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

Spuetird was ranting again. No one wanted to be the one to alert Ramona, so we decided that all of us would go.

When we got there, we found that Spuetird was already there, his indecipherable sentences already making Ramona's ears red with annoyance:

"...and what about the missionaries who came here from the planet Zebulon in the 8th century and colonized Madagascar and Newark, then opened ice cream stands in Charlemagne's palace so he could entertain his eskimo friends when they got back from Cathay with Marco Polo, though I suppose Sir Galahad could have had his ice cream in the Holy Grail when he got back from his successful trip to....."

We knew it was coming, and we knew it would be a disgusting sight, but still we were shocked when Ramona opened her huge mouth and devoured Spuetird, providing her with copious food for thought.....

Now they joined with bears at the side of Loch Ness. The bears are joining in with the Loch Monsters with providing High Tea. There is a little known fact that bears live in cottages, wear clothes and make the best porridges from their ultra modern kitchens. And of course they are all dressed in tartans and serve their speciality dish to the coach party.

It all started when Miriam Hoodunnit sat down to her computer to write a mystery novel, and was annoyed to find that the "G" key did not work. She gnashed her teeth at this; the deadline was tight, and getting a new computer was out of the question, budget-wise, so she desperately needed a brainstorm. What she came up with was the notion of only using words without G's in them. Surprisingly, this actually worked until late in the story when there was a concluding courtroom scene, where the jury was to pronounce the defendant guilty. Guilty was guilty, there was no way of using a difrerent
word for it, but Miriam was saved by yet another brainstorm: the murderer could dispatch all his victims by smothering them with quilts, so the jury would find him "quilty."

Now that everyone in the coach party has had their filled of drink and food, they all get back on the coach singing their merry songs. The next will be Inverness where they will stay at a haunted castle and be entertained and looked after by the resident ghosts, with plenty of copius amounts of whisky and haggis which they will eat at the nightly celidhs.

Many years ago, my family booked a room in a motel in Inverness. Just down the street was a scenic place where you could look across the valley to Mount Washington. The main thoroughfare for North Conway ran past us, so we were almost within walking distance of the Eastern Slopes theater and, further down, the factory outlets that were starting to be so prominent a part of the North Conway community.

There was no longer any doubt about it, the pudding was definitely haunted, Mrs. Mesmeris concluded with a sigh. This was the pathetic end of a dream that had started a year earlier, when she had gone down to the cellar in search of canned foods to help
stretch Mr. Mesmeris' unemployment checks, and instead found a cluster of fasting-growing puddings near the pump. The puddings had proved to be of gourmet quality, and had sold as fast as the Mesmerises could sell them on eBay. Indeed, their growth rate
had begun accelerating, to the point where Junior had conceived the novel idea of selling them to the military, to be dropped on the enemy as Weapons of Major Distraction.

Haunted puddings were another matter entirely, though, and would have to be gift-wrapped and sent anonymously to gay cowboys in the South Park area.

My neighbour is getting over excited on the telephone, shouting out I would have thought so, really, no, yes, why, I don' believe it and I told you so to everything her friend says to her. She is squealing out her disbelieve at what her friend on the telephone is saying to her. But I have never found out why she gets so worked up on the phone.

THE ACCIDENT-PRONE FANTASY HERO

Of all the mages in the fantasy realm, Milly Morningstar--Queen of the Arctrons--had had the most success at bridging the world of magic and technology. Right now she was getting urgent messages from both her crystal ball and her sophisticated computer about the rampant incompetence of young Triptoe, the knight-apprentice
who was supposed to defeat the dreaded Warfarin invaders in the first of many climactic battles in a gallant new fantasy series.

She summoned the lad to her chambers, and before he even had a chance to sit down, she was scolding him: "What were you thinking of, young knight-apprentice, when you lost your balance on that parapet and knocked Feezil the Wizard to his death, when you *knew* he was supposed to save you in the final battle with the Warfarin?"

Still stunned and disoriented by the summoning and the tongue-lashing, Triptoe started to mouth some excuse about not having had time to tie his shoelaces when Drecque the mighty eagle had come for him that morning, but Milly was already well into her second
rebuke: "And then you spilled coffee on Serpilio, the Warfarin double agent who was our only source of intelligence on the enemy's doings; he's had to ask for three weeks to recover from the
burns..."

Finally Triptoe had recovered his wits enough to say, "Better I should get the readers on my side by facing long odds at the start, than that I should win every battle and make the series too short, mother."

They say the world will end on 11:11 pm on 12 Deceember 2012. Where the only way of escaping will be on alien space ships or by creating artifical wormholes that will take you to different universes and dimensions. Or your body and mind could spontaneously evolve and find yourself turned into pure energy.

Now the people of earth are preparing for this cosmic eventin 2012 by having the ultimate intergalatic coffee morning and boring committee meeting, where delagates from various alien planets and star systems come to blether about their favourtie Star Trek and Star gate television series. With Time travellers coming in from various dimmensions to swap their opinions of Doctor Who and quantum physics.

In his later years, Dad became obsessed with the Shuttlewits of Fuffex, a proud family line that had died out with Yorick, his great-grandfather, so it was somehow fitting that Dad would present me with Yorick's diary shortly before he died.

The nurse, Miss Sternly, ushered me into Dad's room, where the walls were festooned with Shuttlewit coats of arms, aerial shots of Shuttlewit Manor, Shuttlewit belles in Victorian finery, and other esoterica.

Dad, resting feebly in his bed, seemed like an afterthought in the midst of such treasures, but he rallied when he saw me, and rattled on enthusiastically about Yorick's daughter, Oblivia, who had entrusted Dad her grandson) with the diary when she was on *her* deathbed.

The diary itself had brittle, yellow pages and simple-minded entries--did Yorick have all his marbles, I wondered--but the acocmpanying photo of Yorick clad in an evening gown and riding a horse across a great chasm seemed pretty intriguing.

I showed Dad the photo and asked whether Yorick did that sort of thing very often, and Dad simply said, "Once."

A scaly head with beady eyes cautiously emerged from a carapace and regarded the seemingly similiar creature beside him.

"Do i know you from
somewhere? I do believe you may be Shelley?"

A dual small snout protruded and hissed:

"Shelley Winters. I am Michelle"

"Do not mock me, turtle, or i shell sell sea shells on the shore of Loch Ness" he replied.

zdt

The ranch had been going downhill lately, and it wasn't just the influx of cowboy vampires that had done it (they were easy to spot anyway, because they showed up for work in tuxedos, and could be dispatched with the garlic that we kept in the watering troughs for the occasion). And it wasn't the mad cow disease, which turned out to be ordinary angst instigated by a bored young bull who had taken to heart some of the self-help CD's that had mistakenly come to him
in the mail.

No, the real problem was worry about the extraterrestrials who had been buying up ranches right and left in the Valley, and we knew the head of our ranch was ailing and would soon cave in--which in fact he did after several weeks of increasing pressure.

When the rancher called all the hands in to headquarters for an announcement, we knew what the announcement was likely to be, and were only surprised by the sincerity of the new owner's claim that she had come through hundreds of light years of space for the chance to savor the beef our ranch produced, and would like to keep the herds as they were, though some buffalo would be added as well.

Then came the bombshell: as part of the effort to make the ranch go green, all the motor vehicles were being traded in for bicycles, which we would use to herd the bison, though I knew some of my
fellow cowboys were going to teach the bison to ride bikes, too.

We now come to the chapter on Thuperalaus, the poet and aphorist who, on hearing about Savonarola's actions, said "Whatever" and went back to his writing.* Thuperalaus is best known for sayings like "It is usually darkest at night," which was popular back in the days when few people were saying interesting things, and anthologists needed extra material to pad their collections. In any event, his real name is mercifully shrouded in obscurity, though his pen name --"Thuperalaus"--was anything but, being an amalgam of the three writers that he most admired, namely Thucydides, Pericles, and Santa Claus. Three days before he died, he was given a pauper's funeral by people who wished he would just hurry up and go.

*This anecdote underscores the futility that dogged Thuperalaus all his days, as no publisher wanted to publish his writing due to low standards--his, not theirs.

I woke up to find myself downstairs, I did not how I got there but everything around me was floating in the air. I tried to get back upstairs to bed but ended up in the kitchen. Time was going backwards, instead of forwards and I found myself a week back.

A week back I woke up with a weak back. On the weekend, I developed a weak end. It's Friday now, and I'm trying to stay as far as I can from the fry pan.

One day I was on the bus going to Grays, I fell out of the bus as I phased through it's exterior which led me falling onto a very busy road. Vehicles were trying swerving to avoid but some did hit me and as they hit me I phased through the body of the vehicle. When I became more collected I got up and went to the nearest bus stop to get a bus to go home and review what has happened to me. This was later on reported in the news but was immediately dismissed by scientists as they said it was physically impossible and the drivers must be have hallucinating.

I looked for you on the playing field. I looked in every classroom. I looked on the roof. I found you in the playground, hiding in a portable cupboard. Are you trying to tell me something?

No, no, I was not hiding in the cupboard. I was accidentally locked in while searching for the mythical Jaberwocky. Those fiends, I thought, those ET people have stolen the Jab away to steal from him the secret of his creativity. But now he is returned to us only slightly the worse for the experience. I dare say he has now another string to his bow.

I asked the Druid where Jab had disappeared to, and the Druid merely nodded wisely and said, ".........."

Then I climbed a very high mountain in the Heralaya chain so I could ask the same question of the Guru Lirpa Loof, but the answer was too cryptic to figure out, though it did wonders for my arthritis.

I also asked Stephen Hawking, who was not feeling well, but who graciously heard me out, then gave me a long mathematical formula that I could not make head nor tail of.

Finally, I asked the wise Lady from Philadelphia, who suggested that I ask Jab directly, as he is the person most qualified to know.