I've received approximately 4,245,098 e-mail messages in the last week relating to the Super Bowl. Very few of them were useful, but some were unintentionally hilarious.

At 4:22 p.m. yesterday I received an e-mail from something called the Weatherproof Garment Company, claiming that it spent $200,000 to air a two-second commercial during halftime of the Super Bowl. The ad, the company claimed, would be the shortest in Super Bowl history.

“We are under the impression that the entire world is borderline A.D.D. and keeping the publics attention is nearly impossible, less is more and we think our two seconds will be more effective than 30 seconds,” Weatherproof President Freddie Stollmack said in the e-mail, which clearly was not proofread.

The company said it was keeping the content of the advertisement a secret but cited "unconfirmed reports from industry leaders" that the commercial would be "so impactful it's bound to redefine advertising."

At 5:44 p.m. yesterday, I received another poorly crafted e-mail seeking to retract the previous message.

"Unfortunately, due to timing restraints Weatherproof Garment Company will be unable to run the 2 second ad during Superbowl 2008. The company had every intention in running the ad but learned that the timeslots for airing the ad which was intended for a national audience where [sic] unavailable."

Yeah, something tells me a two-second commercial wouldn't have been allowed. If ads of that length were permitted, you'd have hordes of companies putting together ultra-short ads, figuring that a couple hundred thousand dollars would be worth it just to get the company name on the broadcast.

Or course, such a commercial would not be unprecedented in the world of advertising. Check out this video of what claims to set a world record for the shortest TV commercial, at 1/60 of a second.