Our Crumbling Civilization: Amped For Sex Edition

Let's say you've got an energy drink to hawk. You know the deal: Young demographic, need to be edgy, viral.

You could make an ad about having energy to party, or energy to work out, or energy to work. No, scratch that last one. You could have beautiful girls surrounding the guy with the energy drink. It could be fun. Fun .... There's a concept. You could make it all about sex! Not just sex, but stranger sex!

Welcome to AMP (that's three capital letters, required) Energy Drink.



For those who don't want to click through or are blessed with short-term memory disorder:

Man 1, waking up in woman's apartment: "When you wake up in the morning in an unfamiliar place..."

Man 2, sitting on woman's bed: "And you can't remember where or when, let alone her face ..."

Woman 1, looking under man's bed in her underwear: "When you cannot find your shoe and your hair smells like a bar ..."

Man 3, sitting on woman's bed: "But you kinda feel excited because you got really far ..."

Man 4, on street: "Last night I was sure I was with a 10 ..."

Man 5, buying energy drink: "But this morning when I saw those knakles I had to think again ..."

You get the idea.

(Kankles, courtesy of Incredible Daughter #2, who introduced me to this video, are calf's or cow's ankles.)

"They ought to put a Trojan commercial on after it," said ID #2. But it appears her peers like the idea of hawking products with trampy, tawdry sin. And they don't just view this spot on YouTube -- they watch it on TV. And they like it; here are some of the comments from YouTube:

Oooooh, good one doooood!

this is the best, funniest, and awesomest commercial ever!!! its soo funny and it rox!!

That is hilarious and its so true i usally am so wasted and dont no ne thing and just go its really funny tho theres usally other peeps 2

In case you're not text-friendly, the middle of that last one is "and don't know anything."

To capture just how civilization-crumbling this culture of cheap sex, loose morals and freewheeling materialism is, I offer up this comment from a concerned YouTube viewer:

why do people have to ruin a good commercial with cases of std comments stfu

Yeah, why let chlamydia or gonorrhea get in the way of fun? Feeling good for the moment, that's the ticket.

And the hucksters at ad mega-agency BBDO know it well, assailing morality in the name of bringing yet another unneeded brand of energy drinks to market. Eight different versions of the clip are up on YouTube, with combined hits in the 330,000 range.

Our Crumbling Civilization: Killing For Art Edition

The Yale Daily News Web site is dead (temporarily) because of this story of a woman who killed (permanently) her unborn babies as an art project:

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

Martine Powers, Staff Reporter
Thursday, April 17, 2008

Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts said. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone." ...

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

Where do I start? What can I say? I'm not going to fisk this piece because it is too appalling and perverted for words.

Sacrificing human life to create a discourse is, perhaps, the most obscene and horrifying thing ever done in the name of "art." And her apology -- "I didn't intend to scandalize anyone" -- is perhaps the most horrifyingly out of touch statement ever made by anyone not the leader of a totalitarian state.

No, rather than fisk, I'll just raise some questions.

What sort of society creates monsters like Aliza Shvarts?

Certainly, it is not one that respects life. I know nothing about this woman, but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Shvarts is a liberal and is against the war in Iraq because it is "blood for oil."

Yet because we live in a society where a holocaust many times over has been perpetrated on the unborn, Shvarts is able to support "blood for art" without so much as a flinch in her horribly deformed morality.

What sort of university condones this sort of thing?

Yale of course is not alone among universities that have lost all sensibility, but it seems to be intent on carving out a place for itself as the most nonsensical of universities: It hired Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Taliban; it employs Dr. LaMont Cole, an environmentalist who taught his students, "To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world over population problem;" and, who can forget, it celebrated Valentine's Day 2004 with university-funded, faculty-supported Sex Week at Yale.

Here's a description of that last one; hide the kids and the sensitive folks:

One Yale professor gave a lecture on the "History of the Vibrator." Students gave talks on the secrets of great sex, hooking up, and how to be a better lover. At "Sex Toys 101," people who admitted to never having used a sex toy were given miniature vibrators. The highlight of the week for most, however, was the presence of Devinn Lane, a bisexual porn star from Wicked Pictures—the adult film company who [sic] co-sponsored many of the Sex-Week events.

Lane participated in a panel on "Sex, Entertainment and the Media" and held a Q&A session with female undergraduates. She topped off her day by participating in a "Porn Party" that was sponsored by Wicked Pictures, which advertised the event on the Adult Industry News website: "All events are free and open to the public, so make this your time to explore Sex Week at Yale, and the exotic world of Wicked Pictures."

Institutions of higher learning have been entrusted to the 60's Secularist liberals, and they have converted them into institutions of gutter learning -- and still, parents not only allow their children to go to schools like Yale, they pay the schools small fortunes to destroy their children.

Whatever happened to art?

There was a time when art existed to glorify God by showing the beauty of His creation and illustrating the stories of His book. Then came a time when art existed to bring people joy.

Today, art exists, in the words of Shvarts:

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity. I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

There are two extremes there, neither one of which I'd call art. The first, of course, is Shvarts' miscarried pre-borns, ripped from the womb, mixed with Vaseline and splattered on plastic to create discourse through the processes of killing, defiling, offending and nauseating.

Then there is the manufactured image, commodity art, sold by the thousands of pieces from catalogs to decorate hotel rooms and trailer park community centers.

Does Yale, the art establishment and Shvarts want that to be it? Nothing in between? No serene still lifes, exquisite portraits, or lush landscapes? Not even any Picassos or Hockneys or Lichtensteins?

What right to they have to attack art that gives us serene pleasure in the name of provocation and hack ideologies?

What constitutes crime in America?

People are in prison in America because they got high on crack, but Aliza Shvarts will not be prosecuted for the crime of creating her art, because in America self-aborting a dozen pre-borns in the name of art is not a crime.

Why isn't she getting help?

The Yale Daily News article never raised the issue of Shvarts' mental health, but she is either souless and completely amoral, or she has a serious mental illness. If she denies the former, which she basically does through her comments, then she is the latter.

But she cannot be forced to receive the care she needs, apparently. Her parents are now probably aware of what their little girl is doing at Yale. Will they remove her and put her under the care of someone who will help her?

Or will they brag to their friends that their artist daughter is at the forefront of the post-modern art movement?

Our Crumbling Civilization: FemPorn Edition

Feminism and porn? How do those two go together? (And whether they do or not, how in the heck will I illustrate this post?)

Porn makes billions because it makes men shop. Women shop enough already; just stop by the directory the next time you're at the mall and compare the number of women's clothing stores to men's clothing stores. But men ... men just couldn't be bothered.

The seedy porn industry has succeeded because it discovered how to unleash the man-bucks. In 2006, sales, rentals and downloads of porn videos, plus "exotic" club revenues, porn magazines and porn gizmos (I don't want to know!) totaled $13.3 billion in the US, up about half a billion from the previous year. (source)

That didn't happen because porn films treat women and women's issues sensitively; guys just won't pay for Steel Magnolias Naked or Thelma & Louise & Bubba. Guy's fantasies aren't generally tender and soft, and the porn industry has made itself rich via compliant women who exist not for themselves, but to satisfy men, no matter what.

So if women want to get in on the fantasy action, with sensitive porn films (possibly with more talk than action, I don't' know ...), I can't really say great, but it's certainly no worse and possibly quite a bit more noble than the traditional porn biz. Or so I thought until I took a look at the Feminist Porn Awards, and discovered that the philosophy behind these awards is that "the answer to bad porn isn't no porn, it's more porn."

And, as expected, feminism turns out not to mean "celebrating the feminine mystique" so much as it means "getting really sick in a woman's [?] body." For example, one of the nominee directors is described as "a queer femmegimp who is a PhD student at York University in Toronto, ON. Her work tends to focus on the intersections of radical queer, disability and sex/uality."

Another is "a transgender performance artist, filmmaker [whose] work [covers] deconstruction of gender, power dynamics, erotic methodology and public personas."

A third is a former female firefighter who runs a little outfit called "GoodDykePorn."

I can't imagine that these feminists are producing work that appeals to the feminine. And sure enough, while the festival's Web site isn't updated with the winners yet, Salon tells us it was a tender little movie that appeals to womankind's deep yearning for understanding and sensuality called "Bondage Boob Tube."

Women are half of our civilization, and we're crumbling if this is how those who supposedly care about them treat them.

Our Crumbling Civilization: Juicy Edition

Oh! The woes of parents of young 'uns, trying to protect their wee innocents from the ravages of the Internet's social sites. (As addressed recently by Bookworm.)

Well that's all well and good for MySpace and FaceBook ... but wait 'til you get a load of JuicyCampus (get ready for an unhealthy dose of obscenity before clicking this link).

The collegiate-level social networking site is under investigation by New Jersey prosecutors:

JuicyCampus may be violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act by suggesting
that it doesn't allow offensive material but providing no enforcement of that
rule — and no way for users to report or dispute the material, New Jersey
Attorney General Anne Milgram said Tuesday. ...

The investigation began last month when a student came forward who had been terrorized by posts on the Web site that included her address. Prosecutors have subpoenaed information from JuicyCampus on how it is run, citing concerns about "unconscionable commercial practices." (AP)

I checked out the site and was greeted by the first entry seeking comments, "Who's the best f*** on spring break?" No comments yet, but I see where this is going: Girls will be named, often in very identifiable manners, so what they thought was a night of annonymous sex will follow them home, name badge attached.

A couple entries down was one called simply, "I swallow." You know what she means. She is revelling in the anonymity of the internet to be without bounds or moral confinement (as if Jesus, if you believe in him, weren't watching) -- an outlet that was simply not available until sites like thise came into being.

Can anyone explain the psychological, sociological or moral benefit of the change? Why is "I swallow" better off by being able to proclaim it and see the racy comments back than she (or he) would have been if this were a matter that was not broad-banded to the world?

Then there's the Big (?) Man On Campus who got this entry about him:

Does [name] seriously have a 2.5 inch erection. What a flaming pile of s*** that kid is anyways, he deserves to have his dick severed from his body, that piece of s***.

There was a time such an epithet would have been said in a dorm room and would not have gone much further. Now the kid has to read it and know people across the Internet are reading it, and who knows what the consequences of such on-line attacks and bullying will lead?

JuicyCampus is disgusting and troubling on two levels: First, that it exists, and second, that young people flock to it.

Someone -- someone now being investigated by New Jersey prosecutors -- knew he could make money by not just appealing to the lowest levels of the human psyche, but by going a step further and spreading those low levels everywhere with no care about the consequences. This person needed no business model; he just knew that if he offered filth, the flies would gather round it. And that didn't bother him one bit.

Worse, he's wildly successful, which means we have a generation coming up that feels comfortable attacking others anonymously, that gets its jollies by annonymous sexual postings, and that cares more about their own thrill of the moment than the long-term consequences those thrills will cause others.

Imagine, if you will, that the person who posted the item about the Little Man On Campus grows up to become the president, and is applying that kind of moral judgment to decisions on how to deal with renegade nations, bothersome allies or political enemies.

Since I started this "Our Crumbling Civilization" series a couple years back, I've never wrapped up an entry this discouraged, this convinced that our civilization is, indeed, crumbling.

Our Crumbling Civilization: Girly Boy Edition

I knew we were in for cultural melt-down when a news article out of Denver started with this:

The issue of being transgender usually pops up with students in high school.

It does? Not in the America I grew up in! But bad as it is, the lead sentence is just a set-up for a civilization-crumbler of much greater magnitude:

However, a 2nd grade biological boy wants to dress as a girl and be addressed with a girl's name.

"Biological boy?" It's come to that? We can't just say "boy?"

Of course, you know that concerned educators immediately realized there's something amiss with the boy and his family (can you say "dominant mother/wimpy father?"), and immediately arranged counseling for all of them. Not.

"As a public school system, our calling is to educate all kids no matter where they come from, what their background is, beliefs, values, it doesn't matter," said Whei Wong, Douglas County Schools spokesperson.

What a calling! Don't think, don't care, just educate.

Hey, Wongster! I want to enroll my little boy in your school, and you should know he thinks he's Pol Pot. I expect you to accommodate his values, which are manifested in a desire to murder his classmates and impose a repressive government. The teacher? Enemy of the State. Summary execution!

I'm too cruel. Wong and the school system are very concerned about the other kids, too ... concerned that they need to be taught to accept this perversion.

Wong says the staff at one of Douglas County's schools is preparing to accommodate the student and answer questions other students might have. ...

Wong says teachers are planning to address the student by name instead of using he or she. The child will not use the regular boys or girls bathroom. Instead, two unisex bathrooms in the building will be made available. The school is handing out packets to parents who have questions. The packets contain information about people who are transgender.

Gone from all the school system's accommodation is any concern for other kids and other parents; there's no question in the District's mind -- everyone else needs to be exposed to this perversion, because the rights of the perverted come before the rights of those who support normalcy.

Do other parents, other kids have any rights in this situation? Should we worry, given that this must be an exception? You bet we should worry:

Kim Pearson says the family is getting support. She is the executive director of a national organization called TransYouth Family Advocates. The group has been working with the family and Douglas County Schools.

"Initially there was a lot of resistance," said Pearson. "Now, their position is they want this child to be safe in their school."

Pearson says their group is working with an increasing number of families nationwide who have elementary age transgender kids. ...

Pearson says children as young as 5 years old are realizing their true gender identity and her group wants to help parents who may be resisting the acceptance of this.

Why do you suppose there are more and more elementary school kids who are apparently transgender? Could it be that sex has permeated society? That tolerance has replaced sanity? In a sane society, this boy would be receiving therapy that would lead him back to the mainstream rather than drive him headlong into a life that will be difficult.

In a tolerant society, however, he is encouraged to leave the mainstream -- and we are forced to nod our heads giving him acceptance instead of help, and stand approving as other kids are exposed to him as mainstream, furthering the watering down of that once meaningful term.

Most parents are much more sensible than the administrators:

"I don't think a (2nd) grader does have the rationale to decide this life-altering choice," said Dave M.

He is also unhappy with the way the school is handling this. The district has been preparing for the child's return to this school for months. Dave M. thinks other parents should have been made aware of this sooner.

"I just find it ironic that they can dictate the dress style of children to make sure they don't wear inappropriate clothing, but they have no controls in place for someone wearing transgender clothing," said Dave M.

Oh, please, David! Get with the program. Your daughter needs to be sacrificed on the altar of tolerance, and if she starts dressing butch, you should happily go along with it.

hat-tip: Jim

Our Crumbling Civilization: Penn State Edition

Not even six months after an insane, narcissist punk gunned down 32 Virginia Tech students in the largest student massacre in U.S. history, two insane, narcissist punks from Penn State thought it would be fun to go to a Halloween party as dead Virginia Tech students.

There's one of them, in a photo that surfaced recently on Facebook.

Yeah, yeah. Kids will be kids, right? Am I going overboard making this an "Our Crumbling Civilization" post? Not by a long shot.

If the perps, when the cold light of scrutiny finally shone on them, had admitted they had strayed beyond the tasteless to the purely offensive and had repented, civilization's crumbling would have been delayed for a heartbeat or two.

But that's not what happened. Not by a long shot. Here, courtesy of the NY Daily News, is what one of the perps had to say:

"It's not that it was funny," the student said of the costumes. "It's that we are notorious and infamous and very popular in the state college, so we have to do things that push the envelope just for shock value," he said.

He went on to imply that Virginia Tech students' public displays of grief less than a year after the massacre are at least partly for show.

"This is a group of college students who now think it's trendy to be upset about their friends being killed," said the Penn student.

He said those who objected to the costumes were blowing things out of proportion.

"The thing is, everybody's making a big stink about Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech was 32 deaths out of the 26 thousand that happen in America everyday," he said. "That's the problem with college students. They all live in an ivory tower of privilege. They don't understand, when it all boils down to it, it's someone wearing a costume."

First, let's just say at the beginning that this guy is about as smart (stupid) as your average college student, getting daily death rate for America off by about 400%. It's actually 6,814. Mr. Know-it-all? I think not.

Looking deeper, we see a person with a reputation to maintain -- "we are notorious and infamous and very popular" -- and prideful of that reputation, no matter how disgustingly it was gained.

There was a time when popular precluded "notorious" and "infamous," but it was before my time. I did, after all, paper my college campus with campaign posters promoting Ho Chi Minh for student body president, representing the Mindless Turd Party.

But there was a day in the not too recent past when being notorious and infamous did not assume that you had to attack the innocent and heartbroken. Back in those days, the targets of the notorious and infamous were usually people in power or people who thought too much of themselves, not the innocent victims of tragedy. The Penn State duo are schooled at Ward Churchill's Little Eichmann School of Indecent Provocateurship.

He also demonstrates a troubling trend in our society to be defensive to the point of cruelty. When he was attacked for his tastelessness, he defended himself by attacking the people he offended. He apparently is an honors student at the Michael Moore Graduate Studies Program in Vicious, Mindless Knife-Twisting.

And finally, this privileged denizen of a top American university Ivory Tower sums up his argument by discounting those he hurt as privileged denizens of top American universities Ivory Towers.

He doesn't understand that it all boils down to this: Halloween costumes only cover what is under them, and in this case, it is a person so tasteless, so unremorseful, so blind that there really only is one place for him in our society: a university.

Flat Buns Update

Carl's Jr. and Hardees are apparently the butt of too much criticism over their "Flat Buns" commercial, which I recently covered as yet another sign of our crumbling civilization, and have promised to modify it.

Are they editing it to remove the blatant sexuality, which Laura Ingraham refers to as the "pornification" of America? Not exactly.

Apparently, Carl's is more concerned about offending teachers than it is about offending the moral sensibilities of folks like us who are trying to raise good kids and live decent lives. From the OC Register's Fast Food Maven blog:

After angering educators with a sexy teacher ad, Carl’s Jr. reps said they will expel the female character from the “flat buns” commercial.

“Many people are not taking the ad as it was intended to be taken,” CKE Restaurants stated today. “We will be re-editing it (the commercial) to remove the female teacher character and focus exclusively on the rappers. We believe these changes will eliminate the primary source of concern and we anticipate that the revised ad will begin airing by the weekend.”

I can understand teachers not wanting to have the classroom sexualized, and Carl's leggy young blond certainly accomplishes that. It's a serious issue, as one teacher made clear in a comment on my previous post:

The ad is offensive and degrading.
I was once practically raped in the classroom.
Teaching is a difficult enough job without having to turn women teachers into sex objects to sell a hamburger.

Agreed. But even with the teacher-protecting edit, the lyrics remain, and Carl's continues to sexualize America. Here they are in case you think I've overstated my case:

Well, I like 'em really hot
I like 'em really flat
I like 'em lookin' like a pancake stack.
What about hiney? Got no hiney?
I call you Your Hineness.
In anatomy class
You got butt minus.
Flatness makes a better rear
Stand sideways, girl, you disappear.
Flat buns.
I like flat buns.
I like the flat ones.

For those of you who must have one last glance at the teacher (professionally, I'm sure, only to evaluate whether she truly does over-sexualize the classroom), click here.

Our Crumbling Civilization: Looking For (Bisexual) Love Edition

No other force in the popular culture has done more to degrade and corrupt the emerging generation than MTV. Not content to rest on its laurels spoils, MTV is pushing on in its effort to normalize the abhorrent and sinful:

MTV has greenlit a bisexual dating show with a star who built her fame on MySpace.

“A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila” is scheduled to premiere on MTV Oct. 9.

The 10-episode series will feature contestants who want to win the heart of Ms. Tequila [pictured here in one of her least provocative poses], who has more “friends” than anyone in the history of the online social network MySpace.com.

MTV says Ms. Tequila is a bisexual, which means the contestants on the show will be sixteen straight guys and sixteen lesbians.

“The finalists move into her mansion, live together, and each week Tila will narrow down her suitors. “Every episode will culminate in a dramatic ceremony unlike anything you’ve ever seen before,” according to the network. (TV Week)

What next? A let's-get-physical reality show taking its cue from "Must Love Dogs?"

Her life story -- born Tila Nguyen to a family that fled Vietnam and rising through adversity to fame -- is on one level a classic success story. She is obviously a person who is very talented in more ways than mere sexuality because one does not become the most befriended person in the history of MySpace without having some lights burning upstairs.

Unfortunately, Tequila concentrates only on what's apparently burning downstairs. That her mix of mush-mouth singing and soft core porn has rocketed her to the top of MySpace and into her own MTV show is more a reflection on the sad state of our civilization, and MTV's preponderant role in its deteriorating condition, than it is on this young woman's God-given gifts.

In a civilization less shattered than ours, she could have really been someone significant.

Our Crumbling Civilization: Flat Buns Edition

You'd think a classic bit of Americana like the patty melt would be beyond the touch of the civilization-slimers who bring everything down to the scuzzy mindset of an 18-year-old male in order to sell more product and make more money.

I can understand dropping "my first lay" to that level, but the patty melt? What next? Apple pie? Oh, they already did that.

The patty melt's fall into society's sewer is brought to us by none other than fast food chain Carl's Jr. (Hardee's in the Eastern U.S.), who not that long ago gave us a minimally dressed Paris Hilton flaunting about in a largely successful effort to get young men to think of Carl's hamburgers when they think of sex ... a pretty compelling marketing strategy, you have to admit.

When Carl's decided to offer patty melts on its menu -- patty melts, by the way, that don't look nearly as good as the one featured here -- they did it with a TV ad called "Schooled" (view here), showcasing a too-hot for this planet high school teacher who slithers about in a slinky gray suit while a couple boys in the class rap:

Well, I like 'em really hot
I like 'em really flat
I like 'em lookin' like a pancake stack.
What about hiney? Got no hiney?
I call you Your Hineness.
In anatomy class
You got butt minus.
Flatness makes a better rear
Stand sideways, girl, you disappear.
Flat buns.
I like flat buns.
I like the flat ones.

The scene cuts to a patty melt with a more mature male voiceover: The patty melt. On flat buns. Only from Carl's Jr.

Patty melts are not, of course, "only from Carl's Jr." The only thing that's only from Carl's Jr. is the raucously in your face flaunting of the old "sex sells" paradigm of advertising, and a willingness to further degrade the American morality in the name of "creative advertising."

This commercial would have been un-runable a few decades ago, but it wouldn't have been unthinkable. I've been in plenty of creative sessions where someone would throw out an idea so tasteless, racist or sexually over the top that it would get a laugh or a groan, but never a thought to really go with it. Heck, most of the time we'd be so embarrassed by the mere thought of having to admit we could come up with such an idea that we wouldn't even share it with our clients.

Now it seems that the more outrageous the idea, the more likely the ad agency (in this case, Mendelsohn|Zien) is to run it ... and not just run it, but run it as if it were significant in some way other than that bothersome "complete breakdown of civilization" way. Really; the folks at Carl's thought the ad so important they issued a news release on it (via Nexis, so no link):

"The Patty Melt is an American classic but the burger has been around for almost 60 years and, thus, it needed an image make-over to become more relevant for today's fast-food consumers," said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for Carl's Jr. restaurants.

"So, our advertising agency developed a rap song to emphasize one of the unique aspects of the burger: the use of flat, grilled rye bread as opposed to the traditional round-top bun. That rap song, which originally ran as a radio spot for our Hardee's chain, became so popular with the public - even spawning related websites and YouTube spoofs - that we decided to make it into a music video TV commercial for the burger to run at both chains. Who knows? This may help give flat buns the respect and admiration they have been missing for all these years."

To help that possible trend along, and to keep digging this civilization hell-hole deeper, Carl's kindly provides a list of the hottest flat-bunned celebs. Most of them are meaningless Hollywood people, but you'll be interested to know that Hillary comes in seventh on the female side (large thighs and flat buns ... is that the anatomy we want in our president?), and Rudy seventh and Obama tenth on the male side (are Obama's buns too flat to be the first black president?).

Sigh. As much as I'd like it if sex didn't sell, and we lived instead in a world where a clever headline, beautiful copy and tasteful art was what drew people to buy products, I have to admit that ever since they started illustrating the Grecian urns to sell more olive oil, sex has been a big part of the marketing mix.

But really, has it become too much? Has it come down to this?