Still dark-thirty this Friday morning on California’s north coast, with high, thin clouds giving the bulged half-moon a fuzzy, sleepy, one-eyed appearance — still carrying a chill, though, with a high expected in the mid-50s.

Odd, crude shape of the world — there’s an international, second-by-second hostage situation right now in Paris (via USAToday): ‘The gunman declared “you know who I am,” according to a police official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he we was not authorized to speak about the situation.’

Another episode in the now-long-running, horrific Paris cartoon massacre and assorted spin-offs.

(Illustration: Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of Eternity)‘ found here).

Supposedly, in this morning’s installment the above-styled gunman assaulted a kosher supermarket on the eastern edge of Paris, killing at least two people — the guy is violently-linked to the killing of a policewoman yesterday (15-days on the job) and that attack on the cartoonists — and took hostages.
This new plot line with additional characters — not the two brothers everybody man-hunted for around Paris, who then supposedly were cornered with hostages themselves — then the ‘know-who-I-am’ guy, along with reportedly a female accomplice, assaulted the market, holding some shoppers, including children as captive pawns.
A nearly-impossible scenario out of fiction, yet seemingly played to media’s reality real well.
From CBS News:

The two brothers suspected in the newspaper slayings were cornered by police Friday inside a printing house in the small industrial town of Dammartin-en-Goele.
One lawmaker said they told negotiators they “want to die as martyrs.”
…
Hours later, a gunman seized at least five hostages at a kosher market in eastern Paris.
Police SWAT squads descended on the area and France’s top security official rushed from to the scene.
The attack came before sundown when the store would have been crowded with shoppers.
The official said the gunman has threatened to kill the hostages if police launch an assault on the cornered brothers.
Officials don’t expect the Kouachi brothers to give up, a U.S. counterterrorism source told CBS News.

This weird episode unfolding, and some bad shit to ensue…
And too, as some other bad shit is playing out, but not with all that much in the terror media coverage: The aftermath/investigation into the IED blast at the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP a couple of days ago — reportedly, a makeshift bomb detonated outside the NAACP office, but failed to ignite a gasoline can placed alongside it. No one was injured. Although no motive or suspects yet, the FBI has not ruled out the ‘“…possibility of being a hate crime or domestic terrorism…”‘
Via the Denver Post:

“We are investigating all potential motives at this time,” Special Agent Amy Sanders, an FBI spokeswoman, said on Wednesday. “An act of domestic terrorism is certainly one possibility, in addition to many others.”
…
Federal authorities have still not officially determined whether the NAACP chapter or the neighboring barbershop was the target of the bombing.
But the owner of that shop, Gene Southerland, is adamant the blast could not have been aimed at him.
“Everybody loves me,” Southerland told a client on Wednesday.

Yeah, well… There’s supposedly to be a press conference this afternoon to update the investigation.

Now it’s well-past sunrise. Nowadays takes awhile to finish a post — as a recent retiree, I’ve got into the habit of thinking way-too much, an effect/affect of having a lot more time on my hands for those idiotic thoughts.
Plus, the news sucks, there’s that…