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

The sadistic type is he? Interesting.

Maybe if we pretend that the last thing we want to hear is his saga then he may feel that we deserve to be punished

Of course you deserve to be punished. Sadly I am fresh out of punishing time until tomorrow. Then I shall make it my business to inflict upon you the uplifting tale of Olivia and Ethelred.
The latin quote is of course 'Hello. We love weevils'. The word curculio means, strictly translated,corn worm; but one of the internet latin dictionaries suggests it for Weevil.

My breath is baited

I have posted 'The Tale of Ethelred The Undead and Olivia Oatweevil' as a guide entry. This is because a) I need to practice (ie do for the first time) Guide ML; b)I wrote it in MS word and did not know how to copy it into this reply; c)This thread is getting too long.
I would much rather it appear on the Church Page. I hope that Nick might think it worthy, in which case it should be transferred and deleted as a Guide Entry. I do not know how to do this.
I hope that I have not trodden an anybody's metaphorical toes.

Whoa, you seem to have put a lot of effort into that. One of the only problems with it is, when viewing it with my browser under Linux, all of the single quotes show up as question marks (which means I could've told you that you edited it using Word even if you hadn't mentioned it ). Other than that (and a couple of typos), it's great!

Is this intended to be the write-up for the Feast of the Ancestors holiday? I can link to it on the church page without having to physically move the document, but I need to provide some explanation as to its place in the world.

No Nick, its not the write-up for the holiday. Its just a story they tell when they celebrate the holiday. It does not, for example, explain the curling or the snow weevils. That task I leave to you. Fit it in as you wish.
Am I always going to have problems if I paste from word into Guide ML?

I'm not sure what the problem is there. I think that Word (perhaps all Microsoft editors, I'm not sure) has remapped the single quote to some non-standard ASCII value. That's what seems to have happened here. Perhaps you could try editing it in Notepad, retyping all the single quotes (including apostrophes). I don't know if that will work but you could try it.

I've seen several sites in which all the single quotes show up as question marks. They've all been created using Windows applications. I guess standard ASCII just wasn't good enough for Microsoft. Not like Microsoft doesn't have a history of breaking standards.

I've been doing some research into this wierd single quote problem. If I select (under windows) a piece of your story that has a single quote in it, paste it into WordPad and save it out, then load it up into a hex editor, the single quote character you've got has an ASCII value of 91, which is very strange because the ASCII code for a proper single quote is 27. Even the slanted single quote (below the tilde (~)) has a value of 60. I don't know where Word is coming up with this character, but it must be part of some ultra-secret Microsoft private standard, because I'll be damned if I can't figure out what to type (outside of Word) to generate this character..

If I edit the WordPad fragment and type a single quote character, it types the correct single quote character, so all I can say is... Windows is screwed up.

What does this have to do with the holiday? Just curious.

Dr. D

Absoultely nothing!

Was that typo intentional? There's a soul in that word now... Sweeet...

Does Big Dan have a whole heap of Motown Soul Weevils in his luggage?

I wouldn't be surprised...

Actually, I've just got a couple of Canadian Typo Weevils around hear. Or here.

The Iranian Bazooka Weevil's long lost cousins!

Dr. D

Nick, what's the prognosis for The Feast of the Ancestors?

He got busy at work again, I venture.

Dr. D

Zonker is very, very correct. Work has gotten rather loony-tunes and I'm stuck at home, sick as a dog, telecommuting.

I should ask, Perc, if your story is meant to accompany the Feast of the Ancestors write-up or if you meantit as a separate side story. If the latter is the case, I can just link to it from the church page.

If it's meant to accompany the write-up, then I will just have to feel all bad and guilty until I find the time to devote to writing it.

I hate being sick.

I am sorry to hear that you are unwell. I have just recovered my sense of smell after what seems like months of sinusitis and I thoroughly sympathise with that 'sub-human' feeling that seems to accompany illness.
The tale is just a separate side story, but my vanity is such that I would appreciate a link on the church page.
Hopefully Kensington and the booming church membership will keep you cheerful until you are recovered.

Be well o' leader!

Dr. D