Errrh… my mother didn’t know Space Invaders from a hole in the ground, but when she noticed the one that’s picked out in tile in a tunnel in San Sebastian, she didn’t freak out. She said “what’s that?” and I said “oh! It looks like a marcianito! Aaaaancient computer game…”
Later I found out that there are similar signs in many places.
Maybe we should be careful not to let Bostonians travel to towns with Space Invaders? They are among us!
I agree. This is a pretty succinct metaphor for the war on terror, if you ask me.
…I agree.
Here’s what Adult Swim had to say in a bumper they aired before an episode of Futurama tonight:
Except for the shoes, bombs that are placed under bridges, etc., as a previous poster mentioned are fairly big. I have a friend who was deployed in the first Gulf War as an Army combat engineer, or as he put it, usually a fancy term for blowing stuff up. He says it’d take hundreds of pounds of C4 to take out a bridge. If you’re going to make a small bomb, it either has to be placed near several people to kill them or put on something relatively delicate and important. Maybe Richard Reid thought he’d rip a small hole in the side of the plane and make it crash that way.
Wow, who’da thought 9/11 would get a mention. It’s the new reason for everything, you know. Mention “9/11” and suddenly the rest of the syllables issuing from your maw no longer have to make any sense whatsoever: you are RIGHT in the eyes of the LORD. Amen.
This is over reaction by idiot officals, about a minor ordinance violation, by advertisers that should have thought to get permits, being expected to pay for the governments embarassment. They shouldn’t be paying more than the fine for advertising without a permit or in a place it’s not allowed. I have to remember the person that found themselves in trouble, because their lunch fell off their wheel chair on the way to work, and the bomb squad had to disarm it.
Actually, having seen a photo of the “device”, I’d say it was a crummy, pisspoor way to advertise anything. This, setting aside the whole “bomb/notbomb” thing.
You could do better with a guy wearing a sandwich board sign.
I think that people who are saying the reaction was justified need to look at the picture a little closer. Specifically, try and imagine what it looks like from the side. That I can tell, outside of the batteries, the thing is about two milimeters thick. It’s just a plastic board, like a clipboard.
You tell me how to hide a bomb inside a clipboard and then I’ll think that the scare was justified. Until then, I have to imagine that this is mostly a case of the police having to come down hard so that they don’t look stupid–even though they didn’t do anything stupid but rather just did exactly as they are bound to do by their profession when a bomb threat comes in.
Most of what made this into an issue was probably the news reporting about “bombs” without ever asking the police what they had actually found.
It’s said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” The Cartoon Network could not buy this type of advertising.
Next year, Aqua Teen will have a special “All-Bombs/All-Terrorist” episode.
Just wait & see.
I’m kind of staggered by people who think that an unknown object, featuring what looks like an obvious triggering device, fixed to the structural support of the major highway out of Boston, is to be laughed off as a “lite-brite.” It wasn’t a lite-brite, and didn’t even resemble a lite-brite. in fact, the one at Sullivan Square that caused the initial panic couldn’t possibly have had its lights working, or someone would have noticed it before now, since thousands of people – including me – pass through there, even after dark.
The police did the exact right thing, and the Cartoon Network and several of its employees are going to get nailed.
Under what law? It was not a hoax device, it was an advertising device.
Same here shaking head
What’s irking me more are the number of people laughing their asses over how the city responded to it – everything from “No wonder why our taxes are too high!” to “Um duh, don’t you have anything better to do?”
Um, NO. If the devices were made to look like bombs, then sorry, it HAS to be treated as such.
Stupid motherfucking Cartoon Network. Maybe whoever sues them will make CN declare bankruptancy. He who laughs last…
Not “people”, Sal. Police officers. Who are supposed to keep their heads when all about them are losing theirs. They did the right thing in inspecting it. They did not do the right thing in flying off the handle and slapping the guys who put up the devices with a felony hoax charge.
As has already been stated, several times, the ad agency did not perpetrate a hoax. Boston PD panicked, and now these people are going to be punished for the PD’s reaction. It didn’t happen in other cities. It was not inevitable. But now they have felony charges.
"Lite-Bright, giving Menino a Fright…!
Over-reaction’s just the thing with Lite-Bright…"
Now available in the new “Creativity = Terrorism” 9-11 edition.
The police may or may not have done the right thing. But once they discovered what had happened, what they should have done was be men and laughed about it, instead of throwing tantrums and screaming about how they are so serious and people need to go to jail for all their sweet time.
Seriously, the price of a ridiculous level of vigilance is, predictably, going to be some accidental false alarms that are nobody’s fault, really. But apparently, that’s not good enough.
Good lawyers may differ. But CN can certainly be nailed for damages in civil court, I would think. And I’d also expect a few people to lose their jobs.
Except that it wasn’t all that funny. And the last thing the police want is for another marketing exec to say, “You know what? That stunt was a resounding success, since it increased awareness of that show by a thousand percent. I’m going to do the same thing, only I’m going to make my shit look even more like a bomb!”
Yeah, but you have to have a legal basis for fixing responsibility for damages. I am wondering what that might be.
The police chief, mayor, head of the bomb squad…
Then they shouldn’t have given ATHF so much free publicity.