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Proof that your trademark doesn’t have to make sense or have any commercial worth to be approved by the USPTO, but apparently it does if you want to sell anything…

Source: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=doc&state=12oiju.18.27

The following is an expired trademark listed on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s electronic database of trademarks (TESS). Now, while I suppose there’s such a thing as a one-stop shop, I’m not sure this is exactly the right combination of trade goods to be offering. If you check a little further, it turns out there is actually still a Mutts and Butts pet shop on Long Island, but they’ve changed their image and logo and seem to just be a pet store now. Check out their site if you like…especially if you’re on Long Island and need pet supplies.

Source: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=doc&state=krh966.2.2

There’s not really alot that I could add to this, so here’s an excerpt from the London Times article about a rather interesting kidnapping story:

The 43-year-old Italian apparently dragged the woman out of a bar in the port city of Genoa in the north of the country and pushed her into his car, before taking her back to his house.

Once there, he threatened to hurt her before making her iron his clothes and do the washing up, police said.

Officers were called to the property by a friend of the woman who saw the scene unfold at the bar.

The man, who was apparently furious at his ex-girlfriend for leaving him, was arrested on charges of kidnapping.

Concerned that, in the event of a tragic plane crash hundreds of miles up in the Sierras, or perhaps a misled jungle expedition into the deepest recesses of the Amazon, your dog won’t have a fair chance of survival? Look no further, my friend, than the new pet emergency jacket with food compartments, which premiered at a recent expo in Tokyo. The jackets, which cost between $250 and $425 dollars, means that Fido will neither go hungry nor get wet, should he become an unwilling participant in your emergency situation.

I’m inclined to agree with one blogger who argues that this stuff is a little ridiculous. After all, the same thing can be effected by adding a small packet of dog food into your emergency supplies, presumably in a Ziploc bag to keep it dry. As for the all-weather protection, consider that dogs have a rather long and mostly successful history of running around naked in all sorts of weather, before deeming it necessary to zip up the hoodie on your Schnauzer.

Of course, you could also have my dog, Bonny, who absolutely flips whenever you try to take this sweater off her. It’s not normal, but it’s undeniably cute…

dog, sweater, emergency kit, clothing, survival

The following is a sponsored review of The Bubblenator, a website that allows you to put thought or speech bubbles on any picture on the web.

When you first arrive at The Bubblenator site, it’s quite obvious that it’s a gimmick to drive traffic to the site online-casinos.com–heck, even the URL is based off that site. However, if you can ignore the fact that it’s clearly a page designed to create advertising for the online casino website, the bubblenator feature itself is pretty cool. You can put a thought or speech bubble anywhere in a picture that has a URL, then you can resize the bubble and add whatever text you want. All in all, it’s a pretty nifty way to waste time on an otherwise slow day.

Once you’ve got your picture all formatted, you can export the HTML for copying and pasting into your website, blog, etc. The good news is it’s all free; the bad news is the image modification is done with a Flash app hosted from the online-casinos site, so if the site goes down, so will your image. Also, there’s an annoying bit of code at the end that (surprise!) leads you back to the online-casinos site. Despite these limitations, The Bubblenator is definitely an interesting and fun way to waste some time. Of course, as an ad for online casinos, part of the point is wasted on those of us in the United States, where it’s illegal to gamble for real money (and stupid to gamble for fake money). Until those laws are changed, however, you can still take advantage of the completely unrelated, yet undeniably fun, Bubblenator.

cat, dog, bubblenator, caption, cartoon

The ABA Journal is reporting that 8 inmates in a Florida prison are facing charges of indecent exposure because they were caught masturbating in their cells, alone. Besides the ridiculous notion that someone would be prosecuted for such a thing at all, there is some disturbing evidence that the female deputy who ‘observed’ one of the inmates was really interested in watching the act for the purpose of, errr, describing it later in explicit detail:

Plus, during Alexander’s trial, prosecutor Cynthia Lauriston and the female deputy who complained, after observing him on a monitor as he was alone in his cell, “managed to describe Alexander’s offense in startling detail, eight times, once with Lauriston approximating the action with arm motions,” Grimm notes.

Now, one female deputy’s sexual frustration notwithstanding, I’d like to point out that this heinous denial of our civil liberties is something we should all be proud to protest, at least once a day. Show our nameless female deputy the error of her Puritanical ways and Give freedom a hand!â„¢

According to Techdirt and an article in the British newspaper The Telegraph, several inmates in an Oklahoma City penitentiary tried to coerce the warden into freeing them by copyrighting their own names, then suing the prison for copyright violation. Apparently, the prisoners thought they had arranged with someone outside the prison to freeze the warden’s assets, thereby allowing them to extort him for their freedom. In reality, the outside contact was an FBI agent, and now the prisoners are facing up to an additional 16 years for their foiled plot.

Regardless of the ridiculous nature of this particular situation, it shows that the idea of manipulating copyright law to extort people has spread far beyond the RIAA and MPAA, to individual enterprising criminals. Unfortunately for the four men in this scenario, they don’t have the clout of either the RIAA or MPAA, and so, rather than meeting with resounding success, their attempt to use copyright law for extortion purposes failed miserably.

copyright law, prisoners, warden, riaa, mpaa, copyright

Those of you who know me know that I’ve been in a relationship for over five years now, so you’re probably wondering where I’m coming from on this eHarmony thing. Well, a couple of months ago I got curious about why eHarmony rejects people, after seeing a chemistry.com commercial. I took eHarmony’s loooong test, and got ‘in’ to the club. After blogging about my experience, and a little about why eHarmony supposedly rejects people, I got a bunch of comments, not to mention constant emails from eHarmony encouraging me to meet people they’ve matched me with. Of course, I have no intention of spending my own good money on something like online dating, but if I get the $60 I need (or a lower amount and someone finds me a good promo code), I promise to meet at least 3 of the people on the list, find out if they’re compatible, and report back on this blog. C’mon, it’s for a good cause!

eharmony, rejected, reject, dating, online dating, dating site, chemistry, chemistry.com, chipin

The following image, presumably from a German public restroom, encourages male patrons to ‘Don’t spray, sit.’

Two of the students in my Latin II class this past semester, Nate and Meredith, made a video about the life of Julius Caesar, as part of a class project. They decided to use ‘anthropomorphized learning tools,’ or sock puppets in the vernacular, as the medium through which to explain the life of this great man. Keep in mind these are students in a college-level Latin class. College.

Tip: Make sure to watch through the credits for the extra priceless footage at the very end.

latin, julius caesar, rome, sock puppet, latin class, college, university, history of rome