Pret A Fucking Manger

I am very against naming things as volcanic for very little reason and Pret have now fallen into this caldera. I am yet to try their vitamin volcano smoothie nor have I ever drank from a volcano but having drank smoothies and studied volcanoes I can imagine that they are in no way similar. Why did they feel it was apt to label their product as a volcano, was it simply for alliterative purposes? Was it because like the smoothie the soils that surround volcanoes are often nutrient rich (in which case well done Pret)? Also the volcano depicted on the bottle IS CLEARLY more then 45degrees so I don't know what the hell they were thinking. But you can check out nutritional information here! But maybe I should just be happy that the nation has taken volcanoes to its heart. Let me know what you think.

Also neither of the hideous clubs have anything to do with Volcano Club shit and even shitter. I thoroughly apologise if anyone has been misled on any occasion.

Volcano Tourism

Whilst researching the new zine which is going to be about volcanoes and travel (which I'm pretty excited about) I found some great websites. I think the variety in volcano 'holidays' shows not only the range of volcanoes and landscapes that they occupy but also the range of emotions they evoke in different people; a holiday advertising the geothermal properties of volcanoes is likely to be different from one emphasising the adventures. I think that my ideal volcano holiday would be to go round the world painting all different kinds of volcanoes, I could then also study the surrounding flora and compare the two. But I think trekking over volcanoes would be pretty fun I'm torn between Iceland, Japan and Ecuador. One of my favourite activities is to look at cruise holidays in the paper and I don't want to go on a cruise as I think it'd be quite gross this website is worse as I actually really want to go all the holidays. They also have eclipse departures, to go round the world watching eclipses and other lunar events would be my other ideal life (maybe I could do both). So at the moment I'm doing lots of looking at volcano holidays and thinking about how I need a change, which is why I'm so excited about the prospect of the volcano travel zine (see I made a circular reference which may seem this post has some sort of point) as always let me know if you have anything to contribute.

I'm not sure I want to do this though. 

Finally here is some more volcano tourism 1 and 2.

Biophilia

Isaac and I went to Bjork's Biophilia on Saturday which was as predicted absolutely amazing it was her last show in Manchester so the encore was slightly more 'hooligan' than all the other nights (which was a lot of fun). Biophilia is about the extremities of nature; from the cellular and microscopic to the galactic and planetary, I have always found these aspects of biology a lot more interesting than the organismal and ecological. But I think this is because I find comfort in the fact that we are insignificant; that life in both the tiny and massive scale is much more advanced and complicated than humanity. Because while we will eventually fade and disappear, life will exist in some tiny molecule and there will still be some habitat in space for it to survive in. In the words of Rick Blaine "it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world" I think that my childhood love of Casablanca has led to my bleak view of the world.

Anyway back to Bjork (I will need to do stuff to my mushroom ragout soon so tangents will be at a minimum), so many of the songs in biophilia were about my favourite things such as the moon, DNA, solstices and cells there was of course a song on plate tectonics. If only she had done a song on photosynthesis it would have been perfect. Every song had some video to accompany it which are all going to be iPad apps and I think the idea is that you can alter the song by playing with the app (which is pretty cool). The plate tectonics one showed magma moving around under the earth's surface and the breaks in continental plates; this was very useful for me as volcanoes tend to be formed around the spaces between these plates. The volcanic ring of fire marks the edge of a tectonic plate; I say it was useful for me as I find it very interesting but don't really know where the plates are and the video showed this. The song didn't have an eruption and seemed to be constantly building up to one but never quite reaching it and was more about the events leading up to it. There was a female Icelandic choir who were fantastic, the other best new songs were the moon one, crystalline and the virus one. However some slight critisms would be that it was half way between a concert and an art installation but not quite either therefore the delivery wasn't quite right so you couldn't really see the stage. Also pretty much all of her old songs sounded better than the new ones, Isaac was particularly happy as she did Mouth's Cradle which is his fav but I loved the time lapse fungi growth to Isobel. But it was absolutely amazing and I might have to buy an iPad so I can play with the Bjork apps.

Sorry this has been very rambling; maybe Casablanca isn't really that relevant so in the words of Bjork 'thank you' (really its funny when she says it as she has a great accent)

The volcanoes in my life.

I have put the lack of blogging activity down to moving, which is a poor excuse especially as I have moved 3 times in the past year. But for various reasons this move is more significant than the others which has resulted in increased stressed levels but to celebrate I made a new volcano club 'logo'. This was only partially because the old volcano was more than 45 degrees (which is impossible). I'm slightly worried about the flat turning into a volcanic shrine which Isaac seems to quite encourage, although I think the amount of volcanoes is almost matched by the amount of origami. Here are just some of the volcano related things about and you can look at my flat (which is quite exciting).

 You can also see some of mine of Isaac's books here.

We are debating whether or not to keep it as volcano club or to write something else (we have made an alphabet).

I'm going to see Bjork tonight at MIF and I'm very much she does something volcanic so I can write a review here (if not I'll just says she's Icelandic like some volcanoes) but I'm sure that everyone can predict the that the review will just say amazing. 

About Sicilian Luddites

Etna erupted again a few days ago, it has been pretty active all year and has erupted 5 times so far. The latest eruption was pretty unremarkable in that it was fairly small and Strombolian, I think most of Etna's eruptions are (although I can't be bothered to check this fact so if you also can't be bothered then just believe it). Like most eruptions that happen nowadays it closed some airport, but these days who cares about flying anyway. However this eruption also did something way more exciting, apparently after the eruption Sicilians were actually on time for work they become suspicious. Sicilian luddites continued to be around 15 minutes late for work. The break in routine was due to all digital clocks being set quarter of an hour fast which was after the volcano's eruption so if you have an analogue clock you're fine (hence the luddite reference). Analogue clocks were not affected so that would be pretty annoying if you were meeting a friend and they had a digital clock and you had an analogue and they kept being late because of the volcano. I bet this ruined friendships. While I like to think that the is due so some sorta magic tephra it's actually because clocks don't actually measure just an event or something, but thats a bit scientific and boring. As it's too boring I'm going to pretend that its due to the digital mechanisms having to speed up to counteract the viscosity  of the lava. I'm not totally sold on this theory so please let me know if you have any better ideas.

This post is the start of the rebirth of this blog which although has only been dormant for a month I feel it's been significant so hopefully like Vesuvius in the 20s it will start to spew lava again (Vesuvius went through a period of inactivity and then erupted loads).

I'm sorry

For the lack of activity, it's not because I've lost my love for volcanoes or I've got nothing to say. But I have just moved and have no internet, plus everything is in boxes. Here are two lovely volcanic links while I don't have time to do a decent post.
I really need to go to this exhibition.

Ash pictures.

I'll write something amazing and inspiring soon plus I'm gonna make some blog changes so that's something to look forward to (if you are looking forward to it, I pity you)