Originally posted to ReadWriteWeb. This post was written just hours before Groupon’s Super Bowl ad aired. Seems timing is everything.

Writing the caption for this cartoon wasn’t easy for me. Not because the joke needed a particular nuance, or involved any special vocabulary… but because it involves a security keyword.

It’s irrational, I know. But I now have a Pavlovian aversion to mentioning anything remotely connected to terrorism or weaponry, because at some semi-conscious level I worry it could get me plopped onto some agency’s list. “Sure, he’s probably kidding about his 500-foot homicidal robot, but just to be safe — (type, type, type, type, enter).”

Which, let’s face it, is kind of crazy; yes, that could happen, but I’m frankly a lot more vulnerable to ticking off someone at, say, Facebook who worked very hard on that interface tweak, and doesn’t take kindly to a smartass cartoon from someone who might be quite upset if his profile were to, oh, I don’t know, vanish.

Actually, now that I put that in cold hard text, it seems pretty damn terrifying.

Next week’s cartoon will be all about kittens.