Here we are getting close to the end of another work week — overcast and warm this Thursday morning on California’s north coast — and life apparently has seen better days.
A sense of rage against the machinery. The feeling a terrible end is just around the corner, but no one seems to give a shit, a vast swath of collective heads buried in concrete up to the neck.

Quiet and still outside. In the far, far distance comes a sound much-like a rooster attempting to screech out a scratchy scrawl, but after a few seconds hearing turns metaphysical — in the faint drifts, the screams and cries of children all over this totally-fucked-up planet.

A sense of perpetual loss.

(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘Meditative Rose‘ found here).

Ironic horror: In the wake of Boston’s bomb explosions on Monday, a key ingredient of many IEDs — fertilizer — was the center of another blast last night in Texas, a humongous one, creating a “Big old mushroom cloud.”
From CNN this morning:

“There are a lot of people that got hurt,” West Mayor Tommy Muska forewarned Wednesday night.
“There are a lot of people that will not be here tomorrow.”
A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant on the edge of the town killed an estimated five to 15 people, wounded more than 160, leveled dozens of homes and prompted authorities to evacuate half their community of 2,800.

Right now, the death toll is considered to be between five to 15 people (which includes first-responders, firefighters, EMTs and such already there for a big fire before the boom), but that count could be as high 50 to 60 by daybreak — the blast registered 2.1 on the earthquake Richter scale.
This an added horror: What caused the explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. was not immediately known. But its location — next to an apartment complex, a nursing home and a middle school — did not help matters.
And here is a most-insane video of the explosion taken by this guy near the plant — mind blowing and frightening, way-too reminisce of the visuals from Boston, and Iraq circa 2005.

And another explosion yesterday in DC — an way-enormous shame blast!
The US Senate acted like assholes and gunned down any chance of any kind of firearms control when these shit-birds rejected an already-watered down background check proposal. A huge chunk of Americans — 86 to 91 percent — favor a ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and the before-mentioned background checks. What are these assholes doing in DC?

Patricia Maisch knows — they’re a discredit to everything right. She displayed extreme courage in the Tucson, Ariz., shootings in January 2011, where seven people were killed and 13 wounded, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Maisch wrestled an ammo clip away from shooter Jared Loughner.
She also exhibited the same yesterday when after the Senate voted down the gun bill by screaming-out most-aptly, “Shame on You!” to those assholes before being hustled away by security.
Via HuffPost:

Outside the Senate chamber Wednesday, Maisch was surrounded by reporters.
“When I was told it was done, I decided that I could not stay still any longer, that they need to be ashamed of themselves,” she said.
“They have no souls.
They have no compassion for the experiences that people have lived through … [having] a child or loved one murdered by a gun.
They say that it’s not the gun, it’s the man.
I’m here to tell you … The man and the gun become intimate and they cannot do the act without each other.
So the gun is part of the problem.”

And she told it straight on.

Giffords also offered up a potent point to the whole Congress in a New York Times editorial. Read the whole thing, but this is important:

I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated.
I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote.
I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money.
I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.
…
Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s.
To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Sometimes this can be a hard-scrabble, asshole of a country.