Ever Want to Be a Lab Rat?

We love a good hoodia ad. Here's one in which a woman goes from fat to skinny, then gets fat again before your eyes. Guess it can't be pegged false advertising if she balloons back to original size, and if the company shrouds a very clear promise under the guise of a study, rather than overtly promoting "the new magic bullet" of weight loss.

Did we ever work out what the old magic bullet was?

KFC Sponsors Mystery Meat Macrophotography Photo Series

So there's this Mystery Meat macrophotography thing floating around. It consists of people taking close up pictures of processed meat products. Next to one of the images, courtesy of contextual advertising fuckery, we have a text ad for KFC talking about their nutrition guide. Mmm, mmm, good.

Contextual Fuckery Delivers Life Insurance Courtesy of Dead Soldiers

Yesterday, seven soldiers died in Iraq. Not that this is the sort of news Adrants reports but it's nice to step outside our mostly meaningless business from time to time and digest something that actually has meaning and truly affects people in ways that make advertising comparably irrelevant. Oh, and if seven soldiers dying in Iraq weren't bad enough, courtesy of contextual advertising's unfailing fuckery, this CNN news story was accompanied by an ad for life insurance with the headline, "If you died today, who would fund your family's future?" Well, for the families of the seven who died, it's a bit late to buy life insurance but hey, there's plenty of time for the rest of the military to bulk up on insurance. So I guess it's a perfectly placed ad after all.

Britney Spears Waddles Through MTV Video Music Awards Debacle

There's one sure thing that can be said about Britney Spears' performance at last night's MTV Video Music Awards. She delivered exactly what everyone expected; a horrifically embarrassing performance that had to have Kevin Federline rolling on the floor laughing uncontrollably. Practically tripping over herself throughout the limp, lifeless, lip-synced performance, Spears began the performance looking as if she'd just stumbled out of a bar drunk searching for something to hold on to so she wouldn't fall over.

From there, it didn't get any better. Several years ago - before Federline, before kids, before physical and emotional meltdown - Spears would have been all over that stage exploding with high energy dance moves. But at least twice last night, she had to be hoisted up and down from a riser like an overweight kid trying to climb out of a swimming pool.

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Quechup Spams Members' Contacts With Invites

Late last week, we received an invite from Hugh MacLeod to join a new social network called Quechup. While we love Hugh, we need another social network like we need another MediaPost email newsletter. Like many other invites we receive, we ignored it hoping Hugh wouldn't be too angry. He wasn't. Mostly because he had no idea he sent the invite in the first place.

While it's standard practice for a social network to ask you if you want to invite friends from your address book, it's far from acceptable to do it automatically, behind the scenes without the member having any knowledge the invites have been sent. That's what Quechup did. That was bad.

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Incredible India Creatives Need Incredible Cross-Cultural Disaster Control

Adrants reader Jinki brought our attention to this unfortunate tourism ad where a woman holding back her veil brightly admonishes watchers to fuck off.

Incredible India, indeed.

TrekStor Beats Blacks...Then Changes Product Name

In an unfortunate and amusing product naming mishap, German company TrekStor had named one of its MP3 players i.beat blaxx. upon realizing the not so nice meaning of that product name, the company has since switched the name to a less culturally agitating and more simple blaxx. One wonders who looks at this stuff before it goes out?

Jailhouse 'Thriller' Has Chilling Background Story

The first time we saw this video of Filipino inmates dancing to Thriller, we remember thinking, "... Dude, how were 1500 inmates at a Cebu prison coaxed into a coordinated syncopated jamboree?"

We didn't have long to wonder. Security consultant Byron Garcia, the force behind it, isn't exactly shy. With a near-comical audacity, Garcia uploaded the video onto YouTube himself, along with a shit-ton of other coordinated nightmares, including I Will Follow Him from Sister Act.

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America's Freedom Begets Idiocy in Advertising

AdPulp gives us good reason why America is such a great country. Or not. And why all this wonderful freedom we have doesn't always stop us from acting like complete idiots. Oh but wait, this is a car dealer commercial. Now it all makes sense.

And Ironically, Imus See Reinvigoration

Our favorite post Civil War relic Don Imus is back after reaching a settlement on Tuesday that frees him to get back on air at a new station, four months after calling the Rutger women's basketball team nappy headed hos.

"He's more valuable now than before the controversy," says founder Michael Harrison of Talkers magazine. "He was such a focus of media attention for so long that his career has been reinvigorated, and he's in a position to sort of reinvent himself -- to make himself more pertinent and even more interesting."

Racist slurs spouted by major media figures are indeed demonstrably interesting. Consider our other buddy Mel.

Well hell, if nothing else, maybe Nike will get another campaign out of it.