This Independence Day weekend will see families across America cracking some cold ones, lighting fireworks, and bar-b-queing outdoors. It’ll also see plenty of proud displays of the ol’ Red White and Blue.

The etiquette of flag display has changed dramatically over the past 50 years.

Activist Abbie Hoffman was famously arrested in 1968 for wearing a shirt that resembled the flag.
 

“I only regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country.” - Abbie Hoffman
 
By contrast, today no one seems to have any problem with selling or wearing adult footie pajamas emblazoned with the stars and stripes.
 

I got these bad boys right here.
 
Pretty much anything that’s mass-produceable by cheap foreign labor can be purchased with a flag on it. From dog capes, to thongs, to pillows, to door mats, to trash cans, it seems that Americans now enjoy a very relaxed standard of flag etiquette.

But one burning question remains: is it OK to eat the flag?

Specifically is it bad form to create foodstuffs in the image of Old Glory? And then eat them and presumably poop them out at a later time?

The Free-Times newspaper put the question to Mike Buss, flag expert and deputy director of Americanism at the American Legion. In Buss’ expert opinion:

We appreciate people celebrating their patriotism by putting images of the flag out for their celebrations! It’s not like they will string a rope up on that cake and run it up a flagpole.  At least, we hope no one will.

However, he adds, using an actual flag for a tablecloth or for any other function other than a flag is not something that the American Legion recommends or encourages. I suppose those door mats aren’t sanctioned either.

Here’s a gallery of flag inspired dishes, some of which look quite appetizing, if you’re into vexillophagy.
 

 

 

 

 
More patriotic foodstuffs after the jump…

 
This had me on the floor laughing and crying, not the least because of the hilarious commentary coming from behind the camera which predicts what’s to come. But what happens at the end is just too, too perfect. Thank god for smartphones or else we wouldn’t be laughing about these dipsy doodles and their instant karma.

This is less than two minutes long, watch the entire thing and know that your time will be well-rewarded.
 

 
Sad news from Improbable Research: Donald Featherstone, the man behind the iconic pink flamingo lawn ornament, has died at age 79.

Don created the flamingo when he was freshly graduated from art school, and newly employed at a plastics factory. One of his first assignments was to create three-dimensional plastic lawn ornaments (up to that time, most plastic lawn ornaments were more or less flat). The flamingo was one of his earliest efforts for the factory.

Eventually he became president of the company. After Don retired, dire things were done, by his successor, to the flamingo, triggering a worldwide protest, which eventually led to a more or less happy rallying of the forces of Good, and a restoration of the plastic pink flamingo’s status. In 2011, the flamingo attained new heights, when the Disney movie Gnomeo and Juliet featured a plastic pink lawn ornament named “Featherstone”.

 

 
Featherstone’s lawn sculptures have become beloved badges of American suburban kitsch, adored ironically by probably about as many people as enjoy them sincerely. And of course, their ticky-tacky ubiquity inspired the title of John Waters’ breakthrough film Pink Flamingos, which has nothing to do with the ornaments. Waters discussed the connection in an interview with Smithsonian.com:

“The reason I called it Pink Flamingos was because the movie was so outrageous that we wanted to have a very normal title that wasn’t exploitative,” Waters says. “To this day, I’m convinced that people think it’s a movie about Florida.” Waters enjoyed the plastic knickknack’s earnest air: Though his own stylish mom might have disapproved, the day-glo wading birds were, back then, a straightforward attempt at working-class neighborhood beautification. “The only people who had them had them for real, without irony,” Waters says. “My movie wrecked that.” Forty years later, the sculptures have become unlikely fixtures of a certain kind of high-end sensibility, a shorthand for tongue-in-cheek tackiness.

Featherstone is survived by his wife Nancy.
 

 

 
On December 23rd, 1975, Gerald Ford signed the reasonable Metric Conversion Act into law, stating, “the truth is that our continued use of the English system of measurement was making us an island in a metric sea.”

School curriculums were altered to teach the metric system, despite the fact that converting was overwhelmingly unpopular with Americans, who were used to doing things the ‘murican way—not no pansy, pussy-ass European way.

In 1982, progressive agent of change, President Ronald Wilson Reagan officially disbanded the U.S. Metric Board—the government organization charged with “increasing the use” of the metric system in the United States. Reagan did so citing efforts to “reduce government spending,” but really it was because America, fuck yeah.

In 1976 King-Seeley Thermos Company released what has to have been the worst-selling lunchbox of all time:
 

The Exciting World of Metrics lunchbox!
 
It’s safe to assume that whatever kid was unfortunate enough to have been sent off to school with this box in tow, was beaten mercilessly within centimeters of his life.

Luckily, ‘70s lunchboxes were made out of HARD metal with a swingable handle, so at least the kid had a fighting chance!
 

 

 

 

 

And they all think you’re a dick, Mike…

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments today on gay marriage, it seemed like the perfect time to post this extended trailer from Light Wins, a goofball anti-gay rights documentary produced by Janet Porter, who is a weekly columnist for WorldNetDaily and the author of the demurely titled book, The Criminalization of Christianity (Gee, I wonder what that’s about?). Porter is a believer in “dominion” theology, the idea that Christians are duty bound to wrest complete control from non-believers over every aspect of political life. To bring about the return of Christ, of course!
 

 
I absolutely could spend the next 45 minutes coming up with all manner of insulting epithets and nasty things to say about the fucking idiots—including GOP presidential contenders Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul—who took part in this… thing—and it might even be fun, but it would also be utterly pointless. These people discredit themselves and the American/Republican form of Christianity they practice with every second of their onscreen time. It’s wall-to-wall DUMB. They don’t need me, or anyone else, to point out how ridiculous they are.
 

 
But I will say this: If you could go back in time to the Salem witch trials and do a documentary about what happened, it would be assholes just like David Barton, Louie Gohmert and Phyllis Schlafly who would be clamoring to inflict their stupidity on your audience (luckily they can’t burn anybody at the stake in these more enlightened times.). Clearly these folks do not realize how much they BOOST the cause of gay civil rights EVERY TIME they open their mouths! Not like there’s a snowball’s chance in Hell that level of self-awareness would shut any of ‘em up, I’m just sayin’...
 

Phil Robertson, thinking…
 
Yep. If these people are what America’s version of Christianity sees as its moral leaders… in a sense, all I can say is “Hey… great!” Ten years ago, it used to be that the sight of someone like Tony Perkins on TV made me steaming mad, but the distance from the Bush administration to today seems very, very vast. Today Perkins is scarcely even shown respect on these shows, just last weekend, Bob Schieffer (who’s retiring and hilariously called it exactly like he saw it) took careful pains to make sure that the Face the Nation viewership knew that he just didn’t like this guy very much or have any respect for him. At one point Tony Perkins and his icky ilk held the power, now he and they, just look like yesterday’s bigots.
 

‘memba her?

Light Wins, of course, casts this matter as a fight of good against evil. In doing so, it makes itself the perfect unintentional time capsule of the moment we’re living in. No really, it sums up everything about America at this pivotal moment in our history, not just the gay civil rights and persecuted Christianist angles, but how America truly is turning into two nations. Not a Christian vs. secular nation, or merely conservative vs. liberals either. It’s something greater than that, what I like to think of as “the Great IQ stratification.” Smart people vs. dumb people. What’s really going on is becoming starkly obvious at this point, don’t you think?

The participants in Light Wins will not be seen very kindly by history and no one in it is ever going to become President, either.

Here’s the nine-minute long trailer. (If you can’t get enough, there’s also the half-hour version.)
 

 
The Oscar-nominated blockbuster American Sniper plays its cards so close to its chest that it’s difficult to tell if director Clint Eastwood wanted to make a pro-war statement, an anti-war film… or what? The fact that the question is being asked by so many people is probably testament to Eastwood getting exactly the reaction he wanted to get. People end up projecting themselves onto it, or (perhaps unavoidably) assuming that Eastwood’s known proclivities for conservative politics and the Republican party must therefore make it a pro-war film. Eastwood himself has declared the film to be “anti-war.”

Whatever nuances and shades of gray ambiguities Eastwood’s film may (or may not) have possessed depending on your own personal viewpoint, they’ve simply been squashed flat by atheist YouTube vlogger “Cult of Dusty” who made his own LOL “trash compactor” cut of American Sniper.
 

 
Oh, Northeast Ohio, I love you. Akron police are seeking a man now dubbed, probably by some rubbish local news program, the “Bowel Movement Bandit,” suspected of having shat on as many as nineteen cars parked in residential driveways. But police have an excellent lead—the gentleman caller has been clearly photographed red-assed in the act of Cleveland-steamering an innocent sedan:

Officers are searching for someone they said has defecated on 19 parked cars in driveways.

The bowel movement bandit strikes between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. On Wednesday morning, a resident caught the suspect on film.

I have nothing to add except that it sure would be wonderful if his name turned out to be “Browning.”
 

 
Via NewsNet 5

 
Mud, a new face-friendly spa in Chicago, is offering its sensitive-skinned patrons something unusual: breast milk facials.

Shama Patel, Mud’s founder, explains:

I really wanted to come up with something that was quick, effective, that appealed to the urban city girl…There are so many mommy blogs out there that talk about using breast milk to basically help with skin conditions.

The salon sources its white liquid gold from “certified milk banks” only. These banks get their supply from local nursing mothers who are aware their boob juice will end up on strangers faces for $40 a pop.
 

 
Ladies and gentlemen: The Cash Cannon.

If you can get this past security at your local strip club—and let’s be honest, if your local strip club has security, it’s probably not that interesting to begin with—you can be the reigning (raining?) King of Fools parted from his money.

This miracle device allows its brandisher to blow through large amounts of cash at an alarmingly high rate of speed. You’re not just “making it rain,” you just brought the typhoon up in this piece.

According to the manufacturer’s website:

The Cash Cannon™ Money Gun is a toy that dispenses paper items in a rapid but user controlled manner. The preferred item of choice to dispense is of course cash but any item that fits in the loading compartment and out of the slot will work with the device. The Cash Cannon™ is the first device that performs this function and is simple enough in terms of design to be mass manufactured for the public use.

If the psychology behind throwing out large amounts of money in a gentleman’s club is creating an atmosphere of fun from an affected lack of concern, then the Cash Canon instantly turns what might have been three minutes of self-important limelight into four and a half seconds of pathetic confusion. The top dog always spreads the money around and you can’t get top doggier than literally spewing it all over the place like a first year fraternity brother retching up last night’s kamikazes. All you have to do is load the Cash Cannon with your favorite denomination of currency, gently squeeze the trigger, and look forward to tomorrow’s regret.

Testing, testing…

 
Actual in-field use, below:

 
Estately, which supposedly has “the most accurate index of homes for sale, straight from the MLS,” kindly put together this super-handy chart which allows us to see what our state “has more of per capita than any other.”

I’m impressed with the results! Apparently Texas has the most pet tigers, Oregon likes to sell cigarettes to children, and poor ol’ Delaware has the most registered sex offenders.

Take this map with a grain of salt though, the data comes from “hundreds of surveys and studies,” so you know it’s legit, right?

Anyway, I had a good laugh at this one. Especially with Pennsylvanians obsession with “holiday music downloads.” What’s the deal, Pennsylvania? You can’t get enough of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”?

Click here to see larger image.

via Death and Taxes