Bomb boy update: “A legally blind college graduate, described by a former roommate as a paranoid ‘hermit,’ was in police custody Wednesday after taking 28 people hostage in a university classroom and claiming to have a bomb,” USA Today reports.

Fairfield police charged Patrick Arbelo, 24, of nearby Bridgeport with 28 counts of first-degree kidnapping early Wednesday. Authorities said additional charges were pending.

[…]Stephen Kriso, of Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., roomed with Arbelo during the 1996-97 school year. He said Arbelo did everything before sundown because he was legally blind, and then would spend all night in the dorm room. He usually ate dinner when the cafeteria opened at 4 p.m. to avoid crowds, Kriso said.

‘He used to talk about the New World Order and the concepts of the Freemasons, and storing things in his attic in the event of a takeover by a group like the Freemasons,’ Kriso told The Associated Press.

Hmmm. Freemasons, huh? Well, Umberto Eco has not returned my calls, but reached for comment, Robert Anton Wilson said, “If the fried flying saucer gives lectures on morality to the almost boiled conspiracy, then the flabby tentacle panics.”

Pressed to explain his enigmatic remarks, Wilson — drumming his skull with his index finger — smiled:

A cryogenicist inside the apartment building seems to be frustrating. A Jesus procrastinates, or a pagan Tarot deck competes with a vacuum cleaner behind an anomaly. The Protestant magic mushroom reads a magazine, and a highly paid magic mushroom procrastinates; however, a magic mushroom about a Damned Thing hesitantly learns a hard lesson from a tampon.

Whatever, Bob.

No one was injured in the incident — though my head suddenly hurts…

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