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

Yossarian:

I am still waiting for your characters
to arrive at the posh restaurant filled
with snooty yuppies, and then manage
to get themselves thrown out of it by
pestering the other diners for a taste
of their food.

Anything about good food has great
literary interest!

Hermetic philosophy strikes me as a
contradiction, though maybe your story
will straighten things out by next
year. Doesn't "hermetic" imply being
sealed off? So if you seal off a philoso-
pher, doesn't that make it hard for the
philosopher to carry on the arguments
with other philosophers that are so
vital to honing the fine edge of an
intellect? The poor soul, after a period
in solitary confinement, will emerge
with a mind that's been reduced to a
gray blob of oatmeal (no offense intended
againat oatmeal, as it is a fine food of
great literary interest ).

Respectfully yours,
Paul H

Hermetic philosophy (as I've recently found out) is embedded deep within Druidistic Spiritualism and is just one of the many different things involved with being Hermetic.

I know that came out horribly and probably made no sense whatsoever, but I had a vague sense of what Hermetic Philosophy was when I signed up to be the keeper of it, and after looking for the answers as to what it means to be Hermetic, I'm lost even further in the dark.

It just doesn't make any sense.


Then again, nothing has made much sense this past week, so why not finish it off with breakfast at Milliways, reading one-thousand pages in three weeks, and then visiting a ridiculously over-priced restaurant, pestering the hilarious customers, then getting taken led to the back by the maitre d, and sliced in half by pissed off French warriors that are over a thousand years old?

Probably they're pissed off because
they have 1,000 years' worth of
arthritis, which means they can't
get their armor off, and their
bladders are mighty painful. You'd
be murderous, too, under such circumstances,
no doubt.

Plus, their eyes will be pretty weak,
so they'll mistake you for a Saracen
or a Turk. Your only hope is to put a
cross on your shield. A Christmas
Tree won't do; that came later.

I am a Saracen.
With English, Dutch, and Turkish roots as well, but that doesn't really matter because the Templar (after being mercilessly hanged and murdured just because a king was greatly annoyed by the fact that they only answered to the Pope and not himself) were greatly influenced by Oriental and Saracen mysticism, and one of the many charges that led to their destruction was that they were involved with the Moslems. They were also charged with Heresy and homosexuality, but that's another story saved for a lazier day when I won't have to read a thousand pages by next week.

Outside of France, the Knights Templar were generally acquitted
of all charges. They served a useful function during the Crusades
by helping pilgrims to the Holy Land obtain safe passage.

I have been reading "Galileo's Daughter." It is mind-boggling
to imagine the Catholic Church (or any church, for that matter)
telling astronomers what theories they are allowed to promulgate.
The world has come a long way in 400 years. Whether it will be
able to keep any of the progress it has made is another story.

In Portugal they just changed their names to the Knights of Christ. In the Germany/Poland area they merged silenty with the Teutonic Knights. But in the UK, I don't think they even bothered to notice that the rest of the order had been dissolved.

In the 1980's the Catholic Church decided to abolish their list of books that were unholy and sinful, so to speak. I'm sure it had a better title than that, but the point remains the same. Progress is going very, very slowly.

The status of living has increased. That's fine.
Amazing leaps in technology, especially in the past two centuries. Good, great. I'll give you those two.

Convenience as well, but that goes hand in hand with technology...


Morally we haven't changed a bit. We make the same mistakes that were made hundreds of years ago, and only because it is human nature to forget anything that didn't occur in our lifetime. I know this isn't the case with everyone, but, hey, I'm trying my best to just sit on the sidelines and watch the stupidity of humankind, though I have been known to get involved with the game more often than not .

It might not have been in the 1980's. But I'm pretty sure that it was sometime in the late 20th century.

Not that I'm blasting the Catholic church. They really got their act together with the counter-reformation. It just seemed like a good example at the time, I guess...

for jumping in here... but do you have this week's article ready for me Yossarian?

Well, I sent an email explaining my dillema, and I think it's best if we converse in that format instead of right here for everyone to see.

No problem

shazz