so, i'm not sure if any of you, particularly those in the US, have heard about this or not, but it was so ridiculous that i have to comment on it.
yesterday, in Boston, officials found quite a few, 38 to be precise, blinking electronic signs on bridges and other spots across the city. the discovery of these 'blinking electronic signs' prompted the closing of a highway and part of the Charles River and the deployment of bomb squads. what were these 'blinking electronic signs' those roused fears of a massive terrorist attack? lite-brites with the above cartoon character on them, a character used for Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force. the signs were a guerilla marketing strategy for the show's new season and not the latest technology in cartoon-shaped-lite-brite-bombs, as most ridiculous, fear-griped people had thought.
when i first heard bout this, i thought it was a joke. how could rational people actually think these lite-brite works of art/marketing were bombs? maybe i am giving the fine people of Boston too much credit. now, i know we live in a post 9/11 world, but give me a f***ing break... don't people still have common sense? have the fear-mongers and alarmists really been that successful in conditioning the American people to immediately suspect anything they don't recognize to be a bomb or terrorist attack? am i being too obtuse here in my reaction to this situation? perhaps..... but it still makes me mad when people abandon common sense and over-react in a truly uncalled for way. i mean, this whole thing cost the city of Boston nearly $750,000... how absurd.
you wanna know what the funny/frustrating thing is here... these signs had been up for three weeks before they were noticed and considered to be bombs. and they were put up in 10 other major cities across the US at the same time as the ones in Boston. i don't understand what it was that caused people to notice them
now and to think of them as bombs
now, when they had been up and operational for three whole weeks.
when i really think about it, i guess its the fact that people are so outraged about this misunderstanding that makes me so mad. generally, it seems like people in America don't know how to be outraged about the right things, but they are incredibly good at getting outraged at the trivial things... and thats what i see here. the UN's report on global worming is due to be published soon. info that has been 'leaked' out ahead of its actual release shows that its not even a debate anymore whether or not it is mainly caused by man and his abuses to the environment, its a fact. will people show the same fervor as they did in Boston, will they be outraged about this finding and seek to make the government enforce changes? i would think not and that angers me. i wish the general populous in America would reprioritize their values and rethink what issues/situations they will rise against... the one's that really matter.
