MONDAY, MARCH 12 The week began with a Hot Tip about John Curley, the satanically perky host of Evening Magazine, who was spotted inexplicably shuffling down the railroad tracks at Golden Gardens brandishing a carpenter's saw and wearing a vacant expression--all with nary a camera in sight. The hysterical Hot Tipper who witnessed this odd event panted, "Please keep this anonymous. If John Curley has indeed snapped, I don't want him to hunt me down." Last Days thinks this city must be in quite a pickle when its citizens are forced to live in fear of such minor celebrities.

··Also today, it's not pickles that parents have to fear in Burger King's kid's meals--it's the insidious "Rattling, Paddling Riverboat." As if the giant burger chain's food weren't enough of a choking hazard, Reuters reported that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of 400,000 of the toys after a toddler was found with a pin in her mouth from the plastic red boat. Burger King last had a toy recalled only 15 months ago when it pulled 25 million Pokémon balls after two infants suffocated when the packaging covered their noses. This is the sixth recall in the past 15 months of toys distributed by U.S. fast-food chains, so unless you're dying to test your Heimlich maneuver, don't give that crap to kids.

··Also today, America's recent propensity for murderous military mistakes continued with Reuters' report that a U.S. Navy warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on a group of its own military observers. Five U.S. soldiers and a New Zealander were killed during the exercise in the Kuwaiti desert near Iraq's border. It remains to be seen whether this tragedy will have an immediate effect on prices at the gas pump.

TUESDAY, MARCH 13 Stop the presses! "President" Dubya abandoned a campaign pledge, telling Congress he would not seek to impose mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide at electrical power plants, Reuters reported today. The move angered environmentalists and was at odds with the spirit of the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 U.N. climate accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. Allen Mattison, spokesman for the Sierra Club, said, "It sounds like Bush is bowing to heavy lobbying pressure from business interests and making a complete U-turn from a campaign promise." Last Days is simply stunned at this baffling turn of events.

··Also today, one of our nation's most malevolent con men and the inspiration for the artsy-fartsy gore flick Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer croaked in his Texas jail cell yesterday. Reuters reported that 64-year-old Henry Lee Lucas, the one- eyed drifter who in 1983 falsely confessed to almost 600 murders, died of a probable heart attack. He was ultimately convicted of 10 murders and was serving a life sentence for seven of them, though Lucas eventually said the only killing he ever committed was the 1960 murder of his mother, Viola. Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said that Lucas spent his final years behind bars working in the prison sewing shop: "He was one hell of a seamstress. That son of a gun could make a sewing machine hum."

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14 If lethal Happy Meals and spongelike holes in your brain from mad cow disease weren't reasons enough to make vegetarians feel smug, the U.S. government just offered one more. It announced that in order to prevent the financially devastating foot-and-mouth disease from hitchhiking into the United States, it would scrub the shoes of American travelers returning from the European countryside. Fine for those closeted foot fetishists working in Customs, but what about the next helpful suggestion that luggage, cameras, laptops, and cell phones should also be disinfected? Last Days is unsure of the practicality of dipping a Hasselblad in a bucket of bleach.

··Confidential to the girl with the bouncy blond bob and the vanity plate that reads, "IMBARBI," held on to the shiny Passat with an "I hate Barbie, that bitch has everything" license-plate frame: Last Days deeply regrets our unkind actions today. We acknowledge that we have a problem and we vow to seek immediate counseling. Also, we're almost positive that it will wash right out.

··Also today, using new evidence from space, scientists dispelled any lingering doubts about the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Reuters reported. Sets of data taken 27 years apart from two satellites orbiting the Earth have now provided the first observational evidence of a rise in greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (see Tuesday). Without significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, scientists estimate the Earth's temperature and sea levels will rise, leading to increased flooding and drastic climate changes that Last Days fervently hope will drown and/or fry to a crisp all the remaining descendants of "President" Dubya.

THURSDAY, MARCH 15 Overheard outside the Globe Cafe: A pudgy teenage goth girl wearing fingerless gloves and sucking on a Camel Light looked glumly over at her similarly attired companion and muttered bitterly, "Cheyenne says I smoke like a jerk."

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 Today Last Days casually glanced at the tag on an Old Navy T-shirt that we recently purchased at a thrift store and were momentarily taken aback by what we read. "Made in Lesotho"? Where in the hell is Lesotho? We have a mental image of Old Navy putting its sweatshops on a gigantic trawler topped with razor wire and then sailing it far out into international waters, way beyond the ken of any meddling unions or human-rights activists. If any Hot Tipper can disabuse us of the unsettling idea of the sweatshop SS Lesotho, we would be enormously grateful.

SATURDAY, MARCH 17 Today Last Days heard a knock at the door of our shack (Ballard via Appalachia) and opened it to find a complete stranger (next-door basement apartment) garbed in a kilt (Scotland), clutching a whiskey (origin unknown) in one hand and a cigarette (most likely industrial urban center in the southern United States) in the other as he swayed slightly in the breeze. This drunken neighbor kindly reminded us that it was St. Patrick's Day (Ireland), so we hauled a bottle of Wild Turkey (Kentucky, United States) out of the freezer (origin unknown) and joined him in a festive toast. Who says we can't celebrate good ol' cultural identity in the new global economy?

SUNDAY, MARCH 18 The Great Alzana, the high-wire artist poetically ballyhooed as "The Most Daredevilish Human Ever to Skirt Eternity's Brink," whose tricks were so dangerous that New York state passed a law to keep him from working without a net, died on Feb 16 at a hospital in Sarasota, Florida, The New York Times announced (rather belatedly) today. Mr. Harold Davis retired in the mid-1970s, but still enjoyed a netless high wire in his back yard for practicing, until his heart condition worsened three years ago. Even then, the Great Alzana remained drawn to the place he loved best. "He'd climb up on the ladder and just sit there," his wife said. "I guess in his mind and his heart he didn't want to quit."

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