Free, promotional email list for Stay Free! print magazine

[Carrie McLaren <stay.free AT verizon.net>]

Here are some recent highlights from Stay Free's blog. For full text, 
images, and many more articles, see http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org.


STAY FREE! SUBSCRIBERS PARTY IN NYC

We're going to be having our quasi-annual Stay Free! subscribers 
party on the weekend after next. If you're a (paid) subscriber to the 
magazine, you should have received the details by now. If not, reply 
to this email (stay.free AT verizon.net) and I'll send them along. Of 
course, it's never too late to become a subscriber and, yes, that is 
a bribe:
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/order.html


AMERICAN SCIENCE, RIP

Stay F---! spoofs the new series of Post Office stamps devoted to 
"American Scientists." Impress your friends and loved ones with these 
downloadable, eerily realistic parody stamps: Richard "Rick" 
Santorum, George Walker Bush, William Jennings Bryan, and the 
Intelligent Designer himself.
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/science_stamps.html


SPOOFING AMERICAN APPAREL

Another spoof, this one from some friends of a friend in Los Angeles, 
home base of American Apparel.
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/american_appare.html


CAN WE STILL BE FRIENDSTERS?

Mark down August 28, 2005, as the day that MySpace.com officially 
jumped the shark. For that was the day a New York Times article 
proclaimed how of-the-moment the site was. (Though one could 
certainly make a case that the shark-jumping occurred when R.E.M. 
joined. Or when Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought the site. 
Take your pick.) My gripe is sour-grape based in part, I'll admit. As 
I age, I only learn that life is designed to make me feel old...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/can_we_still_be.html


UNKOSHER ART

Look for the artists at this Beijing art farm to get a 
cease-and-desist letter after tattooing the Louis Vuitton logo on a 
pig. The artists in residence tattoo the anesthetized pigs and show 
the tattoos after the eventual natural deaths of the pigs...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/pig_tattoo.html


SELLING SICKNESS

I haven't been very good about finishing books lately, but did manage 
to read this one the whole way through: Selling Sickness: How the 
World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into 
Patients by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels. The book is short, easy, 
and loaded with arresting anecdotes about drug company efforts to 
"brand" disease...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/selling_sicknes.html


COULD VIOXX COME BACK FROM THE GRAVE?

I don't know how many of you are following the Vioxx story but it's 
taking a surreal turn. First, a quick recap: Merck withdrew Vioxx 
from the market in September 2004 when evidence linking the drug to 
fatal heart attacks became too much to ignore. (By some estimates, 
Vioxx has caused tens of thousands of deaths.) The news sparked a 
slew of lawsuits from survivors and the verdict in the first of these 
cases came back on Friday. The jury ruled against Merck and awarded 
the plaintiff -- whose husband died of a heart attack after taking 
Vioxx -- a symbolic $253 million...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/vioxx_heart_dea.html


REAL BEAUTY (FOR ASS MEN)

Since Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign has won raves in the press, other 
advertisers are rushing to cash in on some of that "real bodies" 
action. Nike has just launched an image campaign in a similar vein, 
celebrating "big butts, thunder thighs and tomboy knees" -- or at 
least that's what Advertising Age said. I looked at the ads myself 
but the closest thing to a fatty here is, as Charles put it, "a 
tight, perfectly round ass." ...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/real_women_ads.html


BRAIN TAUNTER

Little, stupid Flash-based ads that tout low mortgage rates are 
pretty much everywhere on the web, kind of like the soot-blackened 
gum wads pounded into the sidewalk of any big city: ubiquitous, 
mildly repugnant, and ignored. But, much like soot-blackened gum 
wads, sometimes one of these ads catches my eye. Like today. The ad 
pictured here seems to have some kind of slightly stoned green hippy 
troll-thing giving me a wobbly peace sign, surrounded by a sea-like 
miasmic soup of low-mortgage rate information...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/brain_taunter.html


CAN'T A GAY BATMAN GET A BREAK?

Oh, will the copyright madness ever end? D.C. Comics is going after a 
Chelsea art dealer, demanding that it cease and desist from 
exhibiting Mark Chamberlain's series of "gay Batman" watercolors. As 
Kathleen Cullen of Kathleen Cullen Fine Art explained to Artnet, 
"D.C. Comics wants me to hand over all unsold work and invoices for 
the sold work!" I hope she told them to make their own gay Batman 
watercolors...
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/gay_batman.html


BEER FOR KIDS

Following on the heels of candy-flavored cigarettes and kiddie 
deodorant, a Japanese company is marketing a nonalcoholic drink it 
calls Kidsbeer:
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/beer_for_kids.html


DEATH TO FALSE METAL!

Nu-metal stalwarts Slipknot are on the warpath. The enemy? Coq Roq, 
the fictional band featured in Burger King's new ad for Chicken 
Fries. Slipknot are threatening to sue the fast food chain for 
ripping off their likeness and sound in a diabolical scheme to 
"influence the Slipknot generation to purchase Chicken Fries."
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/death_to_false_.html


WHO KNEW FAKING BARCODES COULD BE SO EASY?

Some of you may remember when pranksters from Conglomco created a 
website that allowed people to download barcodes of various consumer 
goods, print them out, and stick them over more expensive goods at 
Wal-Mart, enabling them to buy at a discount. (The site was quickly 
shut down.)
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/barcodes_art_fa.html