The whole Lightbright thing

So I haven't really mentioned the whole Boston bomb scare thing...but I want to get away from all the lame personal crap and focus on more interesting stuff--so that said here we go. For those of you who don't know, last week Boston had some big scare. The police there found a bunch of scary "devices" which ended up shutting down large portions of the city. Turns out these so-called "devices" we really just lightbrights wired with batteries (so they didn't have to be plugged in). The little kits were placed all over the country as part of a promotional campaign for the upcoming AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE MOVIE (based on a Cartoon Network show).

Now first off, let me say that I love the show. Love it. I think it was once the funniest thing on TV. Lately, not so much (as with all good things, the hilarity could not be sustained, and I hear the movie is God-awful). I think that the panic these things have caused is both funny and sad. Funny because hey, some 20-somethings jokey ads have managed to shut down a paranoid city. Sad because hey, some 20-somethings jokey ads have managed to shut down a paranoid city. Are the adults running the world this fucking incompetent and stupid? Seriously. For one thing, if you can't tell a lightbright from a bomb you have no business running the world. I understand that these are "dangerous" times...but is it really Al Queda's MO to put cartoon characters on Lightbrights and leave them lying around Boston? And since we're talking Lightbrights jury-rigged to work on batteries...why not pull down two and see that this is a hoax? Why let this thing drag on for hours? And why didn't the ad company notify someone in law enforcement the minute this thing was reported?

A lot of blame to go around. Should the idiots who did this thing go to jail? No. Should Uncle Ted's company foot the bill ($1 Million dollars in total cost) for dealing with this situation? No. You can me have been paying for the gross incompetence of government for decades, why should that stop all the sudden? I think it will be a waste of our good money to string these kids up in court. The cost of trying these people for such a stupid thing is going to be ridiculous. The cost of trying to sue Turner Broadcasting is going to be ridiculous. I think that it was stupid for this company to put these things up...but I think it's more stupid that trained professionals didn't know what they were sooner. I also think that the government in Massachusetts shouldn't have gone as overboard as they did. I understand that we live in a different, post 9/11 world...but in that world are we not still allowed to take a second and get more information before we act?

So what did we learn here? Some in the media are saying that this incident shows how good our security is at home. That the swift response of the law is exactly what we need to combat the very real (and not at all Lightbright made) threat that is modern terrorism. However, I take a much darker viewpoint. Here is what I've learned from this incident: all you need to bring this country to it's knees (literally) isn't a bomb or bullets...all you need is a couple of bucks to buy some wire, batteries, and a lightbright kit. Hell, go to a pawn shop and buy some old radios and sega saturns (they aren't being played anyway, right?) and smash 'em up and tape together all the little circuits and wires. And wah-la! Instant mayhem. I think this country sent a bad message with this overreaction. We're letting the terrorist win here at home. We're watching nervously over our shoulders too much. We're arresting stupid kids for their lame attempts to garner our attention (by the way, this campaign will go down in history as the greatest so far by mankind...think about it...it got CNN types to say "Moonanites" on live TV). This isn't the country I was born in 20 some years ago. We've become a nation of scared little children.