Boston has an active community of knitting bloggers. Colleen reports that socks are out, gloves and mittens are in.

When Sissy went to sleep, 12 of the 13 miners were alive. Then something woke her up and she turned the TV on:

... Dozing in and out of consciousness during fitful sleep, we came upon [Anderson] Cooper as Deer in the Headlights a couple of hours later, eyes popping and mouth agape as a sorrowful eyewitness was telling him the families had been "lied to." All but one of the miners -- who is in critical condition -- had been found dead. It was horrible. How could it have happened? Deftly sidestepping his own role in spreading the euphoric rumor that 12 had been found alive, Cooper and his counterparts on MSNBC -- the overripe Rita Cosby -- and Fox News -- some wet-behind-the-ears Anderson Cooper wannabe -- opted for the "blame game." ...

As everybody knows, Boston's most important product - even more so than Cheers t-shirts - is lobster! So it's no surprise that roughly one out of every two items for sale in Quincy Market has a lobster theme. Herewith a small sampling.

Hand-made glass lobster:

Wow 'em back on the farm with your new lobster-claw harmonica and lobster-claw salt and pepper shakers:

Naturally, you'll want to use those shakers to season the lobster you'll serve on genuine paper lobster plates. NOTE: The things hanging in front of the plates are bleached lobster claws with tiny red hats. Yes, they're Santa claws.

An image of the rare Boston Blackie lobster:

Stuffed lobster:

Lobster t-shirts? But of course!

Those t-shirts would go just great with some lobster socks:

Complete the ensemble with a lobster head:

Never forget anything again, with these handy lobster refrigerator magnets:

Lobsterpops (not shown: gummi lobsters and candy lobster eggs):

Proof that somebody actually buys and consumes such stuff:

Lobsters love to hang around:

Little known fact: Lobsters crawl onto Boston beaches to get some sun:

However, too much sun can turn them orange - and, oddly, give them extra muscles:

The Urban Pantheist explains how Canada geese ceased to be exotic:

... Between the changing of the landscape to resemble their feeding and breeding grounds, and the interbreeding with sedentary live decoy geese, eastern cities have year-round populations of millions of Canada geese. Few urban animals are capable of preying on an adult goose (though a bald eagle took one on the ice of Jamaica Pond a few years back), and so they continue to multiply unabated. ...

Yes, the Coolidge Corner sex-toys shop closed. And yes, I posted this mainly so I could use that headline.

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders has filed a suit asking the Supreme Judicial Court to rule the recently approved ballot question on banning gay marriage illegal. One argument: It would overturn the Goodridge case that legalized such marriages - which would violate a constitutional provision against referendum questions on judicial decisions.

Via Mass Marrier, who has more analysis.

How cool would that be? Pretty darn cool is what Paul would probably say, after he's done cursing out the local weatherpeople who forced Watertown to close school for the Nor'easter that turned out to be mostly rain:

... Currently, I'm a little pissed off.

Lyss, who works in an unnamed local TV newsroom, reports that gearing up for the Storm of the Century is no piece of cake - especially when it turns out to be more like the Storm of the Last Five Minutes:

...You prepare and prepare but you can't make the snow come down as much as you'd like sometimes. TV news stations make elaborate preparations for the giant amount of snowfall they hope will come. Because if it doesn't, then they've just wasted all that time on some measly rainy and slushy weather. It's annoying when you send three reporters out in the field to show the viewers the snow and all they really have to say is "it's raining and not that dangerous." ...

Spatch says he won't be returning to Pho Hoa on Beach Street, even if it did up the weirdness quotient by replacing Vietnamese music with the Bee Gees:

... The pho wasn't made fresh to order, which amazed me. How lazy do you have to be to insist upon, as your working model, bowls o' pho just sitting around doing nothing? I mean, it's okay to have vats of the broth on burners waiting to go (and what a pleasant and comforting thought that is!) but not fully constructed bowls of soup. ...

Kevin says Maureen Feeney almost became City Council President yesterday.

Meanwhile, Jay gives Flaherty props for proposing to hire 350 new cops, although he does wonder where the money would come from and whether concentrating limited city funds on building up the detective force might not be more effective.

John notes the dueling front-page headlines in today's papers:

Menino calls on Bostonians to shed fear, report crime

Speak No Evil; Mayor's Speech Ignores Crime Crisis

Now, kids, without looking at the URLs, can you guess which paper ran which headline? Special bonus points if you can figure out which paper ran which of the photos below:

What would a newspaper post be without my own very special disclosure?

Boston Police identify addresses by their "patrol districts." In the case of the Lenox Street shootings, even though Lenox Street is in Roxbury, initial BPD reports placed it in the South End because it's part of the South End patrol district, which extends all the way to Melnea Cass Boulevard.

Idea for BPDNews: Since neighborhoods are obviously an issue when it comes to violent-crime reports, put up some maps showing these patrol districts so people can see where any future discrepancies might be (for example, in my neck of the woods, Roslindale is an amorphous blob that sometimes might be identified as West Roxbury or Hyde Park).

Earlier:
Roxbury or the South End, somebody's still dead.

The scene today at the Brooks Pharmacy in Roslindale (they actually had the Valentine's chocolate out before the New Year - nothing says "I love you" like some Russell Stover that's been sitting on the shelf for more than two months).

JL dreams:

... You can't make me go to work, you can't make me! Still plenty of chocolate, I think even a couple of unopened presents floating around, good books to read - can't I stay home? ...

Johnny fisks that Globe story positing that one out of every 20 households in the Boston area consists of millionaires:

... The Globe article is one of those stories that makes me think that the writer either doesn't follow the news too closely or is just betting that you don't. A lot of dots are left unconnected. Money dominates the story and absence of money is mentioned in the abstract, but crime doesn't show up at all. How can the Globe, with a straight face, run a story about increasingly uneven distribution of wealth in this city without even mentioning the recent spike in violent crime/murder? ...

John, meanwhile, wonders if the Globe mapmakers have the first clue as to what actually makes up Boston:

What the Globe considers the "Boston Area," Beacon Hill, Chestnut Hill, Dover, Wellesley Hills, Weston, Lincoln, Lexington, Carlisle and Sherborn, doesn't exactly jibe with my grouping, which would also include the working class towns of Quincy, Dedham, Braintree, Weymouth, Medford, Saugus, etc. Not to mention the city neighborhoods outside the Back Bay and Beacon Hill.

Maybe the map more accurately represents The Globe's desired subscription base, old-money, millionaire-stuffed towns, but it certainly doesn't represent the Boston Area that most of us think of. ...

Earlier:
The Globe moves West Roxbury.

If disclosures were money, I'd be one of those 1-in-20's.

It hasn't been a good year for old-time Westie institutions along Centre Street. Slyne's, Yoo Hoo's, Hanley's, the bowling alley, and now Friendly's - all gone. OK, granted, the Real Deal is way superior to Slyne's and the service at Friendly's could charitably be described as "glacial" (to the point where, if we HAD to go to Friendly's, I'd lobby for the one in Dedham), but still, where ya gonna go bowling and get a cone afterwards? Short of driving to Ron's Gourmet Ice Cream and Bowling in Hyde Park, that is.

This time, I'm going to try to update Boston Crime on a daily basis, using data from BPDNews.com.

It's finally in a MySQL database (note for Movable Type geeks: I'm using Movable Type and the CustomFields plug-in, which lets you add extra fields to MT's defaults), so maybe now I can concentrate on making the whole thing a lot more like ChicagoCrime.org. So far, I have violent crimes from all of 2006 mapped (yes, both days' worth) - kind of depressing: five shootings (fortunately, none fatal) in 18 hours.

Massport can huff all it wants about "public safety," but John just won't buy the argument that that's why it costs so much to use WiFi at Logan Airport:

... Charging eight bucks for 24 hours of internet access might make sense in a coffee shop environment (although I still think it's like charging for using the bathroom) but in an airport it's more like Massport charges eight bucks an hour. No wonder they want to avoid competition.

Paul's putting together a flash mob for a local Star/Shaws this Saturday at noon. Yes, of course he has a reason - to convince the chain to keep all those wonderful TVs that seem to go mostly unwatched:

I fear that if customers don't start paying attention to these screens, they'll take them out of the stores. I don't know about you, but I cannot bear to think about a world where you can't watch TV in the supermarket. ...

Depending on how many show up, you'll either congregate around the biggest TV in the store or break into groups at each TV:

Then...we watch TV, discuss the programs, take notes, pull staffers aside to ask what aisle these products are in, get annoyed because other customers are jostling us or talking too loudly to hear it. Or anything else you can come up with. If the crowd is huge, I'd love to place people in the checkout lanes who will keep letting people get in front of them because they just can't take their eyes off the screen.

Sisu starts out photographing her cat going into the washer, but ends up photographing one of those ginormous, helicopter-guarded LNG tankers coming into the Inner Harbor.

Mass Marrier thinks Jimmy Kelly's recent bout with brain cancer will turn him into a liberal. Even before he was admitted to the hospital, Kelly was warming to the idea of civil unions, if not outright gay marriage.