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

bully!

*switches over to Sleep The Clock Around*

Just so, Sporky, just so...

"Take a walk in the park/ take a Valium pill / read the letter you got / from the memory girl /
But it takes more than this / to make sense of the day / yeah, it takes more than milk / to get rid of the taste..."

*comes back from Doing Things*

Billy's teeth aren't chipped. Weren't. They projected, the front two, and one was sort of folded over the other. The GIF does obscure some detail, but the thing is I can't draw in too much detail because the edges of things are so soft. It would look strange. Artists never delineate all the teeth in detail unless they are drawing a shark...

He's looking past the camera at somebody who is flinging an extraordinary conglomeration of wire and collar buttons (the old fashioned things for celluloid collars) and snaffle bits and dee rings and the wire from champagne cork cages and a few conchos ... and he is holding a small driving bit, probably for a mule, which he snatched out of the air when he got fed up of his companion tossing the whole mess at him ... which the companion was probably doing to see if he could make Billy flinch or laugh.

I am ready for more beer. Matina, beer please. I'm starting to get nervous or anxious or something, not sure what. Help help, I'm leaving my comfort zone!

A song of love is a sad song,
Hi lili, hi lili, hi lo,
A song of love is a song of woe,
Don't ask me how I know

Glug

Oops, simulpost.

Maybe it was a wedding. All the stuff being thrown was western-style confetti?

Shan't then, Loony...

Hi, Lil. Strawberry? Champagne?
A walk in the park? A Valium pill?
The letter you got from the memory girl?

Jeez. l just heard thunder. lt's fall, for goodness sakes...no more storms...
But l shall brave it. Doesn't seem too bad; l wasn't even expecting one.

Waiting for the moon to rise, Don't leave the light on baby...


Chasing darkened skies above me, looking right past me, at the winter and the moon. If there's a place I wanna go, then I'll be there with you.

Hi, all. Long time no see.
*goes to fridge and rummages about looking for NABs*
Is this cider? It'll do. *muttering somewhat musically**brylcreme; a little dab 'll do ya*

Lil, thought I heard something about sleeping thru Dorothyland on the train earlier. Must admit it's not real scenic right now; on the wrong side of a short drought, ya know. But, in early summer when the wheat has ripened, I personally think it's beautiful. Don't quite understand how a trip from the peninsula to N.M. goes thru here, but, what can one expect from a guvment subsidized transit system. Anyway, my point is (yes, Obleo there is a point) as you are sleeping your way thru rmember someone in Dorothyland loves ya and wishes you safe passage and sweet dreams.

Oh yeah, good luck on the presentation thingie.

*muttering again* *me and my arrow, do do do doont n do do do. me and my arro o o ow, do do doont n do do do*

What's that you say there, Sporky?

*Senses a strange mood in the atelier, there'a a smoky tang in the air, the sky has a deeper blue hue.*
*Takes a deep breath*
Aaah, it's fall! I love the fall. Everything starts to make sense again, the hectic, whimsical summer goes over to the hectic, determinate fall. The schools and evening -courses starts up again, we know what we want to do now.
Harvesting, making jams and chutneys, preparing for the winter.
Colourfull foliage, smell of heather, clear air, I can see for miles....

[P]

I've been looking at Billy...Lil, you're amazing. How did find out about the flying wire, bits, and buttons? There's another story in there!

{[B17]} dodging his own bits of wire and things

*comes out of studio having run bunches of last-but-one minute errands and ready to relax until the pest control human arrives*

Matina, please bring me some pekoe tea, milk and sugar.

Well, look what the full moon brought out last night! Lyric poetry and pensive moods. Sorry guys, I started to yawn like a horse not long after I got online, and had to go crash.

ox, the flying stuff includes snaffle bits with mouthing jingle-bobs, high-ported curb bits and their chains, and other such full-weight booty from the tack room. I cross-checked yesterday with the ferrotypist, and he says that, for that kind of camera (4-lens Anthony), Billy would have stood 10 to 15 feet away, and the exposure would have been between 10 and 15 seconds. This is why they had posing stands, to hold a person still for that length of time.

As you look at his face in the GIF, the incoming stuff (all wired together in one big "toy") is arriving from behind your right ear and is flying past him and above -- I have found a curb bit in the upper left corner. For a curb bit to get, say, 25 feet and be that high, it has to be moving at a decent rate. I think it was thrown high, like a lasso. Would you flinch if stuff like that was coming straight at your face?

*sucks down tea gratefully* Another one, Matina, please.

Yea, but look at that Billy! I don't see him flinching! Almost a dare.

Probably the case ox.

Ah, the Billy you are looking at is a reconstruction. Remember the deformed-looking original? All his features were sort of drifted to the right and the face was too large. The standard proportion for the human male is 9 heads tall; the head for real, and then 8 more measures of the height of the head. I cut and pasted the original head and made him a little over six heads tall, even allowing for his eyes being set too high in his skull. That is not well-proportioned. I think he ~did~ flinch, and then grabbed it before his friend/tormentor could repeat the trick (or repeat it again). Which is why he happens to be holding a driving bit.

In the Authentic Life that Pat Garrett and Ash Upson wrote in 1882, Upson said that Billy always had a little smile on his face (Paulita Maxwell said the same thing forty years later), and you had to watch his eyes to figure out whether he was getting angry.

I really feel nervous about the coming presentations. We Kidologists are such an obsessive lot... the thing is, will the "audience" ~like~ him?

Wow.
Lil, how could you tell it was riding tack? From your years working with horses?
Hi, Phil

*floating in, in her vague, even more ligth-feetedly manner than before*

Hi all!

Matina, a Y please...

OK, so who's got the champagne bottle?

I was told a few hours ago that I'm now an *huh? hold on, checking dictionary* AUNT! My brother and his fiancée had a boy, named Edvin...

Hmm... I saw a reconstructed version of the billy tin type, just like the one you have, lil, in a book recently. I tried to find the info about the picture, but the book was so well annotated that I gave up. Looked exactly like the picture, only without all the scratchy bits. To tell the truth, I think it was a combination of that tintype and a covering, which was painted on.