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

Entry: Funeral Flowers - A82714214
Author: minorvogonpoet - U3099090

After the tributes posted by cactuscafe and Dmitri, I thought I'd post this elegiac piece.

Thanks for sharing this one. It tells a complicated story, but it tells it well. I like the way you suggest the solution to the question in your title.

Just to help us follow, I think it would be helpful it you put some kind of visual caesura to set off the flashback. I stumbled a bit when reading.

Thanks Dmitri. I have added a couple of lines of stars to make the breaks.

My own view about this story is that it is too short for the number of characters. I suppose I could extend it, but I'm working on other things at the moment.

That makes me sound like a proper writer!

Elegiac. Great word. Elegiac. I must think about this word.

I got really involved with this pieace, mvp. Hah! So involved, in fact, that I am going to check to see if there really is a Movenpick Cafe in Victoria, so's I can go meet Colin there, as I have further questions to ask him about all this. .

Then I say to myself, hang on kid, you are getting your realities mixed up, or am I?? haha. Its good when you forget if characters (or cafes) are real or in a story.

I wonder how your writing course is going, by the way?

h

Hi, cactuscafe.

The Movenpick went, to be replaced by a gym, I'm afraid.

The course has picked up, after a rather dull first term. We're a mixed bunch of people - some of the students hadn't done any creative writing before, while others are well through their novels.

I gaily set out on a story called 'Dreaming in Stone'. I had a sort of plot and some fairly boring characters, but I've got to the point that I need to give my anti-hero bi-polar disorder for the plot to work. As one does .

I love it.

Good that this was bumped up, I had missed it. What a beautiful and sad story, MVP.

Ah yes. And hullo mvp! and Bel and DG and everyone. . Interesting about the Movenpick Cafe. I never went to a Movenpick Cafe. And now the one in Victoria is a gym. Where the ghosts of former incarnations sweat it out. huh? That would be a good story. Not as good as an anti-hero with bi-polar tendencies. .

You know, I never know what an anti-hero is. Could someone explain? I am in love with the thought of an anti-hero. In fact I think I am in love with an actual anti-hero, but I don't know what it is. Has anyone got any examples from literature, of a classic anti-hero?

This will take my mind off thinking about an advert for something that is un-advertisable (see ) It is such a marvellous concept, it infests my dreams, but sigh oh sigh, my pen cannot find the way. Yet. I need an anti-hero on a Harley to whisk me away into the desert of lizards. Or maybe that's a hero. .

H

Anti-hero? Er, maybe Alfie? Remember him - the 'bird'-watcher/chaser?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuxPmfuGZxQ&NR=1

Or, your favourite actor (this to cc), lending his famous profile (all ladies ) to the most infamous anti-hero of all time, Captain MacHeath, here seen in a Peter Brook production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2E7p59sRvQ

Mackie, of course, got translated into German.
Here's Sting doing him, bravely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YokJ2BbdwdU&feature=related

Dexter's sort of an anti-hero. (Dexter, in case you don't know, is a successful serial killer with a day job working for the Miami police):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d99AvSk75U

As to adverts: WE WANT MORE. We have several, but WE WANT MORE.

Remember: adverts include jingles, and above all - ART. Draw, you people - otherwise, is stuck with my visuals.

Whoah. . This is an intense mix of anti-heroes, and all before breakfast. . Thankyou thankyou friend, for your time. Now I am starting to realise all things about the anti-hero! Hmm. The brainlight just dawned. Although I'm not having the vapours right now about my so called fave actor. hahah. Perhaps I need more coffee. . Or less coffee. .

I realise I grew up with anti-heroes. I just didn't know that they were called anti-heroes. Ah Columbo! Columbo! Anti-hero and inspiration of my youth. And I still love him now. Do so. So there. In fact, I cannot imagine life without anti-heroes.

And then there's that mysterious anti-hero in my head, haunting my dreams, who somehow guides the story - ah yes yes - except where is he/she now, just when I need that enigmatic anti-hero anti-ad ad art. .

Funny thing, I love ads. Full of heroes and anti-heroes. To me, Flat Eric and Angel were the ultimate anti-heroes, even though they were advertising very famous jeans. .

Hmm.

I don't know if I'd call Colombo an anti-hero - more an unusual sort of hero. After all, Colombo catches the murderer - and he/she is usually grateful for the closure.

I think he's more the embodiment of the Hound of Heaven...sort of the Bloodhound of Heaven. (I don't believe I said that.)

Last night, we watched 'The Prince of Homburg' - the 1977 production filmed at the Biltmore House in North Carolina, with Frank Langella. (Not the UK production from last year, which sounds frankly horrible.) Someone wrote, rightly I think, that von Kleist was a pre-modern postmodernist. His Prince starts out like an anti-hero (he has the NERVE not to want to be shot for a reason so silly only a Prussian would think of it in the first place), but ends up as a glorious dharma hero. And it's all about dreaming and reality...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjqo3lS2QRs

MVP, I apologise. CC and I have got started, you see, and done something awful to your thread that has a word in German (Zweckentfremdung), but none in English. (Roughly, it means doing what you do when you use a tennis racket to strain spaghetti...)

We are terrible.

You've lost me a bit - especially as the sound isn't working on my computer at the moment .

Great Anti-heroes? Heathcliff perhaps. Terry Pratchett's Rincewind?

Oh, good ones, MVP.

Oops sorry. I posted an empty post. . That is the most silent post I ever did. . Ah peace at last. Amidst the tennis racket that strains spaghetti. And the Bloodhound of Heaven hahahah . I will see you on email about that one, mister. hahaha.
Heathcliff! Heathcliff! Ah yes. Yes! I don't know Rincewind.

Columbo isn't an anti-hero?? I am gutted. . Just when I thought I was getting it. Does an anti-hero have to be a bit dodgy then? Or dodgy made good?

What about Gregor Samsa? (as in Kafka/The Metamorphosis). He must be an anti-hero. No hero could be so insecty. . I love Gregor.

hmm. I go I go. Off to drink brandy and consider the Prince of Homburg and some other things.

Write on, writers!

cc