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

Talking to a workmate today, fan of Hitchhikers books, about this site.
Found it really hard to sum up what goes on on here!
So much more than the Guide, the Post (my fave), long running threads, NaJo etc
How would you describe the site to encourage new blood?

a more amusing, occasionally intelligent, definately funny, and often informative, version of.... nothing, its just a version of itself a unique online community .... that bleeds into a real world community, and has the guide as its backbone/internal glue - plus it has nighthoover

"had" nighthoover, past tense.

always has nighthoover, current tents... err... tense...

I've been trying to explain H2G2 to my relatives for many years. Still haven't made the connections I'd like.

its simples...

just tell them...... -

imagine, the stairwell, of an old, disused rail-station; deep, underneath the tracks, deep underneath the platforms; and there, slowely, each summer, knitting baloclavas, an old lady sits, on her chair, and then, as each winter arrives, the man, a sea-farer, arrives, to collect her summer knitting, and burns them, in the fire alight in his garden.
Whilst, on the stage, wading through the heads of herring, the actors play out, as they always have done, the play, acting and singing, even as the seagulls fly in once more, to feast, and as they fly through, each turns, this way, then that, creating a complicated patturn of flight-paths; each of which mirrors, in its own way, the route of the yarn, from ball, to knit, and from knit to garden fire simples.

That would work better if you added a mutant baby, a la "Eraserhead." Then the old knitting lady could do a dance to the tune of a skating-rink organ, stamping on pollywogs that litter the stage.

OO, how insightful... - yes, that would seriously help use the story to ellucidate the nature of H2G2, more fully and accurately

...mostly harmless

a party at the end of the universe?

Said party ending late because of cross-galaxy traffic.

Ending? The party's only just got going.... I dinny see why it needs to 'end'

Nearly 20 years ago, a chap named Douglas Noel Adams and some of his mad associates were cogitating the mysteries of Life, The Universe and Everything. This process was aided (or hindered) by copious quantities of pan-galactic gargle blasters. Such a beverage is known to allow the intangible essence of madness to seep out and move freely about in this odd thing called reality.

If 3, 4 or more such escaped measures of madness find themselves in a suitable environment - one conducive to allowing imagination and fantasy to transcend reality - (often, such environments are a local pub) - they can coalesce into a marginally coherent new entity. An Eddy that can slip easily between degrees of reality. (Some theories postulate that this Eddy is also variously known as 2legs or nighthoover.)

This Eddy encountered a wildly disparate package of computer programs one evening, programs that were trying to persuade relatively normal people to join and have fun. Eddy found this to be a very comfortable home in this "digital village". And as more people signed in, Eddy would touch them with a noodly appendage, and the people became addicted and few were ever able to escape.

Over time, the volume of Eddy (and his insatiable appetite for new madness) was too much for the digital village to accommodate, and so Eddy followed a few people through reality to their place of occupation - the BBC. This home was much more capacious, and had an amazing number of people signing in, from all over the world, and perfectly ripe for the appendage touch.

How-ever, the operations at the BBC were felt to be too constraining. And so once more, Eddy reached out. Through his control of a number of his disciples, he found a much more comfortable home. One not easily constrained by the vicissitudes of reality.

And here he still resides, providing a comforting place for all manners of people to unleash their personal levels of madness.

. .. .... .. ...

I thought we were the saine one's, here, outside the asylum...>>>?

Eddy remains fairly safe here. His only concern would be falling into the Eddy Fissure.