From the outer ad in a recent issue of The New Yorker.

The hang-tag reads:
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO JASMINE
I get 14 days,
336 hours,
20,160 minutes,
1,209,600 seconds of
DO-NOT-DISTURB-ME-I’M-ON-VACATION
time a year.
And I’m going to enjoy every one of them.

And, we see Jasmine, lying in a hammock, reading a book. No laptop in sight. But this is an ad for AT&T. What are they telling us? In teeny tiny type at the bottom, we see
Jasmine relies on the most complete and secure network from AT&T so she can have DSL high speed Internet access to find more unique and exciting places to relax and unwind.

So, what’s this an ad for? Using the Internet to find places to sit and relax? Or, in fact, using AT&T’s secure network (and it’s also a complete network) to access the Internet? In order to find places to relax and unwind?

It just doesn’t really cohere for me. It’s almost a good effort – showing the benefit of using a technology by showing what it enables. But the claim that somehow DSL (and not just DSL but the special kind of quality DSL that AT&T offers) has afforded her sitting in a hammock is just too disjointed, and not very credible.

How on earth would we ever be able to relax out in the wild if we didn’t have DSL?! Lame and confusing ad, I think.

Worst NYT Mag cover. Evah.

This version isn’t quite as craptastic because it doesn’t include the horrible headline splattered on the print version:
Looking for Mr. Good Sperm

Wow. My newspaper has turned into my spambox.

This post is Not Safe For Work (or children). Please move on!

Just the other day we went for a walk with the dog in the flower fields near our house. I was fairly startled to see bits and pieces of an adult mag (i.e., nudie) strewn semi-artistically through the area.

Click on any of the pics to see ’em larger in flickr – you can even select All Sizes in flickr to see the picture in somewhat more full resolution. See these images on flickr here.

This had a Blair Witch aspect to it. A sculpture-like thing.

Close-up view of the pr0n-eating tree

Topless in the grass.

Punctures in this page suggest that it at one time had resided in some branches, but now lay sadly inverted in the leaves.

Budweiser? Perhaps this is a clue!

Impaled…on a branch.

It’s nature’s way.

In some ways, it’s amazing that TV Guide has hung on this long; I can’t remember the last time I used any sort of printed television guide, and I’ve never paid for one, going back to when they’d come free with the weekly paper (I guess they still do, but that goes right into the recycling in our house). The story is interesting, if not particularly shocking, because it marks a sharp transition point in a slow and inexorable change in technology and associated consumer behavior.

full story

TV Guide is slashing the circulation it guarantees advertisers by about two-thirds and relaunching itself as a large format magazine with far fewer TV listings and more emphasis on lifestyle and entertainment, the magazine announced Tuesday.

The radical changes to TV Guide come as it struggles to remain relevant in an age where many TV viewers get their listings from on-screen guides provided by their cable companies or online.

The new TV Guide, which will launch with the Oct. 17 issue, will contain just 25 percent listings and 75 percent stories, versus the 75 percent listings and 25 percent stories it has now, the company said early Tuesday.

Rich Battista, the CEO of TV Guide’s parent company, Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc., said in an interview that the company’s research found that readers would be more interested in reading a magazine with fewer listings and more stories about TV shows and their stars.

Plus, we get the standard PR-speak where the company explains that their business decision was purely informed by research about consumer preference. These things write themselves!