OK, let’s take a hypothetical. You’ve just devoted the resources of a major city to shutting down roads and rails in order to keep the people of your good metropolis safe from a plague of homemade lite brites, one that somehow managed to infest nine other cities without mass panic. Do you (a) swallow hard, blush and hope the embarrassment quietly fades away or (b) double down, throw the cuffs on somebody and hope it won’t make you look even more foolish?
For the good leaders of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the answer is (b). CNN.com is reporting that authorities have arrested two twentysomething men, including a “freelance video artist,” for hanging circuit boards with lights depicting Mooninites for a guerrilla marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
[Update: By the way–and we at time.com have been guilty of this too in our headlines–it’s probably about time the media retire the word “hoax” to refer to this incident. “Hoax” implies that the Adult Swim marketers intended for the light-up thingies to be mistaken for bombs and frighten people, whereas it’s becoming quite clear that their mistake was–what’s the nice way of saying this?–overestimating the intelligence of the homeland-security apparatus. Never mind, I guess there isn’t a nice way of saying it.]
To review, here’s who the British have caught lately. And here’s who we have caught.
God. Bless. America.