OH NO A BMOB

So, by now you might have heard about the widespread bomb scare that happened throughout the Boston area yesterday. A jogger had phoned up the police in the morning describing a suspicious-looking package suspended from a wire near one of the stations that I go through on my way into work. After word of that got out, more calls came in throughout the day, and it emerged that identical circuit-board-like devices were strewn around three parts of the city, including Somerville, the place where I work, as well as Cambridge and the city centre.

Immediately, an enormous alert was raised - subways were shut down, roads were closed, Whitney's university sent out an email advising about the threat and the traffic problems and general chaos that Osama Bin Laden and all his little wizards had caused throughout the greater Boston area. As we sat blissfully unaware of all this in our office, most of the city was brought to a standstill section by section as more of the boards were found, with thousands of dollars worth of police work, fire trucks and bomb squads being dispatched throughout the afternoon.

With everyone safely away from the deadly packages, one squad was getting ready to neutralize the original one above the highway. After poking around it tentatively for a while, they blasted it with a gigantic water cannon to neutralize any threat that it might pose, froze it, (goodness knows what, really) then carefully removed it from the area, drove it off in an armored van and detonated it safely away from any threatened civilians.

That was when somebody pointed out that it was actually a light board that was part of an advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.