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

From what I've heard, that is a really nice place to live. I guess the sources I heard it from were not bothered by the pine pollen.

i never heard of anyone pining for pollen

and i am absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that paul did not make that pun

Actually, we were talking today about how we a) miss Philadelphia life, and b) appreciate that here, it is warmer, and the cost of living is lower.

You really *are* desperate then, if you are pining for life in the city where they roll up the sidewalks at 6:00 p.m.

Just remember - Ben Franklin may have been born in Boston, but he hotfooted it out of there as fast as he could...

...and went to Philly.

my cousin is a well renowned ophthalmologist in philly, i could have put in a good word for you, dmitri

Dmitri, we Bostonians are grateful that Ben left us before he could do any damage to the town. When he got to Philly, he drew up a street plan and made it much more boring than Boston ever was.

I don't know anything about Ben doing a street plan. That was there before he got there. He just showed up on a Sunday morning, and feel asleep in a Quaker meeting (it happens, you should try not to snore...)

Then he went out where the Penn campus is now, and flew a kite...

The boring streets are the fault of one of my ancestors. Henry was a sort of apprentice surveyor back in the 1680s, when they laid the place out.

The problem was, they brought a non-standard surveying chain with them from Europe. Ergo, there is something engineers like my dad called the 'Philadelphia Conversion Factor'...

I think the best joke Ben played on Boston was publishing that phony blog where he pretended to be an old lady...

Bostonians deserved to be deceived by Ben.

Especially his big brothers.

They weren't especially good to him, were they? I don't know if he had cordial relations with his siater, Jane Mecom, who was the first woman printer of note in the colonies.