Because I did a little bit over the weekend, I’m now paying the price. My foot hurt yesterday, was killing me all night long last night, and hurts so bad I can barely walk this morning. So I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to keep ice on it while still functioning. This should make taking the dog to the vet this morning even more fun that I thought it would be. I guess I’ll just have to hobble through.

Marc Maron will be on Fresh Air today talking about his upcoming show and book, and of course his WTF podcast. If you can’t catch it live, the audio will be up later on in the day.

Oh well, I guess I’d better try and get some work done before I head to the vet.

With all the conflicting information and rampant speculation about the Boston Bomber Dudes, it’s hard to really get a handle on just what the hell the deal with them is. Except for one thing I think we can all agree on. As with most messed up people, the blame clearly falls on the mother. Damns mothers, right? And if you don’t believe me, then just ask Texas Republican Michael McCaul (who I never heard of, but I suppose I should have since he apparently chairs the House Committee on Fatherland Security).

“I think she played a very strong role in his radicalization process,” McCaul said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I believe she is a person of interest, if not a subject (sic). I do believe that if she does come into the United States that she will be detained for questioning. So I think there is a connection.”

Great going, Mike. As if that outstanding warrant for shoplifting wasn’t enough, now we’ll never get her to come back here. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if she got disappeared to some Russian Gulag camp in the middle of the night.

So you probably heard that the Boy Scouts have changed their policy on gays in their paramilitary organization. It’s OK to be a gay boy scout now, but it’s not OK to be a gay den mother or pack leader or whatever the hell they call it (sorry, but one of the may things I definitely have never been is a boy scout). So you can be gay but you can’t grow up to run your own club. On the bright side, you can now grow up and join the real military if you’re into that sort of thing. Thankfully, the Mormons have given their approval to the new policy, because if there’s one group whose opinions I care about, it’s the Mormons. Well, and the Scientologists, too.

In other news, apparently Obama was a big hit last night at the White House Correspondents Dinner (which I keep seeing abbreviated as WHCD, and I keep thinking their talking about a radio station – which, by way, I looked up and there isn’t one). I haven’t seen any of it, though I couldn’t avoid hearing a couple of audio clips as I drove to make my weekly (actually now that I get to work from home two days a week, it’s become bi-weekly) trip for vittles and gas. I don’t know if he did any jokes about poor people getting screwed over by the sequester as he signed the “make or flights run on time” bill into law. That’s something the folks at that dinner would probably really yuck it up over.

Oh well, another nice sunny day here. Time to get out and not do much.

Yesterday was a beautiful day here. The temperature was in the low sixties, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, no wind – just perfect. So perfect that I wound up sitting outside until way past my bedtime with a fire going. Being outside in the sun (and later star and moon) shine really makes me appreciate sitting here in my windowless coffin of an office. Yeah. Screw that fresh air and sunshine shit.

Today is supposed to be even warmer – up into the 70s, but of course they’re predicting rain for the early evening. Hopefully I’ll beat it home and at least get the dogs out for a while.

So, Max Baucus isn’t running in 2014. What a shame – he’ll be missed (by the insurance industry, the NRA, Wall Street, etc.). Sounds like Brian Schweitzer could be running to take his place, which sounds good to me, ‘cuz I always liked him. He may not be perfect, but, hey no commie pinko liberal is gonna win in Montana.

So, what is it with these Republican idiots that think the Boston Bomber dude should be hauled off to Gitmo without a trial or any rights? I mean, fer chrissakes, not only did this happen in the US of A (where we have that whole Constitution thing that actually consists of more than the part that says you’re allowed to own machine guns and whatever other weapons you want), but the kid is a US Citizen.

I mean, do we really want to become a place where they can just take you off the street and make you disappear for any reason they decide they want to? I mean, we kinda already are, but at least it isn’t “legal.” I will grudgingly give credit to Rand Paul on this one.

What if they just plain happen to be wrong about somebody. Like, say the Elvis impersonator who, whatever else he is, is apparently NOT the ricin letter guy. What if Li’l Lindsey Graham got his way with this guy and they renditioned him to some hole in the ground somewhere so Lindsey could break out the whips and chains on him?

Of course the non-ricin guy has a regular American-sounding name, so I guess you’d have to treat him fairly.

Big breakthrough in the world of science. A new study shows – are you ready for this? – that chocolate may trigger acne. Gosh, that’s astonishing. Not like I could have told them that when I was, like 13.

Oh well, I suppose I’d better get back to work.

Another weekend in the books. Saturday was pretty crappy. Cold, windy, snowy. When it wasn’t snowing, it was dark and brooding (and did I mention windy? Like, really windy). So it wasn’t conducive to getting much accomplished. I did manage to pound the rest of my fence posts into the ground, but that was about it.

Sunday was much better. After a start in the mid-twenties it got, well, not exactly warm (I don’t think it hit 50), but it was sunny and not very windy, and it felt pretty warm in the sun. So I managed to finally finish up the last 200 feet of fence so the varmints can go out in the back yard again. They haven’t been there in quite a while, so they had a great time exploring and smelling everything they haven’t smelled in a while.

I didn’t manage to take off my snow tires, though. Too cold on Saturday, and I need the “middle bay” in my garage to have room enough to mess with it. But that’s where my wife parks, and by the time I was done with the fence she was back. Not that I was actually contemplating doing them at that point. I was too tired (and sore; that my back hurt me was no surprise, but my hands are killing me too). But I spent most of the day outside and thus avoided having to hear about the Boston bomber kid, and got to catch up on my backlog of Star Talk and This American Life podcasts.

I also didn’t get around to putting the mower on the tractor, which I’ll probably need to do soon. Seems like once the grass starts growing, it pops up all at once.

Back to work today, but at least I’m at home and get to look out the window. And listen to NPRs “Boston” coverage (did you know that white hat dude can’t yet talk but he’s passing notes?).

Have a good one, and go out and do something nice for the planet.

Chechens? Gotta say, I didn’t see that coming. Quite a bit of excitement over there in Massachusetts. Probably not a good idea to rob a 7-Eleven if you’ve had your photo spread across the world. On the bright side, if you live in Boston, it sounds like your weekend is starting early this week. What the hell would drive a couple of young kids to do something like this is beyond me – and we may never know, if the second one goes the way of his brother. Though apparently there’s a third guy who may or may not have something to do with all this.

I mean, is this a political thing? Do they want Massachusetts to separate from Russia? Maybe they played too much Grand Theft Auto. Is it a Muslim thing? Or are they just a couple of fucked-up kids who happen to be from Chechnya? Thank goodness they were apparently here legally, or we’d never hear the end of it.

One more warm day here, and then things turn to shit for the weekend.

I was pretty surprised yesterday to hear they’d arrested a suspect in the Boston Massacre case so quickly. I guess my surprise was justified. That’s what I get for paying attention to anything CNN has to say. Not that I was alone in my gullibility. All the “serious” news folks dutifully repeated whatever CNN had to say – AP, BBC, CBC, you name it. Not being a serious news person, I’m not sure how shit like this happens.

I tried to see what CNN had to say about it, but they’ve more or less scrubbed the incident from their website as far as I can tell (not that I spent a lot of time looking). Near as I can tell some law enforcement officer (or “LEO” as we hip crime show watchers refer to them – as in “alert the local LEOs that we have a serial killer on the loose”) was referring to the “Lord and Taylor” surveillance video and said, “we got him.”

This went from “they’ve identified a suspect” to “an arrest is imminent” to “they have a suspect in custody” to “an arrest has been made” in about ten minutes. Now, based on my years of watching “Lou Grant” on teevee, I could swear that there used to be some kind of unwritten rule about getting something they used to call “confirmation.” Like, verify the information with at least 2 independent sources or something like that. I’m assuming it was an unwritten rule, because if it was written down, maybe they’d still be fucking following it.

But never mind confirmation. How about clarification. As in asking, “when you say ‘we go him’ do you mean you know who he is, have obtained corroborating evidence, and have arrested him? Or do you just mean you saw some guy with a bag in the video so now you’re gonna go look for him?”

I would think that would be important to know – but as I said, I don’t work for a major news organization or anything.

I know it’s all about ratings these days and being “first,” but didn’t there used to be a certain amount of pride in actually being “correct?” Well, whatever.

So, congrats to the NRA today, as they managed to pay off a large enough minority of US Senators to prevent universal background checks for buying guns. Yet another proud moment in American history. And a proud moment for Republicans, as well. No matter what the issue, figure out what’s the least you can do, and then do less.

A rather impressive explosion down there in West, TX. “Fire at the fertilizer plant” are not the words you want to hear if you’re a volunteer firefighter. Or if you live (or should I say, “used to live”) nearby. It’s not gonna be a pretty sight when the sun comes up this morning, I don’t think. Hopefully there won’t be too many people killed by it.

If only those firefighters had guns. Oh, wait. It’s Texas. They probably did have guns.

It’s stupid meeting day today, and unless it gets cancelled in the next few minutes, it looks like it’s on. Typically, it starts out with the person who keeps insisting we have this meeting saying, “I don’t have anything.” Well, great. Remind me what the point of this nonsense is again?

Meanwhile, in Boston, the misinformation continues. On the way home last night, I was told that these were two pressure cooker bombs triggered by a Casio watch used as a timer (I have this intense desire to Google “pressure cooker bomb” but am afraid they’d slam me into a dog pen in Gitmo before the day was over). By the time this morning rolled around, they could only confirm that one of them was a pressure cooker, and the other was yet to be determined because, well, because it blew the fuck up and there isn’t much to go on. They also said the triggering mechanism(s) were now “kitchen timers.” Or something. I don’t think they really know.

Or at least the nattering nincompoop on NPR don’t know. Hopefully the feds have some decent information, though I can’t help but remember what they put that poor schmuck Richard Jewell through down in Atlanta.

They also seem to feel compelled to keep saying that pressure cookers are “like you use to cook rice in.” Really? You have to clear that up for people (thank goodness it wasn’t a crock pot)? I’ve always had a bit of an aversion to pressure cookers, because the one we had when I was a kid was the default “puking pan” for when anybody was sick (if two of us were sick at the same time, the Dutch Oven was pressed into service).

Needless to say, we didn’t really prepare any meals (rice or otherwise) in the pressure cooker. I mean, just looking into the thing evoked a somewhat Pavlovian gag response.

Speaking of gagging, I guess I’d better get ready for this stupid meeting, ‘cuz it doesn’t look like it’s been canceled.

Late Update: Stupid meeting has been canceled. :yippee: Maybe this will be a better day than I thought.

Normally I’d be writing something like, “I hope y’all got your taxes done yesterday,” but of course with yesterday’s events in Boston, I guess explosions will be the talk of the day (and for many days to come, I expect). I didn’t pay all that much attention to it yesterday, because, other than the initial reports, the media tends to just keep regurgitating the few facts that are known, and a whole lot of speculation. Over and over and over. After checking in today, it appears that things could have been worse, as two more devices were found unexploded (or not, depending on what news account you read. I don’t think there’ll be any quick answers on this).

Since I know as little as anybody else, I figure I might as well speculate as to who did it. Given that it was done on April 15 and in Boston (and nobody’s claimed responsibility yet, which seems pretty un-terrorist like), I’m going to guess that it was some teabagger “tax patriot” group in protest of taxes, illegal immigrants, Obama, and the federal government in general. But I guess we’ll see.

Looks like my decision not to run the Marathon this year was a good one. I guess I can rule out NYC, too.

Whoever did it, I hope somebody catches them and locks them up. This is when it’s nice to live in a small town. We’re not exactly a high value target.

I was listening to a story on NPR a couple of weeks ago about how they were adjusting the traffic lights in LA to try to keep the traffic moving, and they were asking people to call in and tell them if their area had done any projects like this. I was tempted to call in and say, “well, we just got the one red light in town, but there’s a blinker up the hill a piece,” but I was in the car without my bluetooth thingie.

If you weren’t in Boston, yesterday was quite a nice day. It was sunny (most of the time) and it actually got up to 70° here. Since I was working from home, the dogs got to spend most of the day outside (lucky them). And since it’s warm again, I just pulled the first tick of the season off one of them. It wasn’t embedded – just crawling around on his head. Hopefully this is because of the flea and tick stuff I just reapplied to them a few days ago. I hate those nasty little things (the ticks, not the dogs – though I wish they’d quit digging up the lawn, the little bastids).

It’s not supposed to be quite as warm today, and even cooler tomorrow before temperatures rebound on Thursday and Friday (and then it’s gonna get cold again for the weekend because, well, because it’s the weekend). But I won’t worry about that now, because from a Tuesday point of view, it’s a long way ’til Saturday.

Ah, I see the ground is covered with white stuff this morning. Must be April in Syracuse. The snow’s not supposed to stick around, though. They say a high of 50 today, and, since tomorrow is Monday, it’s supposed to be in the 70s. Yesterday was pretty chilly as I was out trying to get some fencing done and eventually got caught in a downpour. Now I’ve got a bit of a cough and a sore throat (plus I’m kind of sore from all the bending and pounding and stuff).

What with all the “threats” from North Korea, you folks on the West Coast have been getting all the attention lately. Not for long, though, as our esteemed Republican legislators have decided that Iran is now (or soon will be) a threat to hit the East Coast. Although the DOD doesn’t think it’s necessary, they’re pushing to spend $3.6 billion to build a missile defense system east of the Mississippi. This is what’s known as being fiscally conservative, I guess.

Well, what the hell. We could use the jobs.

Much of the world seems to be suffering from post-Maggie depression. I really wasn’t terribly interested in hearing about her, but of course I had NPR on all day yesterday and was forced to listen. One person – it may have be British PM David Cameron – said people would be talking about her achievements for “hundreds of years.” Really? I realize she was every Konservative’s wet dream of union busting and “privatization,” but I think she’ll be pretty quickly forgotten. Hell, she already was mostly forgotten before she croaked and brought lots of attention to herself. Of course, the consequences of what she and her contemporaries around the world (and her political progeny in the UK) will, unfortunately, live on for quite some time. As for her? A footnote in the history of Britain: Margaret Thatcher, first female PM. Bubble cut hairdo.

I’m sure everybody has seen that Mitch McConnell is going to filibuster gun control legislation in the Senate. I’m not really sure what’s left in the bill, anyway, except for a proposal for background checks for all gun sales. I think something like 90% of the people are down with that, but the NRA says no, so it’s no. Oh well, just be sure to keep your head down, and don’t be a hero.

Otherwise there’s not much going on/ It’s a rainy start to the day, but it’s supposed to get sunny. It’s my late day today, so I’m trying to kill time before I have to trudge in to work. I really would have liked to stay in bed longer, but the damn cat kept jumping on me. I guess I’ll have to start sleeping with a baseball bat.