Comedy Channel's recent Adult Swim stunt threw the city of Boston into a panic and led to the arrest of two ad guys for creating something that could have been a bomb, had it not essentially been a Lite-Brite of a cartoon character flipping the bird. In this hyper-paranoid age, anything that might seem even remotely threatening is probably a bad idea.

A marketing bomb?
 

Then again, remember Orson Welles and his famous live "War of the Worlds" broadcast? In 1938, with Europe careening toward war, millions of listeners were primed to panic, and that's just what they did. Yet far from being career suicide, the radio stunt launched Welles into the professional stratosphere. He's now considered nothing short of a legend.

So don't assume we've seen the last of Interference, Inc., the guerrilla marketing shop that created the Adult Swim campaign. Just hope they've learned a lesson.