We sign up for the free blog services (which are great) and must succumb to the mandatory banners and text links that come with it. We have no choice in the manner or subject of those links and are reminded that it's free. So what am I complaining about? Actually, I'm not complaing. I love the fact that I can write articles about anything I want, post it on the internet for everyone to see, then write more! Life is good.

I've only recently started reading and writing blogs and. I didn't know much about them, only that smart business men and women usually wrote lengthy articles dealing with the latest stock market picks, politics, or some insider sports information.

The more I read, however, the more I realized people like me had something to say about, well, everything. I even learned there are ways to limit the ad use. The peculiar truth was...there are other people with the same thoughts in mind. Amazing! To think I wasn't as much an individual as I thought I was. Truly there must be something unique I could write about.

The endless ponderings while taking a shower or on the commutes to work surely must have some meaning. So, in order to quelch this bottomless pit of mindless thought, I'm constantly on the lookout for some bizarre things to share. There are enough things to be sure, but one thing I'd like to point out is some of the blatant idiocy we see in advertisements that pop up in our blog pages.

So, what about that bizarre stuff I was talking about? One of the most outrageous was this one:

"Hot Indian Girls! 100,000 stores. Click here!"

What!? There are Hot Indian girls in 100,000 stores? I didn't ask for that? I didn't want it either. First, I'm a married man. Second...I'm a married man!

So, I click on the link anyway (just to see what the hype is about because men are notoroiusly curious when it comes to these things) ecpecting a page filled with pictures of beautiful "hot" Indian girls. I can't believe there could be that many stores filled with them. Why would there be stores filled with them in the first place? Are they for sale? Are they catagorized by height, weight, overall looks, education? What on earth is this?

They may as well display an ad like this:

So, I click on the ad and get re-routed to a page with more ads trying to get me to click on more links. I shook my head and chose the "Back" button instead. Insane ads like that should be grounds for persecution.

Aha! Let's start an Ads Witch Hunt! Yes, we could search the 'net endlessly in an attempt to weed out the rediculous. Our efforts would be highlighted on sites like Yahoo and MSNBC who, in turn, would honor our feats of social cleansing!

It's fairly safe to say that sex sells whether we like it or not, but where does the rediculousness end? Have you ever seen the ad pop up for "Discover Sexy Wet Women?" Nice.

I have a relatively active imagination and can guess what they mean, but why must they be wet? Do they like being wet? Where were these girls when I was in college?

Whatever. Let the endless pondering begin. It's as much fun to find silly stuff like that than it is to actually write about them. It's like looking at a website full of "Who's the dumbest" pictures. You know, those pictures of people that attempt absolutely rediculous things like trying to fix an electrical problem...on the pole...barefoot...by themselves.

Advertisements should be screened to weed out the rediculous. On occassion I'll run across an ad whose author should be checked for a negative IQ. Fortunately for him, people with lesser IQ's click on them. Does that mean the advertiser actually has a very high IQ for thinking of it before us? Thus the cycle of life moves on.

I'm sure the endless chain of terrible ads will continue as long as there are people to click on them. I can't believe some businesses are "in business" after seeing truly absurd ads.

An Englishman by the name of Mark Boyd blogged about this very subject some time ago (see his article here http://markboyd.me.uk/dumb_ads/dumb_ads.html). You can finds ads like the ones in his blog on any search engine. Just type in the most absurd thing you can think of and chances are you can find "IT" on eBay. Wierd, huh?

If you have a distaste for annoying ads, read Luke McKinney's "The 5 Most Annoying Banner Ads on the Internet" at http://www.cracked.com/article_15239_5-most-annoying-banner-ads-on-internet.html.

You can't help but to agree with his dissertation about the ludicrous nature of internet advertising. Luke says it best when we are subjected to those incredibly annoying flickering ad banners;

"When reading a page, I don't want my peripheral vision yanked at by a flickering (banner ad) to the side. The part of my brain that evolved on the Serengeti plains to save me from wild tiger-saurs should not be accessible to someone selling penis-enlargement pills."

I thought there were laws preventing unscrupulous acts of subconcious espionage. I'd like to see a committee investigate these worthless ads as seriously as they do MP3 downloading. We'd get real action from that, wouldn't we?

Back in 2004, Jacob Neilson wrote an article about "The Most Hated Advertising Techniques" and posted it on useit.com (read the full article here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20041206.html ). One of the highlights of the article outlined 11 worst advertising techniques.

Design Element Users Answering "Very Negatively" or "Negatively"

1. Pops-up in front of your window 95%
2. Loads slowly 94%
3. Tries to trick you into clicking on it 94%
4. Does not have a "Close" button 93%
5. Covers what you are trying to see 93%
6. Doesn't say what it is for 92%
7. Moves content around 92%
8. Occupies most of the page 90%
9. Blinks on and off 87%
10. Floats across the screen 79%
11. Automatically plays sound 79%

Funny how most of these are still used today. Not listed here is randomly placed adult content ads including the solicitations to see pretty foreign single girls.

I was researching information on weight loss one evening and kept getting lude sexy banner ads popping up. My daughter was right behind me thinking I was purposefully searching for them. Ugh! When my teenage daughter sees them pop up on "daddy's" blog...I have issues.

Back to the subject of "legitimate" ads. Many ads seem legitimate enough. I especially like the Get Rich Quick ads. The "too good to be true" ads get alot of attention these days. Why not? Skyrocketing gas prices, inflation, the plummeting stock market and the crisis within the home mortgage market are all reason for the desperate minds to seek refuge from reality.

The last thing they need is an advertisement enticing them to look at crazy things like some clown fooling them into buying an e-book on "How to make Thousands in one weekend!" What they don't tell you is the enormous amount of money you'll need to spend behind the curtains before anything happens at all.

I suppose I could choose to have no ads appear in my blogs, but that would negate the reason for having a blog in the first place. That's my take on this whole advertising conspiracy. Is anyone held accountable for the insanity that pops up on my web browser? Or, should we let it continue so that we may have something to laugh at during the day? Be careful out there.