We spent a lot of our trip at the Mall of America. I'm someone who can complain about the excesses of modern capitalism and still find a certain beauty in something like the m&m's store.
But there were video displays in there that gave me pause. They were circle-shaped, which caught my eye by itself—you don't see that kind of video format every day!—and intercut with other images was a little message to patrons:
When I looked at the displays again, the letters had changed to M E R I C. The only common word those letters form is CRIME.
What was going on here? Was the store urging me to commit robbery to feed my candy habit? Or, considering the rainbow colors of the m&ms, was this a veiled version of the “Be gay, do crime” LGBTQ protest slogan?
It probably says something about me that both of these ideas occurred to me before I realized the truth: these were thank-yous in different languages, and “CRIME” was actually “MERCI.” (Below, a scrambled “danke schön.”)
The perils of casual anagramming.