Advertising agencies of the world, I send you this request with the greatest urgency: Please stop reanimating dead people to be in your ads. We've seen Fred Astaire selling vacuums, John Wayne selling beer, and scary Orville Redenbacher selling his popcorn from beyond the grave. It's got to stop, because who knows what terrifying undead army is massing against us on The Other Side to take revenge for the commercialization of their legacies? Now the very dead John F. Kennedy, looking like some sort of monster out of DOOM, has taken to the airwaves to harangue the public on behalf of Greenpeace, his long-decayed vocal chords screeching out a chilling simulacrum of his Massachusetts twang. Watch environmentalists flirting with the undertaker, after the jump:

God, John McCain is just sick of running for president. Even in the cozy environs of Fox News Sunday, questioned by the friendly Chris Wallace, he's absolutely unable to justify to himself the various hideous missteps of his miserable campaign. That Sarah Palin pick? Well, he half-heartedly argues, it'll piss off the feminists. What a great reason to make her your successor, John. And then he offers, on the subject of Governor Palin's selection, the type of "joke" that is utterly serious: "as a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased." Ugh.

KFC is terribly concerned about starving third world children's lack of access to Original Recipe® buckets and Crispy Twisters®! So the chicken chain is offering a cool $20,000 to solve world hunger—if one of the presidential candidates mentions the issue at the debates tomorrow. 1. What a skimpy amount to offer. 2. The purest form of charity is that which is given anonymously, not that which is accompanied by a gimmicky TV ad. 3. If they don't mention it, will KFC just let the kids starve? Watch the trite attempt to glom onto the news cycle below; thankfully, the ad is silent:

The Valley's pundits believe that partisan bias is damage, and that the Internet can route around it. That's the conclusion I arrived at after hearing about Ameritocracy.com, a new startup aiming to have Internet users factcheck soundbites for free. Esther Dyson, the writer and startup investor, has joined it as an advisor, just in time for the vice-presidential debate Thursday night. "It bothers me to see people's random statements spread around the world with no quality control — and I like Ameritocracy's decentralized approach to providing that quality control," Dyson says in a press release. So that's what's plaguing politics — a lack of quality control! Dyson, who also invested in Flickr, is deluded to think crowdsourcing will work with opinions as well as it does with photographs. Anyone who's spent time on Wikipedia knows that a decentralized approach doesn't lead to the elimination of bias — it just guarantees that whoever has the most time to waste wins.

Lee Abrams, Tribune Co.'s "Chief Innovation Officer" of AWESOMENESS (pictured, with top advisers) is back with another hard-rockin', mind-shockin' memo to blow the socks off all you naysayers who thought newspapers could never change! Abrams is already single-handedly responsible for the ten dumbest things said about newspapers this year, and that was before he busted out yesterday talking about "freedom to have so much belief on the brand." Are you trying to upstage your own slammin' track record of badass, Martian declarations on journalism, Lee? I think you are! The Chicago Tribune just unveiled a redesign, which seems like a good occasion for a big old memo from Lee Abrams. High five! All ellipses are in the original text, people:

It may well be within the realm of human achievement to make an ad for Hair Club For Men that does not cause an involuntary shudder of revulsion. But this is not that ad. This is an ad where a bald man goes to Hair Club to grow a curly mullet, and is then fawned over by his own comely "stepdaughter." "Is that your stepdad...oh my gosh, he's not too bad looking!" Christ, why, why? All the disturbing subtext you can fit in one minute:

Less than two weeks after Microsoft confirmed that it had picked the Mac-loving Jerry Seinfeld as its new endorser, this ad with Seinfeld and Bill Gates is everywhere. And it is awful. I mean, it's kind of engaging to see this half-billionaire comedian kicking it in a shoe store with the many-billionaire Microsoft nerd-in-chief; but up until the final seconds, I was convinced this was an ad for Payless. And I may be stupid, but I'm still your target audience, Microsoft. Surely Sarah Silverman and Willie Nelson will be a bit more techno-centric. Watch what $10 million can buy, after the jump:

There is now an online ad network for Twitter backgrounds. Launched last week, ad startup Twittad allows Twitter users to sell their background image as ad space and charge advertisers based on how many followers they have. Back in June, Ian Schafer, the CEO of interactive agency Deep Focus, sold his Twitter background as advertising space for $1,082.01. Ridiculous, we thought — since the background only appears when Twitter users visit the company's website to look at another user's profile, or read a specific message on the website. Twitter's website accounts for about 5 percent of the service's usage, and users mostly read pages with streams of all their friends' messages, on which individual backgrounds don't appear.Never mind that! When Schafer sold his Twitter background, Commenter Gregnog told us to quiet down and "just nod, smile and take the check." Well, Gregnog, wherever you are, now's your chance. Using Twittad, Rishi Lakhani, who has 305 Twitter followers, just sold the rights to choose his background image for the next 7 days for $30.00. Even if all 305 of those followers visited Rishil's page over the next seven days — and trust us, they won't — that's a fantastically high, unlikely to be repeated $100 CPM, or cost per thousand impressions. Most social networks are lucky to get a single-digit CPM.

The soon-to-be-shuttered Yahoo Mash is not Yahoo's first failed social network. It's also not its second, third, or fourth. It took one whole hand for us to count Big Purple's failed attempts to get social, either through mergers or in-house development, below.

John McCain is playing dirty! Tonight, after Barack Obama's speech, McCain bought airtime for a rebuttal ad. There are no details on which markets and channels the ad will air on ("battleground states" does not mean much!) but it will surely end up repeated on every channel in the name of "news" a couple million times. What will McCain do in this mysterious and unprecedented ad? We're not sure, but this is a terrible sign:

Those Target pop-up stores which are coming to New York in September? They're opening on September 11th, a rather unfortunate date to debut anything, clearly. Even worse? Have a look at what things will look like from above on the 7th anniversary of the attacks. [Jossip]

Today, the Times printed one of those "op-art" things they do sometimes. This one was in the form of a "mad-lib," those "fill-in-the-blanks with a specific part of speech" things the kids are so into these days. As everyone besides possibly the Times knows, Mad-Libs are only fun for terribly immature kids, as they present an excuse to fill them with swears. Which we did, today, while we were supposed to be working! Click through and wonder what the hell the Times was thinking.

In a moment of what now seems like irrational exuberance, YouTube cofounder Steve Chen declared that the popular online video site would add live video streaming this year. Not so fast, says Google. YouTube is already struggling with the concept of profitability, and according to an anonymous source cited by Silicon Alley Insider's Michael Learmonth, Chen's idea is a financial black hole:

So the Rielle Hunter clips have been available on the internet for ages now. The Edwards campaign famously "scrubbed" them but they were still to be found elsewhere. Still, now that the affair is confirmed, it's fun to go back and rewatch them for creepy hints. Like how Hunter keeps the camera focused on Edwards' blue-jean-clad crotch in the first one. All the videos are available here, but we've put together our favorite moment from the webisodes with the most relevant parody advertising clip available.

An Oregon man who built a 31-lot Lord of the Rings-themed development called The Shire—including a house with an attached "hobbit hole," a central area called the "Ring Bearer's Court," and a set of bylaws called the "Declaration of Interdependence"—now faces financial ruin because of the bad real estate market. Or maybe it's because of the Lord of the Rings theme? No, definitely the real estate market. [Bend Bulletin]

Perhaps inspired by the Britney-prompted downturn in paparazzi profits, former commercial photographer Tania Cowher has come up with a novel (yet terrible) solution: allowing non-celebrities to hire their own personal paparazzi via her service Celeb 4 a Day. After all, who among us hasn't yearned to be stalked by a loudmouthed photographer screaming, "Over here! Look over here, you bitch!" on the way to Walgreens? The answer is "almost everyone," at least if this clip from Rachael Ray is the judge. After grilling Cowher, Ray asks the audience to raise their hand if they'd use the service themselves, soliciting a feeble response. Next time, Tania, try Oprah: the audience will scream in pleasure when O yells "You get Getty Images! You get an X17 subscription! EVERYONE GETS A BAUER-GRIFFIN LOGIN!"

I do not have one single informed or worthwhile opinion about women's fashion, except this: The existence of "Spanx" is a bad thing. Shoving one's thighs, buttocks, and midsection into a tight spandex tube that crushes you like a hot dog casing does not count as "reshaping your body." It counts as "cutting off blood flow to vital organs." Spanx represent deception and instant gratification in the form of underwear, which explains their popularity and their status as a celebrity must-have. So I guess it's not surprising that the company's founder and president credits her success to "my butt":

The "direct mail marketing" industry, also known as the people who bring you junk mail, is "going green." In related news, the hot dog industry will be going vegetarian. It seems patently ridiculous that a coalition of junk mailers is going to end pollution, but don't worry-they're not going to strain themselves too hard. "You don't want to scare companies away from joining because they fear some stringent regulation," explains one member. The general public is mired in environmental apathy these days, too. But maybe that's a good thing, considering what the alternative to "direct mail" is:

New York Life has a foolproof plan for its new online promotion: they let any member of the internet riff-raff go on their website and submit three-word slogans, which are displayed in the company's trademark blue box. Looks just like the real thing. I can see why they want some new ideas, considering what they have now. Jeez. [via Afreak]

The predicted awfulness of CBS' upcoming American Idol-style ad jingle show Jingles has been confirmed, months before it actually debuts. It seems that-incredibly-hundreds of people have already auditioned for the show, and many of the audition tapes are available on YouTube. Ad Age has viewed them, and predicts a "trainwreck." We only have the stomach to bring you one of the auditions; below, a sample jingle for "Fruit It Up" candy, from a bizarre pink-clad singing duo. What would Gene Simmons have to say about this?