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

not only that, glad to know that they are as annoyed by Tom Bombadill as I was at that age

Yo. Pheroneous.
I got your book in the mail today.
Looks like lots of bite-size morsels.
Bedside, loo or commuting.
My kinda book.

So far, I've only read the one about 'the
wheelie bin that played Chopin for a minute'.

And that was enough to allow me to now say
I am not disappointed.

Why would one iron a straight jacket BTW.

~jwf~

For those who haven't ordered a copy yet:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...book/mr-p-%28and-george%29/13582875

In the '13 for 13' thread I said I'd limit myself to having three books on the go at a time. I'm going to break that for a while. Waverley is proving such hard going that I'll be alternating with Pride and Prejudice. Hopefully a chapter or two of that will help break the tedium.

Thanks ~jwf~, support much appreciated. I haven't been able to sort out the page numbering, nor the back cover, but I trust you can ignore both.

I fear transatlantic misunderstanding ( Lulu seem quite US orientated, and my little pieces are often quite anglo centric). A "Strait or Straight Jacket is a tough canvas jacket with very long sleeves that can be tied around the waist that is (was?) used to restrain potentially violent mentally disturbed patients in what were once called Mental Hospitals. "as if she were ironing a straight jacket just for me". She thinks I am mad.

I really shoulda put a winkeye after my question
about ironing a straight jacket. Taking me at face
value, you were, as always, gentleman enough to try
and explain. Let me assure you I am more than familiar
with the nature of straight-jackets and I was actually
trying to show my appreciation for the joke rather than
asking for an explanation.

My bad - I shoulda smilied.

The image of ironing a straight jacket is unique, original
and genuinely amusing.


~jwf~

HG Wells, The Invisible Man. I see what he's doing, but to be honest I think it would have worked better as a short story. There's a lot of flab in there.

I found that with a lot of Wells' stuff.

Context peeps, context.
a) there was no radio, TV and even film was experimental.
Books were king and Storytellers used to be able to flesh
things out and the reading public enjoyed every tidbit.
b) no one had ever written about an invisible man before;
it was startling and original in its time. Possibilities!
c) there was no long history of bad special effects in
the making of films and TV stories that ripped off Wells
brilliant and original idea reducing it to cliche.
d) it isn't so much about the sci-fi or fantasy of an
invisi-ability - it's about the moral questions that arise
in the mind of one suddenly capable of being unseen
e) it's classic steampunk


~jwf~

As I said, I see what he's trying to do. I understand the points about the nature of morality. And I also read a lot of fiction from earlier centuries, so it's not that I'm unfamiliar with the context. (Speaking of context, your point B isn't quite right: Wells lifted the whole idea of an invisible man and the morality of his actions straight from Plato, so it wasn't as new as you might think).

But no, it is flabby and repetitive even allowing it its place in time. I wasn't ignoring your points at all, but I think it's true despite them.

Well put!

*Damn Plato*


~jwf~

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges for the Plato version if you're interested - Tolkein also had a wee fling with Plato.

(Damn. I should be in bed, not talking about Plato and his influence on hobbitses pocketses! I blame 2legs )

Not that I doubted you for a minute.
But thanks for the hard evidence.
Thanks for the link!


~jwf~

Don't get me wrong, I like most of Wells' stories. I just find him to pad out too much.

It's almost as if he knows exactly what his characters and places look like and wants to make sure that no-one is in any doubt, or even able to sway from his vision in the slightest.

I believe he was also quite an arrogant man by contemporary reports.

About halfway through, when IM visits Doctor Kemp, it started to get a bit better. The first half was just the same scene over and over. IM goes into pub/house/busy street, causes havoc, evades capture. It was all action and no depth, but that might be changing.

I haven't read that one, but could it be that he's setting him up for a huge fall and that you need to have the repetitiveness of his successes to make that fall so much better? (I really must read it sometime)

>>..what his characters and places look like and wants to make sure
that no-one is in any doubt, or even able to sway from his vision..<<

Indeed! But this is like the High Def of late Victorian literature.

Dickens of course also suffers in our modern whirled for the
same sin of giving hours and hours of detail to the reader.
Detail which we of the HD video generation find tedious,
but this was considered the 'best' possible writing in the
time before Cinemascope and Stereophonix and Twits.

Some say it is like Baroque or Rococo art and architecture.
And I must confess that I find such art too busy, too full of
tiresome detail, to the point where I find little to enjoy
unless some expert guides me thru it, thus forcing me
to observe and sometimes appreciate the minutia.



Again my thanks to KB for informing me of the Ring of Gyges
mythos as the source of the idea of invisible morality.

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

I sometimes can't believe how little I really know.
Especially of the classic Greek and earlier cultures.

Thank the goddess for the h2g2 opportunity to go on
learning something new every other day or so.


~jwf~

That Wiki entry has a link to a similar phenom of moral suspension
in our modern whirled called the Online Disinhibition Effect.

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


~jwf~

Teh Assfluent Society by JK Galbraith

Finished reading The 4% Universe, by R Panek.
A dreadfully written book imho - contains about 96% irrelevent or made up material (e.g. Prof Peebles was shocked, and rushed to his video monitor to read avaricously the contents of the email sent by Dr Sprochenhind. At that same time the Dr Sprochenhinds wife was out walking the cocker spaniel, a family pet, that they had jointly chosen from the St Cuthberts Dog Sanctuary, on Friday 12th at 7.32 pm, when suddenly ...)