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

Welcome to H2G2 I am sure you will find H2G2 is a fun community to be in. We do a lot here. There is a focus on creating a Guide, where all researchers write entries sharing their unique knowledge. We're all experts on something, even if its only the area pubs where we live. There is also a community atmosphere with a donut stall, coffeehouse, etc. Very friendly people all willing to help. Probably much more fun than Linear Algebra. Here are a few pages you may find interesting or helpful: http://www.h2g2.com/A344756 (a quick reference guide) http://www.h2g2.com/F617?thread=57497 (a newcomers welcome). http://www.h2g2.com/F26140 Aroma Cafe Forum http://www.h2g2.com/A270325 The Overwhelmingly Huge Guide to H2G2 Clubs http://www.h2g2.com/U42 The Researcher page for DNA himself -- Yes, he does participate in the forums on occasion, and has written a few interesting guide entries. If you have questions, let me know. I, or another ACE might be able to help. ACEs, or Assitant Community Edtiors, are all researchers like you, but we have been at H2G2 for awhile, so if we don't know the answer, we often know who to ask. Our homepage is: http://www.h2g2.com/A214796 and drop by http://www.h2g2.com/U127122 The H2G2 Literary Society It's a page where I am attempting to catalogue all the literature-related entries on H2G2. There is an entry on Lovecraft. ><> Gavroche, ACE

Thanks Gavroche, there's a lot of information to digest, but give me a bit of time and I'm sure I'll be a master guide writing type community person thingie

Greetings from me too, Cthulu!
I saw you somewhere and your name cathed my eye and I just had to come and visit... And the reason why your name was so interesting was because I *have* read the Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft (and most of his other work too...) and lately also started playing a RPG based on his stories... So now you know how I got here - not that you'd necessarily be interested but... anyway... And btw, I highly recommend actually reading Lovecraft... CU around!!

Hey, alien, I see I've caught the attention of somewhat of a Lovecraftian. I do intend reading some of his work, but it can be a bit difficult to find down here, and requires some serious 2nd hand book store searching, which takes some time. But never fear, if I can manage not to spend more than 3-4 hours a day in this place, I might be able to find some.....

I look forward to speaking more with you, especially when I get mired in his work........

May I ask where is down there?

Down where is down there? The mighty mighty Melbourne Australia, home of all the finest things in the world, including me

I love searching around in 2nd hand bookshops, but unfortunately I walk into one trying to find one book (most recently Tolkien) and I just sort of glaze over. I come to, find myself outside the bookshop a couple of hours later with not only the Silmarillion but 4-5 other books. So instead of spending $4 I end up spending $30-$40 - which is a fair bit when you're on $90 a week (about 35 pound, I guess). I try to browse but I just can't get the hang of it.......

lol You're not the only one having that problem in 2nd-hand bookstores... And I've noticed that phenomenon in libraries too - you plan to borrow one book but end up with ten wondering when you'll have the time to read them all...

The trick is, to not see it as a problem so much as a challenge. I actually cannot remember the last time I returned my books when they were due. Every time I go up to the desk to borrow some more books they say "Oh, you've got a fine here, the last lot of books you borrowed were returned 2 weeks late." I pay the fine, take the books and go on my merry way. The most recent books I got, I hada fine, but didn't have any money. The girl on the desk says "That's okay, I'll put them through, just pay next time." Those books are currently.......17 days overdue. I finished reading them after 1 week, I just never get around to returning them.....

Sounds familiar...

I've actually started re-reading 'The road to Mars' by Eric Idle, simply because I couldn't be bothered returning it and I finished reading Anna Karenin. Maybe I'll return it when I finish it this time......

Whoops, where have I been...? *looks around trying to remember*

When you appeared to the Celery-Webjello-party I couldn't help noticing you've added that one "h" to your name... And your page is a bit different now... I assume you've read that story now?

*draws a pentagram on the floor and starts mumbling and chanting*

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn...

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming

Hey Alien, howdy do. I actually found a book called "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos" edited by August Derleth which contains The Call of Cthulhu and The Haunter of the Dark by Lovecraft, among many other tales by Clark Ashton Smith, J. Vernon Shea, Robert Bloch, and a few others.
I figured if I was going to take this being as my on-line entity then I should at least know something about it Just like I probably should have known something about the online elections - or indeed known any of the people - when I dropped in on the Celery-Webjello dinner (which thread is still going, though it is kind of trundling along now).

So what other stories do you reckon I should read? I've.........*breaks off and glances towards the door*

Hmmmm sorry, must run, I've just spotted the most marvelous Shining Trapezohedron, and I have the most uncanny desire to peer into its infinite depths...........

Hmm... Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos... Wonder where I could get that one... I've mostly read Mythos stories by Lovecraft but would very much like to read those by others too... And reading them would probably be a very good thing to our rpg...

The Haunter of the Dark? Now why can't I remember which story that is... *goes and finds out* Or, right, that one... I personally don't think either of those stories is best of Lovecraft although the Cthulhu one is probably the best known for some reason...
Some Lovecraft stories I especially enjoy are The Shadow out of Time, The Thing on the Doorstep, and of course The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror... And the only novel he's written - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - is great... And that one novel he wrote with Derleth - The Lurker at the Treshold...

As to your appearance at the Celery-Webjello party - it was the dinner you were in, wasn't it? Appearing there probably was against (n)etiquette since it was meant for invited guests only... But at least you weren't killing the Celery as some were desperately trying to... Otherwise there is no reason not to join any threads whether you know something about it or not as long as one remembers the Continuity (http://www.h2g2.com/A351866)...

About time for another subject....

A lot of the stories don't add anything directly to the mythos, rather they mention Cthulhu or Shub-Niggurath almost in passing, keeping the 'sceptical journalist' style of writing - notes found after death, that sort of thing. They are interesting in so far as they bring things into different settings, but none of them do anything particularly stunning. The forward by Derleth is quite interesting, though (at least to me, because it more or less summarises the general outlay of Lovecrafts world - something I won't really know until I read more of his work).

So what's the setup of this rpg anyway? About the only rpg I've ever played was Dungeons & Dragons, and that was a long time ago (well, 10-12 years ago, anyway )

Suomen kielesi on liian monimutkaista minulle, but yritan kirjoittaa suomea. Olen Cthulhu, but nimeni on John. Mika sinun nimesi on? Sorry, couldn't find an umlaut in my character map. I'm studying Linguistics, so it's always fun to mutilate other peoples languages, though you'll have to take the blame for any mistakes in translation on that one . It's funny actually, I love studying languages but I have very little talent for learning them - English is hard enough, and anyone who can learn it as a second language has my respect One question - are you very protective of your language? Do you, for instance, get upset if people say that it's a dialect of Swedish (or even of a Scandinavian language as a whole)?

As for the C-W dinner, I only joined after it was declared open to all comers - and after reading through a few hundred posts of backlog! Notwithstanding the whole election thing, the people in there seemed interesting, so I thought I might pop in and say hi, to which they replied.......eventually

Hmm... But there are those non-lovecraft stories which add different entities too, somewhere... It's annoying not to have read all of them when they are all mentioned in the rpg rule-book...

And the rpg - did I already mention it before or didn't I? Can't remember... *goes back and checks out*
Looks like I did briefly... So it's called "Call of Cthulhu" and is entirely set in lovecraftian environment - either in 1890s, 1920s (where most of the stories happen) or in present time... We're playing the oldest era... And I'm being the game master so I try to read any related stories I can find...

Just some time ago I found - or my friend found - a collection of Mythos stories by FINNISH authors and I'm reading it right now... It's mostly very ridiculous to read Cthulhu dwelling in a Finnish lake and "Jouni" going insane after reading a long-lost copy of Necronomicon... But they're not even meant to be serious...

And about Finnish language... How well you speak! "But" is "mutta" btw... Great to see someone interested in languages... I love different languages - I study German, Swedish and French too... And would love to know more but my head couldn't hold much more... And English is easy! Although it doesn't mean I'd speak it perfectly but... a lot better than German for example...

And I'm not quite sure what you mean by asking if I'm "protective" of my language... I wouldn't actually get upset if someone said Finnish is a dialect of Swedish, but I'd absolutely correct the mistake!

I do love languages, but the area that mainly gets me is the lexicon. I studied French for five years in high school, and all I can remember now is Je m'appelle Jean, et tu, tu t'appelle comment? Ca va? Oui, ca va. I can remember various other snatches, but I'm not even sure if that's right anymore, though I think it is. I do like studying the structure of languages though, and the way various languages are structured. I would like to learn Latin, Ancient Greek, Olde English and the like - mainly because a lot of interesting stuff is written in them, and you don't have to worry about having to be able to speak them conversationally!

Some people do get upset at the mention of 'languages' and 'dialects' because they consider a language to be more prestigious than a dialect. In sociolinguistics (the study of language as it relates to society), a language is generally considered to be another dialect, though it be one that has attained a status by being put into dictionaries, used in newspapers, etc.

Some linguists consider the Scandinavian languages to be similar enough to be considered dialects of the same language, and the difference between dialects and languages is entirely political. For instance, there is more similarity between Finnish and Swedish than there is between Cantonese and Mandarin, which are generally considered dialects because China is one country.

Anyway, as you can see I can tend to babble on a bit, but that's the sort of stuff that interests me (along with weevils, of course ) It was funny, that. No-one posts to the CoTW new members forum for 3 months or so, then I do and all of a sudden Peregrin pops in to join too. Must be 'cause I'm, so popular

Cthulhu in Finland........I can just see it now, Cthulhu getting caught in an ice-bound lake and having small children throw snowballs at him..... So what does the game master have to do exactly? Other than know everything it is possible to know about the Mythos

I have terribly little time - I'll reply properly later - but I just HAVE to say that Finnish can in no way be considered as a dialect of any scandinavian language... That might apply to other scandinavian languages - once you know Swedish (or Norwegian, Danish...) you pretty much can understand the others, but no one can understand Finnish like that... It's a completely different language and belongs to a completely different "family" of languages... The name of which I don't know in English... But anyway, I have to run... Be back later!

So back here now... Where was I...

Oh yes... Languages... I'd love to speak Latin too - although it wouldn't be of much use would it... But it would be nice to know more of it than being able to quote some famous sentences like "Veni, vidi, vici" and others found in Asterix...

And in addition to the stuff I posted ealier... Or actually, I shouldn't start debating any further, should I... But Finnish really is nothing like Swedish - Hungarian is much more closer to it although there seem to be no similarities at all... But I'm not a linguistic... Anyway...

Oh, and weevils... It -was- a weird coincidence that Peregrin happened to find the church at the same time... It has been terribly silent in the church for a long time and then you both pop in... You didn't happen to see the weevils celebrating St. Weevil's Day, did you?

I just finished the Finnish Cthulhu book... And the last story was actually very good... But there were no snowballs involved... It's not always cold here, you know!

What does the game master do? Well mostly writing, writing and more adventure writing... I've just learned that NEVER make so hard-to-guess secrets that the players end up wandering in the sewers for nothing and eventually eating, sleeping, eating and hoping that something happens... Which forces me to find another way to get them back in track... I shouldn't overestimate their detective skills...
Which reminds me of something that happened earlier when we were playing Middle-Earth RPG and I wasn't the GM one... We found a cave, which had an inscription on the wall, written in Sindar, and which said something like "Red clouds with the east wind"... We had no idea what that meant and started questioning an old woman living up the hill - she knew nothing about anything and we thought that she was a bit crazy... When we didn't know what else to do we then started camping next to the old woman's house, asking her annoying questions, and waiting for those "red clouds"... I think it was more than a week game-time that we spent there - but eventually after the GM had been hinting and hinting we finally understood to read the inscription aloud, which opened a secret passage and we could continue... So always remember that players are even more stupid than they seem...

Another thing about being GM is to try to keep the players alive... Or at least that's what I try to do - our former GM never let anyone get killed although there were some pretty tough situations... But unfortunately especially in a game like CoC there's not much left to do when players meet Yog-Sothoth or some or its friends - they don't have much chance fighting them and they're too stupid to run... But the game wouldn't have much point if the players never met them either... So they'll get killed... That happened in our last game... Although it was a very ordinary cultist who killed the guy with a gun... Oh well... I'm just learning to be a GM - they can't blame me...

Alien, ACE & Guru? What, did you find yourself just floating about on-line, thinking to yourself 'gee, there just isn't enough for me to do, I wish that there was something else I could get involved with....' It really amazes me just how much time some people spend in this place. I'm here for 2-3 hours most days (except weekends) and I can't think how I could possibly post to (and keep track of) even half the forums that you, Redbeard, etc. et al. manage to. It's taken me 45 minutes just to get this written because I've got three other pages open at the moment. Maybe it's just a time management thing.........

Speaking of which, I'm going to have to do more of that because I just got a job. I went into the interview yesterday, answered questions for half an hour and the guy didn't want to let me leave without signing a contract. It's nice to feel wanted

So you are defensive of your language, after all I must admit that I haven't actually looked into the exact relationship and history of them, but originally they, like English, German, French, etc. all came from the same ancestor, Proto-IndoEuropean, but exactly where the branches are after that I'll have to check up on.

As for St. Weevils day, I was quite dissapointed I missed that. I'd seen the button on your page earlier but I just thought 'Okay, fair enough'. Then the other day, August 12 I believe, I was walking along the foreshore and I saw a large group of weevils writhing on the sand. I thought little of it, but when I logged on I thought - hey, maybe the CoTW knows something about this, and lo and behold....

Not always cold in Finland? No need to destroy a perfectly good stereotype with truth, you know Then again, your idea of cold and mine may well differ.......

*breaks off to spend an hour or so perusing A.L.I.E.N.S.*

See it takes me this long to just find out the most basic things. There are just too many links on too many pages in this place. The problem is you click on one link, read what you find there, then click on another link, then another, then another....... Bloody internet. How does anyone ever get anything done in this world anymore

Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, who knows.........

*breaks off to read library*

Gee, I really have to read more Calvin & Hobbes - I never knew it was so funny

Fighting against Yog-Sothoth with a shovel? Are you people mad?

And where do you play h2g2 chess, anyway?

OK, I'm back. I promise.
Anyway, now that I'm back I think I should go. If I don't post this soon I think the entire h2g2 universe may well explode. Keep me up to date with CoC - and of course they can blame you; you are, after all, God.

AAAAAAAARGH!!!!! My modem died!!!!!!!!!! And just before the weekend which means I can't get a new one before Monday!! But luckily I have a chance to be online here at work for a while... And when I come online I find out that Celery has been kidnapped and who knows what else has happened and I don't have a chance to be here tomorrow and on Monday there will be A LOT of backlog to read... *sigh* Anyway, let's just spend as much time here now as possible...

Hmm... Yep, I'm a Guru... And please don't ask me why - I certainly wasn't thinking that there isn't enough for me to do - actually already being an ACE has been a very bad thing for my phone bills... But when a title of "guru" became available I just couldn't help volunteering to be one... So I just try not to care about the phone bills... And although they are huge I'm not even nearly that much online as many others here - don't ask me how they do it...

Congratulations for getting a job!! You must be really good if they didn't want to let you go... What kind of job is it??

So you found A.L.I.E.N.S. then... Hope you didn't go permanently insane... A reply to your question about our madness: Yes, we a definitely mad, and proud of it! But actually we've never been attacking Yog-Sothoth with shovels - they've never met him yet... Although if they did they probably would use their shovels... What's wrong with shovels anyway?!? They're especially good in smashing evil kings sleeping in their chambers without any idea that all of their subjects have been killed... And -- oh, right. I'll just stop here about that.

Where do I play h2g2-chess? That's a good question... I don't even know if it works anymore... After the last update of h2g2 - no, it was the update before that - it ceased to work and Pastey didn't have time to fix it when he was busy getting married... And then I just forgot about it and don't know if it has been fixed now... Hmm... I'd better find out - I was just in a middle of losing a perfectly good game... *goes to investigate the case of Chess*

So while the damn pages load I can continue here... I wonder why I never bothered to add a link to the chess page... Oh well... Hmm... Looks like it was Sea who kidnapped the Celery... The presidential race is getting really weird... I just hope people don't get offended... Although they already are... Hmh...

Hey! I found the chess page! But I have no idea if it works - the page doesn't say anything about it... I should ask Pastey... As soon as I get a new modem... But the chess page is here: http://www.h2g2.com/U113117

Now I'd better say goodbye for h2g2 for a few days... *sigh* But I can manage! I will manage!! I'll show everyone that I'm not an addict!!! At least I hope so... Oh, and btw - you said it took you 45 minutes to write the beginning for that message - guess how long I've been writing this... But when you're writing and surfing at the same time it can't be avoided... And if I still have MSN & ICQ open as I usually do at home it can take hours to write one post... That's why I'm not that actively participating the threads I'm in - I prefer lurking... Although there are many threads which require my or my clone's presence, too... And now there seems to be more of them as usual... Which is why it was so terrible my modem decided to die just now... But hey, was I leaving? I'm sure I was... Now I will. *goes away*

And no, they can't blame me - I'm not God... The Potato is...