(Courtesy of Taylor Marsh)

How would you feel if you lived in Boston (as I did for a year), and the entire city was thrown into a panic because of some "devices" left around by some guys promoting a cartoon?

I'd feel like my security was being safeguarded by morons. These were Lite Brites - children's toys that light up. The Mayor and the rest of the city government threw the city into a panic, when they could've solved the "crisis" by talking to a ten-year-old.

Good God. Wait until somebody leaves a Speak and Spell lying around. They'll probably send in a hostage team to negotiate with it.

Now, I know it's a tough job protecting people, and that security comes first. So we could be generous, and say that they just overrreacted. (That's being very generous.)

Then, how would you fell if, after their fiasco, the selfsame Keystone Kop types decided to thow the book at the guys behind the promotional campaign - even though the judge commented in the first hearing that it did not appear the defendants met the test for being prosecuted? (That is, they had to have intended to cause a panic - meaning that they would have had to know in advance that Boston's police and civilian leadership would lose it over these toys, while those in 12 other cities knew what they were and ignored them.)

You'd probably sympathize with the twentysomething defendants, who refused to answer questions from reporters about anything other than 70's hairstyles. When reporters repeated the suggestion that they weren't taking the charges seriously, one replied: "Sorry. That's not a hair question."

The Mayor and the District Attorney aren't just making fools of themselves. They're also wasting the people's money on this fatuous indictment, which isn't going to stick, and they're tying up a court system that probably has a backlog of real cases to handle.

I'm not an "Aqua Teen" watcher myself. I'm more of a "Space Ghost" fan ... my favorite character is Brak. (UPDATE: Actually I meant Zorak. I don't know why my fingers typed "Brak" - he gets on my nerves.)

But, hey - wait a minute. A lot of people had weird hair in the 70's. Me? I had a Fu Manchu moustache and shoulder-length ... ah, well. No need to get specific. Kids today don't appreciate their elders. They don't know how much fun we had in the seventies. Young punks.

In fact, I've changed my mind. Throw the book at 'em.