Defendant: Unnamed demonstrator representing the Religion of Peace.

Count 1: Misspelling in the first degree.

Count 2: Phonetic indecency.

Count 3: Grammatical malfeasance committed during incitement to murder.

Report: Defendant was demonstrating in New York, a vibrant and diverse city which unfortunately includes this guy.

Fine: $622 and steerage on the first steamship back to Karachi.

Great news! People still read books!

I saw someone on the train and that's exactly what they were doing. A real book with pages and everything! My heart filled with joy, and I didn't care that the person didn't know how to chew gum without making horrific snapping noises.

Knowing that some people still read books inspired me to mention these books - all of which I believe would be perfect stocking stuffers:

I've known Chris Regan since college when we both worked on a comedy show. I was an idiot and went into advertising, but Chris was savvier and wound up writing for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for several years. If you watched the show odds are he was responsible for something you laughed at. His debut book MASS HISTORIA is his alternate universe - like revisionist history but without the Holocaust denial. Chris assumes his reader is smart and makes references to things you'll be proud of yourself for knowing. My friend Bill began reading the book while at my house and was unable to put it down; a mediocre testimonial since you don't know Bill, but it's 100% true. This book is too big to actually stuff in a stocking unless your friend has enormous feet. Perhaps you can leave a Post-It note mentioning that the actual book is under the tree and/or Hannukah box.

Martha Brockenbrough (just say "broken bow" with pretzels in your mouth) founded SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. They just sent me a copy of her new book THINGS THAT MAKE US [SIC] and I immediately started reading it. Now a girl named Amy is sitting to my left and looking through it. And she just laughed. And again. Absolutely serious. And now she's distracting me by reading out loud - a paragraph about a murderer who misused commas in her correspondence with law enforcement. Now Amy is annoying me because I can not write when she is reading out loud. I need Amy to leave now. [Three Minutes Later] Amy is gone. Any fan of this site's Grammar Cop will love this book, and it might actually fit into a stocking.

Brian Sack is me. I wrote IN THE EVENT OF MY UNTIMELY DEMISE. It was very well received. Nice reviews. Got promoted like crazy on the telly. Instead of me saying anything, I will leave it up to Vanity Fair.

LIBRARY
The tiny keyboard
Still makes enough of a sound
To distract, bastard

KINDERGARTEN TOUR
Very important
The future of his children
Never once looks up

THE PARK
A child on a swing
Daddy, daddy, higher please
But he is texting

STARBUCKS
Can I help you sir?
Excuse me, can I help you?
Sir? Can I help you?

GOTHAM BAR
All businessman types
Emailing just like at work
But here they are drunk

Wal-Mart worker dies after shoppers knock him down [Yahoo]

Deadly shootout at California Toys "R" Us [CBS News]

Defendant: Norman Goodman, County Clerk and Clerk of the Supreme Court, New York.

Count 1: Usage of an apostrophe in the commission of a plural noun, a misdemeanor.

Count 2: Grammatical negligence with regard to a word essential to one's profession.

Count 3: Distribution of grammatical malfeasance to the general public at taxpayer expense.

Report: Officer's wife was "randomly" selected to receive a Juror Qualification Questionnaire, mere weeks after acquiring U.S. Citizenship. Months later, Officer was also "randomly" selected for the same questionnaire. During routine perusal of the correspondence the grammatical malfeasance was discovered and promptly scanned.

Fine: $388 and exemption from being summoned to Jury Duty for four years, because Officer sits around and never gets picked anyway.

In the days before iPods and satellite, people listened to music via the radio. Stations that played music over the radio used to subsidize their existence by selling advertising. Can you imagine?

Back in the late '90s I partnered with two other guys and created Sixty Second Airborne - a radio advertising agency that wrote and produced humorous radio commercials. We had the brilliant idea of building the space ourselves, as my partners were both handymen. By building the space out ourselves we stood to save a ton of money.

One thing we didn't completely realize is that literally building your business at the same time your were building a business is a terribly stupid, time-consuming thing to do. Installing cabinets, drilling sheets of metal, painting and putting down flooring is great - if you're Bob Vila. But if Bob Vila also has to write, cast and produce three radio commercials for a client by Wednesday, then Bob Vila is not making the best use of his time.

Nevertheless we had a nice run - especially during the dot-com days when clients, pumped with millions in venture capital, simply did whatever they pleased at whatever cost. There were great clients, good clients, bad clients and clients that didn't pay (Pollak, Levitt & Partners). And we had a lot of fun. We shared our space with other businesses, including a recording studio - which meant interesting visitors were always traipsing through.

Recently I discovered imeem.com, which could be described as a YouTube for audio, so I took the liberty of uploading some of our favorite work lest it all languish on a hard drive.

Some of the voices may be recognizable: Space Ghost's George Lowe, Seinfeld's John O'Hurley and Ken Hudson Campbell.