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A slow Friday at work…even for temporary me…so we resort to Advertising Age for a dose of marketing & media loathing. Let’s watch!

Outside Magazine, up the road a bit in Fanta Se, announces they’re doing away with those intensely annoying subscription inserts. Yay! When was the last time you used one to subscribe to a periodical? Yet when was the last time you mentally groaned when one (or many) fluttered onto the ground from a magazine you were perusing…?

Their most e-mailed article of the day includes a poorly-thought-out, and just plain weird, graphic on What Women Want (online). Roll over her thigh: it’s about pay for play gaming. Her upper arm: frequent shopping. Huh? Her left elbow: parenting. The inside of her right kneecap: healthy living. What the hell were they thinking? I’ll tell you what they were thinking: Uh, we got all this data and we can’t really put it in pie charts. Well, get a picture of a hot chick in a black T-shirt! Yeah but how do we match up this data to her? Dude–it doesn’t matter. Everyone will click on her body parts to find out what they say.

They also have an AdAgeChina. (Who knew?) Their headline piece is about Disney using Mickey to tie in to the Year of the Rat for its China campaigns. I thought he was a mouse, but whatever. Right next to it is an opinion piece noting the scarcity of rats in advertising this year because they’re just not CUTE like other Chinese zodiac animals. Yours truly is quite confident there’s no more alluring Chinese zodiac animal than the Horse; and not just because I am one. They’re just cuter than rats. And Mickey. And…snakes and roosters and boars and whatnot.