I pulled this out of a recent back issue of PC Magazine:

This ad brings all sorts of questions to mind. One of the foremost being: how in Gods name did smokeless tobacco ever become an advertiser in a computer magazine? Am I missing something? Are there lots of grizzled ex-loggers fleeing the failing tree-felling industry, getting out of the forest and into the server closet? Do propeller-heads regularly fantasize about dropping out of the IT rat race and joining the NASCAR circuit? Do an appreciable percentage of computer geeks fear that they aren’t getting cancer fast enough from the myriad source of high EMF they work amongst every day, and have therefore decided to hedge their bets neoplasia-wise by increasing their hands-on contact with another known carcinogen?

The mind boggles, even as the lip chancres and the tongue falls out.

But the real reason I posted this here has less to do with the nature of the product, its consumers or the likelihood of there being any appreciable crossover between either in the computer-magazine-reading demographic than with the scenario depicted in this ad. Observe yon fun-loving, precancerous frat boys; so young, so full of zest for life, vaulting in happy, good-natured-camaraderie-with-no-trace-of-latent-homoeroticism from the deck of their fancy pleasure craft into the (presumably) azure water below. Note also the attendant nubile female hardbodies enjoying the scene from below. Notice how they stand in the gently rippling surf, the serene waters lapping at their thighs. (One wonders what the chick in the background plans on doing with that surfboard she’s carrying in such a complete doldrum; perhaps she’s planning on paddling the thing to an outlying island with better surf.)

Notice how the three young men, while certainly closer to the “camera” in this pathetically Photoshopped tableau than the two sweet thangs watching them, do not seem to be appreciably further out to sea. Notice again the apparent the depth of the water in which the women are standing.

The message would appear to be, “use Skoal® brand Smokeless Tobacco: it’ll so poison your brain that jumping off a ten-foot deck into three feet of water will seem like a good idea!”

Exploration has its perks, like discovering local hospitals. 😛