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

A Large Hammer
by Eddie Izzard

I have been told there are two EDDIE IZZARD home pages and I still can't find them.

I am very excited by the Internet, I am bemused by the Internet, I have tried to surf on the Internet but the bottom line at the moment is that there are still six tons of instructions to read before you can understand what the hell is going on. This is what the human race will not stand for. Instructions. I hate them. The idea is that if I plough through page after page of paper verbiage, I will then be allowed to wade through page after page of screen verbiage. And this is not a big sexy come-on.

I understand the idea of the power of the machine. I do not suffer from techno fear. Techno fear is when people are afraid to press the buttons of a machine in case they blow the machine up. I have the opposite, I have techno bravado. I just love to grab hold of machines, switch them on, press every button I can find and then hit them with a hammer when I can't get them to work. If they blow up, then I watch the pretty colours and then take the thing back to the shop and say: "What the hell's going on here? I just touched the on button and the mother blew up!"

I can appreciate what machines can do and I want to access that power now. I am the kid that broke the first Sharp cassette recorder that my brother got. I never read the instructions. I just hammered away with my fingers until something happened.

The Internet. The new big thing. The thing that grew so quickly that it even caught Microsoft on the hop. I've talked to people who were worried about linking the computers in their businesses up to the Internet in case hackers came in and nicked all their everything. Their nightmare is that they come in next morning, switch on and the computers just say "Oops!".

But armed with my techno bravado I order the modem and the software and get linked up. This having been done, I am given a folder. The dreaded folder which contains the instructions to explain all the software I have just had installed. I immediately leap into a state of apathy. I don't want to read this guff. So it just sits in my bag, going eeeeeeek.

After about two weeks I decide that I had better have a go at surfing and so in the middle of the night, I link up my computer to my phone line, take all the pages of instructions and make a hat out of them, and then just start double-clicking on any new bit of software that I can find in my computer.

I've got a program called Fetch and I get into that quite easily, and before I know it I am downloading BBC cookery programmes on to my computer with the enthusiasm of someone who cooks. I don't. And so I now know how to cook some BBC pies. I download some other bits and get bored. This is no good. I want to see pictures of Earth taken from space five minutes ago, I want to see the World Bank's financial figures in one of those share-of-cake charts. I wanna break into a security thingy and nick all of everything so that they have only got "Oops!" in the morning. But all I have got is some stuff on pies.
So I exit from Fetch and I decide to send some E-mail. So I double-click and it does all the wonderful tonal "beep-beep-boop-beep-boop" stuff as it phones whoever. I put in my password codes (I have four different password things of about eight letters and digits each - this bores the tits off me as it's just more numbers to remember) but when I try to link up with whatever it is I link up with, the screen says: "You have made a problem of type 4096 - do not do this." What the f**k is that all about? What is problem type 4096, and how big a hammer will fix it? This pisses me off big-time because it implies that, not only have I not got a clue what problem 4096 is, but also I do not have a clue what all the other 4095 potential problems are either. Sod that.

Next I try to send a global fax, but I just send it to myself which is a bummer. Then I link through to the World Wide Web (which is different to the Internet, because it is controlled by spiders). I am a member of the BBC Networking Club, and through this I finally enter the Internet. Once in the Internet, I immediately go to the weather section and choose to load some pictures. BEWARE - BE VERY WARE! If you are downloading pictures from the Internet they can often take longer to download than it would take squirrels to make an apple crumble. IT TAKES FOREVER. And once you've chosen the picture, you can't pull out until it's all good and loaded. The pictures may be beautiful, but they may also be boring as hell and you can't tell which at the start. Apart from this though, it obviously is a very fascinating tool and I will eventually work out how everything works.
I feel at the moment that I am five years old and I have been given a JCB to drive. And I can't see out of the window. And I have no pants on. This article is also supposed to be about how to make your own home page on the Internet. Well, I don't bloody know. I have been told there are two Eddie Izzard home pages (set up by other people) and I still can't find them. I guess I'm looking in the wrong piece of surf. What do I have, though, is a large hammer.

copyright The Guardian, 1995

ROTFAPMPL!!!!!!!!!!!

Classic huh??? I wish I had his talent....

I know. Are you watching England?

Classic huh??? I wish I had his talent....

yes I am going mad... 10 out of 10 for observation!!!

No. I'm not into football really so.... (see (19)66 and all that if you really want in my journal....

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Shearer


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Head

Yeah yeah... I did pop down and watch it after all... Germany deserved to win though IMHO... I'm glad in a way I guess...