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

What "imperfections"...?

Sometimes it's a quote. After all, she can't be talking about herself.

I heard she has a tiny little freckle on the bottom of her right foor, but I bet that's just a rumour started by jealous folk.

Aw...y'all are too kind. But two of the three of you have met me and therefore have solid proof of my imperfections, so none of that!

The line is actually from the song that always comes into my head either a) right after I fall head over heels for someone or b) right before I travel. It's "Travelling Alone" by Maria Sangiolo, who is an extremely talented folk singer. Like most folk songs, this one goes in something of a circle, starting with

"It's easier travelling alone, no one to question where I go, no one to see all my imperfections or ask me for attention"

and of course later ends up with

"I don't want to travel alone, I don't sleep so well in a stranger's home, and I can't even use the telephone to call you and tell you I love you I miss you, it's no good, this travelling alone."

It kind of loses something without the actual music.

Apparently - and I think I've mentioned this before, or I'm getting a mad case of h2g2 deja-vu - she wrote it while waiting for a plane in Newark. Which means something good can come out of being stuck in Newark after all - and this was of course the thought I was having last time I got stuck waiting there for three hours...

Newark hunh? I've heard it's hell. What's hell like? (I have to prepare, you see)

Why? Are you going to Newark?

thankyouverymuch

Yes... I have my handbasket all ready to go.

LOL!



I prefer going in a bucket myself. A la the Grateful Dead.

Are you going to be accompanied by pointy ranbowy teddybears?? I'm taking a weiner dog.

My parents have a weiner dog named Max.
His breath smells like dog food.

See my most recent journal entry.

I went pass Newwark in a beetle, does that count?

It suuuuure does.

After living in New Jersey for two whole months, I vowed never to set foot on its soil again. I maintained that rule for about a year, but moving to Boston and what not has made it near impossible to avoid the place. I'm told there are lovely bits of it. Really. The bits I've been in have not been lovely - I lived in what seemed like a demilitarized zone, and in May, Ant and I stopped at a gas station on the PA/Jersey border only to run into a minivan full of really intimidating militia men. What was it about Bali, the garden spot and hell setting up shop on its porch?

Closest I've come to New Jersey is travelling up the New Jersey Turnpike from Washington DC to New York. A salutary experience, but not real revelatory about exactly what it is you're talking about...

Lucky you, Kate. You only had to wait three hours. When I went to Paris in March, I had to spend nine hours and forty-five minutes in the Detroit airport. Admittedly, five hours of that was scheduled layover and two hours was in the plane that never took off because of engne trouble, but it still wasn't very fun. Particularly when, in a desperate attempt to kill time, we began playing War, the card game that lasts forever...and proceeded to play the three whortest games of War I have ever played or witnessed in my life. I just wasn't fair!

A darn sight better than plunging headlong flaming into the Atlantic, though...

Spoken like one who hasn't tried it though. Who knows? Plunging headlong flaming into the Atlantic might have that insanely real sense of adventure that everything else has always been missing!

Oh, but you'll only get to enjoy it for a few minutes...

And then I wouldn't even get the chance to tell anyone about it. No, I'll settle for waiting in airports. That is, after all, why I always pack at least twice the number of books I think I can read during the time of the trip. And my favorite cds.

Books and magazines definitely pass the time well on such a trip, yes. I stopped packing music, though, cos I found it wasn't worth the trouble, and I generally don't miss it, even on the longest trips. United Airlines has an especially cool time-killer: Channel 9 on their audio service (which is on most of their planes) otherwise known as "From the Cockpit". You get to hear the air traffic control talk. Probably just me, but I was surprisingly intrigued by it.

If God had intended us to fly, he would never have given us the railways.

My solution to long trips? Drugs. That way I don't put off everyone else with my non-stop screaming and crying. Plus, the sleeping pills have a hallucunogenic effect and the movies get reaaaallllyyy interesting for that brief space between when I take the pill and when I actually nod off.