Again, do any of you complaining about the boss skimming the tips actually see a tip jar there? There's no physical segregation of income, therefor, while the intent of a significant overpayment may be to "tip" the staff, there's no functional way to separate that portion of the income from the common pool, especially when someone else (even the guy behind you who, say, sees you leave a twoonie for a single bagel) underpays.

Also, on a general note, the addition of the "tip" step to the interac machines at coffee shops and other pay-first counter-service food joints pisses the hell out of me, because I'm being asked to pay a) before I've tasted the food, b) before I have empirical knowledge of how long it will take to get my food (ie, are the staff going to dog it for twenty minutes before producing my coffee), and c) when all the service I get is you ringing my damn order into the machine, with maybe 30 seconds of minimal interaction. I like to tip the staff, when things go right. I've left fairly massive tips before. I've also had waiters tell me jokes about Katherine Hepburn in a sex-toy shop. The counter staff, they smile. That's about it.

With regard to the tips, since there isn't a separate tip jar, and any tip would just go into the old bus fare box, there really wouldn't be any mechanism for sorting out tip vs non-tip income, so the tips would just wind up as part of the general revenue - essentially those who leave a tip wind up covering the tab of those who miscalculated or just took without paying, which seems like a decent system to me, in that it allows the owner to cover his losses, and thus is able to pay his workers a decent wage - one far better than your average coffee-shop employee pulls down, in any case. In reality, the "common pool" tip jar at a Canadian coffee shop is usually fairly marginal - the thing is a way to dispose of nickels and pennies. Heck, Canadians are all trained (in customer habits) by Tim Hortons, where tips are actively discouraged. That or by Starbucks, where the drink costs so damn much that I can bring myself to leave a tip because I'm now broke.

For those of us in North America, instead of "Gypsie" (or Roma) read "Indian" or "Native American." Without the casinos. Socially disadvantaged, abused by both the government and society, the Roma have it pretty rough, but they're not sexy like Tibet, so no-one really kicks up much of a fuss.

On the other hand, any mention of gypsies doesn't render the whole article / prank any less funny. If it helps you sleep at night, just remember the whole goal was random, bizzare postcards, so a) what's more random than a gypsie, to the NorthAm mind, and b) you can create a context where any gypsie bashing is done in ironic mockery of prevalent racism, so it's ok, it's art.

Basically, it's still funny if there's a gypsy joke in it, but #11's comments only pass because of the ignorance of the issue in NorthAm.

Re: #9, #13 - I saw them live over two years ago, does this mean I can take your lunch money now? Honestly, novelty is relative, and the basic premise of the site is that they post things that they find interesting, when they want to.

And yeah, re: #15... a five year old may enjoy the music at home, but parroting Hutz's exertions to "Think locally, fuck globally" may get her in trouble in kindergarten. That is, if the crazed cossack mob doesn't accidentally step on her. Fun show, though, I love stunt Hutz occasionally pulls where he throws the drum to the crowd then hops in the drum to crowdsurf. It looks cool, and results in fewer boot-to-the-face moments for the fans.