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

Wish me luck, I just applied for a job I really, really want.

Yes, I've got a job now, but this one will be better.

I need better. My Cow-orkers are insane.

*crossed fingers*

You know you've been away too long when....

comes out as

Welcome to the atelier, Woolly Mammoth. I hope you can take a few moments to check out the forum page at A304354, and see what we're all about.

*several CLI bots arrive via the service lift and pick up the pieces of sofa that was broken by the woolly mammoth, then sweep up the sawdust and cart everything away, leaving an empty space in the seating arrangement, a space amply filled by the mammoth*

*(I don't quite know how to account for a gross of cinnamon buns. Matina wouldn't make more than a couple dozen at a time...)*

Nice to see you back in the salon, Z! And you too, sea!

Five hours since my announcement, we still have no water. What we have had, all afternoon, are thumping great gully-flooding thunderstorms, with a few overhead lightning bangs that terrified the cats. Not good weather to be out fixing a water main.

Is it Thursday morning yet?? I really want to go to Vegas. It's really my kind of town.

Looking forward to seeing Sea again, as well as to go to the conference. It's going to be quite the weekend.

I forgot, that's this week, isn't it! I hope you have a great time, Marv.

We have water.

Yesterday whilst shopping I discovered an ice cream flavor made with reeses peanut butter cups. Please excuse me while I put my face in the carton.

Just home from the for now weekly game of ball. I think I'm ready to die now.

*Greensleeves undulates into the bar... er, saloon... er, salon*

"A schmall... er.... small... cooling craym de mint... cream de mont... crème de menthe, er, frappé, please Matina"

"Bloody 'ot out there, isn't it?" *she says brightly. She doesn't seem to have noticed that the weather has broken, and it appears that she has lost her other aspirations too.*

*She perches carefully on an appropriate barstool and peers around at the assembled company*

"hic"

*She looks around to see who might have hiccupped and then a thought or some other thing disctracts her and, and standing very carefully up, she delicately pats her rear end and the top of her head, and finally finds what she was looking for. She cautiously fits a pair of green wire bi-focals on the tip of her nose, and starts reading the backlog.*

*Every now and again, the sound of crème de menthe frappé being slurped up through a ladylike straw can be heard from her corner of the salon*

"1978? Well....." *...but before she launches into musical anecdotage, she reaches the bottom of the crème de menthe glass, and is startled by the sheer volume of the gurgling noises she's making*

*She looks around, and decides to blame it on the nearest convenient Woolly Mammoth, and hands it the empty crème de menthe glass*.

*She carefully reads Lil's post:*

>> Not every post I make gets a response. The way I see it, what I posted wasn't creative/interesting enough to sparkle; the lack is mine, but it doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. At some other time, what I said might have caught the ear of the group.

and

>> in the atelier your thoughts are welcome, your ego less so.

"Um......"

"......Er........"

*Greensleeves is clearly struggling to articulate*

"What happens if you don't actually HAVE any thoughts, though?" *she finally asks, with a disconcertinly sober quality of self-awareness*

*And then the moment passes, Matina brings another crème de menthe frappé, and Greensleeves sits quietly on her bar stool sipping frozen peppermint-flavoured alcohol through a straw.*

>> What I was thinking Kelli was, if you had found out before you got pregnant, it might have made you put it off? Or at least be more stressed about it. And I reckon that would have been a shame.

Sol's got a point there, Kelli. It's me what's saying this, and I believe she's bang on the nail there.





>> My Mum, in desperation, has taken to loading me (aged 2 and a half) and one sister (aged one) onto a sled and dragging us down the snowed-under road to the village at the bottom of the mountain, buying groceries, and hauling the whole lot back up again. It takes her hours.

Forgive me, Agapanthus, but your antecedents were stark staring bonkery mad. Fascinating, admirable, over-ambitious, accident-prone, and bonkery mad.





>> "Heathcliff" was on the radio during that same time.

... and now I live close enough to Haworth to pass a sign every day which reads: Bronte parsonagë - Isn't that umlaut really rock and roll?





>> The bad news is that at some point they grow up to be teenage mutant sulk-a-lots.

HAAAAaaaaatiiiiiiii! Good to see you back. I'm pants at IM, darling. But do ping me if you catch me early in my evening. I want to know all about Denmark and your Baltic Adventure. And you are right about the teenage mutant stuff.


>> Other than that I think everyone has a right to look odd unless there is some regulation forbidding it (and they have agreed with it).

Agree with that. I am not the clothing fascist the shorts-episode makes me appear. It was just an odd thing to see in the North of Englandshire.





>> I once burnt at least £40 , maybe even as much as £50 on cooker by mistake....

What? How?





>> Back in the day of pound notes my parents had some under their bed. (never found out why).

Were they farmers? Lots of farmers I knew used to have oncers and fivers tucked under the mattress. What the taxman didn't see, the taxman didn't grieve over.





Oh, and better a Mammoth in the room than an Elephant Welcome Woolly Mammoth.

Lil, does the Atelier include a mechanism for coping with scale? Having a Mammoth and an Ant in the same conversation is rather disconcerting.





Dowsing - something I'd like to believe in but unfortunately no longer do, despite the fact that my father dowsed for water and my mother dowsed for health and diagnosis. James bloody Randi keeps *on* undermining my belief in the romantic, I'm afraid: http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/dowsing.html





Healing Hands, this is a thread full of oddballs and missfits. *peers at lpt's departing back and waves sadly as he vanishes into the distance again* And I think it is the oddballishness and misfittery which so many of us like about the Atelier. But we don't have a hive mind. Although comments appear to be ignored, they are all read, but sometimes conversations move on before there is time to comment. For example, I was reading about Strangely's experience with the and the I wanted to say "oooooooohhhhhhh" and "aaaaaaaahhhhh", but it's rather too late now, and this post is too long already. Likewise, as you know, we are all fond of Amy and excited about her move, but even so, Lil had to mention the idea of a Nest Warming party twice.

I know that this particular thread has a rep for being hard to join among some folks because I've seen it commented on elsewhere on site, but most of the people who have tried and failed have either (a) been too pressed for time to keep up with the backlog or else (b) assumed that they are being ignored when in fact they aren't. I know Az has felt this because she has said so. On the other hand, Wandering Albertross, Mikerhike and Strangely Strange have all joined us recently, so we clearly are not un-joinable.

There has been a third category of people: Oetzi was one and RedPeckam another, who have trolled us, and the usual form of their trolling has been to try to re-structure the Atelier according to their own pre-conceived rules. Oetzi was finally banned from the Collective, (another BBC site) for being vile and objectionable there, and a side-effect of that was that he got banned from h2g2 too. RedPeckham has since apologised off thread for her behaviour here, and explained that she was going through a very tough time at the time, which did go a long way to explain what she was doing here. However, our trolls, Oetzi and RedPeckham in particular, have made some of us wary and nervous around those newcomers who enumerate our manifold sins and wickednesses and then wave the list in our faces. Not suprising that we get defensive, we are just humans, (apart from the Ant and the Owl and the Elf and the Mammoth, obviously).

This thread can seem overly cohesive at times, and cohesive in the face of evolutionary change, but I don't think that is in fact true. As I said, we don't have a hive mind. It *has* changed as a result of its participants. I know it is not what Affi, Garius and Lil originally envisioned. On the other hand, it is true that the kinds of interaction that we have on this thread are highly valued by the participants, and because of this, we are defensive of a proven formula and habituated to how we interact here. I know that the salonistas can seem an intimidating lot to join. I think it took me three attempts to join, and even longer to feel entirely comfortable here.

But my point is that it's a big ole h2g2 and a bigger ole interweb out there. There are other spaces for other kinds of interaction, and I'm interested in what Az is doing over on Word Press at Casa Az, for example. However, I like the fact that Lil has managed to create a space here with the flavour which is has. Also, I am impressed at how you are thinking through and processing your new experiences in Internetland. I don't know if you've come across Mother of God here on h2g2 yet, but she'll tell you what it was like for her coming onto h2g2 as a complete net newbie. She went through a huge storm-norm-form process online.

Ach, enough already. It's good to see you settling down, and I'd love to see links to your butterfly phtos.

And while we are talking about people being ignored - will y'all stop ignoring ME! Who *was* it who mentioned Azerbijan? And why aren't you telling us more about it?





Nice weekend. Fabulous black tie do. Why do men in black tie look so damn sexy? Only thing lacking was Men in Kilts. Also lots of lying around in bed and some Reading.

Late back though. Kept on missing trains.

'Night All.



B

PS:

>> The bbc.co.uk membership system is temporarily unavailable.

>> This is due to essential maintenance work.

>> Unfortunately this means that you won't be able to become a member or sign in to this service for the moment. You will find that this limits some of what you can do, e.g. you might not be able to join a conversation or post a message.

>> The service should be back to normal by 0500 BST. Please check back later.

Bar Stewards.

PPS - welcome back Z, SEA and Greensleeves.

*blinks at Greensleeves*

*blinks twice at what appears to be a woolly mammoth*

*blinks three times at Z, Hati and sea*

*blinks*

Think I should go back to bed I keep thinking I'm seeing things *rubs eyes*

Good news that the water is back on Lil.

"hic"

*blinks*

*Struggles to get out of her invisibility cloak*

Hi Woolly Mammoth

*Enjoys Greesleeves eloquence*

'... become sulkathon monsters'. *In denial. Firmly* Not The Pea. It will be a paragon of sweet reasonableness. Clearly.

Good to see you back, Hati! And 'Hi There!' the Mammoth.

Woo hoo Z!

Welcome back, Greensleeves!

Welcome Wooly (can I call you that?)

*waves cheerily to Hati*

There used to be an enormous ginger tom that hung around our Sainsbury's for some time. He was constantly being stroked, his purr was incredibly loud and judging by the size of him, was well-fed and probably well-loved too.

I've failed to get the new collar on Cassie. I just have to touch it and the bell tinkles and she is straight off out into the garden!

Good luck with the new job, Sea.

Glad to hear you will soon have water on tap again, Lil. I felt dead guilty at using five wateringcans full of water to top up the fountain. *looks shame-faced* But the tinkly sound it makes does help to give the illusion of coolness. But it now looks as if the weather has broken and temperatures will return to something far more sensible.

Ah good a big Wooly Mammouth to alight upon. Hello and hello greensleaves.

Yay, Monday morning . Glad Lil's flowing again.

Wow!! A welcome to 1926 and Wooly Mammoth, and a Hiya again to SEA and Greensleeves and a great to see you again Hati and...

Think I'm out of breath now...

Glad to hear that the water will be back on soon, Lil! Hopefully the rain and Tstorms will let up enough that repairs can be done quickly.

SEA, the best of on the new job -- I'll be looking shortly, myself! So glad Freddy's shuffled off for now...I'll be needing all the luck I can get.

Am feeling desperately hungry right now. I have fasting blood tests in the morning, and I forgot to eat before I had to start the fast. I have gobbled up 5 unsalted soda crackers, and will explain to the nurse, that I couldn't get to sleep w/o eating *something*.

SC

Hi Z, hi Hati, welcome Woolly Mammoth!

*Walks over to Greensleeves*

I would offer you a drink, but you seem to be doing quite well already. Incidentally are you planning on doing another record?

My Mum used to stitch buttons on our sleeves to stop them going green when we had colds.

Extends upturned palms towards tone. Up, up UP

*Greensleeves, who has been looking rather ill, focusses on the Pirate standing before her, and brightens visibly*

"I've got no plans for a record at present darling, but I could sing for you!"

*This was not a good idea*

*Our diva undulates to her feet, wobbles slightly, and looses her footing and, sliding elegantly to the floor, she comes to a rest with her head propped against the lower leg of the Woolly Mammoth*

*Her glasses slide down to the very tip of her nose*

*She starts snoring quietly, like a cat*

That's a nasty growth you've got there on your toe young Wooly Mammouth.

*steps carefully around Greensleeves' recumbant form, and reaches up to tickle the Mammoth behind its knee*

Look what I've found! http://www.sq.ro/spamplants.php

Isn't this FAB!

Ben