Here’s a question. Is this only a jacket? The more I stare upon its woven weavery, the more I’m unsure. I mean, disregard for a second, whether you’d actually wear it. Just look at it. Look deep into it. See what I mean? It’s terrifying. And I’ll tell you why…

It is considered reasonable (based on some absurdly big maths) that there should be, at the very least, 100,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. Yes. 100,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. Not the universe. OUR galaxy. Don’t believe me? Go read this.

You’re back, good. Thing is, if there are that many intelligent civilizations in our (comparative) neighbourhood, how come we’ve never seen or heard a peep from any of them?

Well, one theory (and yes, this is a proper scientific theory, not the plot of a shit-dreadful Michael Bay epic) is that: “There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location.”

You see SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) currently only listens for alien broadcasts. We don’t broadcast out. We don’t send messages. And we probably shouldn’t.

The late Carl Sagan (astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author etc…) said, “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.”

Which finally leads me onto this jacket. It’s by the Scotch madmen over at McRitchie and I can only assume they actively want to bring about a global apocalypse. If anything mankind has ever produced is going to get noticed by a nefarious alien species, light years away, it’s this fucking blazer.

It looks like it’s knitted from quantum physics. I mean, it says 100% wool over at Present. But then it would. The whole jacket is a flat-out nonsense. Look at those zig-zagging rhythms – like the heart monitor for the whole planet. It’s like it’s made of electrics. Constantly pulsing away, beaming out into the unknown. It’s saying, “come and suck out our brains with your laser-straws, we’re still fighting each other over bits of land, because an old book told us to.”

And the aliens will hear this and come and beat us with their mechanical legs, and either synthesize us into nourishing yogurt, or scientifically probe our anuses until they really sting. Either way, it won’t be all that good.

Thinking about it, the wearer of the jacket would probably be let off all the probing. Because, you know, he kind of signalled the aliens to come and get all fucky. Not sure this theory is that scientific. But, I’m still gonna buy it. Just in case.