On your marks, get set, clench – the Friday links buttock workout

Right then, for the uninitiated a bit of preamble on what this whole Friday links malarkey is all about. Pared right down, it is a roundup of the best web-based wonders we happened to stumble upon that week. The inclusion criteria are simple, the link has to  a) make us chuckle or render us slack-jawed with awe b) just generally be of interest to social web users or creative types c) if we can find a financial services angle then so much the better – we then serve them up as a wee Friday treat in link form.

This week, prepare to have your buttocks put through their paces with some extreme clenching and your compassion, nay love, for your fellow man’s foibles and eccentricities swell as you witness the cringeworthy and downright loony antics of the good men and woman with whom you share a planet.

First up, we have the subtly awkward yet no less embarrassing poses struck for stock images. You’ve got to ask yourself, though, just what event/emotion/random act of lunacy the creative director was thinking of at the time of composition and why did nobody stop them? Exhibit A: seashell boy. We rest our case.

Cranking up the cringe factor courtesy of MSN, we move onto TV shows that make you squirm. With one or two exceptions, examples 1-25 are open and shut cases of when someone should have taken the creative team to one side at the brainstorming session and with quiet menace simply said ‘no’. Then you’ve got the genius of examples 26-32.

And we leave you pondering and we hope also marvelling with a sneaky bit of pride, as we did, at the foibles of other people’s parents – safe in the knowledge that lurking somewhere in your own parental home are equally random items, such as one MRMer’s mother’s penchant for hoarding off cuts of never-to-be-used-again wood which has grown to an impressive collection over the years and which resides in the hall cupboard to the exclusion of all other items, ahem…