Over on his own site, Bob (or, as I like to call him, Mister Too Busy to Crosspost) has a link to this peculiar news story:
A newspaper promotion for the upcoming movie “Mission: Impossible III” misfired Friday when a Los Angeles County sheriff’s arson squad blew up a news rack, thinking it contained a bomb.
Instead, the Los Angeles Times coin machine near the intersection of Sand Canyon and Soledad Canyon roads in Santa Clarita held a digital musical device designed to play the “Mission: Impossible” theme song when the rack’s door was opened.
The incident came amid several bomb reports made by newspaper buyers startled to see a red plastic box with wires protruding from it attached to the interiors of racks.
In West Los Angeles, federal police at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center called in the sheriff’s bomb squad after a newspaper buyer spied the 6-inch-long, 2 1/2 -inch-wide box and its wires.
By then, deputies were aware that the box was a musical, not explosive, device.
Times officials said the devices were placed in 4,500 randomly selected news boxes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in a venture with Paramount Pictures designed to turn the “everyday news rack experience” into an “extraordinary mission.”
As Bob
(T)his “bomb”… was actually playing the Mission: Impossible theme. Out loud. Does anyone think Al-Qaeda would really do that? Rig up bombs to play clichéd spy music before exploding, just to freak people out a little extra? The same way, I guess, that sharks like to hum the Jaws theme out loud just before attacking?