Local Human Billboards Participate In Publicity Stunt

Yesterday, a Philadelphia couple began a month-long publicity stunt for M&Ms by “exchanging vows” at City Hall. (Don’t worry, this will start to make sense in a minute. Ha ha, just kidding, no it won’t.) Their vow: To communicate with each other using only M&Ms for one month. The point of the stunt is to get local TV stations to write about candy, and, golly gee, it is a success!

Jennifer Farina and Ryan Donlon are not only forbidden to speak with each other for a month, they also aren’t allowed to text message each other. Oh, and a bunch of cameras in their house are going to track their every move to make sure they’re not cheating.

So can one really express emotion with just the letter ‘m’? Well, no. But Mars has given them a bunch of custom-printed M&Ms to promote a website that allows one to purchase custom-printed M&Ms.

Donlon has already categorized their new sweet vocabulary. “I have 9,000 of these at home,” he said. “Different numbers, messages, words, things to communicate how your day was.”

The M&M’s are even color coded for emotions. “Reds are all angry, crazy, mad. The pink ones are all love,” Donlon said.

In the spirit of this promotion, if I see either Ryan or Jennifer during the next 30 days, I’m only going to communicate with two words: you and fuck.

Couple Takes Unusual Vow Of Sweet Silence [CBS 3]

An Eloquent Silence

The Inquirer’s Jan Hefler and Toni Callas have an article today about a possible grade-changing scandal at Cherry Hill High School East. The Inky sez the investigation centers on a senior who obtained a “privileged password” — true story: at my high school, the basketball coach’s password was “basketball” — and changed the grades of five students in exchange for money.

School officials, though, aren’t quite so forthcoming. All of these are sentences from the article:

• Police Lt. Bill Kushina said the investigation remained active. No arrests had been made, he said, declining to elaborate.
• “The district is currently investigating allegations of limited inappropriate use of technology,” school district spokeswoman Susan Bastnagel said. “No other information will be shared about these allegations until the investigation is complete.”
• The school superintendent would not comment.
• Anne Einhorn, vice president of the Board of Education, said school district and high school administrators were investigating allegations, but she would not elaborate.
• Other officials also acknowledged that there was a probe, but would not discuss it.

No comment.

High school hacking, grade changing probed [Inquirer]