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

Arnold just blinked up at Bruce, not seeming to notice they'd moved.

But Arnold, having always been the most perceptive monkey of the tree, was keen to the change.

"You sure are one thick frog," he said to Bruce, " I wonder whether you'd have even noticed it if " really had pooped all over you just now."

Bruce wasn't really in the mood for diarrhoea talk right now though. He was much too engrossed in...

Right, sorry, I just reread the thing and realised that Arnold hadn't noticed a thing.
So please disregard the last entry containing an alert savvy Arnold with an engrossed Bruce, and carry on.
Carry on...

Or, visit http://www.h2g2.com/A206344 for a go at another one.

Right. After the President Of HeadSnot Inc. (That is your name, right?) left the story, everone remembered that the UFO was due to show up three posts ago.

Sure enough, a loud, droning noise drowned out the entire scene, as everyone looked up to see . . .

a huge UFO shaped like a giant tylenol. In fact, it was a tylenol. The tylenol corporation had learned that advil had launched a massive space station. So they launched their own. In an epic space battle that spanned years both stations were damaged and started a spiraling journey to earth. The advil space station would crash in 3 more posts but the tylenol one was about to smash into them when...

Bruce said, in an authoritative voice, "Stop right there!" The tylenol space station hung in mid-air. "You're not going to smash into us until we find out what tylenol is!"

the next researcher stared at the screen. Did he mean what is the medicine tylenol made of, or was tylenol not a leading drug in the UK. He wondered for a moment and figured that they must have tylenol in the UK. I mean, a huge drug company must have many fronts. So being quite confused by the whole ordeal the researcher's mind started to wander. He forget about the huge tylenol (its a pill people, they have it in many forms, for colds, headaches, flus, all sorts of ails) being stopped in mid air and it promptly smashed into our heroes. They survived because...

having been smashed into by a space station sponsored by some kind of pharmaceutical company, it was quite easy for them to find a stash of recover-from-being-smashed-into-by-a-space-station pills. The only drawback was they tasted awful, and despite having washed the pills down with a full glass of water (as directed) our heroes' mouths still tasted of the pills for another 2.7 posts. Meanwhile, the current researcher wondered what the UK had to do with anything, so she sent the characters there to find out...

Tylenol, the original non-aspirin headache medicine.. How odd that be the item to give our heros such pounding headaches.

'Nonnie

Knowing what Tylenol was, our heroes could finally relax.. also, they noticed that the UFO hadn't followed them to the UK, so they were safe for it too...
"What now?" Elliot asked.
"I don't know," Bruce sighed, "But we sure should do something to get back to the Golden Prom/Ball, shouldn't we?"

*Eliot looked at Bruce and said:*

Nah. If we get back to the ball and The Kiss happens, then the story will end and we will be out of a job, or we'll end up doing cameos in other stories.

*Just then Death walked by and waved*

See what I mean. No, what we need is some plot twist that will take lots of posts to resolve.

*No sooner had the words escaped his mouth when a real UFO appeared and beamed the entire group aboard*

The UFO was the advil shaped space station. (if you don't know what advil is then this is really weird. I mean, I brought up the UK because I assume most people here are based there, and I guessed that the only way they hadn't heard of tylenol was because it's not based there. http://www.tylenol.com)
Anyway, the space station had repaired itself and was carrying our heroes back into space. As the group came to they were locked into a brig. They soon realized that this advil space station had been taken over by... ALKA-SELTSER!!!!!

"Hooray!" they all said. "A remedy we've all heard of!"

Then Elliot grabbed one of the alka-seltser people and asked, "Hey, why did you just beam us aboard? I thought space stations were supposed to stay in space in orbit somewhere, not somehow fly down to Earth and pick people up. If you wanted us that badly, why didn't you just send a shuttle to bring us to the space station?"

(BTW, did you know there are places on Earth which are neither America nor the UK? )

"Duh!" The alka- seltser rolled his eyes. "What are you taking me for!"
"Could you at least tell us what we are doing here?" Elliot tried carfully. A cruel smile came across the alka-seltser's face....

(Yeah, I know there are places that is neither America nor the UK. I'm so lucky that I happen to come from one of them)

(Not wanting to leave the story in spite of earlier mishaps

..."Well, said the alka-seltzer, "I would, but..."

... but then you would want to escape and next thing we would know is 'plop plop fizz fizz' and we're all dead."

*Bruce noted that little tactic in case he needed it later, then began to explore the ship ...*

(What! there are places outside the U.S. Oh no you don't, now I don't pretend to be an expert but as I remember it the world is layed out like this. United States!!!!! and then there are some islands or something near guam [just kidding, not serious, and two minutes later all the UK-ers and those from other nations beat Siguy to death])

Anyway, Elliot looked around the brig further and found a satchel that had been left by its previous occupant. Inside he found a 1/18th size model of a cow, three turtle dove corpses, and a notebook. He started to flip through the notebook until a picture of the layout of the ship (lot of "of"s) caught his eye. He read the writing next to it which said...

"This picture is of the layout of the ship. Not to be confused with the picture of my mother-in-law on the next page."

The picture of the mother-in-law was surprisingly similar to the ship. Quickly, Bruce (this is Bruce, right) flipped the page. The next page said "Current exchange rate of tylenol/zorkmids/pounds/dollars/ingots." That was boring, so Bruce flipped to the next page, which said . . .