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

[{Courtesy}]

Moving here has been very hard for me, since I went from living in a state with less population than the county I'm in now. I've made friends, like Courtesy and some of my fellow grad students, but as far as having people that I'm terribly close to here, no. The bigger the place you live, the fewer connections you actually make. People tend to be more standoffish, and so are you. It's something of a vicious cycle, I think.

Actually TEG had an insight into that. "In the country people talk to each other because they don't have anyone else to talk, Because in the city we have so many other ways to make friends we don't bother about making friends with their neighbours"

Oddly enough in straight clubs and bars people only tend to talk to their friends and the people that they want to get into bed. In gay clubs, a smaller community, people will often talk to each other more often. Strike up conversations whilst waiting for people at the bar. When I was a regular I used to know all the bar staff as well.

I don't think it matters where you live in the world, it is human nature to be suspicious of newcomers. As Z says, you need to make an effort to get on, both newcomers and existing residents.

Perhaps a lot of people who move into what they consider to be thier utopia, the place where they're going to bring up their children, expect people to be things that they're just not. When really they're just the same people you get in the city.

But I think Z's friend had a point. There are so many people they sort of get jumbled up. It's quite odd, really.

But you know, honestly, some of it is that I've found I've very little in common with people who grew up here. Their lives are so fast-paced, and their lives revolve around consumerism. It's unnerving, really.

Which is why I like Courtesy, although his truck intimidates me.

I lived in small towns growing up and have to say that - while you are in a closeknit community if you were born into it - its just as difficult to make new friends when you move into one as it is moving into a big city. In fact, in some ways its more difficult. Its hard to complete when Susie and Janey have known each other literally all of their lives and you've just gotten there the month previous.

Having said that, I wouldn't have traded those experiences for anything in the world. I never would have become the person I am today if I hadn't had to get out there and actively persue friends.

*sips and continues paging through the pamphlet*

Well, ladies and gentlemen, today was the last time, possibly forever, than an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was shown on television. Their last episode was experiment #912- The Screaming Skull (w/the short Robot Rumpus (starring Gumby)). A good, general episode, fairly strong humor throughout.

Sorry for interrupting the conversation flow, but this show's meant a lot to me over the years. And now, I can only get it through whatever few episodes Rhino decides to sell, and through the underground tape trading community that MSTies have set up over the past decade and a half.

I'm gonna be downstairs watching shorts. Think I'll start with some Commando Cody, maybe "Hired, pt. II", who knows.

*Departs*

*shoots a after Affy* What a wonderful show. Its a shame that it is off the air now.

*Parts*

Definitely a shame. Certainly one of the most creative ideas for a TV Show that I'd ever heard of. And I don't think I ever saw a single episode that didn't make me laugh.

[ttox]

[Affy]

"Something I've always wondered is whether or not English villages are as unwelcoming to new residents as they are often portrayed in books and films."

Having been born in one village, raised in another and spent over a decade living as an adult in a third all within 20 miles of each other, I do have some experience about this.

Z's ex is right about weekenders. We thought them the pitts unless they made an effort to join in, and very few of them did. They put the price of houses up, and brought their shopping with them in the boots of their immaculate cars.

What used to irritate me was people bouncing into the village, joining everything, telling us how to run things, and then bouncing out two years later. As a result I simply couldn't be bothered to get to know people until they had been there two years. What was the point?

The key thing about villages is that they are the only place with a truly mixed demographic; where there is a rich man in his castle whose next door neighbour is the poor man at his gate. (Only these days it would be the rock star in the castle and the weekender in the gate-house).

I would drink with a far wider range of people (from farm workers to company directors) in the village pub, than you would ever meet in any other kind of venue. (Maybe the gay scene is as mixed as that, Z, but I cannot think of any other straight environment that is. H2g2 uset to be, but it is too big now).

As a result, I knew and liked a lot of people that were not natural friends that I had very little in common with intellectually. Hell, we might shoot together, we might feel the same way about badger-baiting or the closure of the village school, but intellectually and educationally we were miles apart.

This is cool. It is important to be able to get on with folks who you only have limited things in common with, and I miss those nights in the pub.

But since all we had in common was the village and shared feelings about the environment, then we would have nothing in common with the incomers who were new to the village and who thought that the ickle lambikins were cute, and so were the foxy-woxies. As I said, there was no point in getting to know them until we did at leat have the village in common with each other.

I used to freak incomers quite a bit, actually. I had been born about 12 miles from where we lived, but I was married to a Scot and we both worked in IT and we looked and sounded like the incomers that we were. So when people asked me where I was from I would say "I'm not local." They would say "No, where are you from?" I would say "I was born the other side of Little-Village-On-The-Hill" (which was about 8 miles away. And then they would get embarrased and apologise.

But the point was, I was doing it without irony. Being born 12 miles away did make me an incomer.

Mindf**ker?

Moi?

Ben

Ben.

I think that the shortest move I made as a child was about 250 miles. I was most definitely an incomer anywhere I went.

I've moved a lot, and haven't generally been treated too unfairly by the other people who were there first.

However, I've gotta say that moving back to Indiana after a four year stint in Louisiana was one of the most rewarding "new kid" experiences I've ever had.

I had a horrid childhood moving experience. I went from being one of the kids in Missouri and then moving to Montana, and believe me, it was small town back then. So much for being cool...I was a new kid, and I went from having tons of friends to none. At least for a bit.

The funny thing is, I moved there when I was 8, and now, if people ask me where I'm from, I tell them Montana. I am a Montanan. It's even official that since I've lived there most of my life, I can claim transplanted native status (this was a long drawn out convo at a bar with a high school friend of mine who is now a columnist for the Missoula paper).

I guess it boils down to how well you fit in. And when I was 8, I automatically assumed the top dog status I'd had in Missouri. Didn't go down too well as the new kid!

I live in one of the small English villages you describe. My local authority provides social housing so we are a mixed social community. Generally the folks, like folks everywhere, are good people seeking a quiet life.

The incomers snap up the properties for ridiculous prices. We have at least two millionairs and several aspirants. But great efforts are made by the villagers to create social events and include as many as possible.

Of course you get the odd fracas. I've caused a few because I don't believe in feudal systems. If something wants doing then I do it. I don't wait for sanction from others. Overall the villagers see that what I do is in the common good. But when I first came they felt upstaged. Bit like Lil did on here.

I'm a metropolitan person really and one of the reasons I come on here is because rural life is a bit dull. But overall at my time of life I should be able to settle.

Just takes time to adjust. Never have been an easy person to get along with. But if I can help folks I will. The villagers found that out during the recent bad weather.

It wasn't long after I moved to Lincoln that I started working part-time at the post office, and I am certain that helped a lot to give long-time residents a chance to evaluate me. A couple that moved in shortly after I did, who took up the old Ashworth place, didn't mix as much and are still regarded as sort of transient. It ~is~ down to how much you contribute, and also, I believe, to how much you accept the residents for what they are.

Another fellow who moved in several years ago is universally disliked. He is considered arrogant -- he treats his fellow villagers as if they don't know as much as he does and has political views that are contrary to our interests. I'll clarify that; he was the minority of one who was in favor of abandoning the ordinance, not having any regulation at all.

Hi Everyone, Been gone for a while but I am back. Gonna have to try to get through the backlog and see what has happened. My wife is getting big, the pregnancy is going well, her bellybutton is almost an outie.

Life

Welcome back! Although I prefer to think of life as a cup of - Madagascar Red Vanilla, to be specific.