Our W-2s had ads for Arby's and lube. I have no idea why.

Wow. Just after I posted this, I found this other good article about Cash4Gold.

That is so lame. Do they have ads on toilet paper yet?

My plan to pay down the national debt: send all the gold at Fort Knox to Cash-4-Gold.

Alternatively, have Obama nominate every American to a cabinet post, and let the unpaid taxes roll on in.

You think that you've seen long confirmation hearings? Wait till they get to Sifu.

Only today? I thought they had to arrive by the end of January. Maybe they had to be mailed by that date. That seems more likely anyway.

Mine has "e-file", but this seems to be an IRS service.

Sadly, if you don't like the intrusion of advertising into the workplace you were born in the wrong time and place. This trend is going to pick up speed; my prediction is that most corporate e-mail systems, portals and the like will include an advertising component (a lot of them simply delivered by someone like Google with the ad stuff reducing/eliminating the cost to corporation/organization). It is already there around the margins, and the ability to target ads given the known demographics etc. will prove irresistible. The only thing in the way is bad taste and tackiness (and maybe a few minor laws and regulations that can be easily dealt with). Ha!

As has been discussed here before, the real question is when does it permeate the government. "This rescue brought to you by the AIG Coast Guard".

the real question is when does it permeate the government

Should we be worried about the other way around at this point? "This rescue brought to you by the US Department of AIG."

Update to 1: That was Horsey sauce, so less confusing.

The advertising infiltration that I'm most upset by these days is the ads on the ceiling of train cars. I'm not talking the long banners that have been high on the sides of subways for years. I'm talking, you get on a train, you're tired, you lean back to rest, and what is staring you down from the ceiling but a long, garish column of ads.

I resent it so much. It feels like just one more visual assault. No peace, no privacy, not even on your ride home.

(Once they pasted the ads backwards, so when you tipped your head back they were upside-down. That was even more frustrating, in the way that a really loud one-sided conversation forces your brain to pay attention and tires you out because you're trying to come up with the other half.)

Yes, I realize there are more pressing problems in the world. Still. The normalization of this unpleasantness is just so...unpleasant.

You don't like Dr. Zizmor?

A couple of days ago, there was an excellent article by April Witt in the Wash Post about the Maryland Mayor whose dogs were killed by the police.

I knew that I would like the article before I even read it bc of the name.

12: You used to live in NY?

There's an ad now that's three panels, one for each of three specialists: foot pain, bad skin, and impotence. I have a hard time not thinking of it as the "How much does your life suck" ad.

In 2000 the CEO of the CLEC for which I worked sent a company-wide email touting the company's Amazon link - you know, like you see on some blogs and people used to have on homepages and the like, one of those 'buy stuff from Amazon through my page!' buttons - as an example of the sort of thing we were each expected to be pushing on everyone we knew to help with the company's bottom line. So tacky. So tacky. That said, good taste suffocates in the airless environs of marketing departments' alien decision-makers. I won't be surprised if we're not just subjected to advertising but, like with that defunct CLEC, expected to be agents of it.

Advertising dollars are allegedly drying up on account of the economic collapse. I'm hoping this will the trend of advertising anywhere.

On the other hand, things may just get more obnoxiously targeted...

My W-2 did not have ads, but I can't say that I'd have minded if they did. I'm all for bemoaning the ubiquity of advertising in our culture, but W-2s seems like an odd place to take a stand. Did the ad interfere with your aesthetic appreciation of the W-2?? In any event, I'd vastly prefer an ad be printed in the margin of the W-2 than be enclosed in the same envelope on a separate glossy sheet of paper, which is the more common, and far more wasteful, practice.

14: That sounds like it was aimed at the protagonist's father in one of those coming-of-age novels (or memoirs) set in Brooklyn.

"When Grandpa Podheretz came home from work, after soaking his scrofulous feet in hot water for half an hour, he went straight to bed with scarcely a glance at Grandma.

Here's an idea for obnoxious advertising: on the margins of your kid's report card. It could even be audience-specific: for the A-students, there could be advertisements for SAT prep courses; for the C-students, private tutoring or educational software; for the D-students, truck-driving school.

More seriously, marketers should provide "sponsored paper" to school districts, i.e. reams of copier paper with advertising on the back or even in the margins. It would be relatively inexpensive for the advertiser, and every suffering school district seems to be short on copier paper. If school districts can justify subjecting children to Channel One, surely they could go along with this.

I don't have anywhere close to all my W-2s and 1099s. I hate taxes. I hate taxes more than Tom Daschle hates taxes. I don't know how I'm going to sort through all these receipts I have.

I don't know how I'm going to sort through all these receipts I have.

You only have to pay the tax if you are up for a cabinet post. I think.

20: Amen. Tax preparation for freelancers sucks monumentally.

This is my first year with self-employment income. I'm kind of dreading it.

17, 19: When my one kid was at Big State U, I was unprepared for the amount of quasi-official looking advertising material that we got deluged with. There were always subtleties that let you know which was the "official" pieces of mail, but it generally made me discount anything that came that had "Big State" on it.

8: Suck as it might, Google and it's various gadgets that one can build into Google Sites, etc., are allowing me to build a virtual office online for my new business using home-based freelancers that will cover voice, videoconferencing, file transfer, mail, calendars, and task assignment. For, oh, $100 bucks a year (for the file transfer service, not Google). Run a few ads in the sidebar, fuck it, I don't care.

8: Suck as it might, Google and it's various gadgets that one can build into Google Sites, etc., are allowing me to build a virtual office online for my new business using home-based freelancers that will cover voice, videoconferencing, file transfer, mail, calendars, and task assignment. For, oh, $100 bucks a year (for the file transfer service, not Google). Run a few ads in the sidebar, fuck it, I don't care.

OK, seriously, two iterations of my last comment are over in the main page sidebar, but none are in this thread. I call shenanigans.

27: Yeah, that's where the Google puts its ads.