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

When I saw the film version of Zelazny's 'Damnation Alley' I almost quit reading science fiction... I mean what's the point if nobody else gets it.

God bless the h2g2Postteam - looks good and thanks for being the 'editor' and selecting just the right words to keep as a regular mission statement.
And that semicolon just tops it off perfectly.

Tonsil, please note I said 'regular' as in weekly, as in ongoing, as in I have retracted the threat to quit.

peace y'all
~j~

I don't know. Ask the little man behind the curtain.
I feel like George S. Kaufman. I think I saw one of my original words in that intro.

My vote is at least a link to some kind of expletive comment about the goals and fouls of the (insert Popeye laugh) so newcomers can be just as confused as old-comers.
I always spell and pronounce spiel with and 'h' in it, as my acquaintance with it is in the Yiddishkeit. Shpiel.... but the doctionary say's you're right. What do they know? They can't spell schmuck, either.

Yes, well, Harlan was one of the reasons I didn't pull a Columbine when I was a teenager. I found out you could mess up a whole lot more people with words than you could with bullets.

I just gave my 11 year old the first two dangerous visions anthologies to read.

Later I'll give her the truly hard stuff: Harlan's own work.

Yes, well, it was because of the stupid film, which was kind of impressive to a fifteen year old out in the sticks, that I read the book.

All right, second revision of Library Games into in the can.

I'm still here, jwf. I would add links and stuff as you mentioned, except shazz appears to have done so already in her tentative AGG/GAG #2. The only thing I can really add is the link to Library Games, which would look like so:

Games for Playing Whilst Bored in School Libraries

I'd also suggest that the intro to Lucinda's piece be streamlined slightly. The line that reads, "Click <>here<> to see 'Recursive Laughter' by Lucinda," could be omitted if the link were placed over the words "Recursive Laughter" in the line just before that.

So it would read, "But this recent entry Recursive Laughter reveals a true sense of humour and is one of the most thought provoking and funny entries I've ever seen. Enjoy! ~jwf~"

Lastly, the way shazz wrote that suggested entry looks okay, but the opening spiel made jwf's first paragraph sort of redundant. I realize you didn't write the redundancy into it, jwf, because you hadn't included the weekly opening spiel. But you might want to read over it again with that in mind and touch it up as necessary.

Here's the best mission statement I've seen so far, taken from a post by jwf above (with a slight slip of the scalpel): "For all the foo-for-all and hot-air expended [by members of AGG/GAG], it really does just come down to promoting and shamelessly plugging writers who create anything good that doesn't fit the 'Edited Guide' rules and regs."

PS to John. Would a little update to the AGGH page be in order? Maybe just a couple of words at the bottom and a link to the AGG/GAG page? This serves the purpose that AGGH seemed to describe originally, and I imagine there are a few visitors to the page now and then from the link at AWW.

PS again even - I've been surfing through some random normal entries looking for something else to recommend for #2, but haven't found anything that jumped at me.

...But looking at the AWW, I just noticed this bit by Hobbes. The Fashion Industry and it's Positive Contribution to Society. http://www.h2g2.com/A665859

It's the perfect embodiment of one of the Guidelines for Edited Guide. And it would be amusing to try to write an introduction for this piece that used more words than the piece itself.

If no one else hates it, you could use this for the third entry of AGG/GAG #2. Here's an intro for it:

In his concise, no-beating-around-the-bush style, Hobbes shares his opinion about the world of haute couture with his entry on The Fashion Industry and Its Positive Contribution To Society. Keep in mind that Hobbes is "currently going through a beige period playing lots of easy listening music by people such as Burt Bacharach," according to notes on his user space. [recommended by Deidzoeb]

(The bit about Burt Bacharach is an irrelevant factoid taken from his user space for the purpose of padding his bio.)

Ok GAGers, I've incorporated your suggestions and re-done the page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A666623
Nice touch Subcom!
tonsil I am learning Dutch so need to practice spelling words like speil correctly... but I have also seen it spelled as schmuck and shpiel.
By the way, this is very like the Take5 column we used to run wa-a-a-a-y back at the inauguration of TP, but that picked the best of the 25 accepted entries... this is much more fun and saves me a bit of work!

shazz

Glad we're all having fun!
Will update AGGH page.
Will check out Shazz'z latest version of AGGGAG#2 to see if =x's suggestion of a shorter schpiel is included.
Wondering how tonsil comes to run a 'church' library if he's so familiar with Yiddish.
Glad to see Zelazny was an inspiration to others.
peace
jwf

Hi all

just seconding Zoeb rec of Hobbes piece. I laughed!

Well this is a nice place to be, people having a laugh instead of disappeating up their own .......

I like the look and feel of the page for TP, you all deserve a pat on your collective backs.

Our Baptist minister's Jewish.

>Our Baptist minister's Jewish.

LOL. Only in America huh!

~j~

You-all had a minister that was Jewish. Disraeli!

hey - what happened to the page that called me an enigma? No fair!

It's a mystery to me!

Anywho - I've converted my 'nominations' page into some kind of archive as well, so hopefully over the weeks we'll end up with a nice list of cool entries there
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A663653)

Just logged on and not quite sure which page seems to be missing. I know Shazz took up my draft of Issue #2...

Lucinda's Archival thread seems a good, safe and private place to list new nominations. This thread and the AGG/GAG threads will become very public once we publish. So, everyone please consider e-mailing me for the password to AGG/GAG so you can log on as AGG/GAG and post anonymously as AGG/GAG if you need to be 'critical' of some work.

And perhaps we should confine 'organisational discussions' to the thread so named off the AGG/GAG homepage because I'm starting to miss some of the many threads we now have going. I only found Lucinda's nominations list today.

peace
jwf

Ahhh... never one to waste paper, sorry webspace, I used the entry I created for the draft of GAG/AGG2 for the inaugural edition! Do not fear... I have the text and coding safely stored ready for use!
You wouldn't believe how many people have a sneaky peek at Post items before the actual current edition is released!
I can easily repost it for further comment if you like... and you are still there in all your glory Lucy!

shazz

There has been a few mails going about in the scout e-mail group about scouts cleaning up WW (this doesn't sound good to me)so it might be a good idea to trawl through the old entries before they are sanitised.