The Flickr network has been very generous with material for Marketing Mayhem lately. Just the other day, I was minding my own business uploading some new pizza box images when this animated gif got all up in my face:

It was the last in a series of several slides advertising Ortho Tri-Cyclen Low. There were others but it moved too fast for a good screen capture.

1st thought: Dude, TMI. I like to think I’m an enlightened person overall, but I’ve definitely got a bit of a Hank Hill prudish streak when it comes to bodily fluids and the like. And seeing the phrase “Irregular Bleeding” emblazoned across my screen makes me yearn for the good old days when you knew it was an ad for a tampon or whatever because people were walking on the beach and talking about feeling “confident.”

Time-wasting link on the subject: The Museum of Menstruation.

2nd thought: Okay, it’s a little graphic for me. But it’s also kind of awesome that even in the age of free-for-all marketing of pharmaceuticals to consumers, companies are STILL required to list side effects in promotional materials. Remember the Lunesta commercials that had a serene CGI Luna moth bopping around against a pretty little lullaby? It was all mellow and stuff, but they were FORCED to end it with the voiceover dude listing like 2,000 wacky side effects, including my absolute favorite: sleep driving! Seriously, sleep driving?

Okay, that’s about as much of writing about this as I can take. How about that weather, eh?