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

Defensive Thread Management, that's what we excel at here! Plus coffee, tea, specialty drinks, good conversation, an orangutan and now a samovar which I think got "borrowed" from the buffet table at Damogran.

Please make yourself at home.

I'll have a "first-to-the-new-thread-after-Irv" special... there was something like that anyway, IIEM, I'm sure you know what it was. *for irv read lil*

So anyway... five essays later I'm about halfway done my work for tonight... and I meant to go out jogging... and it's 10:30... what the heck am I doing online? Eek.

*gets a quick espresso from the machine, slurps it*


PS funny you should mention Dick and Jane... I'l tell you why later...

Hi Ioreth, want to talk to an english insomniac?

"Can I have a peppermint tea, nice and strong please IIEM?"

picks up tea, steps carefully over ook

Hello entities. Shall we all have a hot chocolate and see if that helps? Or some anticoffee?

Ioreth, I never would have thought you would know of Dick and Jane seeing Spot run and all. I thought _Dick and Jane_ was phased out 30 years ago.

Dick and Jane books always really scared me

I think I was able to read when I was six, but didn't catch fire for reading till a year later when books were made available to me. Anyhow, what I chiefly remember about reading in first grade was incredibly boring it was. The uninteresting illustration of the boy in shorts with the black-and-white dog on the left page ... three large words on the right page. And I wasn't allowed to read ahead. Mustn't turn the page before Johnny MicroCephalic catches up with the rest of us.

More peppermint tea?

Yes please...is it morning in america? I started school in 1983 and they still had Dick and Jane books then, even in the 90's our French books were from the 60's, weird.

It's 11:30 on the east coast ... And you truly do have insomnia, don't you! The rest of the Brits should be getting up within the next couple of hours, and the milkmen are already out and about. Do they still deliver milk in England?

I remember reading a long article about what a disgrace it was for Americans to let their children's brains turn to shredded wheat reading Dick and Jane while the East Europeans were giving their kids STIMULATING and interesting stuff to whet their appetites.

Also notice how Dick and Jane are always outside, running and jumping and flying kites, just the thing to make a kid want to sit still at her desk.

My thermometer thinks I have a temperature of 102, but surely I'd be dead? They certainly do still deliver milk, but not where I live.

102 is a tolerable bad fever. 103 is worth getting to a doctor about and 104 presages convulsions, or is 105? I had pneumonia earlier this year, and was still walking around (having chills) at 103. I assume we are talking Fahrenheit.

I read in that article, that reading primers in Poland show kids doing constructive and interesting-looking stuff in the classroom, so that the child gets a positive feeling about his necessary educational incartceration.

I never realised the Brits had Dick and Jane.

When I was 10 they didn't have enough teachers so there were 60 kids to a class, there were only 6 girls in my class so they would send us over to the infants most days to help out. I can't believe they were so sexist.

Maybe Dick and Jane is why I'd always do anything to avoid learning what I was supposed to be learning

It amazes ME sometimes to think what we accepted as normal behaviour. When I went to college, there was a 9 pm curfew for freshmen girls and no curfew at all for the boys.

And I think Dick and Jane have much to answer for in terms of study habits. If only they had turned me loose with the Black Stallion novels I would have read all day -- which I did when turned loose on my first bookcase at the age of 7.

I haven't heard of the Black Stallion, was it like Black Beauty?

Yehay! I've been a researcher for a week now, and I've written half a guide entry.

The Black Stallion was the central character in a whole series of books written by Walter Farley. Through an improbable series of adventures, a teenage lad becomes the only trusted human for a coal black Arab stallion. The boy, whose name I never even tried to remember, was the only one who could ride the horse or keep its behaviour in check. This, of course, was a fantasy that any horse-loving child could identify with -- being the sole possessor of some amazing and beautiful source of strength -- and so the books have long been classics in teen lit.

So what are you writing about?

I'm trying to write a guide to nice things to do in the West end of London on a non-existent budget. I must check that this isn't ground already covered.

What's the strangest thing the Aroma Cafe serves?

Can you recommend any easy ways to beautify my page?
I haven't got a clue about html

I ordered a pizza last night and the delivery guy got so lost I
actually had to go out in the pouring rain and walk all around my
street to find him

Yah, best do a search of approved and submitted entries, because a duplicate doesn't stand much chance. Did you have a fever before you went out in the rain?

The strangest thing the cafe serves, apart from anti-coffee, is probably Afgncaap5's Usual. It's beyond my power to describe: have a look on the menu on this user page.

I need to turn in for the night, if I'm to keep in sync with my clients! So I'll bid you good night, and look after yourself. If you can get hold of some camphor tea IRL it might help you feel better.

Babel-17 will probably be on in a few hours, just to check on things, and in the meantime you have Ook.

*cleans IIEM and changes filters*
There you go: everything's good to go. I'll see you in 8 hours, luv. Try and get some rest!
*heads back to studio*

feeling a bit better now, I'll have to make do with peppermint tea
IRL, bye

5.40pm Thursday night here in Xenaland.

if you are looking for excellent reading for young (and not so young) people you could do a lot worse than check out Margaret Mahy.

[Broken link removed by Moderator]
Here is a taster from the site....

As a child I was entranced by the stories that were read to me, and entertained with the sound and possibilities of words. In the beginning, before I could write, I wrote small rhymes which I learned by heart, and told myself my own stories, drawn indirectly from my own life and expressing wishes and dreams.

I finally left my home town, Whakatane, to go to the University of New Zealand. On the blurb of one of my books the publishers put down that I had been educated at the University of Whakatane. To anyone in New Zealand it was a funny mistake, but to me there was something true about this. I still think, in my heart of hearts, that I was educated at the University of Whakatane and I finally graduated. (Whakatane is a small NZ coastal village with a strong Maori heritage, Loony)

All this time I kept on writing. I began to have stories published in the New Zealand School Journal in 1961, and since then I have written many stories for young children, as well as some for young adults. The pleasure I get from these stories is similar to the pleasure I receive from other people's books, but slower, more troubled and more uncertain.

I live just out of Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand in a house with an untidy garden, three cats, and a dog. One of my daughters, her husband and her little daughters live next door. I visit a lot of schools, but when I am at home I spend a lot of time writing, ordering the cats and dog around (not very successfully), and fussing over my granddaughters. It is an ordinary life, but like many ordinary lives it is secretly remarkable to the person living it.

A native New Zealander, Margaret Mahy was born in Whakatane in 1936. She has worked as a librarian for children in both public and school libraries in Christchurch, N.Z. In 1980 she left library work to become a full-time writer. Her hobbies of reading, watching films, gardening, and astronomy have found their way into her many books.

Ms. Mahy writes for all ages from picture books to teen novels, from fantastical adventures to penetrating insights into today's adolescents. Her picture books are full of rollicking good humor, while her older novels reflect an interest in the supernatural and the themes of family relations and coming of age.

She has won the British Library Association's Carnegie Medal twice, for The Haunting in 1982, and The Changeover in 1984 and the New Zealand Library Association's Esther Glen Medal five times. In 1993, Ms. Mahy received an Order of New Zealand, the highest honor that a resident of that country can receive.

The lady is a real-life kiwi legend. Now what will I cook for dinner to go with my crayfish - caught this morning.......

Loony

*runs in, look about. All appears to be in order. Ook looks up with hope on his wrinkly blue face*
Sorry, pal. No can do. Things are so heavy just now.
IIEM coffee to go and some bananas and a bowl of water for Ook.
* gets coffee, passes sustinance to Ook, who takes it out onto porch, and runs out again*