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

[MTG]

[GD]

Forgot to mention I actually had something exciting happen to me today - my video game skills paid off this afternoon. I was driving to work, when somebody decided to turn left across the street - they would have broadsided me, if I hadn't turned the wheel hard to the right and zoomed around them. When you're driving around in Grand Theft Auto, cars will try to broadside you at random, so I've evidently picked up a useful reflex.

Whaddya know... Video games teaching you useful skills. I just wish there was a well-paid job that involved red keys, blue keys, and shooting lots of demons.

{Courtesy}

Did you jump out of your car and shoot the offenders? I have video skills for ~that~.

Naw... I forgot my Uzi.

I was pretty peeved as I saw them proceed along their way, not even seeming to mind that they'd almost cost me a car.

Another for Kerr. I'm sorry for your loss.

Mol, thanks for the memory-jog re: Wonder Woman.

I have downloaded the art thingy, but cannot produce anything worthwhile. Yet. I will keep trying, though!

David

and and for Kerr... we're not trying to get you p!ssed, honest!

I've decided that my painting's going to be a landscape... probably a fantasy one, but because this will be based on how fantasy works in *my* head there will be no busty women in chainmail bikinis* or giant eagles in the background.

*I've never got the chainmail bikini thing... firstly they'd chafe like buggery and secondly how to they expect to protect their vital organs in such a skimpy garment? And there's *no* way such a skinny woman would *ever* be able to comfortably wield a six-foot greatsword.

That video of the is cute, lovely to see how well they all get on.

Saw War of the Worlds last night, in spite of it not being set in Woking, I thought it was a cracking film.

Yeah, Boris Valejo's paintings always made me wonder exactly what his girlfriends looked like. Geez.

Okay, D's room is about half done. And get this...2 bags for charity, and six, yes indeed, you read that right SIX bags of trash. My daughter is a packrat. Or a crow. She's got a thing for small shiny objects. I found old broken bolts, washers, beads, broken necklace/keychain pieces...

I don't think she's going to like me when she gets home. I'm really being ruthless. I'm just done with all the cr@p I keep finding. I found my stapler, 3 rolls of tape, 4 pairs of scissors, several of my good pens, her 'missing' winter gloves and hat...and I can't tell you how many dirty clothes I found stuffed under things and in the toy box...no wonder she can never find anything.

And the blokes you get in fantasy art bug me too... I'm sorry, but muscles like a sackful of basketballs and a sword so big it qualifies as a weapon of mass destruction ain't gonna be much use when 30 tonnes of enraged dragon land on your head.

It'd be interesting to see these stereotypical muscle-bound heroes go against, say, an army of Picts... they'd get *cheesed*!

*blushes vermillion at all the outrageous flattery*

*busily making notes so as to create credible fantasy heros*

My sister's ex was an illustrator. He once did a lovely picture for a book cover of a hero and a heroine both sat on the same horse looking down at a village while dragons wheeled overhead. The hero and heroine (she bore a suspicious resemblance to my sister, BTW) were sensibly clad in leather trousers, shirts, jerkins, big boots, she had her quiver of arrows, he had a sword he could probably lift, neither of them had startlingly enormous chests, the rest of the picture was great. It got sent back because they didn't think it'd sell the book without cleavage and muscles like melons and a weapon of extreme silliness on display. Despite the fact that in the sory, the heroine is sensibly clad throughout and the hero is slender and quick rather than strong. But no, they have to be travestied on the front cover to sell the book to brainless male adolescents who want to fantasize and flex their pimples. It was very hard to convince them the book had originally been directed at GIRLS and only about one in ten girls is that keen on someone else's cleavage, and then they certainly wouldn't be impressed by melon biceps and his silly weapon.

Not that I get areated about these issues, hooo no. Harrumph.

Exercise. Yes well. My current excuse is that it is too hot. But then we don't have a pool locally. And if we did, I'd merely float in it, wondering about waterproof books.

It's probably as a result of that kind of art that a lot of women don't get into fantasy... it's even worse with roleplaying where a lot of the men (particularly the spotty greasy ones who have only ever seen a nekkid woman in print) expect female role-players to do scantily-clad Res Sonja type characters and get in a huff when they don't.

I do know some of my family think I must be somehow brain-damaged for reading and enjoying SF&F, solely because of the covers. Even when I wave Ursula LeGuin at them. It is as if they see two Agapanthuses, one with an MA who uses words like 'disarticulated' and 'bathetic fallacy' in the middle of Waitrose, and one who has a room temperature IQ and freakishly geeky tastes. Throw in the knitting, the cooking, the happy marriage to a non-SF&F fan, and their poor little onboard computers simply blow up. Hilarious.

<>

Ahh, yes... the good old assumptions about SF&F fans. On another thread I was told that admitting to playing D&D is, socially speaking, as bad as admitting to dressing up as a baby for sexual reasons.

[GDZ]

Hey, what's wrong with D&D? I *like* a bit of rp now and again.

Most of the RP players and GMs that I know are all rather intelligent people. Now, all of them seem also to have some certain social issues, but that goes along with a pet theory that I have regarding intelligence, looks and social ability.

Unfortunately ArtRage is a little bit buggy on the Mac. It sometimes just doesn't respond to pen strokes, and other times simply disappears without notice, taking any attempt at artwork with it into some nether-world of computer software.

http://www.flickr.com/ is another option for sharing images.

They really need to make game controllers for elderly arthritic hands. I'd like to improve my driving/shooting skills too.

>...staring at a housefly in the window
Castor () invariably, with loud jaw-snapping sounds, tries to catch lies - and, as invariably, fails.

Marvin ( - yes, named after a certain android) is the only four-legged in our family to have routinely caught flies. A flick of a paw, and one fly was trapped in a cage of claws. Scrape, scrape, same fly now transferred into a welcoming feline mouth. And buzzzzz buzzzz, strangely subdued, one fly made noises inside on cat's mouth. Until it didn't anymore....

>If they would invent a way for me to exercise in my sleep, that'd be boss.
Lentilla, I'm with you! Nobel prize stuff, it would be!

for Kerry, indeed!

MR, , I think our daughters may be related, somehow. I am next going to present her with the snow shovel from the shed when it's once again time to suggest a clean-up. (Actually, maybe I will Only, she'd probably look at me, head slightly at an angle, and say "Dad, you're strange"... )

>brainless male adolescents who want to fantasize and flex their pimples


And as to the wierd mix of things, a kid from 12's class recently took a long look at our walls and declared something like "you have a classy collection ... of very weird things..." We actually ended up enjoying the remark