h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We really enjoyed reading these entries. Some great characters described very well here - Ross and William Shawn in particular - and a sense of sadness once the profit-at-all-costs mentality took over and the eccentric but unquestionably noble ways of the old guard became a distant memory.

An amazing effort. One wonders how you managed all the research. Congratulations, Leo, this is really good.

Thank you for helping me to finally understand why New Yorker cartoons have always been completely incomprehensible. I thought it was me.

The profit motive is pervasive , and one reason I suspect I wouldn't be happy in the industry. It's also a very different magazine than it was.

But the cartoons are traditionally that way. It's so the snobby intellectuals can lord it over you. A visual version of "no soap radio." You haven't heard that one? Isn't it funny? Oh well, I like you anyway.

I've heard that one.

Two elephants are sitting in the bathtub. One elephant says to the Other, "Please pass the soap." The elephant replies to the other elephant, "What do I look like, a radio?"

Since when do elephants sit? In bathtubs? And use soap? What a dumb joke.

You don't like elephant jokes?

Try me on another.

(Ducks are funnier.)

Two ducks enter a bar.

The bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind in here.”

The ducks leave and go out into the alley to talk it over.

One duck ruffles his feathers and goes back into the bar to order a Wild Turkey and water.

The bartender says, “Aren’t you one of those ducks?”

The duck replies, “No soap. Radio”.

What is gray, has four legs, and a trunk?

I would say a going on holiday but it might be a brown feeling very

Goodness no: an elephant of course.

Though it might be a a gray dog going on vacation, or two dusty ducks sharing a trunk going on vacation, or two pigeons going on vacation...

Who uses trunks any more?

Elephants

Oh and swimmers. Or do you 'Mericans call them "speedoes"?

Oh yeah - swim trunks. Well, they *shouldn't* be used anymore. Yes we call those bits of lycra speedos, when we must refer to them at all.

You prefer men swim in - what? Or skinnydip?

Board shorts - and a little dignity.

Board - as in "stiff as?"

No, as in what you wear on a board. Cuz surfers are big on being , and it's impossible to be in a lycra bakini.

I've never seen anyone ing. The River Humber's conditions are not conducive for it.

I think I know what you mean though, the sort of shorts beloved by American tennis players? And tourists in Hawaii.