Every year in October since 1973, Knott's Berry Farm (a theme park in Southern California) is transformed into Knott's Scary Farm, one huge, fiendishly frightening park with more than a dozen haunted mazes and other horrific attractions. It is the first and many think the best Halloween-themed theme park. If you enjoy things Halloween and are in Southern California during October, it is a must see.

In any case, one of the highlights of a visit to the Halloween Haunt is "The Hanging," which is a parody of pop culture and celebrities, with many stunts and special effects. During the event dozens of celebrities are slaughtered, soaking the stage (and some in the audience) with blood. A review of last year's show called the parody "so good you can smell the lawsuit." This year's hanging featured a Pirate Theme, "The Curse of the Black Pearl Necklace," a risque parody of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.

What would a pirate-themed parody of contemporary culture be without some references to file sharing?

In this year's show, the ghost pirates (or are they pirate ghosts?) complained that users of file sharing programs, such as "Kazaa..aar", were not real pirates and were giving piracy a bad name [I note that the audience cheered quite loudly at the mention of "Kazaa..aar"]. The "real" pirates realized how difficult it would be stop P2P programs, but they had a solution. If you can't stop P2P, you have to stop the file sharing at the source - by killing the celebrities who produce the works that will be shared! The audience seemed to like the solution quite a bit.