Sure, the current dicey economic climate has reduced America to nation of terrified food hoarders. But more importantly, it has cost us some of our annoying and unnecessarily strange advertising icons: Applebee's Wanda Sykes-voiced talking apple, and a bunch of guys running around in bizarre red pigtail wigs on behalf of Wendy's. Take a moment to mourn them. "Both campaigns were meant to attract younger diners," the Times reports. But they failed, because kids aren't doing as many drugs these days, I guess. The companies' new advertising strategy? "Hey, look at our food."

So Alec Baldwin would like run for office some day, maybe. Possibly soon! After all, he's almost 50. And 50 is when you are allowed to "run the world," he says. "There's no age limit on running for office, to a degree. [It is] something I might do one day," the amusingly intense actor tells 60 Minutes this Sunday. Ha ha ha let's all laugh at him! He'll never win any elections, because of how insane he is and how we all know terrible things about his family and his life and his temper and how he yelled at his daughter that one time. But hey, the actual reason he'll never win an election has nothing to do with his sordid past. It's his unrepentant liberalism. Because California will happily elect drug-abusing unqualified actors with histories of gross sexual misconduct and harassment governor, as long as they're business-friendly Republicans. Seriously, Baldwin's past is way less gross than Schwarzenegger's, plus he's never done anything as embarrassing as this. [CBS]

Soldiers are fighting back against a government attempt to take their men's magazines away! Stars and Stripes talked to a bunch of our military men at a base in Germany, and they voiced universal opposition to a proposed bill to ban "sexually explicit" magazines—including Playboy, Penthouse, Maxim, FHM, and the like—from Army bases. They're good for morale, the soldiers say. And besides (everybody together now), they read them for the articles!

Beware MorphMonkey's invitations to morph you and a friend into love children on Facebook. The American Social Health Association has infected the MorphMonkey app with chlamydia, transmitted each time you make spawn with it. ASHA's video tutorial doesn't explain why Facebook condoms can't protect you from Facebook VD, or how the kids used to deal with virtual infections back in the days of AOL chatrooms and fingering each other's Unix .plan files, but it is sort of sexy in an afterschool special way:

PosOrNot.com, conceived as a public education campaign about HIV/AIDS, apes HotOrNot, asks visitors to the site to guess the HIV status of those pictured, based on photos and social network-style profile excerpts. Look, even professional hater Perez Hilton donated his image to the viral antiviral effort! Then again, encouraging testing using a faux dating site is probably wiser than a campaign to get Web-cruising users to disclose their status on a real hookup site, where everyone is allegedly very good looking.

Not that we have to remind you, but you should be making your preparations now to attend the August 30 "Million DJ March" in Washington, DC. One million DJs—a number equal to almost all of the DJs in Williamsburg—will "descend on Washington to celebrate decades of service to the entertainment industry." And what worthier cause could there be?

The internets are ablaze with the controversial question that has come to define our era: Will Britney Spears be the next spokesperson for Bally's Fitness? The rumors started this month, with appropriate denials from the company, Ever since the LA Times broached the topic last week by noting all the time Britney's been spending at the gym with her two trainers, the celebroblogosphere has been on permanent Bally's watch. The company claims they're just helping her get into shape out of concern for her health. And let's hope so. Can you imagine the escape clauses that would have to go into a spokesperson contract with the mentally unstable pop tart?

Despair is in order for those of you who balance out your vague sense of revulsion at visiting corporate Death Star and coffee shop Starbucks by telling yourself, "Well, at least I don't have to talk to anybody there." The company is now seriously considering promoting conversation in its stores. And the sunny, terrible people who frequent the Starbucks public suggestion factory, MyStarbucksIdea.com, think it's a "great idea!"

Oh god we've been playing into their hands all this time. We rib CNN for their terrible tabloid-style headlines, but we had no idea how profoundly unembarrassed they are about their naked attempts at cheap traffic grabbing. Now, you see, you can click on a little icon next to selected CNN.com headlines and buy those headlines on a t-shirt. Seriously. The internet has caved in on itself! Only certain headlines merit the shirt treatment—so, like, the "weird fish" one, but not the "20 bodies found floating near Bahamas" one. It's still in Beta though! So you can quite easily mock up CNN headline t-shirts that say anything you like. Like the ones we've attached after the jump. Make your own!

You'd think at some point, in a creative review meeting, some advertising exec would stand up and say, "Maybe the 9-11 picture's not such a good idea." Such a simple sentence. But no! The latest example of incorporating a nationally traumatic terrorist mass murder into an ad: this spot for SABC Radio [via AdScam], with the tagline "There's More To See On Radio." Such as the Twin Towers burning. So hey, listen to the radio! Click through for a larger image, and pictures of the five worst 9-11 ads we've covered in the past:

Richard Quest, the most unpleasant "funny" on-air CNN correspondent EVER, was arrested this morning (like last night "this morning") outside Central Park for violating park curfew. As they arrested him he said to the cops, presumably with his trademark "hilariously" over-emphasized British accent, "I have meth in my pocket." Not the best line maybe? Quest, host of CNN Business Traveler, is openly gay, btw, which is maybe why he was hanging around the park at 3:40 a.m. with meth in his pocket. CNN had no comment. (After the jump, a truly odd clip of Quest interviewing Ritchie Blackmore.) [NYT]

When we were notified of the existence of Ladies Who Launch, a website for women with startups, we suppressed the gag reflex triggered by the name. We then consulted one of our favorite entrepreneuses on exactly how horrified we should be. "Yep, we've talked about a profile," she told us. "But bitcheswhobusiness.com, that would be my website." To be clear, we have nothing against anyone offering women like our IM correspondent "resources, opportunity, community," or, for that matter, publicity. We just can't get past the site's unfortunate moniker.

Have you signed the petition against Guillermo "Habacuc" Vargas yet? He's the Costa Rican artist whose latest big exhibition featured him tying up a starving dog "without food and water under the words 'Eres Lo Que Lees' - 'You Are What You Read' - made out of dog biscuits while he played the Sandinista anthem backwards and set 175 pieces of crack cocaine alight in a massive incense burner." Some reports say the dog starved to death during the display; the gallery director says that's not true. Either way, Vargas is not a popular man with animal lovers. By now, more than a million people have signed a petition (you can sign here, if you're so inclined) urging that he not be allowed to recreate the work, and the cause continues to draw media coverage and generate new outrage. But the artist calls his opponents hypocrites. His defense, and a video of the exhibit in question (which is pretty heartbreaking), after the jump.

Can you imagine if every video posted online had to be reviewed for propriety by a human before it went live? Can you even wrap your mind around the amount of effort that would take, for very little benefit? The people at YouTube can, and they're telling the British Parliament it's an incredibly horrible idea. England called YouTube on the carpet after someone posted a video of London woman getting gang raped in February, and it wasn't promptly removed [Telegraph UK]. That's a serious tragedy, but sometimes the cure can be worse than the malady. Google's lawyer compared the pre-screening idea to posting a policeman on every corner of every city. Bankrupt the treasury in pursuit of justice! It's doubtful the UK would descend into a US-style "We are so tough on crime that we will destroy everything" overreaction. But there is a group who is allowed to post a video titled "Genisis19:4 Gang Rape" on YouTube: Gays4Jesus!

There was a ton of debate about the death of Paul Tilley, the ad agency exec who committed suicide last month. Some people charged mean bloggers with helping to push him over the edge—charges that seemed increasingly ridiculous, as people took time to consider the full situation. But Liberty Mutual, the huge insurance company, had another thought about Tilley's death: what a great way to promote our company! And that's exactly what they did, the sickos.

Valleywag commenters hate the idea, but the New York Post's Page Six loves IT Girls, the proposed reality TV show with New York umtrepreneurs Julia Allison, Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin.

Dumb money on display: A publicly traded Japanese company, CyberAgent, has put $1 million of its shareholders' money on a video search engine called Fooooo, or as its radio ads will surely call it, "that's 'ef' followed by five 'ohs' — 'ef oh oh oh oh oh dot com'!" Sure enough, when I tried to type it in the first time, I botched it. Foooo? Foooooo? Fooey. Next time, dear friends from across the Pacific, spend six figures on acquiring an easily typed domain name. That seems easier.

Why were AOL CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant so secretive about buying Bebo? Because they knew much of AOL management hated the deal, Silicon Alley Insider reports. Executives from AOL subsidiaries Advertising.com, Platform A and Userplane would all have worked to kibosh the $850 million deal if they'd known more about it, so Falco and Grant kept them out of the loop. Supposedly, Grant and Falco pushed ahead with the deal because they think Bebo makes AOL a more attractive acquisition target. One source called the buy "Grant's last stand." Below, SAI's account of precisely what's to hate about Bebo, according to AOL execs.

Embedding videos into Valleywag comments is as easy as dragging and dropping a YouTube URL into the comments field. One advantage this method holds over Mashable's video comments: Embedding a YouTube video of yourself takes at least one extra step. Trust us: No one wants to hear you talk. Especially me. I get paid by the pageview.

This is just going to lead to so, so many regrettable "bitch" jokes, isn't it.