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

I must say I was heartily amused by this one. I remember the old attempts to circumvent the wait times in the old Queue. I've heard such attempts met a mixed response. And here is a perfect example of that!

This story seemed to ring a bell with me... so I've just searched through my old subbing emails and discovered that the whimsical and bored subeditor which replied to your entry was in fact me

I remembering trying to figure out why somebody would submit such a useless entry! At long last I now know!

I'd love to be able to write about some of the articles I had to reject before the peer review system was operational but such details are classified for obvious reasons. Some, like yours, were devoid of content. Some were cut and pasted from copyrighted sources. And others, of course, were just too darn weird...

Thanks Fragilis Yes, i'm sure many a story could be told about the dreaded queue, nowdays you just have to bribe a Scout

Peregrin, i had a feeling it would be someone i knew. I must admit i was hoping to find out who it was

Pity you can't write that article but some people may not see the funny side i suspect...

Yeah... most of the articles which were rejected were just nonsense written by new/passing researchers who hadn't read the guidelines yet. Stuff saying how great Douglas Adams is, etc. We can't allow people to go round saying things like that.

My personal favourites were the completely-freaky-weird ones... like the one claiming that the monoliths from Arthur C Clarke's '2001' series were real; one one that went on about how much the writer liked licking things. It was always a challenge to think of a new way to tell the researcher why they were wasting our time

Hehe
I sometimes have the same problem with Post articles... although just about anything goes in the post of course
shazz

Yes, luckily for me

Indeed
I await your next offering with great anticipation then!

shazzPRME

I hope to write something when I've got time! I've been wandering around the country in the last week and then I lost my notes as my PDA ran out of battery... so it'll have to be next week's I'm afraid.

*begins constructing an excuse for next week*

Thanks Peregrin
I wondered where you had got to!
I now have your's and Bb's gifs blobbed, courtesy of Amy-the-Ant... so you will have a nice personalised gif for the top of your article!

shazz

Feel free to use come of my old excuses Peregrin. I'll need to think of new ones anyway

One of these days, I should write an article about the all the excuses I've had for the failure to send in an article
Trouble is... it would make a very long article! LOL

shazz

Trouble is with email is that dogs can't eat it very well.

Once my hamster got inside my computer, which made a fantastic excuse, unfortunately I'd already done my homework. I could have ripped it up again and used the excuse just so I could say I did, it was almost worth it.

I almost had a very good excuse tonight!
The kittens had managed to disconnect the phone and we hadn't noticed until I tried to dial a connection!
Now THAT is an excellent excuse of course

shazz

I hate phones... and so I've conceived a very clever system (don't tell my family though); I've bought a mobile phone 'so they can contact me more easily' - one of the ones where I don't pay anything unless I call anyone, which I never do - and leave it off all the time, so nobody can ring me. And we use our land line for the internet most of the time, except 7-9 in the evening 'which we put aside for calls - so people can contact me', which Matt uses to call his girlfriend. And if by some chance nobody is using the phone, our line is full of faults and so it's rare for somebody to get through. And thus, I am free of niggling phone calls from annoying sources such as family, bank managers, and debt collection agencies. Cool eh?

not bad at all

The beaty of mobiles is that if you put everyones number in the phone book it tells you who is calling when the phone rings. Leaving you to decide whether you want to talk to that person or leave it for the answering service...

Good point... and you can get little gadgets you plug in between a normal phone and the phone socket which do the same thing now.