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

Loved the pics, FG

I hope you find some suitable accomodation in Blackie, Z (I'm sure you will) Might have to organise a mini-meet when you're settled.

Love the pix, FG. You captured the spirit of the gathering, IMHO.


Good luck with your relocation, Z. Must be exciting starting in a new place!

Community fireworks were rained out last night, but there were plenty of locals shooting them off around us so we still had a nice show--if you can call standing outside in the rain nice. (No, we didn't stay outside very long.)

Morning all.

[MTG{KEA}workin fool]

That's another Hillbilly Fourth out of the way. A good time was had by all. I ate way too much as usual and am feeling it this morning. I'll have to give my innards a rest from digestion today. My cake was delicious and enjoyed by all, but I was instructed to go back to baking blackberry cobbler in future. We had two hours worth of fireworks to end the evening. There was a bit of a problem with the spud launcher again this year. I may write a journal entry around it, if I can find a little motivation while the events are still clear in my head.

FG, why aren't there more pictures of a certain someone, darnit?!

The grounds crew woke me up for the millionth time in a row today, and finally I've had it. They aren't supposed to be crashing about homes before 8 a.m., and I've had them using electric hedgetrimmers outside my window at 6:30, and this morning at 7, a guy dumped out an entire wheelbarrow full of gardening implements not 20 feet from my window. I thought someone was breaking it, because of the clash.

I know it's hot. I know these guys want to get work done when it's cool. I know that. But the fact is, there are plenty of places to do landscaping stuff that isn't near homes, but lately, they've decided that right outside my window is the perfect place to get started.

ARGH.

They're punishing you for the fact that they had to get up early and work, MR.

What's this about the abduction of a child in Portugal?

I admire the powwow pictures too. What they said.

Thanks, everyone. And there are more pictures of Molly, MR, but they're for her and Laurie to look at first before I post them.

Let us know when the journal entry goes up, Hypatia -- I dearly want to hear about the spud gun!

[ ]*


*excuse the extended absence - strep throat

Lil, do you mean Port Harcourt, Niger? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6272676.stm

Apparently, the rebels have been kidnapping the children of their "enemies" lately. I don't know about you, but when people start kidnapping children for their cause, I really don't care about their issues anymore. They've become nothing better than thugs.

I believe PWM was referring to the disappearance of a 4 year old British girl while she and her family were on holiday in Portugal:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6668801.stm

I don't watch network news but didn't we have one of those full-saturation events when that teenager went missing in Aruba last year?

Yes, indeed. She still has not been found.

Here in Blighty, on the 4th of July, it rained. Again. And do you knwo what it's doing right now? Go on, guess.

I have spent the day at home being ill (again! Again! Argh!). Because my brother-in-law is comeing to stay this weekend, and because the flat looks remarkably unpleasant at the moment, I spent the afternoon doing house-work, and feling like a raging fraud because if I'm well enough to scrub the stove-top, then I'm well enough to stare at occasional students in a mildly bovine way. Except I tried to clean the stove with laundry detergent, and then put the pillow-cases on inside out. So maybe even bovine is above and beyond current capabilities and I'm reduced to slightly hostile lizard, no blinking.

I'm tired now.

Is it a media thing, this obsessive focussing on one person, one tragedy, one lost child, to the exclusion of all others going through the same thing? Or is it a human thing, because we find it very hard to assimilate large numbers or comprehend and empathise with something if it happens to an abstract yea number of people rather than to this particular sweet-faced child? Or both. Whatever. Sorry, was I rambling on? I hear the sweet call of the wobbling stack of pill-boxes on the top of my fridge.

Depends on the person missing. If the person missing is conventionally "pretty", they get more coverage than someone who isn't. By "pretty", the media means (usually) white, preferably female (and thin and a good picture doesn't hurt), and/or either young or from a well-off family. The number of missing persons who get ignored flabbergasts me.

> Cherry tomatoes - halved or quartered to make 'em bite sized.
Haloumi cheese - in little dice.
Fresh leafy corainder - torn.
Grind of black pepper.

Sounds like a feta cheese tomato, cilantro and cucumber salad I used to make... oh yeah, had bell peppers in it too. So maybe just a little different. But the important bits were the cheese and tomato and black pepper, with an aromatic leaf like cilantro mixed in.

> I've been told off more than once at work that I'm insulting when I was actually only joking.

This is my problem as well. I run it through my filter, it comes out funny, so I say it... and it is funny, but also a bit abrupt.

> Humourless Colleague also talks to himself

There's a fellow like that in our office who sings to himself. Tunelessly. Continously. And he likes Madonna. And he also has that peculiar inability to misunderstand irony.

Perhaps he has Asperger's too - although he's very slow to learn anything, and I find that I have to tell him things over, and over, and over, and over, and over...

Ag, I'm glad they've finally scheduled you for surgery. Now it's just a matter of waiting...

Pretty photos, FG, but is it just me or do others find Flickr an annoying site to look at pictures on? What's wrong with a captioned photo and a "next" link?

Santra: "Berk? What a nice word."

Have you checked its etymology? It doesn't seem so nice when you know where it comes from.

[Mol]

Etymology? Hey, give us non-native-English-speaking-people a break Bagpuss!

See, we don't pick up those kind of expressions at school, but through our net friends, capice?

On a more serious note - where *does* the word 'berk' come from?