My friend Joe loved his chickens, though a fox did them in this last fall. He’d planned to leave the coop empty for the winter and start fresh in the spring, but his surfing lead him to mail order chickens (adoption card pictured above).

So…what better a gift for a friend than a chicken by mail? And what better a gift to the world than trade justice?

last minute shopping, gift idea, joe, joe monninger, funny, serious, globalization, global economy, economic imperialism, laugh, chicken, chickens, mail order, mail order chickens

“I eated the purpleberries” (groaning).

“How are they Ralph…. Good?”

“They taste like…burning.”

More goodness at the Ralph Wiggum Soundboard, via InformationNation. More quotes, like “Oh boy, sleep! That’s where I’m a viking!,” at TheDotDotDot.

tags: funny, goodness, humor, laugh, quotes, ralph, ralph wiggum, ralph wiggum quote, ralph wiggum quotes, ralph wiggum soundboard, simpsons, the simpsons, thesimpsons

I don’t remember how I found this tip to BaitCar.com’s collection of police videos of car thefts. They’re good for a few laughs, but things like this — and about half of the programming on Spike — make me wonder how far we are from from the worlds depicted in Running Man and so many other stories.

Eh, at least we’ve got Bravo. That’s some good TV.

tags: bravotv, car theft, car thefts, culture of entertainment, entertainment culture, laugh, laughs, police video, police videos, running man, spiketv, theft, wfmu

The are few things as joyus as the excitement of discovery, so it was a great pleasure to learn that Stay Free! Magazine has a new blog: Stay Free! Daily. The blog has a number of stories about intellectual freedom and copyright oppression that resonated with me. Take a look at Silent Disobedience, Christo’s policy of photographing The Gates, and Wizard People screening in NYC. Anybody following discussion of the FCC’s broadcast flag mandate will be amused by an old movie studio and broadcaster PSA arguing against subscription TV services.

Like TiVo, But More Prurient, however, points out the irony of how so-called “decency” groups seem to collect more indecent material than the rest of us. Back in the day, J. Edgar Hoover would have his FBI G Men confiscate porn and other “indecent” materials for his private collection. Raise your hand if you think all this fuss is just a beard for those who don’t want to admit they’re interested in the stuff.

But we’ve known Republicans have been sexually repressed since long before Jeff Gannon/James Guckert became a household name.

Shifting back to the intellectual property discussion, however: It also turns out that Stay Free! is a founder of the Illegal Art Museum, a collection of works that got hit by the copyright bus at the intersection of art and commerce. The heading to the list of video works notes:

The films and videos below appropriate intellectual property, whether through the use of found footage, unauthorized music, or shots of copyrighted or trademarked material. (Filmmakers and videographers now have to get permission for just about every concert t-shirt, store sign, or other piece of intellectual property that happens to appear onscreen).

Illegal Art’s collection of related articles is a good place to start if this is the first time you’ve considered the wrongs of copyright. And there’s more of my own thinking on this in the Copyrights & Intellectual Property thread here at MaisonBisson.

[update:] This wasn’t the real point of this post, but Cliff is begging me to link to his roundup of the Gannon/Guckert affair at Spiralbound.net. It seems like the White House wouldn’t be what it is without some sex scandal, but I think we’d all be better off with more open gays there. My concern, however, is the repression that conservatives must live with. It’s unhealthy for them, and bad for us when they’re leading our country. Funny thing: the redder the state, the greater the consumption of liquor, beer, cigarettes, and porn, and the higher the divorce rate.

tags: broadcast flag, bush, christo, dubya, fbi, fcc, gannon, guckert, james guckert, jeff gannon, laugh, movie studio, movies, prurient, psas, repression, sexual repression, stay free magazine, stayfree, subscription tv, tivo

Cliff over at Spiralbound.net posted the video of Bush flipping the bird. It’s not as exciting as I’d hoped, but it’s on video.

Then there’s the Dubya Movie. It’s a fantastic mashup of old Don Kotts movies, but that’s already giving too much away. Go watch it, you’ll laugh.

tags: bird, bush, dubya, flipping the bird, laugh, movies