Oh the hilarity!

AP:

A judge ordered two men held on bond Thursday for allegedly placing electronic advertising devices around the city in a publicity stunt that went awry and stirred fears of terrorism, shutting down parts of Boston.

Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were held on $2,500 cash bond each after they pleaded not guilty to placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct for a device found Wednesday at a subway station.

Officials found 38 blinking electronic signs promoting the Cartoon Network TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" on bridges and other high-profile spots across the city Wednesday, prompting the closing of a highway and the deployment of bomb squads. The surreal series is about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. The network is a division of Turner Broadcasting Systems Inc.

"It's clear the intent was to get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location," Assistant Attorney General John Grossman said at their arraignment.

The 1-foot tall signs, which were lit up at night, resembled a circuit board, with protruding wires and batteries. Most depicted a boxy, cartoon character giving passersby the finger - a more obvious sight when darkness fell.

If you're familiar with ATHF at all, that boxy cartoon chracter was a Mooninite, doing what he does best. We have really gone over the edge, eh? Especially when the signs have been in place for at least a couple of weeks -- oh, how we can congratulate ourselves on our vigilance for finding lit-up mooninites giving the finger. And you've got to credit Turner Broadcasting with a special kind of stupidity -- seems they didn't learn a thing from this incident from last summer:

A newspaper promotion for Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible III" movie was off to an explosive start when a California arson squad blew up a news rack, thinking it contained a bomb.

The confusion: the Los Angeles Times rack was fitted with a digital musical device designed to play the Mission: Impossible theme song when the door was opened. But in some cases, the red plastic boxes with protruding wires were jarred loose and dropped onto the stack of newspapers inside, alarming customers.

This was all over the news last year. Then again, maybe Turner did learn something about getting free publicity...just not a whole lot about not freaking out the normals.