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Leave the jokes to me

According to some journal, men find a sense of humor in women a huge turnoff. I would be more specific, and possibly offer a quote or two from the article, but the idiots at The Independent have decided that 48 hours is enough time to keep an article online for free. (The [Racine, WI] Journal Times, more generous with their archives, has an article about the study here.)

Suffice it to say that I don't dispute the conclusion of the study. It's why I insist that Carrie only post articles like this.

Woman Becomes Quadruple Amputee After Giving Birth

Here's a good story to remember the next time you hear about hospitals and doctor groups complaining about the high costs of malpractice insurance:

ORLANDO, Fla. — A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.

The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won't tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients' rights.

Claudia Mejia gave birth eight and a half months ago at Orlando Regional South Seminole. She was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando where her arms and legs were amputated. She was told she had streptococcus, a flesh eating bacteria, and toxic shock syndrome, but no further explanation was given.

The hospital, in a letter, wrote that if she wanted to find out exactly what happened, she would have to sue them. [emphasis added]

This would be unbelievable, except that medical professionals respond this way all too often. The Orlando hospital may cite Florida's "Patients Right To Know" statute as its rationale, but the code of silence is common throughout U.S. health care. The reasons are varied and complicated, but for a quickie intro to the topic, check out some of the sources mentioned here.

Coke's criminal conspiracy

Coca-Cola has recently started airing a commercial whimsically encouraging " sip stealing"—surreptitiously drinking at the self-serve machine and refilling when the owner is distracted. It is a lighthearted, fun ad ... or is it? (Adland subscription required to watch the ad).

It seems so innocent and imbiber-friendly, as if Coke is your friend—a cuddly, corporate Abbie Hoffman—encouraging you with a wink and a nudge to steal from them. But they aren't really asking you to steal from them at all—they're asking you to steal from convenience stores! When customers steal sips, stores have to buy more syrup from Coke. Pretty crafty, huh?

Which isn't to say that I haven't been sip stealing for years.

Clearance sale on ovens

A few days ago I wrote about the unfortunate placement of a McDonald's billboard. Because of my vain obsession with Technorati-ing this blog (Technorati is the new Google for the self-involved), I saw that Ishbadiddle linked to us in a post that included an even better juxtaposition: nobody wants their ad to run on a page with a story about the Holocaust but gas companies want it to happen much less than others.

Winston Smith's Close Call

Winston Smith has been cutting up other people's pictures to make surreal and politcally charged collages since the 1970s. His illustrations have appeared in magazines from Spin and Playboy to The Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker (my favorite New Yorker illustration can be seen at right).  But most know him for his album cover art for punk bands like the Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra, and even Green Day. 

I emailed Winston to ask him if he'd ever had a run-in with copyright holders upset with the way he, in his words, "kidnaps innocent images from vintage magazines and diabolically glues them into compromising or politically revealing positions." Here's what he had to say:

Winston Smith: Actually, in over 25 years of appropriating images created by hard-working artists (unlike myself), only once was I ever approached about it. Sometime in the late 1990s I had made an illustration for Playboy using an image from an "Old West" magazine from around 1949.  The artist who did the original illo saw it.  He was 82 at the time, so I reckon he had something on the ball that he was still enjoying pictures of the photo lay-outs of Playboy. (Or at least the articles...)  And he recognized his work, even though I had substantially changed it and added several elements.

My art director at Playboy said the illustrator wanted to sue, until their lawyers pointed out that the image was fifty years old—the original copyright had run out about 24 years earlier. And because I had transformed the whole piece, it was no longer covered anyway.

But Playboy was cool about it and the editors invited him to write a letter about his work. So his son wrote a nice letter about his dad's career as an illustrator and how pleased he was to see that his work still had relevancy at the turn of the century (1999).  And Playboy asked me to write a letter explaining how I create my compositions and how the essence of collage as an art form depends entirely from appropriating images from different sources (without which I would be working in a GE plant making air conditioner filters outside Tulsa).  They printed both letters, plus a reproduction of the guy's original piece. (I would send you the tear sheets but the pages are stuck together).

That was the only close call (so-to-speak) that I've had in over a quarter of a century. I also try never to utilize anything from Disney, Coca-Cola or Norman Rockwell. I may be crazy but I ain't stooopid.

Ad-Free Blog.org

My neighbors down the street started adfreeblog.org for bloggers who do not run advertising on their blogs.  It's a simple little icon that means:

I am opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.

I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.

I do not accept money in return for advertising space on my blog.

This is especially interesting with the controversy surrounding whisper campaigns on blogs, where bloggers are paid to talk up specific products in the content of their sites.  This type of advertising goes a step beyond banner ads usually found on the web, because the ad is disguised in the content as the authors authentic opinion.  The advertisers count on the trust and dedication readers have to the author, and the advertiser exploits that trust. 

The "AdFreeBlog" button is a quiet way bloggers can assure their readers.  If you have a blog, you can quickly download the buttons

Truth and Consequences

We were recently sent this amazing photo of a pair of billboards.

It would be great if all billboards were conveniently paired like this. Say, the Army and coffins or BetOnSports.com and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

(Thanks, Cody Wilmer!)

I am blogger. Hear me whore.

The Spoonbender has the right idea about how people should react to getting nominated for web awards, but I have decided not to treat adland's Battle of the Ad Blogs with contempt. Adland is a good blog; we have linked to them and we have been linked from them.

Also, they nominated us in the Best Topical Blogs category. The category is so important that it was listed 16th of 16, so scroll down.

More corporate graffiti?

Thanks to Matt Novak for tipping me to this oddly tagged newsrack that he spotted in Milwaukee.... but is it corporate graffiti? No way. How can I tell? Easy: Target would never advertise on something this ugly. This is closer to Lumpen's style than Sony's. In fact, it reminds me of a prank the Cockeyed guy did a while back, where he painted a couple of ratty metal chairs with the Starbucks logo, chained them to a random street sign, then watched for weeks to see what would happen. Street art. Gotta love it.

The Amazing World of iTunes Celebrity Playlists

I'm sure every one of us has, during some moment of curiosity, weakness, or both, investigated the "Celebrity Playlists" section of iTunes. It's occasionally interesting, but after seeing that Frank Black is listening to nothing but Burl Ives, I grew bored. Until I hit the last page.

Now, I'm not sure what the criteria is to get your playlist featured on iTunes as a celebrity playlist, but the last page of them (page 15 when I checked this morning) is full of some amazing playlists. I'm not even sure how or why some of these people have playlists on here. I mean, David Oreck? The vacuum-cleaner mogul? Lawrence Lessig? Alan Greenspan? More amazing than that he's even here is that, apparently, Alan Greenspan listens to almost nothing but the Black-Eyed Peas.

Some of the entries offer no surprises at all: David Duke likes Skrewdriver and Prussian Blue? No shit. Frank Gehry likes Kraftwork? I can see that. But sometimes you think some of the selections are just picked to be, you know, seen. Like how Kofi Annan's huge list of U2 songs really seems just like some Bono-ass kissing.

Then there's the really baffling ones: Fidel Castro and the Shins, Betsey Johnson and Thin Lizzie, and the fact that Fran Tarkenton (ex NFLer who once co-hosted That's Incredible) is on the list at all.

Anyway, this makes for some fascinating time-wasting.

Whatever happened to Martin Luther King?

Who says we never celebrate the holidays at Stay Free?  We've got two Martin Luther King, Jr. items for you people:

Martin Luther King™
What Martin Luther King's estate is doing in the name of "intellectual property" has the civil rights leader rolling over in his grave. From Stay Free! #24, by Kembrew McLeod.

The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV
In his time, MLK was a radical who the FBI tried to take down. Now, he's a postage stamp. When I was teaching high school media literacy, I used this article from FAIR on MLK Day, and it inspired some lively class discussion.

New from Stay Free! magazine

Actually, this article came out last summer but, hey, it's new to the online world:

How we learned to stop worrying and love plastics
Jeffrey Meikle discusses the history of plastic and its place in American culture

Interview by Allison Xantha Miller from Stay Free! #24.

Goodbye to 390 Butler (part I)

For the past several years I've been pasting postcards, news clips, photos, and other detritus on my bathroom walls; nearly every inch has been covered. But when I started preparing to move a couple of weeks ago, I found myself taking items off the wall - and thinking about where they came from. So instead of just trashing my carefully acquired refuse, I thought I'd scan in a few images and tell you about 'em. Here we go...

Sean Tejaratchi, the genius graphic designer behind Craphound, once gave me a bunch of postcards he made for Stella Marrs. This was my favorite. More recently, he designed Negativland's No Business CD. Rumor has it that he's now touching up photos for a porn magazine in California.

Heidi Cody, another artist from the Illegal Art Exhibit, put this together. Hours of fun!

For Stay Free #16, back in 1999, I was aching to do a parody of the Gap's "Khaki Swings" campaign. I didn't have much of an idea for it, though; all I knew is that I wanted the photo to have blood and khakis. After Noah Scalin took this shot of my buddy Molly Aboud, we were standing around with a few friends wondering what else we could do.... and someone suggested the suicide pun, which ended up becoming the back cover.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this ad is that some people didn't realize it was a parody. A co-worker even congratulated me for getting a Gap ad in Stay Free! (and, no, she wasn't kidding) I realized that's because people often don't consciously process advertisements; they recognize the image reflexively and assume they know what they've seen.

And here are a couple of photos of my dad. The puppy in the first one is the dog that was on the cover of Stay Free! #22 (my brother's broken mini-Pinscher). In the other, my dad is wearing the kilt he borrowed from his brother. I think this photo makes him look like a character in a Chris Ware story.

And this kinda thing never gets old...

That's all for now. I'll post a few more later...

Those Bad Apples at Applebee's

First, we learn that they got a 5-year-old drunk. And now, in Smoking Gun-esque fashion, I have uncovered another scandal. Has Applebee's ripped off American Idol for their takeout logo?

On the depression of mice and men

I was listening to NPR last night and caught this bit about a new study of depression drugs:

Scientists have discovered a protein in the brain called P11 that may explain how drugs like Prozac fight depression -- and why they take so long to work.

Continuing...

Researchers have been looking for an explanation by studying precisely how serotonin acts on brain cells. That's hard to do in people. So a team led by Pers Svenningsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm looked at mice with signs of depression. When these mice are held by their tails, for example, they struggle less than normal mice.

Svenningsson and a group of U.S. scientists found that removing P11 from the brains of mice caused them to show signs of depression.

Granted, I'm no scientist, but how do we know that the mice were struggling because they weren't as depressed? Who knows, they may have been trying to wrap the string around their necks to kill themselves.

And isn't it quite a leap to say that not struggling is a sign of depression analogous to human depression? Charles thinks there must be a line missing in the article along the lines of: "Scientists determined the symptoms of depression in mice through a combination of tail-hanging and interviews."

This story is more promising if you look between the lines of its ridiculously reductive analogies, though: thank god researchers are looking beyond seratonin and dopamine as isolated triggers for brain functioning.

Stay Free Blog Post: The Special Edition

Recently, I've been inundated with advertisements for the Wedding Crashers: Uncorked Edition DVD. A few weeks back, it was the same deal for Office Space: The Special Edition With Flair. I think naming these things might be something I might excel at. So with no further ado, I offer for your consideration…

PROPOSED SPECIAL-EDITION DVD NAMES FOR LAST WEEK'S TOP-10 FILMS

1. The Chronicles of Narnia—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
The Even Narnier Edition

2. King Kong: Absolutely Bananas Edition

3. Fun with Dick and Jane: Huh-Huh-Huh We Said "Dick" Edition

4. Cheaper by the Dozen 2: Same Price No Matter How Many You Buy Edition

5. Rumor Has It...: Box Is Empty Because Movie Is So Heinously Bad Edition

6. The Family Stone: We Tell You Right on the Cover That the Diane Keaton
Character Dies of Breast Cancer Edition

7. Memoirs of a Geisha: Five Discs of Rambling Incoherent Stories From Real-Life Senior-Citizen Former Geishas Edition

8. The Ringer: Edition That Tricks You Into Thinking You Bought The Ring Special Edition Edition

9. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Quidditch Overtime Edition, And Oh Yeah,
Also, Harry and Ron "Get Busy" Like Those Gay Cowboys

10. Munich: Deleted Scenes of Rocketships, Lasers, and Homesick Aliens Edition

2005? That's so...2005.

Here's a daisy-fresh 2006 post for you kids. Not to enforce Jewish stereotypes, but I go to the movies a lot over the holidays. In fact, it doesn't require a holiday; I'm always going to the movies. Twice this weekend I've gone to a multiplex in Edgewater, New Jersey. And for the first time in any theater I've visited, the self-service ticket machines are now more prominent than the traditional stand-in-line ticket counter (which had been moved off to the side).

Also, going a second time, I now realize that what I assumed was a matinee price for Munich was actually the child/senior rate. Those touch screens can be tricky. Mr. Spielberg, if the week's box-office earnings are $3.50 lower than projected, I take full responsibility.