One of the great things about having an attention span
...longer than that of the proverbial goldfish, is that you tend to remember things like this, when similar incidents happen - yes, once before, Boston was made chaotic because the PTB overreacted and went bonkers and put the city on alert (no matter what after the fact they were saying in the news, it was majorly played up, to the point where people up here were calling down to make sure their relatives and friends were okay, even while saying "it's probably not real - again" because of the media and government response to the anonymous "dirty bomb plot" tip. (You may remember this was the one that invoked the deadly threat of nuclear oxide, breathlessly reported by the uncritical media Heathers, while those of us who didn't completely sleep through HS chemistry went "Huh? Did they say 'nuclear oxide'??? That's GOTTA be a typo (or whatever the AV equivalent is)..." before it all turned out to have been some infighting between coyotes and the worst that any of the "Chinese scientists" was charged with was being an illegal immigrant, and the whole thing was swept under the rug with so much else, by the media, the govt, and the chickenhawks alike.
However, the bizarre combination of "Danger, Will Robinson! Duck And Cover!/Citizens, go about your business! There is nothing to fear!" of two winters ago was as nothing apparently to what the dreadful strain of the subsequent (and previous) years of bombless non-terrorism* did to the nerves of Boston's officialdom. All I can say re the Great Aqua Teen Hunger Force Promotion Panic (which this time, at least, didn't actually panic or even worry people in the Greater Boston area, given that we didn't hear about it up here even until it was all over, when it (felicitously?) broke simultaneous with the story about how after thousands of random bag searches on the T the past couple months, there had been dozens of false alarms and none, nada, zero, zip instances of finding anyone carrying a bomb (but, say our valiant Homeland Security Theater performers, it's still a deterrent! and never you ask of what, Citizen) - all I can say, I repeat, is for their own sake as well as ours, I'm glad they never had to deal with ETA, Red Brigade or the IRA. I mean, imagine if there had actually ever been any things blowing up in the streets here, since 9/11!
But the thing which I find hilarious is people saying "It wasn't overreacting! There was Stuff! On Bridges! It COULD HAVE been bombs!" without stopping to ask logical questions (like who would be trying to blow up whom, and what strategic reasons would they have?) is (quite apart from the whole if you're worrying about IEDs in Boston you might as well just stay in your basement and cry, because anything can be a bomb aspect) that sticking things on bridges is kind of a New England tradition. I don't mean the omnipresent pair-of-shoes flung over the anti-suicide baffles, or the stray Coke-can-jammed-through-the-chain-link just to see if a Coke-can can be jammed through and will stay, or the occasional bit of freeway blogging. I'm talking shrines - homecoming shrines, where a big piece of cloth, tablecloth or sheet pressed into service, is painted on with a Welcome Back message to (these days) a friend/relative home from Iraq or Afghanistan, stuck over the road they are most likely to return on, wired or flex-tied onto the bridge and often accompanied with other adornments like flags, mylar whirligigs, teddy bears, also wired onto or wedged through the chain-link. These are also sometimes put up for winning school sports teams, triumphant college grads by their relieved families, and newly-married couples. I don't recall seeing any with electric blinkenlights on yet, but I'm sure it's either that I haven't been on the right roads, or just a matter of time...
All I can say, then, as a former courier driver in and around Boston at all hours, is that if I'd spotted them in passing, out of the corner of my eye, knowing nothing else - I would have figured that some wiseacre had stolen a neon sign out of a bar/restaurant/friends' dorm room, and thought it would be funny to tag it up like glow-in-the-dark grafitti and gone "Kids these days!" (or mebbe "those whacky MassArt Students!") "What will they think of next?" while trying not to trash my clutch as I tried to not follow the imperative "merge" literally or end up going to the airport as an accidental detour (assuming I wasn't white-knuckling it through the Big Dig, that is.) Then again, I've dealt with non-theatrical security in the wake of major bombings in countries where radical groups blowing shit up happens (or did) with distressing regularity, as well as risking life-and-limb in rush hour traffic on 93 and Storrow Drive, so I may have a perspective lacking to, e.g., CNN reporters or the Mayor's office...
The fact that the so-called (non-comedy, non-fake) news channel which was hyping up the "possible terra plot" was a subsidiary of the outfit responsible is just gravy - as is the fact that CNN reporters, who presumably get paid a lot more than most of us, still can't figure out how to use the internet - even to go on line and beg for help in learning how to use Google.
Irony is dead, long live irony.
* unless you count having KBR drop a ten-ton slab of concrete on your car or flood you out with gallons of bay water due to shoddy construction as terrifying, which I have to say I certainly do, as someone who used to have to drive that way on a near-daily basis.
However, the bizarre combination of "Danger, Will Robinson! Duck And Cover!/Citizens, go about your business! There is nothing to fear!" of two winters ago was as nothing apparently to what the dreadful strain of the subsequent (and previous) years of bombless non-terrorism* did to the nerves of Boston's officialdom. All I can say re the Great Aqua Teen Hunger Force Promotion Panic (which this time, at least, didn't actually panic or even worry people in the Greater Boston area, given that we didn't hear about it up here even until it was all over, when it (felicitously?) broke simultaneous with the story about how after thousands of random bag searches on the T the past couple months, there had been dozens of false alarms and none, nada, zero, zip instances of finding anyone carrying a bomb (but, say our valiant Homeland Security Theater performers, it's still a deterrent! and never you ask of what, Citizen) - all I can say, I repeat, is for their own sake as well as ours, I'm glad they never had to deal with ETA, Red Brigade or the IRA. I mean, imagine if there had actually ever been any things blowing up in the streets here, since 9/11!
But the thing which I find hilarious is people saying "It wasn't overreacting! There was Stuff! On Bridges! It COULD HAVE been bombs!" without stopping to ask logical questions (like who would be trying to blow up whom, and what strategic reasons would they have?) is (quite apart from the whole if you're worrying about IEDs in Boston you might as well just stay in your basement and cry, because anything can be a bomb aspect) that sticking things on bridges is kind of a New England tradition. I don't mean the omnipresent pair-of-shoes flung over the anti-suicide baffles, or the stray Coke-can-jammed-through-the-chain-link just to see if a Coke-can can be jammed through and will stay, or the occasional bit of freeway blogging. I'm talking shrines - homecoming shrines, where a big piece of cloth, tablecloth or sheet pressed into service, is painted on with a Welcome Back message to (these days) a friend/relative home from Iraq or Afghanistan, stuck over the road they are most likely to return on, wired or flex-tied onto the bridge and often accompanied with other adornments like flags, mylar whirligigs, teddy bears, also wired onto or wedged through the chain-link. These are also sometimes put up for winning school sports teams, triumphant college grads by their relieved families, and newly-married couples. I don't recall seeing any with electric blinkenlights on yet, but I'm sure it's either that I haven't been on the right roads, or just a matter of time...
All I can say, then, as a former courier driver in and around Boston at all hours, is that if I'd spotted them in passing, out of the corner of my eye, knowing nothing else - I would have figured that some wiseacre had stolen a neon sign out of a bar/restaurant/friends' dorm room, and thought it would be funny to tag it up like glow-in-the-dark grafitti and gone "Kids these days!" (or mebbe "those whacky MassArt Students!") "What will they think of next?" while trying not to trash my clutch as I tried to not follow the imperative "merge" literally or end up going to the airport as an accidental detour (assuming I wasn't white-knuckling it through the Big Dig, that is.) Then again, I've dealt with non-theatrical security in the wake of major bombings in countries where radical groups blowing shit up happens (or did) with distressing regularity, as well as risking life-and-limb in rush hour traffic on 93 and Storrow Drive, so I may have a perspective lacking to, e.g., CNN reporters or the Mayor's office...
The fact that the so-called (non-comedy, non-fake) news channel which was hyping up the "possible terra plot" was a subsidiary of the outfit responsible is just gravy - as is the fact that CNN reporters, who presumably get paid a lot more than most of us, still can't figure out how to use the internet - even to go on line and beg for help in learning how to use Google.
Irony is dead, long live irony.
* unless you count having KBR drop a ten-ton slab of concrete on your car or flood you out with gallons of bay water due to shoddy construction as terrifying, which I have to say I certainly do, as someone who used to have to drive that way on a near-daily basis.