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

Hi Ben
I read that poem you wrote for Boots, after I'd read hers.
Can I say this? You guys are sometimes too much for me. You seem to go very deep for your catharsis.
Be careful.
Pin

Well I wrote it for me, but it is a propos of her situation too. Though as I indicated, mine is a cinch compared with hers.

What are you saying Pin? My assumption is that she and I just have the ability and the habit of writing down our thoughts as they go by, trapping them in amber as it were. And of course we go deep for our catharsis. We were, each of us, deeply in love. And still are, for that matter.

*note to scandal minded lurkers - we were each of us deeply in love with our partners, not each other - and if we were deeply in love with each other, the answer would almost certainly be 'no you couldn't watch'*

What is the warning? I am a bit dense at times. Flip to email if you like.

B

It's not a warning.
Oh, yeah. I suppose it is.
You just cut me up, that's all.
So I guess I was warning you not to write so well that you cut me up.
Pin
(Mind you, I cut up easy. It's not much of a film, book or anything if I don't blub. Last week, I even blubbed over cutframes in a PS2 game...)

Ach, I've cried at advertisements, though I cannot remember which ones. Don't fret for me, Pin. My situation is a cinch compared with Boots'. I just get wordy every now and again.

You are a contrary phocoid you know. You tell me I finally get it right with "Ozymandias", and then tell me I get it too right with "Hunger".

Picky, picky, picky!

I am going to email Boots though. She needs to feel what she is feeling, but it ain't fun.

B

Not that contrary.
I like the poems that invoke awe.
Extinction/oblivion etc is cool, as long as it doesn't get personal.
Heart-on-sleeve stuff from real people, though...oooh, squeam...

You were missed tonight, Pin, my dear.



B

Sorry. When I finally remembered, it was too late to ask.
Next time!

Wo Ben
I screwed up royally, didn't I?
Pin

What? Where? I am only online about 15 mins per day and am not lurking anywhere right now, including the NSS. And I can't pick up emails.

What's happened?

B

Hiya Ben
Been a while...two weeks, it looks like.
So. What you up to?

Working hard, mainly. Staying away from home, and being generally busy.

I am fiddling around with a new website for my poems, dealing with getting over last year financially and emotionally, and making sure I
get at least 8 hours asleep a night.

How 'bout you?

B

I'm busy too.
At work, we've got a lot of projects coming to site, a couple of complex ones in engineering and on top I've got my own thing in South Wales to push through. That one's a little tough because the instigator from the client site has given notice. so now I'm dealing with people who were sceptical in the first place.
At home...who knows where the time goes? My wife's job has taken off this last year, so she now travels even more and carries a lot of responsibility. By it's nature, it's a drop-everything-and-go job.
It's very interesting, the attitude of my employer to it being me who stays at home to allow a better-paid wife to jump on planes. They're OK to be fair, but they keep forgetting. All my peers live like my wife.
I don't know how long it'll last. They must see me as a luxury, to some degree. Up to Alex, I was very client-facing, and a lot of people still see it as my main skill. Now I choose not to do it. Tricky.
It's an important time for my elder daughter too, with GCSEs looming. The second of my remarkable women is the artist of the family (though, to be right, her mother's pretty handy too). Her work is maturing now, and it's extraordinarily good. I can see a painting of an iris from here, just propped behind the printer in the usual throw-away fashion. It could pass as an O'Keeffe. I think she's going to be OK, but then again I always presume that I could get by just writing.
I suppose the younger daughter must have a mention to complete the set. Her biggest concern right now is the parlous state of her martial arts club, with her favourite senseis having upped and left. She played in a school netball tournament yesterday morning and, as goal keeper, she intimidated and saw off an opposing six-footer goal shooter more or less by pure aggression.
So, the thoughtful action-woman, the sensitive craftswoman and the hyper-energetic fireball. I love them all.
The other thing this week (Tuesday) was a lecture on the history of my firm. The event is annual, a historical lecture in memory of a revered local metallurgist and historian.
I took a few liberties with style and format, and through some carefully-prepared wordstuff I think I can truthfully say they were gobsmacked. A friend who's got broadcasting connections saw it, and described it as somewhere between Adam Hart-Davies and Fred Dibnah (!)
People have been coming up to me all week, which is nice. I love doing that sort of thing. I wonder if there's a career-niche somewhere around it?
Some stuff I've written in the last couple of months, I'm excited about too. I've decided not to post it to hootoo, though. If anything will ever break me into career-writing, I need to keep control of it. Never thought you'd hear me say that, did you? I won't be ashamed, not until I say I'll never post it.
A good friend's got the novel at the moment, and is puffing me up by being suitably awed. As he says, it almost reads better in draft, with the cuts and restarts, the multiple paths to the same event and the complete disregard for causality. I wonder...but of course you can't start that way. Better not have the Director's Cut before anything reaches the box office!
Right...that just about takes us up to the Weddell's coffee-moment.
We didn't talk about finances or eight-hours-sleep. Maybe best not to, though feeling a need for either always strikes me as a curse I'm lucky not to have.
Hope the poetry flows and apologies for being AWOL in recent times for crit, etc. I did scan some of your recent postings, but it was only scan. No time to think critically, let alone express it. The stuff I saw struck me as almost too minimalist for crit anyway. One-idea raw kind of stuff. Some shock-impact, but if I'm honest not really the progression of impressions I enjoy and you do best.
There I go. Stop it, Pin...
See you around!
Your Pin

This deserves a much longer reply than I can give it. The katauta were an experiment really, working across my grain to some extent. I have a friend who is learning Japanese, and one thing I want to ask him is if Japanese has a better ratio of sylables to meaning than English. I am still interested to know if the crude ones are just crude, or if they are tender too, so I am still working with the boundaries of scatolinguistics.

I am an hour late leaving for work - I've got to go. It is tough when you wake up at 5.50 and you are running an hour late for work....

I'll mail soon, I hope.



B

Oi! Come on Little-Miss-Up-Yourself!
Let's see you do some REAL poetry in the N-SS!

Bugger that for a game of soldiers. I am in left-brain mode, coding and working out why files won't upload and stuff like that!



B

Hey, Ben
Your sparks seem to be deep in the ashes these days.
And it seems like my embers and your embers are in different parts of the hearth.
It's not bound to die out, not yet. There are still a few other glimmers out there too.
If we all wanted to, we could relight this fire. I wonder if enough of us do?
Pin

Hmmm. h2g2 ain't what it used to be, eh, Pin?

I will catch up with the backlog on the Never Starting this weekend, and I will reply to your long post by email this weekend as well. At the moment I am surrounded by my stepson's detritus, and badly in need of some girlfriends. Incidentally, boots is coming to stay this weekend, so if your ears burn you know why.

Take care, Pin. Like Arnie, I will be back.



B

See you found Ali G.
Snigger.
Love the Trout-poem.
I'll get back to you on the title of that other one.
Can't think of one now - I'm Miyazaki'd, so I've just got 'Spirited Away' ringing up there.
What an awesome film.
I also think you should apologise to Dylan.
Date of First Publication of "Do Not Go Gentle..." = Nov 1951
Date of Actual Death of Thomas Sr = Dec 1952
OK?
Be nice to literary slobs now.
Pin (off to fetch another beer)

I am still laughing. Oh, and I have put yours in the annotation on the Beth Cargill site.

Yeah, like I said, Thomas was in denial about the (presumably approaching) death of his father, and laid the burden of his denial on the old man.

I am not doing 'kind to slobs' at the moment. I have just discovered that the handle of a frying pan I have had since a couple of years before the stepson was even conceived has been burned to the point where chunks of it came off when I washed it before using it.

Take care, Pin. No hurry on the other one.



B

Mmmm...post #20. Perfect that this one should nestle in the shadows of a page-end, I reckon.

You're right, you guys are sweethearts, and so I thought I'd gather up all the reasons I could think of why I shouldn't take up your delightful offer. If you can knock them on the head (one by one; we do things one by one, remember?) then I might have to accept after all.

Just to make it more interesting, I can exclusively reveal that one of these 'reasons' is actually true, but you'll have to work out which.

In the meantime, enjoy the Chardonnay, and I do hope that that silly woman actually gets there.

Pin

_____________________________________________________________________

13 Reasons Why Pin Can't Visit Ben

1. According to this thesis, Pinniped is a well-known celebrity. Any kind of public appearance would therefore cost him the anonymity that he treasures. Conjecture about his real identity abounds. One of the more far-fetched theories is that he is actually Douglas Adams, who therefore faked his own death. Marginally more plausible is the suggestion that he is Jostein Gaarder, best-known as author of "Sophie's World". There are similarities in both subject-matter and style, and Pinniped once compared himself at some length with the character of the Joker from "The Solitaire Mystery", another Gaarder novel. Although Pinniped clearly has literary pretensions, not everyone is convinced that he is an authentic professional writer. Alternative hypotheses have him as an actor or a broadcaster. There is definitely something about Pinniped that is cock-sure and larger than life. Perhaps this explains the widely-reported rumours (prevalent in fish circles) that he is a prominent porn-star.

2. Pinniped is detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure in a famous high security prison, convicted of one murder but suspected of others. Opinion varies about his psychiatric condition. It is notable that Pinniped belatedly asserts his innocence, claiming a whole series of alibis, several of which are contradictory. His sentence has fourteen years to run. His incarcaration explains why he appears to have so much time for writing, but paying anyone a visit in the foreseeable future is unlikely, according to sources close to the Home Secretary.

3. This group of theories holds that Pinniped is severely disabled in some way. The best-known is that Pinniped has vestigial flipper-like arms, hence the seal avatar. There is some evidence that he and his shadowy friend 'Lion' struck upon joining h2g2 through a sick joke ('Mostly Armless'). Pinniped's apparent age makes his birth contemporaneous with the peak of the thaliodomide tragedy. Other versions of the same idea have Pinniped as a paraplegic, or confined to an oxygen-tent by chronic allergenic sensitivity. A further suggestion is that he is grossly facially deformed, and that various Pier characters are allusions to his appearance. If any of these hypotheses are true, Pinniped's unwillingness (or inability) to appear in public might be readily explained.

4. There is nothing particularly special about Pinniped, except that he is already an acquaintance either of Ben, or of someone in her immediate circle. Pinniped knows it, but Ben does not. He would be recognised immediately in a face-to-face meeting, and he presumably fears that the virtual friendship would not survive this revelation. The manner in which this circumstance came about is a matter for speculation. Perhaps it started as a joke, one that has now run on too far to risk exposure. It is possible too, that Pinniped is a former admirer, and that the present virtual proximity is the best he can achieve in promulgating a still-cherished relationship.

5. The reason why Pinniped is unwilling to show himself is that he is not a single person, but a collection of writers all contributing to the same oeuvre. He has confessed as much in at least one Entry. The breadth of his subject matter and the prolificacy of his output are both well-explained by this simple fact. A corollary, of course, is that if "a" Pinniped ever did make a visit, he would only be a part of the complete "individual".

6. Pinniped's non-appearance is down to a gender problem. The simplest explanation is that Pinniped is female. "He" certainly appears to empathise with women more than men, as a perusal of his Friend's List will confirm. Would these friendships withstand the revelation of the deception? A related suggestion is that Pinniped is conspicuously gay (of either gender) and is not comfortable with disclosing this now. Whereas others on the site have been open about their sexuality, Pinniped's experiences in early life taught him/her to be guarded. To his/her great regret, it is now too late for the openness that should have come long ago, and discomfiture keeps Pinniped from making an appearance. A further possibility is that the time is not right for real-life appearances, because Pinniped is undergoing a sex-change. This raises two intriguing possibilities : either he was telling the truth about being male, but won't be one when he finally meets people, or else he will appear as what he claimed to be, in spite of being untruthful when the claims were made.

7. Pinniped is hardly likely to reveal himself, because his relationship with everyone on the site is completely artificial. He is a research psychologist, engaged in a formal experiment about the nature of relationships and credulity in a virtual environment. He is a member of a leading team in his field, and holds high academic office in a world-famous University. The five-year project of which this is a part is funded by six national Governments. Ben's indignance about being treated in this high-handed manner will hopefully be ameliorated by the knowledge that her participation may help to eradicate the scourge of internet personation, including the notorious activities of paedophiles.

8. The main reason why Pinniped does not turn up to meets is that he is in Antarctica, participating in the international survey. Pretty well everything else he says about himself is true, but he left Sheffield and steelplant engineering a couple of years ago to try this out. Where else could the idea of the Pier and its inhabitants have come from? A study of his times of posting will also quickly confirm that normal conventions of the clock do not apply in Pinniped's world. The most enigmatic aspect of this explanation is Pinniped's apparent failure to reveal it previously. It's possible that Pinniped is on the run from something (see, for example, his 'Dog War' evocation of the Foreign Legion, an analogous pursuit of anonymity). More likely is that Pinniped made no secret of his location at first, but that nobody noticed. It would be completely in character for him to leave the evidence there unfound, waiting in quiet amusement for the day that the penny finally drops with Ben and the others.

9. Pinniped is a very normal man, who hides nothing about himself. Behind the flights of imagination, there is no pretence at all. But Pinniped has made it clear many times that he considers imagination to be better than reality. The simple reason that he is reluctant to show himself is that he expects disappointment to be the result of any meeting; one party or the other would not come up to expectations. Perhaps he'd be proved wrong if the meeting ever happened, but it's hard to see how he could ever be persuaded to take the chance. Besides, there are two sides to this tightrope, and falling off the other side is probably worse. On that side, Pinniped knows very well that he is both charismatic and impulsive. What if things went too far? He's been talked into meeting with dream-girls before. Sometimes they have the crush, sometimes he has it; someone always gets hurt. It just isn't worth it. To the likes of Pinniped, a virtual relationship is better, and certainly safer, than risking a real one. The imprecation of cowardice is dead on.

10. Pinniped is a pathological liar. Just about everything he has ever written about himself on the site is complete fabrication. Some of the lies he has told are utterly shameful, and his reluctance to show his face is hardly surprising. Who, for example, would risk the public exposure that his purportedly dead son never actually existed? Pinniped is a deeply unpleasant person, and there is no telling how much hurt he could cause Ben and others. Not only should they forget any expectation of meeting him, they should also seriously consider whether they want anything to do with him at all. If this picture of his true character seems difficult to believe, just think about some of the stuff that he has written, and how he treats people in general. A thoroughly nasty piece of work. Avoid him in future, please!

11. Ben isn't likely to meet Pinniped, because he's a seal. He's said so often enough, for heaven's sake. If Ben considers this to be nonsense, she should carefully set out the facts alongside all the other hypotheses, suspend her scepticism, and give the truth a chance. If it's still too much to believe, then she should at least admit the possibility of related infranatural explanations. Pinniped is a being from another planet - aliens surely would be attracted to h2g2, wouldn't they? Alternatively, Ben could even consider that old chestnut about everything being a figment of her own imagination. In her case, this is surely more likely to be true than it would be for other people.

12. Pinniped doesn't show up because he's only playing along. Mistakenly or otherwise, Pinniped believes that Ben doesn't really want to meet him, or at least that the meeting would not be what it's cracked up to be. The reasons why he could have such an idea are legion. Some reasons are the antitheses of other explanations offered here : for example, Pinniped might be convinced that Ben's a bloke pretending to be female. Alternatively, he might have fallen for some kind of similar-appearing wind-up before, and is not all that keen to fall for one again. One of the problems with a virtual world is that people make themselves larger than life. What if Pinniped, for all his bravado, is really somewhat meek and shy? How has Ben projected herself? What is an actually-timid Pinniped going to do, confronted with a woman like that, other than run a mile?

13. The best explanation is always the obvious one. Pinniped has never made any secret of his ultimate ambition, to get Ben back into h2g2, contributing, directing and doing the job she was born for. To achieve that, Pinniped is prepared to be altruistic. Whatever he feels about an individual relationship, he values Ben's contribution to the team much more. He is simply not going to let her get away with the selfish satisfaction of an offsite acquaintance when (in his eyes at least) she has a job to do. Pinniped believes that Ben herself, and not just h2g2, would grow through her renewed contribution. He is going to lead Ben on as far as she lets him, and what she is reading right now is palpably just another weird and yet typical example of his approach. Ben, for her part, needs to get used to this, and to reconsider her stance accordingly. Pinniped would probably be round tomorrow if he believed for one moment that Ben was back in h2g2 to stay. Until Ben shows the commitment, though, he's not coming.