Happy VD! - M&Ms Scandal!

Welcome to the 200th post on Frivolous Motion. And welcome to Valentine’s Day. I have a wonderful girlfriend of nearly two years and we spent the weekend together in Hartford, but since I live in NYC and she’s not here, I have decided to write up an Anti-V-Day post to celebrate the occasion. At first I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate, but after stumbling onto the MyM&Ms site (I was directed there by a TV commercial advertising a special promotion they are holding), I immediately knew what to do.


As you will see at the end of the post, the form on the site allowing customized messages to be printed on the candy is not so great when it comes to censoring offensive words and phrases. I spent some time with my roommate and another friend last night and this afternoon doing what you might call research into the words that get by the coded censors. Now, I recognize that no form validation can be perfect, and that we tend to use a lot of “clean” words euphemistically these days, but allowing “fag” and “homos” but not “queer,” or “vagina,” “boobs,” and “erection” but not “penis” just doesn’t make a shred of sense.

And the rejection of “kill” but not “murder” or “shoot” or “stab” or “poison” or “bomb” or “hang” or even “lynch” makes me wonder how else I could possibly kill someone. Now, writing this, I realize I haven’t tried “choke” or “smother,” but surely those would pass.

Below, I have posted screen grabs of a bunch of the more offensive phrases that got past the censor-bot, as well as some fun anti-romantic sentiments, and a few others I thought were noteworthy.

Click the image to see it full size, in all its glory!

I invite you all, in the spirit of this joyous holiday, to check out the site, and do your own research. Anyone reporting back here with a link to some screengrabs will get their pics included in this post. Alternatively, you can email them to me at kevinmichaelkeating at gmail dot com and I will get them up when I have a second.

If I can secure enough extra dough to purchase the minimum four (4) bags (About 50 bucks! - Anybody else want some candy?) I will place an order for a bag bearing one of the slogans I have posted below. And I will let you know if it manages to make it to printing and shipping right here in this blog, complete with pictures. It is my guess that the process from submitting to printing to shipping is totally automated, but who knows - a real person might intervene and stop the order and notify the authorities about the potential hate crime or terrorist act I may commit. Luckily I have this here blog post to absolve me of all wrong. Right?

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

Note: The pic is on Flickr, too, if you are into that.