Sign of the Times

‘Kay, there’s plenty of news to talk about, but this just stopped me cold. I saw that Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer, so I went to her hometown paper to see what they had to say.

Imagine my, well, surprise at finding what the LA Times thinks is good (or even appropriate) context-generated advertising. (I’ve highlighted the relevant offenders in yellow.)

In case you’re unable to see in this rendering, I’ve cut out the offenders for separate viewing:

As if the text ads weren't bad enough, we also have:

What you can’t see here is the changes in the caskets that are displayed, so there is this constant neon-light-like flashing in your line of vision.

I understand there’s an algorithm that matches ads with content, but you’d think there’d be some adult supervision in the equation somewhere.

Evidently you’d be wrong.