In case you've missed it, conservatives around the country are gathering together on tax day to protest taxes, using teabags as a symbol, harkening back to the Boston tea party. Yes, conservatives are throwing nationwide teabagging parties today.



That's from this report from an earlier event.

Fair and balanced Fox News is jumping into this wholeheartedly, sending their stars to parties and running wall-to-wall coverage. You can even send a postcard to your Fox Friends about the event!

Meanwhile, the people on the other side of the line can't stop snickering. Here's Rachel Maddow, who can barely keep a straight face during her piece (here's a direct link, since their embedding code seems a little flaky):



One conservative thinks they don't go far enough. Here's the next logical step:


I will say this: teabagging makes tax day much more fun.

Evidently selling homemade pie is illegal in Pennsylvania

The problem is the pies are illegal in Pennsylvania. Under the state's food-safety code, facilities that provide food at four or more events in a year require at least a temporary eating and drinking license, and food has to be prepared in a state-inspected kitchen. Many churches have six fish fries a year, on Fridays during Lent. St. Cecilia's has always complied with having its kitchen licensed, so food made there is fine to serve. But homemade goods don't make the cut.

The disappearance of Mary Pratte's coconut-cream pie, Louise Humbert's raisin pie and Marge Murtha's "farm apple" pie from the fish-fry fund-raisers sparked an uproar that spread far beyond the small parish. The local paper dubbed it "piegate," and a nearby bakery donated pies to the church to help fill the gap at the dessert table. There are reports of other churches continuing to sell contraband pastries. Legislation to overturn the baked-goods ban is being discussed.

"Contraband pastries" has to be up there on the list of two word phrases you don't expect to see in the WSJ.

Monty Python decided to post their entire library on their youtube channel. Here's how they put it:

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

It turns out that their strategy of giving away all their content for free has paid off: their Amazon sales increased 23,000 percent (not a typo). Hooray for free content finding a way to pay for itself.

The only downside is that they're slowly posting things over time, and many of my favorites (like the Cheese Shop), aren't up yet. Still, there's reason for optimism:

My father has a 1968 Gibson Guitar that he bought while he was in college. He was in a folk band, which is amusing given his otherwise total lack of hippiness. But he loves his guitar.

He just took it in for some repairs. It needs the frets replaced and the action lowered, and maybe some other things. He was terrified to take it in, worried that something might happen to it, that it wouldn't be the same when it came back.

The guitar store repairman went over the guitar with him and found lots of work needed. It's fairly major surgery -- the neck has to come off and be sanded, and bridge and wood under it needs work, and so on. After the conversation, they had the following conversation:

Repairman: Did you buy this guitar new?
Dad: Yes. 1968 or '69, I forget which
Repairman: Do you have the receipt?
Dad: Of course not.
Repairman, looking at the serial number: 1968. Would you be willing to have an affidavit notarized that you were the original purchaser?
Dad: I guess so. Why?
Repairman: Because much of the work is covered by the warranty.

Now *that's* a good warranty.

We're having a couple of murals painted on some outside walls we have, next to the stairs down to the basement. I'll post more about them when they're done.

One of the artists is a graffiti artist. He asked for a list of ideas we had, or things that mattered to us, and he incorporated some of them into the mural. One of the suggestions was a pair of aces. Here's what he painted:



It turns out he isn't a poker player. Go fig.

Luckily this is a problem that is easily fixed.



I'm just glad he wasn't carving a bas relief.

A player in the 10-10-20 game who I had played and chatted with sits down.

new player: Hey Dave, I was thinking about what you said last week about Revenge of the Sith. You're right, it is a bad movie! You totally ruined it for me.
me: Great, now you've outed me to the whole table as a giant nerd.
random other guy: It wasn't a secret.

Hey!

Ew. But funny!

Also wtf, only differently so, here's what Palin had to say about energy today:

"Oil and coal? Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first," Palin said. "So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It's got to flow into our domestic markets first."

It's a bit incoherent, but she appears to be saying that we should ban exporting oil? What happened to republicans being in favor of the free market? Between that and the administration's bailout of the financial sectors, I am not seeing it.

Something I never expected to hear at the poker table:

"So, are you a singularitarian?"

A new organization has just formed, perfect for the likes of rcfox or schmengie.

Try not to get too excited, guys.

No matter what happens this election, our next president will be better on several dimensions. For instance, and I think this is key: religious headwear. Check out Obama's kippah here, on his stop at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem:



McCain had an even nicer one when he went:



But Bush. He just looks like a dork, like the Christian kid at his first Bar Mitzvah:



H/t: The Volokh Conspiracy