Well, THAT would figure

So I finally bite the bullet and try to get my parents to take a look at the LLamabutchers, and sure enough the same day our new MSNBC ad switches over to advertise porn.

There will be no living that down in this lifetime.

I'm trying to dig out from under the grading mountain, but it's been harder as I feel really sluggish and out of it. The annoying, whining emails from students about their grades have begun, though, so I've got that going for me.

This weekend was great: we put up the tree, and we went to the Lessons and Carols service at church last night. I've got some stuff I want to write about that, but getting to switch over into the holiday mode is my incentive to finish grading these durn papers.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades has more on the emerging controversy of the MSNBC Porn Ads:

That MSNBC Ad in the Sidebar...

BlogAds warned me in advance that the ad would be changing, and gave me a similar ad to let me know that MSNBC was planning some blatantly-sexual advertising.

I wasn't really thrilled with the come-on nature of the ads, and the screaming slammer "PORN," but I figured it wasn't something likely to offend most readers here. In case you didn't click on the ad or read it closely, it's just an ad for an MSNBC report on online porn. (As if, you know, frequent internet users have something to learn on this score.)

I'm not sure why MSNBC did this, though. You don't really need to go too over-the-top to interest people in tittilating material... and it sort of reduces, I think, MSNBC's credibility. This is the biggest ad-buy in BlogAds history, and they've kind of sold their network with one of the more aggressively-prurient ads to run on political sites.

It's also odd that they didn't offer two alternate ad schemes -- one more restrained than the actual ad -- because I have to figure a lot of more socially-conservative sites rejected this add.

It's edgy, of course... Buzz Bunny edgy.

One of Ace's commentators observes it could be worse: it could feature naked pictures of Chris Matthews. And then I'd have to go and get a gallon of clorox and a piece of jagged fiberglass to carve out my eyeballs and clean out my cerebral cortex reeeeeeeal good. But we're just proud here to take our $7 from this little sliver of the ignoble death flop of the once-great American media establishment.

UPDATE DEUX: WHAT WOULD MELISSA THEURIAU SAY?

If you ask me it's a pretty simple timeline: John Chancellor rules the roost.....you replace Jane Pauley with that skanky hosebag Katie Couric....you let Jane Pauley go blow up some trucks with model rockets on Dateline...you let Chris Matthews go on the air off his meds....you start desperately trawling for viewers by putting up fake-porn ads on blogs like the LLamabutchers.

Like Melissa said (albeit in a husky, sexy French accent) "MSNBC a sauté le requin."