Monday was another ho-hum day on Wall Street. A bank announced another $10 billion in subprime writedowns, people continued to speculate about what the Fed will do, and Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne made a fool of himself.

Byrne appeared on CNBC's Closing Bell on Friday to talk about his company's holiday season. Byrne said that the company was "having a pretty nice Christmas", and that gross bookings are up about 10% so far over the prior year quarter.

However Byrne also warned that gross margins would fall due to aggressive discounting, with Q4 income of +/- 1% of sales and EBITDA of between $5 and $10 million.
And therein lies the problem. Ordinarily, a company cannot go on CNBC and make material announcements. They have to be made through broadly disseminated press releases or some other means in keeping with REG FD. On Monday morning, Overstock rushed to put out a PR reiterating what Byrne said on CNBC, which sent the stock tumbling. Gary Weiss commented on the news:

The Overstock press release was a real piece of work. Get the title: "Overstock.com Comments on Patrick Byrne's CNBC Interview." When was the last time you heard about a company "commenting" on its own CEO's interviews?

Blodget's piece was entitled,"CEO Byrne Speaks, Lawyers Panic." His lawyers, perhaps, but the lawyers suing him, at the SEC and elsewhere, are salivating.

Patrick Byrne has often commented that his company is the target of a conspiracy of crooked journalists, and probably feels that the avalanche of bloggers and writers making fun of his latest SEC-defiant snafu is just the latest example.

But the reality is that Byrne's bizarre antics are just too funny to pass up -- a little bit like watching Britney Spears attack an SUV with an umbrella. This is the kind of stuff no good blogger can ignore.