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

So dear Phil, how did your jaunt in Seattle go?

It was great. We went to Pike Place and the symphony to see some jolly clasical music and to the Bon Marche to look for (and find) a dress for Andrea's mother for the wedding and all sorts of things. The Space Needle is tall but not so tll besides some of the other places. I liked Seattle a lot overall. We didn't make it to Capital Hill or whatever you called it.
that wasn't very informative was it?

You are quite capable of being an odd bloke when the fancy strikes you.

Am I really? In what sense, pray? I thought I was pretty normal in a dull sort of way, especially in that last message. Dum-de-doo, how do you do.
Phil

I'm doing well enough, trying to sort out the many girlfriends I suddenly seem to be having. I couln't even think of adding a wife to the mix. That would be ludicrous. You are a brave man.

A marriage is a good cure for all those 'where WILL I put all those girlfriend' blues. Just pick one and marry her. It's fun and funky and you get gifts. I did and will.
Phil
Hill
Bill
Will

I think I need to keep my options open for the time being; I'm feeling "oaty". Gifts are enticing, though...

And what, pray, is 'oaty' when one is feeling it?
I notice our emails are getting rather short so try this for sighs as Adam Ant once said.

And then came around July 4th and people mindlessly came out and waved flags without appearing to know quite why they were doing so. We went to the park by the sea. The park was beautiful, the sea lapped right up to the parks boundary and the posts of the old lumber yards and transportation sites that stick up from the shallow waters edge like broken old posts which is what they are. A boardwalk runs along the water edge and on the other side is a train track along which, throughout the evening and with gratifying regularity, trains came shrieking and screaming 'get out of the way' to the people wandering aimless and drunk on the line. Small boats bobbed backlit by the dying sun.
And all would have been beautifully wonderful if it weren't for the people. I spent a lot of time trying to work out why I get so uptight about the people at these events. I think it has to do with two things. One is the way in which they come on down and put on a silly hat they bought from Walmart that morning and parade about insisting they're zany and creative and wacky and cutting loose and all that jazz. The second is my inherent and inbuilt nay-saying and grumpiness. This, to me, was state sanctioned euphoria. In order for a field to provide the highest yield of crops the farmer will give it a rest and let it lie fallow one year in three of four or whatever. July 4th seems to me to work on the same principal. The state sanctions a one day holiday for the tools of capitalist production so they might work all the smoother and more efficiently the other three hundred and sixty four. My dear, not at all like my going to Burning Man, that was totally different. God, I can be an ass can't I? I'm paranoid but am I paranoid enough?
What did surprise me about the proceedings was the lack of commercialism. There was one guy selling glow sticks and a small coffee counter but that was it.
And people scattered everywhere. Every inch awash with people whooping and hollering and dancing and generally letting off steam in the approved manner. And when a flock of geese swam by in a beautiful honking group one bright fella saw them for what they were, an unwelcome intrusion into a HUMAN holiday and so a target and he started heaving rocks at them. Actually I don't think his synapses quite got that far. He just made like an SAS man on Gibraltar, saw a moving target and fired.
And then there was the band. Reasonably OK-ish in a fairly crappy kind of way they, sang song after song of startling mediocrity and you can guess why I was reminded of Liverpool (just what I needed) but what was weird and kinda dumb was that they had some woman on stage doing sign language. If I went deaf I think that the inability to hear or comprehend the words to Beatles songs and other mawkish 'my baby left me and I might as well be dead, in fact it's quite possible I am dead' type of rubbish would be one of the few blessings I could count.
And I can't be bothered to remember any more about that night except that it was cold.
And I've been collecting funny names. There are some mildly silly ones like Rhode D Row (pronounced Roedeerow as in Rhodeerow, I'm a troll) and there are very silly ones like Tore Ofteness, Mystique Grobe and Nirvana Guernsey.
And I met our neighbour, Dick, again. Or rather we met him. He told us about a woman down the road who 'plays the piano like Liberaci, real good.'
And I was confused to see a sign hanging from a shop, out into the street. It was like a cinemas sign explaining current attractions but the attractions advertised were:-
'Quake hold
Picture hooks
Museum wax'
Perhaps it was a cinema. A cinema with a very small screen displaying little known and dull movies. Quake hold might be a vaguely interesting title full of people being gripped by terrible alien creatures or even the heart wrenching tale of a man destroyed by his uncontrollable fear of being cuddled. But the other two couldn't help but be drab and awful.
And I wore my 'Keep Music Evil' T-shirt to a meeting at the printers/web designers. First a busking musician said 'hey, great T-shirt. Of course, it's totally against my principles.' Oh. People are so convinced of other's interest in their opinions.
And so I returned to Haggen the Horrible, the big supermarket. I like America and I have met a lot of nice Americans but as a group and on the whole they seem to behave like children. No holds on their having what they want and when they want it will be tolerated. And in Haggen there was a mom and her son waiting at the checkout and all they were carrying was a bag of carrots. That’s all they wanted to buy. Another shopper took a great interest in this apparent deviation from the shopping norm and asked what was going on. Mother and nine year old explained that they were buying the carrot for the rabbit. ‘You gonna eat the rabbit?’ ‘Aye, right’, thought I, ‘like you really believe that’s likely.’
The young boy patiently explained that the rabbit was a pet and they weren’t going to eat it. ‘So you jist pays out money and it eats?’ said the man in a pretence of astonishment, as though he were some kind of grizzled cowboy in the general store waiting in line for some bullets with his trusty steed outside waiting to be shot in a tremendous show of a lack of sentimentality (‘She’s jist a machine, laike a plough, I’ll plug her when she’s too old’. As the horse looks on in terror and wide eyed astonishment at the man who hugs her neck each night and wonders why he’s suddenly not acting soppy like he normally does). This man really was trying to make us think of him as a cowboy.
Again the young boy patiently explained that yes, this was the generally accepted way with pets. The man was by now desperate to make these people behave in some normal manner and would try anything. ‘That all you buying, jist carrots? No candy or gum?’ And the boy looked expectantly at mom who turned round and delivered a left hook to the interfering old self justifier with his trolley full of purple, red and green sticky treats. No. She didn’t. And this is the most amazing thing. She just accepted this uncalled for call to consumerism and coughed up for a stick of sucrose. Weird and scary.
And I felt weird and slightly ashamed asking where the toilet roll was. I felt like I was saying ‘knickers’ to my granny, that toilet was a swear word in this new Victorian age of the euphemism but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for the bath tissue. No sirree.


So that's another reflection on life in the big apple (state)

Phil

Dearest JWF,
About 3 years ago. What is the Burning Man Thingy? Tough luck if the vegite and the Brit Brat don't like us jumping into their thread. That's what the h2g2 is about. Let me warn the Warlock that Forwarned is forarmed and he is talking with a good Catholic girl who evokes the name of Jesus Christ and over him he has no power with is Machavellian mutterings. Start a new thread at my Personal Space if it soothes their nerves. Personally, I like to jump in where I have something to say. Happy Dude has already made amends for any damage done by the Red haired devil from England and I am sure that the little stripper from Modesto that he got pregnant has more than punished him. I know for certain he's living somewhere south of Oakland. Pity the Child, his little boy not him.
Worlds of Love,
JLC the TTP

Ok, you'll have to wait a bit for me to come up with a good answer to that one. In the meantime, oaty as in sowing ones wild oats, a saying that originally meant quite foolish, but seems sensible to me.

What the hell is a vegite?!!

She likes to 'jump in where she has something to say' but she then proceeds to talk an awful lot of nothing.
Hmm

Are you still in the land of the living oh wise one?

Are you still single?

Yes I am. Sorry about that dear fellow. I've been alternately busy and exhausted for the past few days. Sculpture (at least the way I do it) is a very physically taxing activity. Ooo, you should see my pectoral muscles.

Yes he's single for another month, but hands off or Andrea will kick your butt!

An Artiste!
Of course you had no Idea how hot good pecs make me. Of course I do prefer biceps and triceps if we are going on a rating scale of 1-3.
I'm not looking to get married, just curious. I have already married my share of foreigners.
WOL,
JLCtheTTP

So, tell me more about your sculptures. Can they be viewed anywhere? Are you hugely successful?
We went to Capitol Hill and Broadway at the weekend. I loved Broadway. There was my name in lights. Well, it would have been my name if I changed my name to Safeway.
Phil

My sculptures have been a series of copies (learning process) and unfinished, quite original, abortions (still learning). I will put up some of the nicer stuff just for you.
Did you see the new show "Crackhead Homeless Punks"? I heard it got rave reviews.

Where will you put them up?
We don't have a TV so no, I didn't see it though it sounds good.

Silly man! I meant the Broadway show! You must have seen it; it's playing on all the sidewalks.

I will put them up in some sort of internet type place.