Have you noticed lately on your television that there are a stunning number of crappy infomercial-quality ads running during prime time? That is because the fancy advertisers are broke. We live in Snuggie's world now.

Earlier we showed you the horrifying, adult Mouseketeer-like "commercial" for Microsoft Songsmith (do not click that) that could drive the gentlest among us to murder. But at least it's inspiring a YouTube artistic explosion.

You have to admit, anti-abortionists have a canny grasp of the "news cycle." What if that baby you decided to abort grew up to be... Barack Obama? Then he'd be pro-choice. But whatever. Advertisement!

• Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helù has pumped $250 million into the beleaguered New York Times Co. [NYT]
• Newsday's editor-in-chief and managing editor have been absent from the office the past few days and it's still unclear what exactly happened. [NYP]
• Matt Cooper has joined Talking Points Memo as editor-at-large. [Politico]
• For the first time, movie ads will appear during this year's Oscars. [AdAge]
• NBC says 90 percent of its Super Bowl ads have been sold. [AP]
• Jennifer Aniston on the cover of Vogue in December and GQ in January provided a nice boost to both titles. [WWD]

Obama's inauguration being held on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. day? Historic! Moving! And, for corporate America, a great chance to get a two-for-one deal on its annual "We Love Diversity" ads.

Poster Boy let the Guardian tag along for some of his work, and mentioned that the NYPD Vandal Squad is squeezing his friends for information with which to hunt him down.

What has our favorite semi-anonymous ad vandal Poster Boy been up to lately? Just tearing down the commerce-based capitalist infrastructure and replacing it with a vision of public utopia.

This little ad for Will Ferrell's new one-man show about GW Bush was banned from both ABC and CBS after outraged viewers decried its profane terminology. Bunch of D's. Watch it below, for freedom:

"Say 'farewell to Bush'"—with 20% off a Brazilian bikini wax at Bliss Spa! Yea, the joke is hackneyed. But at least the motherfucker was finally good for something. [Blissworld]

Ever since Vice plastered an ad on its cover that was only visible in the dark, magazines have been researching better ways to sell out. Now Esquire has made a breakthrough in invisible cover ads!

In lieu of national health insurance coverage, America offers easy access to VitaminWater. If you're ailing, simply drink the proper dye-and-micronutrient-containing beverage, and you're good! But now some liberal "public interest" lawsuit threatens it all:

If you haven't already publicly forsaken all your Facebook friends in order to earn a Whopper, it's too late. Facebook has crippled the Burger King "Whopper Sacrifice" anti-friendship widget for being too mean.

In this age of fossil fuel depletion, economic meltdown, and a dying US auto industry, how should consumers pick an automobile? By bowing to the demands of the world's most terrifying screeching red-haired brat:

Don't pretend that the economy is all bad. Lottery ticket sales are booming! American states are beaming at the prospect of closing their yawning budget gaps with the final dollars of the desperate poor.

If you thought Microsoft's Seinfeld ads were bad, then you really don't want to see this new four-minute Microsoft "Songsmith" pseudoinfomercial. Because it is a descent into child karaoke hell, is why. Very bad.

Remember when mega ad agency Omnicom announced it planned to lay off 3,500 employees? That was a full three weeks ago, but there's much better news to report today, at least if you happen to be John Wren, the agency's CEO: He collected another $25 million in Omnicom stock just ten days after announcing the layoffs. How nice to see that in these times of flux, some things stay the same! [AgencySpy]

Uniball figures that between the Madoff scandal, mortgage crisis and high-pitched Law & Order cop S. Epatha Merkerson, it will sell a metric fuckton of pens to panicked individual investors. So it shot the ad below. As Videogum notes, it is heart-poundingly terrifying, for a ballpoint pen ad.

NBC is launching a female-focused quasi-marketing agency featuring the following people: Maria Bartiromo, Meredith Vieira, and Tori Spelling. Raise your hand if you don't see the problems with this. (Hand down, Tori).

A brooding ad exec takes on God as a client to save the world from this "Hip Hop age of Internet porn and Reality TV." Can I call Happy Soul Industry awful before reading it?