The great thing about advertising on the web is that it's really cheap to run an online ad and there are almost no barriers to entry. (Do you have a copy of Photoshop? Can you write 18 words or less? YOU CAN RUN AN AD!)

The worst thing about advertising on the web is that it's really cheap and there are almost no barriers to entry. (Are you a 14 year-old boy with stunted English skills and one-dimensional ideas of feminine beauty? YOU CAN RUN AN AD!)

Sometimes, people make an ad so bad, it's genius.

These are not those ads.

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I get a lot of ads for online dating. I mean A LOT of ads. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.

If so, the universe really needs to refine its message.

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This weekend I went to three terrible movies.

Why?

-So you wouldn't have to.

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Recently, Southern Comfort announced it's ditching cable tv and magazine advertising and spending it's $10 million ad budget on Facebook and Hulu.

I hope they are smarter about their online ads than these people were.

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It recently occurred to me that, despite my lengthy nerd pedigree and fervent interest in Dungeons & Dragons, I do not own a sword.

Lead goblins? -Check.
Aluminum space pistol? -Got it.
Replica borg cube? -DUH.
Plastic lightsaber handle? -Yes, BUT that's not a sword. Everyone knows a lightsaber handle isn't any good unless it's secretly stashed inside a droid you plan to have captured and turned into a mechanical bartender aboard the sandbarge which will be conveniently parked nearby to witness your impending execution via excruciatingly slow digestion/starvation.

(I don't get why Jabba didn't just hang the guy by his toes, brush him with vinegar, and not feed him - it's the same effect. But Jabba clearly had a flair for the dramatic. It turned out to be his undoing, but it also gave us Princess Leia in that slave costume. Win-win all around if you're a jedi and/or horny 13-year-old boy.)

All of this points to the fact that not owning a sword is a severe oversight on my part. There are times when you NEED a sword.

Can I borrow yours?

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...When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

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People wonder why internet advertising is not particularly effective. Maybe that's because to do it right you actually have to, y'know... TRY.

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Hey everybody,

It's me, Earth. Yeah, I know you thought my voice would be a lot lower, like that Morgan Freeman guy. Or maybe I'd be a woman and more matronly.

That's kind of the problem: You have a lot of misconceptions about me.

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Hey there, Mr. Go-Getter!

Did your massive Ponzi scheme suddenly fail, leaving you broke and universally despised?

Were you recently laid off when the peanut company you ran accidentally poisoned hundreds of people?

Did your patently unsound plan to issue sub-prime mortgages to unqualified buyers inexplicably collapse, taking most of the world's banking system with it?

Don't worry, Go-Getter! There's still money to be made out there, and it's in INTERNET ADVERTISING!!

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