Although my disdain for the advertising industry is well-documented (and well-founded!), I would never go so far as to call them terrorists. The fair city of Boston, however, evidently would.

Beantown (named after Boston Baked Beans, no doubt) was shut down on a scale that San Francisco only reserves for peace protests, labor protests, gay rights protests, anti-immigration prote—you know what, let's just move on. Anyway, Boston flipped out today at the discovery of "suspicious" devices placed all over the city by terrorists.

These "terrorists" turned out to be an advertising firm doing guerilla marketing for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. In case that last sentence made no sense to you, let me put it another way. Boston went apeshit over Lite Brites giving people the finger. No seriously, here's what they looked like:

You can't see the finger, because FoxNews at least has the decency to blur out a cartoon bird-flip. Don't want our kids to pick up any nasty pixelated habits.

As much fun as it may be to watch Boston freak out, this is not a victimless crime. I speak not of the poor people who were late for work (gasp!) but the creator of the devices who was arrested on "a recently enacted statute making it a crime to place a hoax device that results in panic". I'm curious to know what the definition of a "hoax device" is, as these devices were clearly not hoaxes, but Throwies.

Webster defines "hoax" as "an act intended to trick or dupe". In a world were we are constantly inundated by "hoax devices" trying to trick us into buying clothes by duping us into thinking we'll be loved/feared/respected or trick us into buying cigarettes by duping us into thinking they're not going to give us cancer/emphysema/stinkiness or trick us into driving cars by duping us into thinking that global warming isn't real/dangerous/our fault, I think these devices do not qualify as threats.

The Anti-Advertising Agency correctly states that "advertising is the graffiti of the Fortune 500" and arresting someone for throwing light on a building, much less using such brash words as "terrorism" to describe it, leave me feeling very afraid for both our values and our collective Spidey Sense in this country. I place the blame squarely on the people who think LED lights are somehow dangerous (they don't even get hot, clearly ranking them below Xmas lights on the Threat Level).

Adult Swim got some serious bang for their buck though. Hire these guys again!

Update (2/1/07): Following their arraignment, the two guys arrested for putting up the devices agreed to only answer reporters' questions if they were about haircuts in the '70s. It's great to see that they're treating this issue with exactly the amount of respect it deserves. Here they are laughing in court: