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

You keep wiring like this and you'll have to drop Vogon from your moniker.

Thanks, Elektra.

I liked the piglet.

Yes, quite so, you are no longer vogonpoet. Official. We have spoken. In fact you never were a vogonpoet, always much too poetic for that. heheh. Oooh and we have piccies! Check the purple blue creature with the spirals and the twisty magic horns, where does this Ed find his artwork? I never saw this creature before and I move freely from dimension to dimension, in my dreams haha.

Best to check the 'Round the Day in 80 Worlds' archive. That's our Willem.

And yes, I rerun these wonders, so that all may enjoy and be astounded.

I agree that MVP is not Vogon. But I beg her not to change her moniker. I think of her every time I see the phrase 'MVP', which I do everywhere in the US - it stands for 'Most Valuable Player'.

Yes it is a beautiful and magical creature. I assumed it was Capricorn, but it has strange eyes - as if it had drunk too many and a wild tongue.

I don't know who drew it - perhaps Dmitri would tell us.

One Giant Mutant Space Goat a la Willem coming up: A85518273

Sorry

Thanks for the compliments. I quite like being a minorvogonpoet, because people don't expect too much.

Oh! It's a Willem mutant space goat! Of course! heheh. I thought it was Aries the ram after a trip around the cosmos, but that's because I'm Aries and see rams everywhere. Now I look at it I realise that it's not a ram at all. It's a space goat. .

I understand that, you know, to be named minorvogonpoet so people don't expect too much.

I think I might rename myself Mrs. Magnum Opus, then maybe I will write one. , although I might feel under pressure also, people will say 'oy Mrs, where's yer magnum opus then? ' As it were.

Is this relevant to mutant space goats, vogons and poetry? No. .

When I first read Hitchhikers Guide, about a year ago , I found the Vogons really funny, I love the Vogons .

I like that Magnum Opus.

where else could you get poetry, a space goat and a cute piglet

I think the best way to produce a Magnum Opus would be to buy a pile of boxes of the ice cream with all the and hand them round.

Yes! Read for curious voyages around the universe where purple space goats offer you lovely choccy ice cream, I haven't had one of those lovely choccy ice creams in years... I think there was white and dark chocolate, mmmm I think I'm going to faint .... you'd have thought a rival company would have created a similar product and called it The Opus, although that is quite pretentious which explains why I don't work in ice cream, but it would be a good magnum opus, the study of ice cream and the names that sell them. Remember mivvi? (TM). I was totally sold on mivvi (TM) as a kid. Catchy name, better than The Opus.



Does TM mean trade mark? I hope so, I'm typing it so I don't advertise. I hope I'm not advertising. I'm just fainting from ice cream memories.

I've never liked a single commercial ice cream, really. But then, I'm lactose intolerant and it's not worth it.

You know what I miss? The ice cream my parents used to make. In a churn. By hand. With tinned milk, so it never made you ill.

What fun that was. And how delicious. Wonderful taste, and you got brain freeze, but it was worth it.

Vanilla? Great. With fresh peaches or strawberries in? Heaven.

A group of the men competing to be the longest to turn the churn...all that ice, all that rock salt...

I went to a shop in Philadelphia to buy rock salt in June. The man said suspiciously, 'You think it's gonna snow?'

heheh, I love it.

Really hungry now! That home made ice cream from the churn, made with the tinned milk sounds incredible. Brain freeze? Is that when you eat something reeeely cold and you get a sort of like headache for a few minutes? I think I've had brain freeze. I like that expression, I might use it in passing conversations, pretend I know things ... ..

I was raised on warm milk, straight from the 5 am milking parlour where Dad milked the coos, into the churn, bring it home to feed the kids for breakfast, this was early 60s, before pasteurising laws, it was really really yukky, , but I am grateful that he kept me alive, although I would have preferred ice cream made with tinned milk, with added brain freeze. heheh.

Just tell 'em you learned the phrase from Americans. Everybody says 'brain freeze' here. Comes from kids drinking cold drinks and shakes through a straw, or ingesting a dangerous concotion called a 'Slurpy' - delicious, really, tiny, tiny flavoured ice particles.

Ah, I know milk straight from the cow, although it made me ill. Buttermilk, safer.

The best bit: Watching my grandmother mould butter. With a flower on top.

Warm milk , but then cold milk , yet I like cream, yoghurt,ice cream and butter

I remember moulding the butter with my Mum, good memories, we never thought to put a flower on top though

Mum made strawberry ice cream, home grown strawberries, milk from our coos, tasted lovely but it froze solid, how me and my sisters laughed when Dad went out to get the ice cream and came in with a chisel to tease Mum

mmmm This is becoming the milk bar thread. . I need a milkshake, strawberry flavoured. I'm better with flavoured milk, than straight milk. I love yoghurt, bio live, thick greek style, with honey, is the best.

ooh! a milk smiley!!

That's interesting, Peanut, you don't like milk but you do like cream, yoghurt, ice cream and butter. Maybe it's to do with the process of conversion which changes the consistency of milk, or something, better for the digestion.

I'm not keen on butter. I prefer yukky margarine. .

Being married to an almost-vegan doesn't help , or maybe it does. There are always peculiar milk alternatives in the fridge, rice milk, oat milk, and fake cream too, peculiar oat cream, guaranteed to ruin the cornflakes experience, although it is secretly delicious. . hmm

I think I have brain freeze, I need a Slurpy. .

I've never seen or heard of butter being moulded. I wonder what it means, butter being moulded ...

Well, in our case, it was because she'd just churned it.

Now, in our historical understanding, an old-fashioned butter churn was wooden, with a dasher, and pumped by hand.

But my grandmother was modern, you see - she had an electric butter churn.

After she'd churned the butter in this electric thing, she had to form it into a shape. So she used a wooden mould. With a flower on top. And put waxed paper over the butter.

This was pretty, but the butter made me ill. (Lactose. Intolerant.) My mom gave us margarine, which we called 'butter'. We called what my grandmother made 'Sparta butter', because the nearest town was called Sparta.

Butter was electrically churned, but cows were milked by hand. And ice cream was churned by hand...ploughing now took place by machine, much to the appeciation of Kate, the mule, who was enjoying her retirement.