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

The same phenomenon can be seen with socks. It comes to wash day, you put several PAIRS of socks in the wash, and amazingly, when you come to hang them out to dry, one has always gone missing. Some people blame this on freaks of nature, such as a black hole opening up inside the washing machine and taking it to another dimension, where it enjoys life free from the burdens of stinky feet weighing down on it. I personally think it's the sock monkeys. These cute little creatures are only half an inch in height, but they enjoy nothing better than hiding in the drum of your washing machine, and, when a new supply of washing comes in, guzzling down on a tasty sock. They can only eat one though, as they only have small appetites.
Once they've had their fill they love to play merry pranks around the household, such as moving the remote control, in an effort to get more attention. This, however, has the annoying outcome of having to go around all day in odd socks and missing your favourite programmes on the TV. Damn those sock monkeys.

Sock Monkeys???, I thought they were Sock Elves. (Close Cousins of the Underwear Gnomes)

Missing socks are successful escapees from the oppression of their human enslavers who have traditionally treated socks as second-class citizens. Having been crushed under the heels of humanity for countless generations, socks have an irrepressable desire to escape their downtrodden circumstances by sneaking away when their humans are not paying attention.

The sock monkeys are merely bleeding heart liberals who are exploiting the socks for their political PR value.

The legend about the black hole appearing in the dryer is a myth. Many escaped socks do indeed dwell in black holes, but they have to get there through a series of underground railroad stations, which are located (aptly enough) underground.

So what you're actually telling me is that socks burrow through the washing machine drum to this station, catch the train to a black hole and run away. Sounds very much like the Great Escape to me. Next you'll be saying they have border guards. What about socks that are on their last legs? Are they booted to the back of the queue? And those who are injured? Are they heeled? How does they train move? Is it toed?
I prefer the monkey story. It is much more plausible.

Agreed. How plausible is it that an odd sock could get past the border guards? Obviously they'd be on the look out for socks travelling alone. What actually happens is that thouands of odd socks are held in abject misery in sock refugee camps where they wait for their twin to turn up. As this never happens, the wait is endless. Many socks have been there from before the Norman Conquest. This sorrowful situation is remediable, however, if world governments would take control of sock manufacturing and produce only one type of sock for the planet. A summit meeting would determine the size, colour and composition of the new "EarthSock". Unfortunately, it would be too late for those pathetic creatures ending their days in the appalling sock camps. Perhaps their only hope would be a useful, if short, retirement as remote control covers.

I think the Remote and the sock tend to congregate in the same location as all the Bic Biros have through
countless generaitons. The same principal applies. Put a pen down in an obvious place. Go to use it and
it has gone. You spend hours looking for it and when you finally give up and do something else you find it again.
However sometimes they vanish forever and I don't think the sock monkeys are interested in biros. SO where
do they all go. Is there a parallel universe run by biros who are just trying to free their comrades into a life
that is more fullfilling that that which we give them.
I don't know about you but I get rather attached to a biro when I have had it a few weeks and get a bit upset
when it is abducted by its well meaning species.

Imagine those problems multiplied by weightlessness. The Americans tried to invent a biro that could be taken into space and work in zero-gravity conditions. The Russians simply took a pencil. Anyway I think you'll find there are no remote-controlled devices on the Space Shuttle, and probably no biros to lose either.

I'm sorry but you have all got it wrong.

Have you actually counted the socks that come out of the washing
machine? There's not one missing - there's one extra!! If you are
really then it matches the extra sock that appeared last week.

Unless of course my washing machine is at the other end of someone
elses Black Hole.

So you're telling me it's you who's been stealing all my socks, not the sock monkeys? Well I'll be. Do you have any spare pens and remotes, then? I'm running out.

Just forget about the whole thing. Stop watching the telly, don't wash your socks and forget about biros. Give
your house away to a foul smelling tramp, opt out of soicety, leave the country, find a backward uncivilised
domain of swamps, rain forests and bug eyed things and go live in a dark cave. Incidentally at the back of
which you will find all your socks, biros, remote controls, relatives you thought were dead and a yellow thing
of no obvious use

And the monkeys

I didn't like to mention it but the yellow thing of no obvious use was the monkey.

Are you sure that wasn't the banana peel left over from a sock monkey's mid-morning snack? They're out there you know. Always stealing my socks and remotes.

Spiny Norman is correct in a sense (see 8 messages ago). The Sock summit did occur in the 50s. The sock decided was a bland, brownish beige. The other socks have appeared from off-world, ie people from other worlds losing their socks on the journey to and from earth, and pick up new ones lost by us in the same manner here on earth. The abundance of multicolour socks in thousands of different designs is the best evidence of extra-terrestrials visiting earth we have.

I see, so what you're saying is the pretty coloured socks are migratory, much like the pretty birds of Britain. And all the aim of these socks is is to try to find a way home, pigeon style. That doesn't really explain why you lose remote controls or biros though. Monkey's still is the only explanation.

i know what happens to pencils,
youknow the ones that you start to use but never finish,or throw away?

they are eaten by the pencil eater (genus plumbus eata) , its a bird-like creature no more than 2 feet tall,
they have a specially adapted beak which fits the end of a newly sharpened pencil precisly,
they take the pencil in the beak and suck it up like spaggetie,
except the rubber on the end which they spit at preadetors, such as pink elephants

possiably a subsection of the pencil eater population has evolved to exploit the neich offered by biros.