Quite how Pinniped acquired the werewithal to buy this Pier is unclear. He has been speculating in Fish Futures recently, so that's one possibility. Whatever the source of his wealth, the little guy certainly appears to have some commercial acumen. A range of attractions will see to it that he's self-sufficient in fish from now on.

Welcome to the End of the Pier Revue! The initial performances will take the form of apoplectic rants and other amusing losses of decorum, punctuated with a few curiosities. For an example of the latter :

The Spell-Checker has identified an error in the first paragraph. That word should be 'wherewithal'. But 'werewithal' is actually a much better word, making it the first entry in Pinniped's 'Dictionary of English Improvement' :
Werewithal (n) : personal finances that turn hideously unpleasant once per month and thereby keep you awake all night.

Future attractions will be truly...

Spec-tac-u-lar!

A Walk in the Petrified Forest

(Pinniped has decided to try and make a serious point for once. If your preference is for the usual guff, maybe this isn't for you. Sooner or later, we'll get back to the oleaginous fishpaste we've come to know and love, so you could go straight there. You might even teach the wobbly little fellah a lesson that way - skate straight past the reasoning and wallow dreamily in the nice-sounding and trite conclusion. Yep, that's Pinniped alright....)

When you first enter the World that is h2g2, you are captivated. Who wouldn't be? It teems with Life (not to mention the Universe and Everything - which are actually fairly boring by comparison). Showers of sparks are falling around you; creativity crackles everywhere.

But let's take a closer look....

Just how dynamic is this place? Sure, you'll find ACEs and newbies roaming about, with wide open arms and eyes respectively. You'll find sharp repartee in conversations here and there, but it's the exception rather than the rule. It's then that you'll notice that most of the Spaces and Places are untouched in a long time.

Your heart will probably sink for a moment at this realisation. The sparkle that caught your attention has turned out to be a patina of dust in the sunlight. Now, here comes the critical moment. Brace yourself for a leap of perception. This place is beautiful anyway.

It doesn't matter if a lot of h2g2 has been there for a long time. Most great writing is like that, after all. Just enjoy it! Don't judge a piece on its posting date, or for that matter on the density of the conversation about it. Remember, too, that the meaning of what you find is more important than its superficial appearance. (Most of all, wherever you take real inspiration from what you find, remember to leave a word of acknowledgement. Someone has earned it. There are thousands of real labours of love out there).

I reckon each one of us has to ask him(her/it)self what h2g2 is for : Is it a reference library? Is it a chat room? Is it a forum for like-minded people?

'Well, it's a little bit of all of those things.' Excuse the cliche. The important thing is that it stays like that - a little bit of those things. A really tiny eensy-weensy little bit, purely on the grounds that h2g2 has to be whatever its researchers want it to be. There probably are a few weirdos who do actually want those things, and so call them into existence. So, yes, they are going to 'exist'. I use the term advisedly, because existence normally implies a tad more life-quality than they exhibit.

Which reminds me. There is now a second entry in the 'Dictionary of English Improvement', thanks to the meticulous research of our hard-working Spell-Checker.

Existencialism (n) : a branch of philosophy which holds that people possess the free-will to think and act independently, and that it's entirely up to you whether you draw round things or not.

Ahem, where was I? Ah, yes - the reasons why h2g2 is only superficially a reference library or a chat-room. You can get these things elsewhere. They're all over the Internet... not to mention out there in real life.

People who reside in chat-rooms really need to get out more. An occasional visit is OK, just to see what's going, and provided that you're prepared to be disappointed. The quality of conversation is often poor. When it's better than poor, you tend to find a clique with sharp elbows.

But the reference library tendency is more insidious within h2g2, because it's fostered at the administrative level. I don't want to get heated about the style of quite a lot of the Edited Guide; suffice to say that bland and obvious pop-ed features are a strange kind of homage to the great (and uncategorisable) Douglas Adams. Creativity doesn't fit in a pigeon-hole.

Whoever wrote the piece in the welcome pages, implying that we all write best about what we know best, ought to think carefully about their assertion. For what my opinion's worth, that particular piece of advice is plausible, misleading and downright dangerous enough to have come straight out of those notorious Publishing Corporations of Ursa Minor themselves. On the contrary, most people write best when their imagination is on fire and they're working hard to channel it. We all know that Douglas Adams wrote that way.

What about the third possibility - that h2g2 is a forum for like-minded people? This one is just a complete misconception, although the idea sounds reasonable until you think about it. When you do, then you'll realise that what you look for in this place is the precise opposite. At its best, h2g2 is a forum for wholly unlike-minded people who get off on other people's different ways of thinking and expressing themselves. The cream of the contributions to h2g2 are inspirational, and the great majority of contributions are thought-provoking. There are gems of insight (and plenty of simple happiness and laughter too) wherever you look.

And into this delightful world, they release... Editors... (insert strident doom-laden music, if GuideML ever evolves beyond primordial-soup-functionality)

You might guess that the author dislikes editors because he can't get stuff published. In fact I can say here with honesty that I've only ever twice offered pieces for publication, and both were accepted. No, I mistrust editors for a more fundamental reason.

Writing is art, and a particularly intimate kind of art at that. Each work of art in this gallery is complete in itself; a triumph of the self-expression of its creator. Each work conveys a precise message, and anxiously questions it's observer : 'Do you see what I see?'

So what happens? By Order of the Management, the curators in this particular art gallery go around thinking 'I could improve the composition of this painting if I cut some holes in it'.

But there's more to this place than that...

'Too damn right there is. It's a pier for a start'.

'Shut up, Pinniped.'

'I will not shut up. Here you are, acting as if you own the place, frightening the punters off with all this drivel. Who the hell are you, anyway?'

'I'm your creator. I conceived you as a kind of alter ego'.

'B******s. I happen to know my alter ego, and it certainly isn't you. You're just a sad individual trying to cash in on my enterprise. You're spoiling it. S*d off.'

'Stop pretending to have free will, you disgusting little beast. You're nothing more than a product of my imagination. I dreamed you up barely a week ago.'

Pinniped grins alarmingly. He holds out a sheet of paper, smeared with unspeakable piscine excrescences. Through the slime, the tenuous outline of a fish is just discernible.

'There, I drew round that one myself. I think you'd better face up to the fact that I am indeed a free agent, Daddy Boy. Now, I reckon you could do with some literary criticism. Let's have a fishmonger's at this stuff. Oh, dear, this isn't what the public wants at all. It'll have to come out. This space is reserved for Ent-er-tain-ment!'

'I was trying to make a serious point about the Edited Guide. Look that's the pun behind the title, the 'End of the Pier Revue'. Clever, isn't it?'

Pinniped looks blank.

'This isn't a s**ding pun'

'This is a fine example of Victorian seaside architecture, ripe for commercial exploitation. Go re-register, and get your own Personal Space if you want to trot out this c**p.'

'I can't do that. I'd have to think of a new nickname for a start. That took me ages.'

'Literary Onanist.'

'What?'

'Literary Onanist. That's your new nickname. Now p**s off.'

For some reason, I find myself resorting to the most miserable abasement at this point. I plead with the corpulent creature, promising the most diligent of service should he permit me to stay.

'Now you think your s**ding Dickens. P**s off.'

'Pinniped, please. We could be a marvellous double-act. Your imagination and my articulation of it. I really want to stay. I'm proud of what I've... We've... started here and I really don't want to give it up now. Please, Pinniped...'

The seal gazes at me intently. The depth and intelligence of those deep, dark eyes suddenly fills me with terror. In another second, I will turn on my heel and flee this place forever, but instead he speaks :

'All right, you can stay. I retain total editorial control, and you will learn the proper grammatical use of ellipsis; I can't stand sloppiness. You will pay me rent of twenty fish per day for the privilege. Deal?'

'Deal',

I say, completely failing to consider what I'm letting myself in for. I am not really thinking clearly. My mind is a blur of fear and wonderment.

'Pinniped'

I venture,

'Can I ask you a profound question? It wasn't the mice and the dolphins at all, was it? It was...'

Pinniped frowns.

'Dunno about the mice'

'It certainly wasn't the dolphins. And I warned you about the ellipsis. Now get on with the piece. Wind it up, quick.'

Yes, I suppose I'd better round this rant off. Note the decisive full stop.

The truly wonderful thing about h2g2 is that it's fabric was woven by everybody. It's a universal creation, in the same way that the real world is. Whatever a contributor leaves here is left to us all. The anonymity is actually the crystallising touch. A collection of anonymous people are implicitly equal, and so everyone here shares everything. Discovery is as important as creation.

'You're not s**ding anonymous. You're Literary Onanist, and you'd better wind this damn piece up pretty damn quick.'

'I refuse to be called that. And I don't want to end the piece. I kind of had an idea to just keep adding to it, so it got longer and longer over time. Quirky, and a neat way to poke fun at the Administration.'

Pinniped's contemptuous glare is by now getting uncomfortably familiar.

'You kind of had that idea because you're a kind of self-indulgent prat'

'This is not some anal exercise in free-writing for people with wispy beards and pointy fingers. This is a commercial venture aimed at regular punters, most of whom are deficient in both erudition and attention span. Wind it up, right now!'

'What about the name?'

I retort indignantly.

'Lion'

'Li-On. It sounds noble and grand and a little bit dangerous, but those of us in the know will remember exactly where it came from. Now finish this before I turn nasty.'

'OK, Pinniped. You're the Boss. Cut...'

'Ellipsis!'

'Sorry!'

The Pinniped Portfolio

Pinniped

22.11.01. Front Page

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