The internet is basically a place where you get free cat pictures in exchange for shadowy Big Brother-style ad conglomerates harvesting every bit of data about you and using it to psychologically manipulate you into rampant consumerism. Now, with disclosure!

As Christmas approaches and hearts across the world are warmed by good cheer, New York Post grave-pisser Andrea Peyser would like to take the time to piss on a murdered man's grave. She's a contrarian, what can she do?

What is this we spy with our jaded eye? It is a new Mark Penn patented Microtrend column. We have not forgotten you, Mark Penn, you shady, shady character! Today, Mark Penn explains why god is dumb.

Most obese Americans, meaning most Americans, have given up hope of ever losing that weight unless they can land a spot as a contestant on NBC's Biggest Loser. Unfortunately, Biggest Loser is made of 100% evil.

The Philadelphia Inquirer still runs op-eds by John Yoo, legal mastermind behind torture, illegal detention.

You thought all PricewaterhouseCoopers' did was count Oscar votes and seal envelopes, but you are wrong. They also lie, professionally, for various large and evil industries.

America's biggest tobacco companies voluntarily stopped advertising cigarettes in magazines, because they care about you, the tobacco consumer. But hey, have you tried this new "Snus?" Try it, in your mouth! Check out the magazine ad for it!

Ululate your huzzahs, counterimperialist warriors: Shoe-hurling Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi is free from prison. Where he was tortured. So, Muntader, tell us, are you going to Disney World or what?

Savvy corporations are now using implied peer pressure—Your Neighbors Are Buying It—to induce you, the consumer, to buy things in order to keep up with the mainstream. Proving once again: We're all dumber than average. [WSJ]

Haha: Those shockingly expensive Sigg water bottles beloved by yuppies and hippies for being free of some specific deadly chemical did in fact contain that deadly chemical. Do we spy the hand of The Creator?

Last week, the federal government passed a bill that lets the FDA essentially control everything about how cigarettes are advertised and marketed. New restrictions could save thousands of lives. But wait, this could hurt magazines! Stop everything!

Martha Stewart, our arch-nemesis, has a few ideas about how to save some money during this recession: buy fewer trees, but more glitter kits. She also demands that you knit her a scarf!

Almost forty years ago, Charles Manson and members of his "family" cult killed seven people. He's still alive, still in jail, and still scary-looking. California's Department of Corrections has released a new photo of him.

The man you see hiding behind the blue binder is Josef Fritzl, the sick Austrian who plead guilty to enslaving his daughter for 24 years in his own rape dungeon. But what about the binder company???

Last week Rachel Maddow called out failed Clinton consigliere Mark Penn for running an evil PR firm, Burson-Marsteller. The firm is evil, and Penn should just shut up. But he didn't! So he paid:

(This is from yesterday's Rachel Maddow Show, shortly after her MSNBC colleague finished pointing to his Cornell diploma to prove a crazy point.)

Every communication medium, from the telegraph to instant messaging, develops its own peculiar lingo. But the lingo of Twitter, the status-updating tool which has infected Internet hipsters, media types, and Hollywood, is ahistorically vile.

How to make fat Swiss children change their ways? How about slapping an "Every fifth child is overweight" sticker on playground swings which are refitted with super-thick chains to hold up the fat ass of the fat child trying to swing on the anti-fat ad swing? That'll teach 'em to go out in public! An ad agency did this, by choice. [Copyranter at Animal]

Zimbabwean dictator and overall monster Robert Mugabe is one of the world's top bad guys. But if you're running an ad agency in Zimbabwe, hey, work is work. So a firm called Imago—owned by Young & Rubicam, the US ad giant—made a bunch of ads for Mugabe's "re-election" campaign. Now Y&R is falling over itself to cut its ties with Imago, possibly because Mugabe's wickedness has been front-page news in the US for the last week. The fun part: the ads sucked big time! Especially the one that looks like a wicked political acid trip. And we have the evidence:

Okay. I was browsing Page Six online just now when a screamy virus warning jumped up and the page I was reading disappeared. I haven't looked at the Post's website in forever, but this MacBook is only two months old and this is the first virus scare it's ever had. So if there's anything good over there, lemme know, coz I'm not going back. Too scary! [NYP]