too many cars

So I'm down here in Van Nuys right now -- at an Islamic trance-dancing convention of all things. So this morning I go into a Sufi-like trance and what is the first thing that crosses my mind? How much I hate all those hundreds and hundreds of new-car commercials we always see on TV. What a waste of a good trance dance!

And what a waste of good TV air-time too.

Here we all are, living on a planet that is about to extinguish all human life here by choking us to death with all the rings and layers of air pollution that currently circle the earth -- and the only thing mankind can come up to hopefully solve or stop this desperate and scary crisis is to bombard Americans with hundreds and hundreds of commercials to go out and buy yet even more new cars? Cars that are causing this desperate and scary crisis in the first place?

That is not thinking outside the box. That is a death wish.

And now I'm about to go off to have dinner at a famous Jewish delicatessen in Encino, about six miles away. And I'm gonna walk there!

PS: Are you aware that some sleazy Israeli neo-colonialists have just sold some sleazy Saudi Arabian neo-colonialists a bunch of bunker-buster bombs -- which the House of Saud immediately went out and dropped on helpless civilians in Yemen? Apparently Yemen has become the House of Saud's equivalent of Gaza.

And are you also aware that the Saudis, in order to stop relief ships loaded with medicine, food and toys from landing in Yemen, have totally bombed and destroyed the port where the ships were supposed to land? This war crime would be the equivalent of that if the House of Saud didn't want relief ships to dock in California (perhaps after watching the movie "San Andreas"), they then blew up the entire Port of Oakland.

Talk about your air pollution!

I guess that I should just be grateful that there aren't any ads for bunker-buster bombs or bomb-dropping airplanes on prime-time TV.

So far.

NOTES

The painting in the illustration is by Mahmoud Said. Mahmoud Said was a central figure in modern Egyptian art, born in Alexandria. He is called the “father of Egyptian modern art.” He abandoned his career as a court judge when he turned fifty to dedicate himself to his art full-time. His paintings are much sought after by collectors. A museum dedicated to his art has opened in Alexandria.

The subject of this painting is the ecstatic whirling of the Sufis or dervishes of the Mawlawi (Mevlevi in Turkish) order that follows the teachings of Jalal al-Din Rumi. For more on this mystical order and its practices, see this site.

First posted on Jane Stillwater's blog at http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2015/05/climate-change-car-commercials.html