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

Colditz, 1943.

Tonight would be the night.... the escape was on.

I waited pensively for the all clear signal that would herald our descent on Hut 17 and the freshly completed tunnel that was safely ensconsed beneath the tiles of the shower room. As I buttoned the jacket of my civilian disguise, my door was flung ajar and in walked none other than Big X himself. I saw from his demeanour that he had ill tidings to deliver and began to fear the worst.

"Ruprecht, I'm afraid you can't come on the escape old man. You're blind."

Immediately I protested that I had sacrificed my eyesight to the cause of freedom whilst enscribing the minutest details on over a hundred Nazi Aussweisses, toiling night and day with my hand constructed typewriter concealed within a tobacco tin.

Big X hesitated momentarily and then rallied once more,

"Ruprecht, you can't come on the escape because you're deaf."

Taking umbrage at this remark I pointedly indicated that my auditory functions had been irrepairably impaired by the constant shrill whistle of the carborundum dental drills employed in cutting faultless keys that were able to combat even the fabled Leitz Cruciform locks installed by the camp Commandant.

Considering this briefly, Big X then retorted,

"Ruprecht, you can't come on the escape because you have no hands."

Indignantly I ventured that the incessant preperation of climbing ropes from torn cotton bed sacks; rolled, sewn, and then plaited, spliced and twisted into thirty foot lengths had worn my fingers to the nub in the service of the escape committee.

Finally, Big X fixed me with a penetrating stare and announced in a composed steady voice,

"Ruprecht, you can't come on the escape because you are an SS Oberleutnant of the EinsatzGruppen Totenkopf Verbande."

Grudgingly I accepted this remonstration and returned to my garrison.

Oh, that was close. For a minute there I thought it was turning into one of those 'man walks into a bar with a horse and says...'-kinda jokes. But you pulled it off. At the last minute you saved it with introspection in the face of cosmic cruelty and it becomes literature, or at least worthy of an exposure in <./>AGGGAG</.>

Look for it in the next issue of . I'll be lifting it from here to an AggGag entry page soon. It will then appear on your h2g2 homepage (Personal Space) because you'll be credited as the "writer/researcher". So if you want to make any last minute adjustments say so here.

~jwf~

I say.

It is not every day that one is accused of literature in the safety and comfort of his own home.

By all means, submit this entry as it stands; with perhaps the small favour of correcting the awful 'preperation' typographical error from the line 'incessant preparation of climbing ropes.'

Much obliged for you words of encouragement.

I shall have to stop there as my eyes are becoming a little misty.

As a closing aside, during which year ought I check the post for confirmation?

Mark

Be of good cheer and look ye to this next Thursday's edition of yon Post!
peace
~jwf~

Righty ho.

I believe that I may be getting the hang of this.

Having said that I have posted two new entries this week; one with a glaring error right at the finale and the other utilising large quantities of text from Shakespeare's Henry V, some of it French.

How many house rules does this upset?

And will I be called upon to kiss them all better?

I fear you may have pumped just a little too much adrenalin and youthful angst into the stream of our collective conciousness. We are not anarchists any more than we are anal collectivists.

We at AggGag do not advocate the breaking of any house rules; nor will we incite to riot or discuss weapons grade plutomium. We advocate only a peaceful, symbiotic, perhaps parasitic, relationship with the great powers that beeb.

Like fleas, we may cause the occasional itch, but anyone who gets caught actually biting the dog that houses us gets no sympathy from us if they get scratched off. Comprendez-vous?

Your first piece is featured this Thursday and I have added an additional link to your homepage where I hope people will continue to find all the latest adventures of Ruprecht. But first you will have to copy and paste all those new offerings you left in our contributions threads to separate Entries on your homepage.

Anyone who reads this week's issue will look for them there among your 'guide entries' via the link that says 'Click here for more Ruprecht stories'. You will need to set them up there sharpish, laddo, folks'll start clicking pretty early Thursday morning...

~jwf~

Oh here's a sneak preview of the page at A804818 so you can see where our link goes.

I can't link to all those other threads so gather them up in entries on your homepage. Once they know they are there, folks will come back for more.


~jwf~

Many thanks for the advice.

But let us pretend for just a moment that you are talking to a man who has virtually no idea what he is doing and could not link a thread if his very life depended on it.

I see that the entries are listed on the left hand column of my personal space. Would it be wise to leave them alone?

Or have I overlooked something on the Help section that will answer these questions and prevent me from annoying you further with these clueless queries?

Yours in over his head and searching for the snorkel,

Mark.

Ah, hold on a moment. I think I may have cracked it.

If I unsubscribe from the aforementioned entries in my personal space and then retype them using the Add New Guide Entry does this resolve the problem?

Or do things start to explode in a weapons grade plutonium sort of fashion?

I shut up now, yes?

No. Shutting up is discouraged and frowned upon by civilised societies. Even ours.

Leave the conversations. Do not unsubscribe from them. People can find them there.

Below your conversations are your 'entries'. One of course is the one you created as a homepage. The other is the one I created as AggGag's copy of 'Ruprecht's Escape'. It is actually AggGag's 'entry' but a copy automatically appears on your page because I credited you as 'writer/reseracher'.

I will try to do the same for the other Ruprecht stories today if I find the time. And a copy of each should appear in your entries list.
Patience and humour are required to learn how to create entries, especially with the GdML codes. It took me months to learn. So worry not for now, and I'll try to set those up for you.

Creating a new entry is much like creating your homepage. Just click on 'Add new entry' to reach a new, blank 'edit' mode page. For 'help' seek out the 'creating entries' pages and 'how to use GdML'.

You'll get the hang of it soon enough. Meanwhile, feel free to join in any of the Agggag conversations. In some of our older conversation threads you'll find we all went thru a steep learning curve on GdML coding from time to time. You might find some tips there.

peace
jwf

You Sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

And blessed with infinite quantities of patience, I might add.

As you have probably ascertained by now, I have a mere passing aquaintance with the world of personal computers and a tendency to bleat on and on and yet further on without ever really coming to any sort of sensible point.

I shall look out for you in the AggGag conversation forums.

Peace, love and a definite dope at this end,

Mark.

No problem.
Both stories now appear on your homepage as 'Entries' with you as 'writer/researcher' and me as 'editor'. I built them on my homepage as A820397 and A820388.

It was a fairly quick-n-dirty copy-and-paste job from the Contributions thread to 'Add Guide Entry'. It was easy because you typed them and formatted them well in the first place and I could leave them as 'plain text'. If I had had to correct a lot of spelling (I fixed 'dismay' by the way) or spacing I would have had to use 'GdML' codes and that can take a while ..as you will discover when you get into creating more entries.

And for all that, the genuine real-life laughter you got from me with
"...prithee sir, pulleth the other one for it is prettily bedecked with bells.." was worth more than all four minutes of my pain and suffering on your behalf.
Thank YOU!

~jwf~

PS:
I sincerely hope others will get to read the Agincourt piece (I probably should have put it first); they'll find it as enjoyable as I did.
Your parody and paraphrasing of Shakespeare is a treat. Let me know if you do more. It takes a knowledge and love of a subject to do a succesful parody. In fact I'll suggest that it is parody and not imitation that is really THE sincerest form of flattery.
Good stuff.
peace
jwf

Blessed be Mr Fulton.

Your invaluable assistance and kindly words of encouragement are very much appreciated here in the land of primordial slurry.

As dear old DNA would have put it, I shall keep banging the rocks together until such time as I 'ahem' master this system.

Having been excavated from an enormous self styled hole by your good self I shall strive not to blunder directly into another before the weekend.

The above statement, of course, is merely a forecast and does not take into account my singular ability to commit woeful acts of accidental sabotage toward anything even remotely electrical.

Many more quasi-heroic tales loosely based on possibly true stories are in the offing. The works of Shakespeare may very well rear their ambiguous heads once again in the not too distant future.

You have been warned

Once again, I am indebted to you for this days work,

With gun and umbrella,

Mark.