If only Lock & Co made tinfoil hats.

A lot of the regulars out there will know that I'm pretty odd... Actually, who am I kidding, you've only got to read any of my posts that involve the words 'Haddock' or 'Spoon' or 'Transvestite Poundshop Christmas' to realise that I'm a purveyour of the rum and uncanny...

I actively enjoy the unusual. Normal, vanilla people and situations bore me senseless. I like it when OAPs tell me that they like hardcore Jungle music, or when quiet, unassuming office girls have one too many WKDs and say 'I make ferrets wear traditional Romanian gypsy dresses and film them dancing the polka'

That doesn't happen as much as I'd like, to be honest, but the opportunity's always there.

My favourite kind of people in all the world are conspiracy theorists... They're great, mad as badgers, every man-jack of them, but great. You usually find that they're very earnest people who strongly believe in something that they have no way of proving (trying desperately not to compare them with rabid fundamentalist Religionites here) Usually involving the Government, Aliens, Aliens in the Government, Government by Aliens or Aliens, in the Government, trying to keep the fact that we are being governed by Aliens, secret.

-oOo-

Every heard of Vril? Well, there are them that say that it's a type of energy, ('Them' in this instance being 'crazy people') described in a book written in the late 19th Century (as a novel originally, in fairness, but soon turned into cold, hard fact, a bit like the DaVinci Code I guess), that the Nazi's used to power their flying disk aircraft that they had all over the place between the two world wars... I know, right, I can't find a photo of the sky, taken between 1912 an 1944 that isn't choc full of Nazi flying saucers - They actually have to Photoshop them out of footage of battles you know. The Roswell Crash? that wasn't aliens, it was a Nazi flying saucer, powered by Vril.

In 1947-1948, a (strangely heavily armed) flotilla of US Navy ships, Commanded by one Admiral Richard E. Byrd were sent to the Antarctic on a 'routine survey mission' and were beaten back by a strong force of Nazi soldiers, backed up by flying disks. Huge cover up, tears before bedtime and everything.

Perhaps even more strange is the fact that the popular Beef Extract foodstuff Bovril (Made by giant chemical company Unilever) Gets its name from the words 'Bovine' and 'Vril' being cleverly portmanteu'd.

-oOo-

HAARP is a word you will have stumbled across if you've spent any time on the Internet at all. It stands for High (f)requency Active Auroral Research Project - Cleverly the 'F' of frequency has been omitted from the acronym as No-one could say HFAARP! without sniggering. HAARP does everything, it can trigger environmental disasters, down planes, burn the sky (or, at least make it look like the sky is burning, to possibly confuse our reptillian overlords), flip the North and South poles, and last, but by no means least... Control people's minds!

OK, so it does actually exist, there are vast arrays of strangely shaped antenna in Gakona, Alaska that shoot signals into the upper atmosphere to do strange and interesting experiments. There are certainly some odd things about it, it's run by the military and they freely admit that it can, sometimes heat the sky up a little bit... Can that be good? I don't know, I'm not a scientist - Google it, you'll have loads of fun trawling through all the 'HAARP ate my hamster' stuff.

-oOo-

Secret Societies are a VERY popular talking point too. Everything we see, do or feel is supposedly controlled by these trans-global mega think tanks. Be they Illuminati, Opus Dei, The Bilderberg Group, various Banking Clans such as The Rothschilds and, my personal favourite, The Freemasons. Whilst it would be stupid to say that the Hyper-rich can't also be the Hyper-powerful, some of the things attributed to these groups are - Is far fetched the right word? For instance,

The Illuminati - based on a group of German free-thinkers in the late 18th Century, have joined with the Communists to infiltrate Hollywood to pave the way for The New World Order (That's another one to Google on your own time - Ain't nobody got time for dat amount of explainin').

Opus Dei, a group within the Catholic Church, mostly comprised of lay-people, are said to have death squads throughout the world (again, an idea popularised in The DaVinci Code but now taken as 'fact')

The Bilderberg Group is an invitation only, annual meeting, of some of the most powerful men in North America and Western Europe who sit around and have a good old chat about the problems that the World is facing - They're definitely not deciding future global policy and the fact that there are no members from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa or South America is only because those people are traditionally no very good at golf... Probably.

The Rothschilds have used their financial power to fix the outcomes of wars over the past few hundred years for their own financial gain.

The Freemasons... Ah, the lovely, lovely, Freemasons... I should probably admit that I know quite a few Masons, but I am not one myself. In my personal experience they're a great bunch of guys who really know how to party.

But to the pencils up the nose, pants on the head types, they've done everything from assisting the Illuminati and the Knights Templar in various plots to take over the world, worshiping their own personal God (called Jahbulon, for those who like to pigeonhole your deities), constructing the streets of Washington DC (and probably any other city that will stand still long enough) to strict numerological and Masonic algorythms and assassinating JFK.

Oh yeah, and according to David Icke, they're part of the reptilian alien conspiracy too - As if the rest of it wasn't mad enough.

-oOo-

Just to finish, I'd like to say that I bear no ill-will towards people who believe any of this stuff. Everyone has the right to believe whatever they want, who am I to judge? I just thought it might be a nice thing for people to trawl through the Internet for, maybe give people ideas for short stories?  The worst thing that could possibly happen is that they all turn out to be right...

Sleep tight my friends - But watch out for the communist, kitten eating, Nazi, reptile, bank owner under your bed, slipping into your dreams and sucking out all of your positive energies.

-oOo-

And finally, for those of you who don't understand the title of today's post, Lock & Co are the oldest, and arguably best, Hatter in the country... Possibly the world. They are credited with the invention of the Bowler/Coke hat (or Derby, if you are of a Collonial persuasion) much favoured by our own resident brick-wizard and Flash-Fictioneer, James Josiah.

Their customer list contains the great, the good and the Royal and I have received word that popular comedian Al Murray has just invested in one of their luxuriant head-coverings.

If you should ever find yourself in London, with the spare time and money, you should pop into their premises at 6. St. James' Street SW1 and make yourself a better person, well, certainly a better dressed person - which, for all intents and purposes is the same thing.

And if anyone from Lock's is reading this, and they feel like posting a new hat to Dandy Towers (for purely review purposes of course) Maybe something in a 'Stovepipe' or 'Fez', or even a linen cap as Summer is allegedly on its way, well, that would just be spiffing!

Dzit Dit Gaii

Imagine you're going on holiday, somewhere nice and warm, Barbados or Guatamala or somewhere like that - Somewhere you need to fly to though. You buy your tickets and pack your pants and your towel, because that's all you really need in places like that, right?

Your departure date comes around, the taxi arrives and you're whisked to the airport. Upon arrival, you are calmed by soothing music, the happy smiling faces of other travellers and the carefully thought out decoration of the terminal itself. Gradiose pictures and statuary with a global, geographical theme perhaps? Aircraft through the ages? Famous people with aviation backgrounds? All things that you're quite within your rights to expect...

Not if you fly out of Denver International you aren't - On initial arrival at the airport, you are confronted by a 30' high statue of a rearing horse with glowing red eyes, the locals have entered several petitions to have it taken down, siting that it is evil - In fact, the statue actually killed it's own sculptor as it fell on him whilst it was being completed!

If you manage to make your way inside with your wits intact, passing by two gargoyles bursting out of suitcases, you come across the dedication plaque, or capstone from when the building was completed. Apart from the large, Masonic Square and Compasses in the middle, which is enough to set the consiracy nuts off all on its own (Doesn't bother me, some of the nicest people I know are Masons) it houses a time-capsule to be opened in 2094 and it has a raised dais, with a vague resemblance to a keyboard that houses a repeat of the Masonic symbol and a braille translation of the inscription. There are them that say if you press the symbols in the correct order, the door to the secret underground bunker will open.. (Did you read that in a hushed pirate voice? - You should, ir sounds much better)

There are inscriptions in the floor, including the chemical symbols for gold and silver on the side of a mine cart and the Navajo phrase 'Dzit Dit Gaii' which means 'The Mountain that is White' - The inscription 'Mt Blanca' is also repeated in various places around the terminal - A very important place in Knights Templar mythology.

But the strangest thing you'll see, in my opinion at least, are the murals - I'm not going to post them here, because they're all over the net, but I will describe a couple to you. Try to keep in mind that we're in a public space, at an international airport, in the mainland USA, not a despot's palace in an out of the way corner of what used to be the USSR or a terrorist based republic in the Middle East.

There's one that depicts a giant nazi-esque figure, wearing a gas-mask and great-coat, with a giant sword spearing the dove of peace. He's surrounded by a slew of greiving mothers holding dead babies, in the bottom corner is a poem, written by a 16 year old child who died in Auschwitz... Just what you want to see before you catch your flight to Eastern Europe. There's one where the main feature is a scene of a group mourning three people in open caskets, surrounded by extinct or nearly extinct animals whilst the rainforest burns in the background - A poigniant image, certainly - But would you display it at an airport? Yet another shows the children of the world coming together, some of them carrying a selection of swords wrapped in the flags of warring states including the Palestinian & Israeli, Indian & Pakistani and British & Irish amongst several others, standing on a fallen statue of the unidentified gas-masked villain. Strangely, some parts of the murals have been recently painted over at the request of customers...

Weird, I think you'll agree - There are other odd things about the place, for instance, from the air it bears a close resemblance to a swastika. It was paid for mainly by a private investor, to the tune of some $5 Billion. It's alleged that five pentagonal structures were built, twelve stories high and then buried and used as foundations, rather than demolished as they were not to specification. It has triple-redundant water & power systems and a ventilation systems that stretches for miles outside the airport environs. It seems to have a higher incidence of windscreen and fuselage cracks than any other airport, this has been speculated to be due to high (or possibly low) frequency pulses emanating from below the airport itself.

Of course there are more than likely perfectly reasonable explanations for all of the above, the main one being that it's posted on the Internet it's probably tosh. But do a bit of research for yourself, immerse yourself in the world of the tin-foil hat wearing brigade, see what you can find - It might keep you busy over Christmas.