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

(tiptoes back in, to attempt to justify previous fevered smiley-induced posting )

....and finds the poetic-mind-collective are already ways ahead, , with their blank sheets of paper (zen wisdom), and their babbling, meandering trout filled brooks, pom pom , cryptic Schubert reference, and their algae coated millponds .)luvvit luvvit luvvit. )

The next time someone asks me how I am, I am going to say . hey Elektra. Can I borrow your mind please?

Actually, I have a very strange true story about a millpond, and a mill. In France. I was there. Hmm. Laters.

Mvp - been thinking about your ( me? obsessive? never! ) hmm. Bendy hills, like in Van Gogh's painting Starry Night. You know that painting? I always saw the South Downs like that. Like dark waves.

I feel a story coming on. Today my mind scuttles ever on, like an nervous searching for the supernatural light of the The Place of Definitions, where you can sit in open-air cafes, drinking curious science-fiction elixirs and thinking about ...

I go.

*supplies nerve tonic to ants and waits*

France is better for starry nights than Britain because there isn't as much light pollution.

My husband has tried putting his telescope up on the Downs, but you get an orange glow over Brighton and another over Lewes.

with the cactus cafe. As for the Place of Definitions, that sounds like something out of Plato...

Hah! yes! So Vincent had the quality star visuals - mind you, if there had been a glow from distant town, he probably would have painted that into the picture also - in bendy fiery orange Vincent style .. heheheh . Poor fellow, though. A tormented life on the mental edge, and over.

I know what you mean about that - the orange glow from distant towns -although when I see that it always reminds me of Manderley burning ...



Do you remember the Isaac Newton telescope at Herstmonceux Castle? I remember it being built, in '67 I think, and I could see it from my bedroom window. It was awesome. A huge silver dome appearing on the horizon. I was a bit scared sometimes, as I thought it was a spaceship. Then of course the visuals were impaired by bad weather - the skies were kinda scummy - and they moved it to the Canary Islands, but the dome is still there.

is responding well to nerve tonic, but spent Saturday obsessed by the sentence which didn't further its literary career at all ... .. but .....on it goes in search of sugar and delusion .... ....

I remember taking our son round the Herstmonceux science centre. That was interesting but it would have been better if there had still been telescopes.

The lady grieves for Grasshopper? I don't know about grasshoppers but I watched a pair of praying mantises mating in the garden of our house in France. I find mantises intriguing, because of the way they turn their triangular heads and look at you. This pair spent hours sitting on the trunk of a pine tree. Then the male vanished. I wondered if she had eaten him.

Probably.

More power to you, MVP. I cannot spend hours studying mantises because the sight of one - or a grasshopper, 17-year locust, cicada, etc - causes me to freeze in near-catatonia. I don't know where the phobia comes from, but it's there. A mantis mimicked a leaf and lay on the handle to my car door one day. I almost had a heart attack when it moved.

Cactus, try checking out the significance of 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy' on google...PK Dick's fictional alternate-universe fiction novel in which the Allies won the war, which they didn't because 'The Man in the High Castle' takes place in an alternate universe...of course, somebody's got a thrash band or other noise-making instrument collection called 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy' now, since they can't be bothered to make up their own names...

Would a discussion between an electronic ant and a grasshopper hopped on symphonic metal be of any use to the universe at all?

I've been to a few events at the Herstmonceux Science Centre. I remember one, a few years back, that was kind of interactive, with all moving planets and things, and diagrams to show how space works. I didn't really understand it, but I felt like I was involved with something far greater than the limits of my tiny mind.... like .. erm .. space hmm.

Your house in France sounds lovely. Have you written about it? I need A numbers! From the mantis sightings, this suggests the South? Or perhaps the mantis lives in the North also.

I've been to the South once, near to Aix en Provence. At the time I was in love with the works of Paul Cezanne (Van Gogh, Cezanne .. .. what am I? .. some kind of art-geek all of a sudden? ) ... and I had to see Mont Sainte Victoire - because I loved the way he was obsessed with it and had to paint it over and over.

I love the colours of the South. And the fragrance of wild herbs in the air. And the heat. And ..... I think I need to return one day.


Ah the strange strange mantis. Never fall in love, that's what I say .. with a mantis. I have only seen one once, in Greece. I know exactly what you mean about the way they turn their heart-shaped heads, .. uh oh ... ... and stay in the same place for hours. Every time I walked past this one, which was on a white wall, it watched me go by and I would say in my best Greek ...



The lady grieves for Grasshopper ... .. hmm .. there was this lady crying in the coffeeshop yesterday .. she was so beautiful, and I wanted to know why she was crying .... so I wrote this sentence in my notebook .......


oh ant ant ant brain spirit guide please surrender your story ....

whoah .. hey DG boss ... your posting just hopped in, while I was feverishly typing ...

back laters for to read wisdoms

oops ... sorry boss . Here I am in another arachnid situation. ahem. time to change my first line. The lady grieves for ..... for what? for what? for what?

yes. I'll check out that P.K. Dick story. Thankyou. I am fascinated by P.K., but I never read any of his books.

So ..... taking of science-fiction ... here's a thing. Yesterday. Long story. Ah .. long story .. I wish I wish ... so who is Gras*******??? .. no wait wait!

.... in short, I am currently in possession of a very large hardcover book I never read before called The Hitchhi .... a trilogy in five par.... what?? you mean you've heard of it ????? ... in six months time I might just figure out what you guys are always talking about ... kinda funny I never read it.

hmm. Strange random sentences. First lines. They can haunt. I do this to myself. They are the gateway to a void, for which I yearn. The void is where the story will be, perhaps. It lures me with its magnetic essence. Perhaps sometimes it is best not to fill this void at all, and move on to another first line....



.....or perhaps it is best to give away the haunted first line to a Writer who can free you from your haunting ..... in return for a box of paperclips, the recipe for spanish omelette, three glass marbles and a chihuaha. What? ? Do I give these gifts to the Writer, or does the Writer give them to me, in return for my first line, which really isn't worth it.

I think about these things.

Nothing wrong with the word grasshopper. As long as I do not have to be in the same room with one. I am glad there is no smiley for this, and I pray that the next consignment of smileys will omit this insect.

So you're going to read the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'? I'll admit to liking the first three books - but more in their original incarnation, as a radio series. There I was, alone and lonely, in Cologne, and all this jokey philosophy came at me out of the darkness, courtesy of BFBS...I liked that very much.

I also like the notion that if this world were satisfactorily explained, it would be replaced.

I wish for this to happen soon. With better actors.

Dmitri, check your email. Send it on to H, with from me.

Will do!

How magic is that? I didn't realise it all started as a radio show. You see? That's my point. What point? Never too late to learn. Except when it is.

That is really amazing in fact. Think I'll do the radio and the book. I think I am an obsessive light-effect on the verge of actualisation.



Wish there was a smiley. for erm.... Yuh. We get them in the flat, in the summer months. Baby ones. Green. Little hoppers. They come in from the neighbour's garden. Lots of them. I tell them things. There was one particular one, last summer. It stayed in my room for days, but then it hopped behind my TV and never came out because it felt inferior to Escher's gr********* etching.

OK so that is the last incredibly pretentious art reference I am going to make. ...

References to Escher always welcome. Of course, my idol is Rene Magritte.

What was this thread about originally, anyway?