Atmospheric Advertising

The planes are back in the air, but there’s still a volcanic cloud up there. The RAF found ash in the engines of two of its Tornados this week. Jules Verne - writing in 1889 - predicted that by 2889 the clouds would carry advertisements: they’d be writing on the clouds. A thousand projectors would achieve this ‘atmospheric advertising’ by constantly displaying on the clouds, mammoth adverts and news stories. I can see tomorrow’s headline (cloud-line?) now: ‘Volcanic ash causes Tornado crash’.

This is not a hairdryer

Magritte was a great painter of clouds (in light skies, dawning on dark days), and there’s ‘an advertising-quality’ about much of Magritte’s art; indeed, Magritte’s imagery - from Homepride flour to The Prudential Building Society - must have visually influenced more adverts than any other artist I can think of. But let’s stick with things that smoke; consider things with wings; let time fly. 

 This is not a pipe

This is not a clock

This is a wing-mirror

This is not a mirror

Arrest The Pope?

Thanks to a vast cloud of volcanic dust from Iceland, the skies of South West London – indeed of the majority of Northern Europe - are clear of planes. That bankrupt country (Iceland) has found something to export: ash. A heavenly silence reigns.

Talking of things Holy. The Papers are calling for the Pope to be arrested. Never liked those black circles around Pope Benedict’s eyes. They remind me of records – a couple of 45’s. And today it’s Independent Record Store Day, and even though I don’t have a gramophone - and I’d love to see the Pope on Crimewatch - I’d hate to see the death of vinyl.

My last blog, Fatography, discussed Scientology (as well as lard, brothels Cheddar Gorge and L Ron Hubbard), and was written a couple of days before the Icelandic volcano made the news and closed our airspace. With this in mind it’s spooky to ponder Scientology’s volcanic beginnings.

75 million years ago, an alien galactic ruler, Xenu, controlled 76 planets in our galaxy, including Earth, whose name at that time was Teegeeack. All of the planets were overpopulated (by, on average, 178 billion). Xenu thus devised a plan to rid his sector of the galaxy of this overpopulation. All of the planets Xenu controlled were over-populated by, on average, 178 billion people. Social problems dictated that Xenu rid his sector of the galaxy of this overpopulation problem, so he developed a plan. Xenu sent out Tax Audit demands to the entire population, demanding that they attend special audit inspections, where the people were arrested, held down and injected with a mixture of alcohol and glycol. They were then frozen, put into spaceships and flown to planet Earth, where the frozen people were dumped in and around volcanoes. When Xenu’s Air Force had finished dumping the bodies into the volcanoes, hydrogen bombs were dropped into the volcanoes and the frozen space aliens were destroyed - all 1.4 trillion of them.

The final part of Xenu’s plan, involved setting up electronic traps in Teegeack’s (Earth’s) atmosphere. These traps were designed to trap the souls or spirits of the dead space aliens. When the 1.4 trillion spirits were being blown around in the nuclear winds, the electronic traps – sticky, flypaper-like traps - worked like a charm and captured all the souls. Out of these trapped souls: Scientologists?