Today's pet peeve: "mobile billboards" that drive around in circles around the Chicago Loop, and likely every other major city in the country (check out this NPR story on mobile ads). They're nothing but giant halogen-lit posters for bling-y products like luxury SUV's, diamonds, premium vodka (and pay-per-view concerts by a certain geriatric rock band who shills for this particular brand of premium vodka) perched on the back of stinky, traffic-blocking, exhaust-billowing flatbed diesel trucks.

Now, let me say that I don't really have a problem with advertising on the sides of trucks, buses per se, because those vehicles are actually moving people and products and have a genuine purpose. On the other hand, is there a single good reason - besides love o' good old god-o-Mammon - that we need to be wasting precious fossil fuel on huge trucks that do absolutely nothing but drive some garish billboard around in circles in crowded inner city rush hour traffic, when just as many people would see the damned ad if it was on a truck, bus - or just standing still?

I'm sure the mobile-ad companies will say, "but more people pay attention to moving objects!" Newsflash: just about everything in the city is moving except the rush-hour traffic. Can't you make an electric/hybrid or LP-gas powered version of one of these, or use them for transporting something wedged inside those 12 wasted inches between the billboards? Your CEO's come to mind, for example.

1. Billie Holliday - "God Bless The Child"
2. Boozoo Bajou - "Barkensignal"
3. Mike Oldfield - "Santa Maria"
4. Pixies - "Gigantic"
5. Magnetic Fields - "In My Secret Place"
6. David Bowie - "Supermen"
7. Synthetica - "Mystery of the Third Planet"
8. Miles Davis - "All Blues"
9. Interpol - "NARC"
10. Christmas In The Stars (The Star Wars Chistmas Album) - "The Odds Against Christmas"

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