SURVENT

The two men who have been charged with placing "bomblike" electronic light boards throughout Boston pleaded Not Guilty yesterday. Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens came up with the promotion which placed electronic light boards displaying a cartoon character with a raised middle finger in various cities in the US. The issue is that the people of Boston are a little too paranoid and have no sense of humor. Per an article on CNN:

Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards "bomblike" devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged infrastructure and transportation in the city.

This is interesting to me how the government and politicians seem to make anything into a "bomblike device" or a weapon of mass destruction. From what it sounds like and from the pictures I have seen of these displays, these things are nothing more than Lite-Brite boards. In fact, in the same CNN article, one person said just that:

Twenty-two-year-old Todd Venderlin, a design student at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, saw one of the devices two weeks ago as he left a lounge in south Boston, according to The Boston Globe. He said he was stunned when he saw bomb squads removing them.

"It's so not threatening -- it's a Lite Brite," he told the newspaper, referring to the children's toy that allows its users to create pictures by placing translucent pegs into an opaque board. "I don't understand how they could be terrified. I would if it was a bunch of circuits blinking, but it wasn't."

I understand the aggressive approach initially taken when these boards came into question. It is better to be safe than sorry given the society we live in.

What is odd to me is that Boston is the only city that these boards became an issue in. Does this mean that the people living there are out of touch with what is hip and being watched on TV? I mean, someone at some point should have been able to walk up and look at the signs and tell the police, "Hey, that looks like one of those Mooninite guys from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon." It is sad to see the amount of chaos a simple promotion can cause nowadays. I would say that the efforts of the terrorists have succeeded and we as a country have failed to be resilient as we need to be. If terrorists are going to place bombs all over the place, I highly doubt they would have the creativity to come up with a cartoon character that stands out and is easily seen. They would have simply placed C-4 or some other type of bomb in these places so they were much more inconspicuous. The old farts and uppity-ups in Boston need to relax a bit and understand the humor intended here.

What the authorities in Boston and all the other cities should be asking is "How did these signs get placed all over with no one noticing or reporting it for two weeks?" Another thing to keep in mind is that no matter how bad the folks at Turner Broadcasting System Inc. get blasted by the media, authorities or general public; no matter how much they disagree with the method of advertising that was used; and no matter what they have to pay for damages - the advertising scheme has drummed up plenty of buzz and interest in the cartoon. I do not thing that this was their ultimate goal as these things typically are happenstance, but the promotion is a success no matter how you slice it - now everyone knows about the cartoon.

Here are some links to what others are posting about the situation:

whatsnextblog.com

laughingsquid.com