The Laboratorium : Thank Goodness for Illness

The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (or the "Evergreen Floating-Point Bridge," as I prefer to think of it) was closed due a bomb threat this afternoon about an hour after I drove across it on my way home from work. I left early on account of this cold-like thing, and concluded that I oughtn't be driving until I'm a bit more alert. Nothing really dangerous; I just kept gerrymandering my route to avoid difficult merges and left turns. Three young men in a pickup truck -- why are my suspicion sensors immediately going off -- chased down a bus and shouted to the driver that there was a bomb on board. Also in the news today, Bryan Smith died. Smith was the driver who hit Stephen King on a Maine road last year; it's a sad but hard-to-deny truth that Smith's passing -- 43 years old, no immediate indication of cause, vauge mention of a "variety of medications for his health" -- feels like something out of a King novel. Further, the California Prune Board (which I have repeatedly mislexed as the "California Prude Board") is spending $10 million to retarget prunes as "dried plums". A noble cause, perhaps, but for those of us who've had experience with preserved plums, this is actually something of a step backwards in terms of perceived edibility. Finally, Altavista ("they carry news? ") reports that drug cartels are recruiting among the homeless. Missing from the story: any discussion of what kind of inhumanity it takes of a society to make this sort of expendible-fall-guy drug-running among the most attractive overall options open to some of its members.