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

I find it odd to find a NaJoPoMo (National Journal Posting Month) on a guide to the so of course I am instead creating an Inter Galactic Journal Posting this month.
(There may be more postings to come, but I can't promise anything. As everybody knows us age old pensioners are busy...)

Lanzababy introduced me to the word "Humblebrag", which I had never heard before but nevertheless appeared strangely familiar

Then Beatrice mentioned "stealthboast" and I remembered "namedropping"

And now I have come up with an idea how to use these - concepts, can you call them that? - in a different way. Let's see how that w*rks out.

"I met Jimbo the other day. Was good seeing him again after all these years. You know, Jimbo? The drummer of that famous rockband? Yes, his name is actually Jim Robertson, but to me he'll always be Jimbo, of course."

This is how you would practice name dropping a few years ago. But these days you could add: "We were in school together, same class even. I remember sharing showers with him after gym class. Very nice chap, always lent me his shampoo."

You see, Jimbo came out a few months ago - on national tv.

I too have bizarre phrases that come in my head, and wonder what their origins are. In the North East of England, 'They say any road, or they would ask someone to go and use their gumption'.

I don't think I have ever did any 'namedropping', I may have without know it.

Ooh, I could do some good name-dropping. But I'm so old now the Yoof wouldn't get the names. I should begin to write a memoir before even I forget who it was I met and where it was I met them.


example - I got invited to the opening night of an Art Exhibition here recently, and had to come out with the priceless name dropping - 'The last one of these I attended was in Bristol - Peter Blake at the Arnolfini - lovely man...'

That sort of thing?

exactly, Lanzababy

In my line of work you can't help meeting one or the other celeb (mostly wannabe celebs, though). A colleague was asked to tell about his job to a school class and of course one of the pupils asked if he'd ever met a famous person. Off the top of his head my colleague mentioned a very famous Danish player.

"Who is he?" asked the pupil And then my colleague remembered that the player in question had resigned a couple of years ago

Name-dropping is a temptation. The problem is that the famous people I've met form a short list. The list of famous people who are still alive is even shorter.

I doubt that any of them, alive or dead, have ever dropped *my* name.

Meh, name dropping is annoying unless the person actually has a story to tell about meeting the famous person. I met James Cameron, but I didn't even speak to him other than introductions. If I'd told him how poorly I thought of Titanic and especially the trite use of dancers holding hands with a spinning SteadiCam operator, maybe he would have reacted in a way worthy of telling the story (fisticuffs?). But just meeting a celebrity isn't interesting. I see this on social media quite often. People post images captioned "Look who I ran into". I don't care! Well, I don't care when strangers do it. If I actually know the person then that's mildly interesting, deserving of a "Oh, that's nice".

I met and spoke to Bill Gates (and shook his hand) on two separate occasions in the early 90s because I was head of a team that organised a Microsofft Conference at which he gave the keynote speech both times. In fact the second year we (i) got him on stage with John Scully (head hocho at Apple) much to the surprise of... well, everyone.
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not that I would ever name drop.

Humblebragging, imo, is much much much worse.

Sho, did Mr. Gates remember you the second time?

well, he did use my name and mention something from the first time. But I'm guessing that he has a very good team around him and was very well briefed about talking to the minions. Credit to him, though, he made it all seem very natural (my current CEO - who is a godlike figure generally - has a similar approach. I don't think it fools anyone but it's a nice gesture)

He most likely has a farley file (or rather, his personal secretary has one). I first heard about this in a Danish tv interview with one of the richest guys in the world (can't remember the name, but might have been one of Henry Ford's descendants). Plus I read about it in Heinlein's "Double Star" which is also mentioned in the following

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file

Namedropping is one thing, eavesdropping is quite another ballgrame.
I remember being a young bicklayer's assistant. I was up on the scaffold when a clumsy bricklayer handed me an eave in such an awkward way that I couldn't help but drop in on our boss

yet another career down the drain - almost literally - but at least I had the rest of the day off

I remember meeting David Owen in the late 80's in Brighton. I don't remember much about the meeting, whether not I said anything to him as I was not quite sure about how to address a top politician, it was in the heady days of SDLP.

I went to visit a brewery today.
(Yes, I'm fine, thank you for asking.)
9 friends met at 11am and drove an hour or so to this micro brewery:
http://www.bryghusetmoen.dk/
I'm afraid there is no foreign text (which is a bit strange since the brewer is German and tourism is the thing here). Oh well, I don't have any shares in this.
We were told the story of this only 9 years old brewery, had a very nice lunch in its restaurant and went home again.
Will I be able to eat and drink anything after this at all?
We'll have to wait and see. It's time to relax in my sofa, watch some and make some hard decisions later

Pierce, I hope you had a wonderful time at the brewery. I wish I was there for I love sampling traditionally brewed beer.

it really was wonderful

Happiness is a decalcified shower head

The water here is very 'hard' as they say. There's quite a lot of calcium in it. This ruins washing machines, boilers and stuff like that.

And over time it blocks the holes in shower heads. Eventually you have to move around quite a lot to become wet all over
And rinsing after shampooing becomes a task

So what you do is you detach the shower head and let it sit in some kind of acid for a while. One night in plain vinegar does the job perfectly

You then attach the shower head again and hey presto, you have the same sensation as you will when you have stopped repeatedly hitting your head against a wall: Shere bliss