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

Tuesday afternoon in Kiwiland.

I have just received a letter from the dinosaurs at the local Job Centre requesting my presence at a seminar to be run by their Job Brokers. At this seminar they will try to place people in seasonal work on the local orchards. My closest relationship with a fruit tree, in recent times, (due to illness) is leaning on them while trying to get my breath back. Maybe there will be a vacancy for a Job Broker.

I thought this might be a good time to play a friend’s video recording of the first episode of the much-vaunted £6 million BBC documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs. Please join me.

What can only be described as a "thing" appears on screen and minces across the mid Triassic landscape with the effete grace of a red-light area transvestite. Meet coelophysis (or is it a postosuchus? They all sound the same to me), one of many in a long line of supermodel uglies we shall be encountering in the next few episodes.

In the first half-hour of this drama choked with special effects, we are introduced to a family of cynodants, snouty creatures bearing a residual resemblance to Mole from Wind in the Willows, and watch while one of their children is devoured by a coelophysis. Minutes later, we observe mum and dad eat the rest of the kids in the nest.

Terribly tragic and all that, but surely eatin’ yer young (infanticide) is all part and parcel of the rich tapestry of wildlife programmes.

And, indeed, the whopper dinosaurs obligingly hit their cues and run nicely through the whole gamut of reptile emotions - that is, stalking, running prey to ground, ritual killing, dismemberment and general variations on the theme of al fresco dining.

Really, they should get the "animals" to do food reviews to broaden the options and cater to the now ravenous demand for television cooking shows.

Imagine two tyrannosaurus rexes, preferably naked, at the local eatery chowing down on shank of Pterodactyl with drizzled conifer grass salad and passing comment on the decor - hopefully from the Cretaceous era scenery supplied in this series, care of Rotorua, Wanganui and Bruce Bay of New Zealand.

All in all, New Blood, episode one of Walking with Dinosaurs, set in the parched desert lands, was a pretty dry argument.

Water was in short supply so the most camel-like (in the thirst stakes) ugly won out in the end.

Enter gushy old H2O and the Jurassic era in the coming episodes and things are bound to hot up.

Think standard watering hole species stand-off scenes where about six different breeds thrash it out for water rights and get to rear, mount and paw the terrain in various states of nutritional rage in marvellous Technicolor animation. Throw the narration of Mr Helene Bonham Carter (Kenneth Brannagh) into the background noises and you can't help but be impressed by the best of BBC British.

So what if it didn't really happen like this, that no diaries written by reptiles have been unearthed by archaeologists to prove that what we are seeing on our set is anything other than pure Disney fiction.

It's entertaining to watch and contains scenes that may offend such as the now famous (in NZ) urination scene performed by a Postosuchus relieving himself or herself (we don't know where the knobs are on these things) which has been described sniffily as "gratuitous".

And we haven't even got to the bedroom scenes that must be by the sheer scale of things, colossal stuff.

Imagine the size (cough) of the duvet.

Hi, there Mr. Toons!
Glad to see someone else on the planet was not overly impressed with the series. The Beeb Beeb Ceeb have released a book to complement the show, which has glorious photos which prove beyond all doubt that what you are seeing is some cheesy CGI images. Not that I needed proof, of course. I thought the puppetry was better.

Surely the "Job Brokers" can find something better for a man of your obvious talents than bloody fruit picking? Even I've got a better job than that. (But not much, it has to be said.) Is the employment situation that bad in NZ?

Why not move to shimmering Britain, with it's wonderful ever changing landscape, (when the fog lifts, you can see they've cut some more trees down and stuck in some shoddy housing) vibrant social scene, (when I get home on a Friday night, I have no need to speak again until Monday) and being led by Smiling Tony into a Bright New Dawn!
Then again, you may be better off with the fruit...

G'day Grey Area, haven't spoken to you for a while.

I could get a real job quite easy if I tried. In September, when I was made redundant from the newspaper I worked for, I resolved to take the Summer off. I got a quite large payout from the company.

I also registered with the local dole office. To continue receiving dole payments ($NZ240 - about 80 British pounds net weekly)you have to go to these seminar things.

Because of my ill health, (asthma, emphysema), I can't do anything physical. I told the Job Brokers I had access to an 11-seater van and could deliver people to the outlying orchards and pick them up at the end of the day. The Job Broker was really interested and was going to approach his boss with my idea. One month later I haven't heard a word back.

The food at the seminar was excellent and the sun is still shining.

Sorry to hear this. I too am asthmatic, but my main problem is in my head.

I managed to view your home page or whatever, without my computer crashing. Marvellous stuff. I've got a few problems with my machine, but I bought it off my boss who has since died. So the only way I'm going to get any tech support is with a ouijia board!
It is Spring in England now, and the sun is shining here too. It is my favourite time of year. I'm hoping to get myself sorted out this year, and enjoy the Summer.

The Beeb have made a series called Apeman, same sort of deal as Walking with Dinosaurs. I haven't watched it. I see enough apes everyday.

I ended up having both lungs collapsing. After 6 weeks in intensive care I now have 15% lung capacity. I'm a bit restricted in what I can do but it's not too bad. I can still drink beer with no problems.

I watched Raising The Mammoth on the Discovery Channel last night. Sort of like Raising The Titanic but with perma frost instead of water. Really good except in the scenes of computer-generated mammoths roaming the meadows.

I await Apeman arriving in NZ.

Jeez, I thought I had problems...

To day is my 44th birthday. Whoopee.

I too can drink with no problems, but I'm going to cut down.
Back this evening.

Well, what a wonderful day that was.

I really enjoyed your Alien Abduction forum a while back. Any more of those going on? It's a quarter to five a.m. and I had to get up, couldn't sleep. I saw you'd been talking to my good friend Prof. How many people do you think are on H2G2 these days? It's certainly very s l o o o o w. Trouble is, in good old Blighty, you get stung for everything you do, including local pahone calls. I've got a deal with AOL, but I don't know if it'll work out cheaper.

You mentioned a plan to drive a van as a ferry service. What are the drivers like in NZ? Over here, they're mostly bloody useless. aA good 90% don't know what a roundabout is for, what a junction is, or how to turn their lights on! I saw one guy with a frozen windscreen driving with his door open, and his head stuck out.

Gosh, not another coincidence?
Some good friends of mine are escaping to live in NZ, mainly for the wines from 'Cloudy Bay.
They have found the crowded UK just too much.
They will still keep the Tewkesbury site open, they may still have photographs of their last holiday there.
http://www.tmgcon.com/tewksweb/contents.htm
The site is kept very clean, and a visit to their e-mgazine is worth a look. UKs loss NZs gain!
They did mention on Sunday, that there seem to be loads of speed camera signs in the middle of nowhere though..........

G'day guys. I must report, after backing into a lamppost yesterday, that NZ drivers are as bad in NZ as elsewhere. I missed out on the driving job, probably just as well

Prof, whereabouts in NZ did your friends move to? The trouble with the speed warning signs are that some, but not all, come accompanied by speed cameras.

You guys may want to join this h2g2 mailing list. We have some surreal conversations on it. There are currently about 30 h2g2 researchers on it. Just follow the instructions posted below by researcher ffmike if you want to join.

OK, due to popular demand, I have set up a mailing list server that will NOT put ads on our messages. (That's because it's running on my own server, and I haven't found anyone who wants to buy an ad yet <g&gt. A few of us have tested it out and it seems to be working fine. So it's time to move the discussion over there, and let the Onelist version just wither away.

To join the new list, send a message to:

[email protected]

with the subject line of:

Subscribe

I'm sure it will take a few days for everyone to get moved over, but the sooner this happens, the sooner we can have ad-free messages. I'll probably post daily reminders for a while to try to get the attention of the lurkers.

See you there!

Mike Gunderloy/ffmike
http://www.larkfarm.com/h2g2.htm

Cheers for the info!
Will let all know their arrival time and place, please make them welcome! Have no memeory as to even which island they are moving to.