Seeing as it’s something of a cultural mandate, many?media companies have gone green lately. Some append the ubiquitous “Please consider the environment before printing this email” below their signatures; other outlets, such as newspapers,?camouflage cutbacks of their ailing print editions by claiming a web-only product is better for the environment. It is (and it’s better for newspapers too in my opinion).? A certain advertainment company, however, is going headlong and heedless in the other direction ? or so it seems. While stuck in traffic in Napa last week, a mobile billboard idled in front of me (imagine a delivery truck in which the three sides of its payload, viewable from the street, are outfitted with rolling billboards that changed every few minutes). Admittedly, burning non-renewable fossil fuels while advertising “Cosmetic Sedation Restorative Orthodonics” sufficiently riled my inner-West County-child-of-the-70s such that I began drafting this post. When I tracked down the offender’s website (the ad company, not Dr. Vanity or whomever), intent on some online character assassination to avenge Mother Earth, I was met with a prominently placed “Bio Diesel” logo hovering above an animation of the truck’s revolving ad mechanism. Drats ? I would have to find another target upon which to release my self-righteous anger ? the outsized, rolling yellow pages was actually green. Kinda. So, in commemoration of Earth Day, I offer you the above photo of the medium-is-the-message monstrosity, for which I?risked having to get cosmetic sedation restorative orthodonics having taken the picture while driving. Shame on me. And shame on them for providing yet another roadside distraction.
