Flutterby™! : Segways in Paris

Oh. My. Deities. Marketing has sunk to a new low. Lower even than the horribly intrusive and annoying Cadillac plugs in the movie Women vs. Men that Charlene and I recently watched (which wasn't quite as annoying as the ad, but was still three and three-quarter person-hours we'll never get back). Slate is doing this "Paris on a Segway" series that is just page after page of advertising for a set of sponsors, strung together with some really tacky narrative of the "Ugly American" experience.

Now frankly I think that this is a lot of what has to happen to writing, and it's good to see that the first glimmerings of it aren't as subtle and insidious as I'd feared. Frankly it's like watching an upscale Crazy Eddie commercial.