Times, whose reporter Paul Richter wrote the story reprinted all over tarnation. Richter's primary source for the impressively frank and gloomy gas predictions: the tell-it-like-it-is media blitz undertaken yesterday by Bush administration officials, including but not limited to White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten ("This is a very large problem," said Bolten on Fox News Sunday), Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman ("Clearly, we're going to have a number of years—two to three years—before suppliers are in a position to meet... demands," said Bodman on NBC's Meet the Press), and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told ABC's This Week, "the quicker we get about the business of reducing our reliance on oil, the better we're going to be." Meanwhile, threatened with the death of American pleasure driving, car commercials continued to get creepier, with auto advertisers forced to forge ever more specious arguments for the necessity of sexy new cars. (Best in show: the ad that suggests driving a car that's "not you" is akin to walking around all day in old-age makeup. When advertisers are reduced to making fun of resistant consumers' looks, you know times are tough.)

TUESDAY, MAY 2 Speaking of the forthcoming years-long gas crisis (if three Bush officials said it on the same day, it's got to be true, and then some): Today brings not one but two stories of horrors borne on the Metro bus. Story #1 comes from Hot Tipper Emily, who was riding the #43 from downtown to Capitol Hill when she was granted the opportunity to overhear the cell-phone-clutching guy behind her yak in graphic detail about the yeast infection that had taken over his balls, as well as the effect that the astrological alignment of Mars and Uranus was having on his affliction. Story #2 comes from Hot Tipper Melissa, who was riding the #197 from UW to Federal Way when she was required to survive a 30-mile bus journey across from a twentysomething woman insistently picking and eating her facial acne. One benefit of the gas-price crisis: the streaming of many more riders and would-be Hot Tippers into the self-replenishing petri dish of gawk-worthy humanity that is Seattle Metro. There's no fighting destiny. Bring it on, motherfuckers.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 3 The week continues with a fascinating report on bias crimes in Seattle, presented today by Seattle City Attorney's Office employee/concerned private citizen Ken Molsberry (who spearheaded the study in his latter capacity), and covered extensively in tomorrow's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The lowdown: After reading about the December 2004 attack of a straight man in a stylish shirt in Ballard ("Perceived to Be Gay... and Bashed for It," read the Seattle Gay News headline), Ken Molsberry embarked on a year of study to produce today's report, "Bias Crimes and Incidents in Seattle: 2000 to 2005: An analysis by type of bias and neighborhood." Produced in partnership with the Seattle LGBT Community Center and drawing on five years of Seattle Police Department reports, the study was designed, as Molsberry writes, to "dispel the misconception that there is any neighborhood in Seattle in which bias attacks are not a problem." Mission accomplished: Between 2000 and 2005, Molsberry counted 403 "bias-motivated attacks" throughout the city, from Asian-baiting in the U-District to anti-Arab violence in Belltown to the allegedly epithet-ridden attack of a 14-year-old African- American boy by three white men in Ballard last Friday. The two biggest motivators for attacks: race (142 incidents) and sexual orientation (119 incidents), trailed by religion, national origin, political ideology, and gender identity, in decreasing order. Most hostile areas: First Hill/Capitol Hill and Eastlake, with 76 reported episodes over that five-year period. But as Molsberry was driven to prove, no neighborhood was immune. "Hate crime perpetrators believe they have the support of the community," said Molsberry to the P-I. "The community has to tell everyone, 'We condemn hate violence and prejudice.'"

•• Speaking of (alleged) hate crimes: Today one of the Texas teens accused of beating, sodomizing, and hurling racial epithets at a 16-year-old Hispanic boy in Houston offered an explanation. Speaking to Houston's KTRK-TV from his prison cell, 18-year-old David Henry Tuck gave his take on the night of the attack (which in addition to the aforementioned beating, slurring, and raping is also alleged to have included dousing the victim with bleach). Whatever did or didn't happen, Tuck blames it all on one thing: drugs. By his own admission, on the night of the attack Tuck had ingested vodka, cocaine, marijuana, and Xanax. "Xanax to me is like a demon," says the reportedly reformed former neo-Nazi/total pussy. "It takes control of me." David Tuck and his alleged co-attacker remain jailed on charges of aggravated sexual assault, while the attack victim remains hospitalized in critical condition.

THURSDAY, MAY 4 Nothing happened today, unless you count the long-awaited sentencing of psychotic al Qaeda sympathizer Zacarias Moussaoui (who was denied death-penalty martyrdom in favor of life in prison and a meaningless death by attrition) or the deeply disturbing Amnesty International report concluding that torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, and elsewhere. "Evidence continues to emerge of... cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody," said Amnesty International in its 47-page report, which found that much of the ill treatment stemmed from officially sanctioned interrogation procedures and techniques. "The U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture," said Amnesty International USA Senior Deputy Director-General Curt Goering, "it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill treatment can flourish."

FRIDAY, MAY 5 Nothing happened today, unless you count Cinco de Mayo, the annual, nacho-flavored commemoration of public drunkenness and something allegedly having to do with Mexico.

SATURDAY, MAY 6 Hot on the heels of last week's sweet old man struck by lightning in Florida, today brings another instance of electricity gone horribly wrong. This week's story comes from Baltimore, where yesterday America's unluckiest 14-year-old was stretching before a baseball game in a city park. Speaking to the Associated Press, teammates described watching the girl place her foot on a park fence, then collapse to the ground, after which she was rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The culprit: a sagging power line that had come in contact with the aforementioned fence. Condolences to the girl's loved ones, who lost a daughter/sister/teammate/friend because she put her foot on a fucking fence, and best of luck to the city of Baltimore, which is sure to be seeing some scary-ass lawsuits.

SUNDAY, MAY 7 Nothing happened today.

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