Redundant caravans

It can't have escaped your attention that there are lots of examples of redundancy in the English language. Lobby, foyer and atrium all mean roughly the same thing; teenagers, youths and adolescents are in essence the same. We keep inventing new terms for things we already have names for. As another example, why did Mr L Ron Hubbard feel the need to invent the term "scientologist" when we already had the phrase "malicious, deceitful, vicious c**ts"? To provide evidence for my assertion would take ages and wouldn't be particularly amusing, if you're interested see www.xenu.net for numerous examples of what can only be described as torture of vulnerable people for financial gain. No, that's not in the nature of my rantings; let's instead look at some of the 'teachings' of scientology, they're much funnier.

Scientology consists of the idea that human bodies are just a shell for a spirit ("thetan") that, were they to lose all supressed subconcious traumas from their past trillion or so years of existence, would achieve a god-like level of omnipotencecy. As such the generous church of scientology offers so-called 'audits' that remove these traumas. For this service they charge 1000's dollars and, naturally, you need hundreds of them before you achieve omnipotency (incidentally, many people who've reached the top of the cleansing cycle aren't omnipotent either, see above link). You get the idea of what these people are about. Anyway, apparently 2 of the worst things that can have happened to your thetan in previous incarnations are;
1) "encounters with the Marcab Confederacy and various Invader Forces from spacefaring Galactic civilizations"
2) "life on earth as a clam"
Sounds pretty bad.

Also, there's a supposed event (apparently the most traumatic in history) which happened ~75 million years ago which reads, in the founder's own words:
"The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet) -- 178 billion average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic Area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged." His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. were placed in the implants. When through with his crime Loyal Officers (to the people) captured him after 6 years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confed.) has since been a desert. "

And here is a more detailed version from an ex-scientologist of the same event:
"75 million years ago, the galactic overlord for this sector of the galaxy was called Xenu. He was in charge of 76 planets, including Earth (at that time known as Teegeeack).

"All of the planets Xenu controlled were over-populated by, on average, 178billion 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 all these trillions of people. As each one entered the audit centers for the income tax inspections, the people were seized, held down and injected with a mixture of alcohol and glycol, and frozen. Then, all 13.5 trillion of these frozen people were put into spaceships that looked exactly like DC8 airplanes, except that the spaceships had rocket engines instead of propellers.

"Xenu's entire fleet of DC8-like spaceships then flew to planet Earth, where the frozen people were dumped in and around volcanoes in the Canary Islands and the Hawaiian Islands. 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 vaporized.

"However, Xenu's plan involved setting up electronic traps in Teegeeack's atmosphere which were designed to trap the souls or spirits of the dead space aliens. When the 13.5 trillion spirits were being blown around on the nuclear winds, the electronic traps worked like a charm and captured all the souls in the electronic, sticky fly-paper like traps.

"The spirits of the aliens were then taken to huge multiplex cinemas that Xenu had previously instructed his forces to build on Teegeeack. In these movie theaters the spirits had to spend many days watching special 3-D movies, the purpose of which was twofold: 1) to implant into these spirits a false reality, i.e. the reality that WOGS (Hubbard's derisory term for anyone not a Scientologist) know on Earth today; and, 2) to control these spirits for all eternity so that they could never cause trouble for Xenu in this sector of the Galaxy. During these films, many false pictures and stories were implanted into these spirits, which resulted in the spirits believing in all the things that control mankind on Earth today, including religion. The concept of religion, including God, Christ, Mohammed, Moses etc., were all an implanted false reality that to this very minute are used to control WOGS on Earth."

And people really believe this shite! Bloody yanks.

Here's another example of redundancy in the English language; roadblocks and caravans. Argh! Words cannot describe how much I hate these fucking polystyrene boxes on wheels. Why would anyone buy a vehicle that overturns as soon as you hit 50mph? What's the fucking point? The main reason for owning your own vehicle is to get from A to B quicker than you can bloody walk.

For the price of one of these things you can have 10 years of holiday cottages, which are warm, dry, have a kitchen and a bathroom. And they're always decorated like something from Clockwork Orange. They look hideous parked outside your house and take up the entire driveway. And they emit some sort of weird chemical that turns otherwise normal, decent people into vindictive bastards (although many, 64.7% at last check, caravan owners are already vindictive bastards to start with). They just sit there doing 30mph below the speed limit (which is why they're such a pain in towns!), refusing to fucking move. And when you finally overtake the damn things, they're always being towed by a beige Volvo estate (already big enough to holiday in without the caravan) driven by some bald bloke with glasses thicker than the Hoover Dam who's about half the size of the steering wheel! And then he has the cheek to look over at you as if to say "I'm within my rights and what right do you have to want to go faster than me". Tosser!

They're too big, too ugly, pulled by bastards, too expensive, and they always pick campsites where their ugliness is exemplified to ruin the landscape (see any aerial photo of the Dorset coast). Top Gear gets it right; destroy them! Destroy them wherever you see them! But do it in an amusing way.

I'm driving up to Sheffield in 24 hours, a good 6-7 hours by the country route, so I'd better go and start to calm down (and fit the mini-rockets behind my headlights) now.