A Guide For the Perplexed
Or people in Boston, which may just be the same thing. Since some people in your town can’t tell the difference between a bomb and a cartoon character, here’s a little guide to help you through the chaos:
Not a Bomb
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Bomb!
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Bomb! Wait! Fooled ya. He just looks like a bomb. Not an explosive device!
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Bomb!
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NOT A BOMB!
In real life, bombs do not look like bombs. They look like plain packages or unobtrusive things. Trash. Boxes. Sometimes shoes (but only once and never since). Or nothing at all because they are hidden inside other things that are innocuous, like cars or plastic bags or chijuajuas. They do not tick. They do not blink.
Bombs are not used as part of a multi-million dollar marketing plan for a movie, even one directed by Michael Bay. They are dropped on people, usually civilians, form a great height, or strapped to the chest of fourteen year olds who still believe in fairy tales. They are stuffed inside soda cans and thrown through windows or mailed to celebrities by a recluse living in a shack in Montana.
Bombs do not ever look like cartoon characters that give you the finger, which you deserve for being so fucking daft that you shut down a whole frickin’ city because the government has you so shit scared that some religious fanatic living in a cave in some lawless zone in Pakistan, using his hand as toilet paper, is going to somehow deliver a state of the art improvised explosive device to the underside of a bridge in the greater Boston metropolitan area.
And even if they could, it wouldn’t light up!
But hay, at least it distracted us all from that war with Iran that Bush is starting.