Apparently some of you have actual lives, which means that, unlike me, you haven’t spent countless hours obsessing over the Boston Marathon bombing photos. And because of that, some of you have let me know that you are having trouble locating the areas of the images that I am referencing in the text. So I have decided, because I’m a giver, to include some crudely-rendered colored arrows to provide some visual references. Anyway, when we left off last time, Jeff’s chariot had arrived, prompting Tang to once again cut away from the action. We return to the same view without much having changed, other than that the cop in the left foreground is about to perform a knee-drop on the old guy laying on the ground (blue arrow). That old guy, by the way, whose name is reportedly Bill White, will allegedly lose one of his legs. There is apparently a little-known provision in the new Obamacare bill that requires any leg injury, regardless of severity, to be remedied with amputation.

In the foreground, Mr. Loafers (purple arrow) is consulting with the cop and the fireman, while in front of the tree, Dr. Levine (blue arrow) is doing what he does best – calmly waiting in the wings on the off-chance that someone might need medical assistance. Dr. Panter (orange arrow), next to the guy in the orange jacket, is also on standby. And Li’l Jeff is still being held by the same responder guy (red arrow). Li’l Jeff, as you may have guessed, got separated from his mom in the blast, so now he’s on his own. There’s no way to find his mom because she could be as much as 3-4 feet away.

Moving on, we find the scene around Sydney reaching such a fever pitch that the guy in the shorts is leaping the railing (light blue arrow) to get in on the action, even though there are already a number of professional responders on the job. The cop is now checking out bearded guy’s pants and asking about where he can get a pair (green arrow). Elsewhere, new victims continue to surface (yellow arrow), Dr. Levine (orange arrow) is still on standby, and Dr. Panter (pink arrow) is pretending to tend to Campbell. Notice also that the tables inside the railing are still perfectly intact (blue arrow). File that away for future reference.

Next up we find that the bearded guy is being arrested for vagrancy (blue arrow). Bearded guy, by the way, is supposedly Colton Kilgore, seen being interviewed in the first link below. According to a fundraising page Kilgore set up, he was watching the marathon that day with a group that included Li’l Jeff and his mom, Rebekah Gregory. Funny then that he doesn’t seem too concerned in any of the images with reuniting Li’l Jeff with his mom and her boyfriend. Rebekah Gregory, curiously enough, is a corporate housing executive whose company works with clients such as Honeywell, GE, Exxon, AT&T, and the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. http://wlos.com/shared/news/features/top-stories/stories/wlos_local-boston-marathon-victims-marathon-ahead-11971.shtml http://www.gofundme.com/dimartinofamily http://corporatehousingbyowner.com/blog/2013/04/preferred-corporate-housing-executive-injured-in-boston-marathon-bombings/ http://www.corporates.com/clients.php http://www.corporates.com/government.php Elsewhere in the image, there continues to be a great deal of activity centered around Sydney Corcoran, but Kevin “Family Values” Corcoran (green arrow) doesn’t seem too concerned. Alongside Campbell’s waiting gurney, our favorite blond EMT (red arrow) knows she is being photographed.

In the next photo, Kev stands calmly by (blue arrow) while continuing to ignore the fact that just behind him and to his left there are a half-dozen responders frantically working to allegedly save his daughter’s life. Meanwhile, Mr. Loafers (green arrow) continues to make his rounds and no one has yet called Child Services to report the appalling exploitation of Li’l Jeff (yellow arrow). In the upper right corner, Grumpy Gus (orange arrow) is now setting off on his wheelchair ride.

Here’s Grumpy Gus from the reverse angle, in an image captured at almost the same moment in time. He doesn’t seem to be dealing with his injuries as well as most of the Boston Strong victims. His right leg must be very badly injured because he has some kind of splinty thing on it and a physician is supporting it for him, which nobody bothered to do for Jeff or The Other Jeff. And his face has some kind of red fluid on it that looks like it was self-applied.

Grumpy Gus is reportedly Eric Whalley, who was allegedly very gravely injured. Let’s check in now with some trusted mainstream media sources to find out just how serious his wounds were. According to the Daily Mail, “The Whalleys … have had nearly a dozen surgeries between them to remove multiple ball bearings and nails. Eric Whalley was struck in the skull and eye and may lose his sight. There is also the chance he will suffer brain damage … [Eric] had a blood clot on one side of his brain. He also had orthopedic surgery on his right leg. ‘The feet are in especially bad shape,’ said [son Richard] Whalley. ‘Part of the right foot was blown off.’” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2311243/Boston-Bombings-2013-Eric-Whalley-65-iconic-blast-picture-lose-sight-suffer-brain-damage.html Sounds pretty serious. The Boston Globe provided some more details: “[Eric Whalley] had spent the week on his stomach and side after surgery to repair and reattach his retina and should regain partial vision in that eye. The BB that pierced it remains embedded in his brain; removing it would cause more harm than good. After a terrifying first few days in which doctors stabilized bleeding in his brain while trying to stave off infection, Eric has been alert, upbeat, and as sharp-witted as ever, his son said. For now, doctors plan to reconstruct Eric’s damaged right foot and lower leg through a series of surgeries over the coming year, though amputation may be necessary, Richard said.” http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/05/11/the-boston-marathon-wounded-eric-and-ann-whalley/YShKIhsoJ3ujL7xilYI4WN/story.html According to the family’s fundraising page, Whalley was in an intensive care unit for several days and “suffered brain trauma and damage to his legs, and will need several follow up operations including a serious neurological operation later this week at Brigham & Women’s hospital.” Sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it, what with the possible brain damage, partial blindness and the possible loss of a leg? Before jumping to any conclusions though, let’s take a look at a photo of Whalley taken before he was loaded into that wheelchair. https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/yy72/whalleyrecoveryfund/updates/29764

There are quite obviously no open wounds on his right leg at all. Nothing whatsoever other than some dried red paint here and there. I suppose it could be argued that the injuries are to the back of his leg, but that would make no sense since he was supposedly struck in the eye, which means that he would have had to be facing the blast. His right foot is also fully intact, unless it was somehow partially blown off without damaging his shoe. And the ‘blood’ on the ground all around his legs is of unknown origin since he has no open wounds visible. He does though favor the Castaway look when it comes to shopping for pants. Has anyone else noticed, by the way, that the shrapnel in the bomb was very respectful of the modesty of the victims? Whether we’re looking at Shrapnel Man, Running Man, Colton Kilgore, or Grumpy Gus, we consistently find that pant legs have been shredded while the victims’ crotches remain discretely covered. And that is surely a good thing because – let’s be honest here – no one really wants to see Whalley’s bloody junk on display. Come to think of it though, it seems kind of weird that there were so many explosive amputations of legs and not a single report of an explosive castration. Would Super Jeff be nearly as upbeat and optimistic if he had had three appendages blown off? Eric Whalley, as it turns out, is a former pharmacology professor turned biotechnology executive. He recently retired from Biogen Idec, Inc., a corporate entity that is undoubtedly involved in research and development projects that you don’t want to know about. Both of his sons work in the biotechnology/biomedical industry as well. Nothing suspicious about that, I suppose. http://www.biogenidec.com/ Returning now to the Tang images, we see that Kev (yellow arrow) continues to refuse to even look in his daughter’s direction, while Dr. Levine continues to do absolutely nothing (blue arrow). Campbell appears to be loaded onto her gurney (green arrow), a process being closely monitored by Mr. Loafers (light blue arrow), because it’s always good to have some random fuckwad in the way when you’re trying to save the life of a young woman who supposedly barely has a pulse. It’s now been more than eight minutes since the blast, by the way, and Campbell is one of the last remaining victims. In other news, Li’l Jeff is finally being handed off to a national guardsman (red arrow), which provides us with a clear view of the back of his head, which was reportedly ripped open by shrapnel. It’s no surprise then that in the close-up, we can see the bloody, jagged wound (green arrow – but don’t waste too much time looking for it).

In the next image, the guy under the green arrow is pointing over his shoulder and saying, “Check this shit out! Right behind me are two Steven Spielbergs!” One of them, Dr. Levine, has found something new to do: leer at the cute girl. Meanwhile, Mr. Loafers (red arrow) continues to monitor the handling of Campbell, Kev (yellow arrow) continues to ignore the plight of his daughter, and the girl in the foreground (blue arrow) knows that she is on Candid Camera.

Shockingly enough, Tang next cuts away from the action around Campbell to give us three relatively worthless images taken in fairly rapid succession. In them, we can see that Kev appears to be putting his belt back on while never once so much as looking in his daughter’s direction. We also see that Li’l Jeff is still on the scene. Following those three shots, Tang gives us an even more useless pic.

Given that we aren’t supposed to have very long attention spans these days, many have probably already forgotten that one of the first big stories to hit the airwaves this year concerned a guy by the name of Oscar “Blade Runner” Pistorius. Few could have guessed that just two months later Pistorius would be replaced as the most high-profile double amputee on the planet by our very own Jeff Bauman. Or that two months after that, there would be an Amputees Gone Wild incident on a Belgian soccer field.