Down With Blimps

So a London-based business group wants to splash our skies with 23 blimps to advertise for their clients (“UFO With a Message,” Nov. 18). The blimps rent for a quarter of a million dollars a month! Which companies can afford such an amount for a mere portion of their advertising budgets?

* The auto industry, which already has us all advertising their wares for them--for free--every time we use our vehicles.

* The oil industry, such as Exxon. If they can’t ruin our view with offshore oil wells and oil spills, they’ll get our views somehow.

* The tobacco industry, which is just dying to get to our young children. (They would do well to realize that the latest figures show that the number of smokers in the state of California is now down to 20.4%. For every one person lighting up, four people are glowering at them.)

A couple of years ago, Sea World tried a blimp out on us, and we could see the grinning teeth of the passengers as they swung very slowly over our gardens, invading our privacy from the air. We weren’t happy about that, said so and Sea World, to its credit, backed down.

On the odd day that I can lie out and enjoy my garden, gaze at the sky whilst smelling the roses, I’m hanged if I want to see a bunch of yobbos grinning back, or some creepy depiction of a desert animal advertising a product to which I am horrendously allergic.

Any blimp that gets between me and the hard-earned view from my home, thus imposing advertising on me, will have those products advertised boycotted by me.

PAMELLA BERRY, La Jolla