It Must Be An iPhone Ad, Right?

Oh look! White background. Dancing icons. Lots of animation. Music plays a primary role. It's an iPhone ad! Oops, sorry. It's an LG Arena ad and it's being hyped by SocialMedia8. So make them happy. Link to it! Embed it! Forward it to a friend! Post it on Facebook! Bl`og about it! Tweet about it! Digg it!

Or...just lament the fact it's yet another iPhone wannabe.

Bathing Beauties More Delicious Than Napping Sumo Wrestlers

And in today's weird for weird's sake, we have this commercial for Wai Wai in which fat, swollen noodles become lithe, slim...hot noodles. It's not clear, though, why the guy doesn't spend at least a few minutes enjoying the site of his lithe, slim...and hot noodles before he scarfs them down like a Suleman kid fighting for the last scrap at the dinner table.

Because a Villain's Not a Villain 'Til You Can Buy 2, Get 1 Free.

You gotta admire a guy who can throw a blanket over $50 billion and make it disappear.

Pay tribute to this modern-day Svengali by investing in your very own Bernie Madoff action figure. For a paltry $149.99, you'll get plenty more than did the overeager speculators that hosed Madoff with their hard-earned savings: a plastic doll with a fistful of cash, and a wristwatch plated in 24-karat gold!

Hard-up? Aren't we all. Scale down with the $110 variant. He's not as snappily-dressed, but he does come with a hammer the size of his head.

Big-ups to @bloggersblog for the links.

ALS Weaves Debilitating Maze Through Unwitting Hosts

A few years ago we met a farmer who lost his wife to Lou Gehrig's disease. The process was short but painful: it hit her all of a sudden, and took her in a matter of months.

He ended up publishing their story under the title When the Music Stopped. When we asked why he chose it, he explained that Lou Gehrig's -- or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) -- functions by depriving you first of the muscles you use most. It spreads rapidly to the rest of your body, and finally ends in death. His wife was a piano player; in her case, things began falling apart when she could no longer play.

Imagine it: the slow dismantling of your life, beginning with the loss of your smallest, dearest pleasures. It's a terrible thing to hear, and a worse thing to experience first- or second-hand.

That's the crux of "Head and Shoulders," a powerful ad released by the ALS Society of Canada. Put together by Lowe Roche to the playful, active tune of "head and shoulders, knees and toes," it makes you privy to a father and his family as their universe spirals into painful stillness ... along with him.

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VW Sends Earnest Junk Bond Traders to Rehab

As the economy struggles out of the hinterlands of recession and Just General Suckiness, Volkwagen takes advantage of the French's irresistible inclination to remind the world it knew better all along.

Witness while a group of compulsive junk bond junkies try ridding themselves of their nasty addiction. Think AA, except with tailored suits instead of flannel.

Our favourite is "Exorcist," possibly because purging unregulated capitalism is the closest we'll ever come to watching a businessman give birth: "SUBPRIME! Dol-LARRRRR..."

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CURB Uses Magic Rainwater Spray to Push Soul in UK

Kia's takes its Soul to the streets with help from UK-based CURB, a company whose modus operandi it is to develop nothing but eco-friendly ads.

Dirty pavements in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham will be "spray-cleaned" with the silhouette of a Soul and a link to shapeyoursoul.com, where you can win a soul of your own. (We're trying not to read too deeply into this, especially since we like kicking puppies, carving random initials into young trees and vandalizing any and all likenesses of Regis Philbin.)

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Tweets Go Black to Protest NZ's 'Guilt Upon Accusation' Law

Avatars on Twitter are going ominously black to protest a new law, Section 92A, that's been passed in New Zealand.

After the 28th, users can get their lifelines internet disconnected "based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny." Because of the unveiled creepiness of that language, the law's been dubbed "Guilty Upon Accusation."

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Revisionist Historians Add The Watchmen to Man's Timetable

Every once in awhile you come across some viral propaganda that's actually pretty neat, actually. (Consider.)

Hoping to reignite the sleeping flames of The Watchmen comic series fans, Rubber Republic launched a YouTube channel to populate with retro news stories.

Commentary's mostly favourable and views are high: all signs of happy viral life. People seem impatient for more news stories to appear as the public release of The Watchmen draws near. (In theatres March 6, boys and girls.)

We're suckers for an elaborate backstory, so this is some pretty cool shit. Hopefully the film will maintain the same fidelity to the spirit of the original comics.

Find more goodies -- including a retro game, widgets and all the necessary social network tie-ins -- at thenewfrontiersman.net. One of the videos has also been posted below.

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Misguided Intent + Lawyers = Social Media Disaster

Didn't we just go though this with Google or something? Facebook's TOS has been revised to state, basically, they own all your content forever and ever and they can do anything they want with it forever and ever. From the TOS:

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Facebook's Scary Content Stance, Gatorade's Mid-Brand Crisis, 'This is Why You're Fat'

- Facebook revises TOS, Twittersphere goes apeshit.

- Wisdom from the front lines. Via.

- Gatorade's new packaging and naming conventions betray desperate need to fit in with the minimalist lifestyle 2.0 crowd. Here's an idea! from reader Elinora: "Make a drink that doesn't taste like vomit!" Come on, Ellie, it's not Gatorade's fault; those are the electrolytes.

- Hardees/Carl's Jr. slips into the Daytona via YouTube.

- "Do we need a new internet?"

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