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

and then, as they stood, Calamaty, George Formby, Dawn, the lampposts, Pertunia's, Spoons, Anne Witacum, Shaggy (from scooby doobie doo), and Thelma, heard a noise, and stood prepared for whatever disasterious event that by now they have lurnt to associate with every happening in their short, short, short, not very long association with each other.... but this sound, was not as that of those before, and then in a circular realisation of certain brands of household bleach possing differing quantities of teh active ingrediant and being all more or less thicker or thinner in consistance in relation to other brands included in this small scale, but representitive sample of the avilible brands in teh market, and which, in a recent survey, were shown to be the ten top selling brands in all regions of the UK aside Scotland where other brands prevailed, and the noise was thus, well, it was a noise that can't easily be described but if you heard it you'd probably recognize it, and then it happened! Trowel hammer descended rocketing the fortress-like extensions of the extended fingers of someones right hand, and desheveled vagrent type folk did all 'neeeek' symultainiously adding a surreal nature of poodle to the goings on, and the tea buns did burble in their infactuations with the cream donuts, and then, again teh trowel hammer descended, ripping asunder the entire left hand quater of a punnet of necterines, which scuttled and bruttled their way to the floor and bermused stood to be squished underneath the feet of a thousand thousand slimey things, which in teh cool light of day resolved to eat less sweet and fattening products for the foreseeible future, but, then the future for them was not long, only as long as the etherial existance that is life and the embombinal determination of prevailing despite all evidence to the contry, and, yet, again, the trowel hammer descended, squishing half the necterines and the impact sent the rest scuttling further along the floor, just as ten hundred Imortial worriers strode into vision, their bronze breast plates glinting in the light cast by a nearby telephone box, and beneath the chain mail, of steel glinted over the softwoolen shirts that cradeled their skin from its coldness, and their swords, raised, attacked, clanging distastfully off the necterines, again and again, as furvently they attempted to draw up sucessful and devient plans to control the fiscal happenings of the region, and thelma screamed 'golash!', and then wondered why she had done this, but to Shaggy it was all too clear, the thousand thousand slimey things; talked of the time that was to be, the ten hundred Imortal worriers spoke of the times that were not to be, and Hamlet spoke little, as he wasn't there..... Again, the Trowel hammer descended, and this time Shaggy saw clearly, the blazzened words on teh Armour of the Imortals, 'Toto moto', and it was right, it made sense so he jumped off the building and landed on George Formby's hoovercraft, and speed off into the night, forgetting Thelma, their unsucessful romance, their flawed attempts at running the largest chain of muffin retail stores in the whole of Europe, and George and Shaggy flew through the night, and through the sky, and Shaggy was at peace, for he realised

that the bill was still due to Ranjit Frederico Castro. And the wrath of the Indo-Scicilian Cubans was to be ignored at great peril....

*perilous*

yes, it was to be ignored with great and perilous results, for as Shaggy and George were zooming down the middle of nowhere, beyond All Reason and right before the left turn to New Reason, that was lying on the horizon, in sleep forever until the next full stop, they have noticed that they are being chased by a great number of small restaurants with checkered tablecloths and menus written in Hindi and the CD of Buena Vista Social Club playing in the background, and they got terrified and mortified and immortified, and they were so busy doing this that they missed the left turn and kept zooming towards

the Wholly and Increasingly Unlikely Conclusion. "Freeyeaoowww!!!", screamed Thelma, but not for any imediately obvious reason. On hearing Thelma's scream, George turned his head to look back and on turning his head, George turned the hoovercraft down an indescript alley that demanded to be described anyway. So thusly, it was a dark and stormy alley, the kind of alley one wouldn't want to meet in some dark... well... alley, alone at night. The alley never wanted to be dark and stormy. Given a choice it would have prefered to be jaunty and subtropical. But it wasn't. Dark and stormyness was thrust upon it and this made it also surly. So the alley decided to thrust its surliness upon George, Shaggy and the hoovercraft. The alley tossed trashbins and alleycats and wafty-grimey bits of old newspaper at the hoovercraft, (trashbins, alleycats and wafty-grimey bits of old newspaper being the only weapons at the disposal of a surly dark and stormy alley). The Wholly and Increasingly Unlikely Conclusion watched all this from a far, and was wondering how all this was going to turn out and whether or not any of the others would like to make his acquaintance. The far didn't care, it just liked being there for the Wholly and Increasingly Unlikely Conclusion.
Meanwhile, George, Shaggy and the hoovercraft continued, somewhat destinctly daunted down the alley. Shaggy became distracted by a sign on a wall that said "Post No Bills". Since this seemed like a "Bill" itself, Shaggy decided it needed 'unposting' and ripped it from the wall. Now he had a recently unposted and self referencing bill in his hand he didn't know what to do with, so he stuck it in his satchel. George narrowly evaded the latest barrage of alleycats tossed in his way and steered the hoovercraft out of the alley. The alley opened up to a...

become a small patessary, a persona the alley prefered much more than its previous alley like existance as a, well, as an alley. As the hoover craft left the newly born patessary, Shaggy turned to George, and hit him over the heat with a fresh halibut that one of the alley cats had droped in the craft, George turned, and said

that he believed it was quite impolite for one to hit somebody with a fish, especially when this somebody happens to be George Formby [for the record, I have no idea who this person is - Yael], at which point he has been attacked by TWO fish-wielding thugs. Shaggycouldn't hear his cries for help as he was already walking down the ex-alley, pondering and reflecting off the bright windows of shoemaker stores that have not been opened for the last year but still have a little sign on the door saying "back in five", and he thought to himself that maybe they meant they will be back in five years, or in 2005, or perhaps never, and if that was the case then why would they put a sign on the door that was obviously incorrect, which is an understatement, you can even say that the sign was lying, but then again maybe they did mean to come back, and perhaps, he thought, he should do something about all these commas and that apparently infinite sentence that just goes on and on and on without stopping, as if it has a life of its own, and then he saw that the sentence indeed had a life of its own and it was now following him around, crawling on the walls like a huge snake, its commas glistening in the light of the lampposts that have now made another appearance in the story, though for the moment with no ill intentions, so it seems, and he got very very scared, and started struggling to remember where the full stops were until he managed to find one.
The sentence

(George Formby is quite a British thing I guess.... there is an guide entry on him, which might give you some idea, but if you can ever find a song or two of his, they might shed more light... maybe
A622568 Should link to the guide entry... 2legs).

...the sentence lay, out flat on teh ground, panting for breath as a consequence of its mammoth effort, and total, and utter, emersion into the world of commas, which were, even now, serabitiously creaping back into the sentence, elongating it, cradeling it, as it developed, grew, growing ever large, towering over the fish, the lamposts, George Formby, the alley, the Ex alley, the Shaggy looking Shaggy, the sky gleared at the sentence, the sentence, unable to break its break-neck pace of continueation, did not notice the sky, but continued, onwards, upwards, sideways, and always with multiple commas, handly breaking up the sentence, but, even now, as the sentence continued afresh, its breathing grew the more raggard by the moment, as it elongated further, and further, until it seemed it would reach breaking point, but, then, at what the lampposts, George formby, Shaggy and the alley had decided would surely be the point at which the sentences gigantuian effort came to a bluddy end, something happened. The something which happened was

the full stop exploded... leaving in it's wake several happless elipses... Well... there they were, just cluttering the place up... as they are wont to do.... The sentence was very afraid... what would it do if the elipses came after it.... The commas were bad enough... but those elipses could really do a number on a sentence.... So the sentence did what any good sentence would do in such a situation... it hid!
It hid...

and it hid....

And it waited...

and waited...

and kept waiting...

and waiting...

for the elipses to go away...

Which they did!

----Newsflash, Real Life update:----
Suicide bombing. Gaza Street. Bus no. 19 - quite a student bus, going between two campuses and through downtown.
I'm making phonecalls now, trying to find out if everybody I know is alright.
I'll post an update later today, hopefully.
----/Newsflash, Real Life update----

----Real Life update:----
I just want to thank everybody that offered their sympathy.
I'm much better now, once again I've been lucky enough and nobody I know was there...
Hopefully I'll recover from the shock later today, and will be able to resume posting nonsense.
----/Real Life update----

I heard about it on the BBC radio four news today, sounded pretty bad You must have great strength to live with the threat of su h things always around the corner nighthooer will protect you

Thanks.

... But then they all paused for a moment. George, Shaggy, Thelma, the Lamposts, the hoovercraft, the patiserie, Calamity, Darkness, Count Often, the lady, Marvel and all the rest stopped what they were doing to honor all those suffering in times of strife and horror....




And then they all went back to what they were doing because they felt the best they could do was to follow the advice of Anonymous when he said, "Never let the bastards get you down!"

And much silliness ensued. For instance, just to the left of Shaggy, a...

giant lobster shapped inflatible sofa, by the name of Horatio appeared, and began a dreadful battle song, but he only knew one verse, and kept singing it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, untill he saw shaggy, and cried out 'aubergine!', for no apparent reason, this shock Shaggy, and he struggled for some time to fre himself from teh aubergine, which they slid over to George Formby and

hoped that he'd keep it.
"Huh!" said Horatio, the giant lobster shaped inflatable sofa, before turning to Latin. "Damnant quid non intelligunt" It said sadly, but nobody understood him so they just looked the other way and hoped it would shut up, and eventually it cried out "O tempora, o mores! Sic transit gloria mundi!" and disappeared into the floor.
The small group began their long way towards the next post, walking in the moonlit semantic fields of maize mazes. Shaggy was deep in thought, trying to remember how he got to this story in the first place and what the aubergine had to do with it all, and suddenly he heard a voice on his left. No, he remembered, this was actually his right, since that morning he put his watch on the other hand, and he started trying to remember why he did that when he heard the voice again and looked towards it, on whatever side it was. He was only mildly surprised to see his yoga teacher sitting in the lotus position and saying vague truths in a foggy voice. "Don't ignore your fear, recognize it and use it," she told him, "and don't forget to breath!"
Shaggy realized that he did forget to breath, but couldn't recall how to do so, and panicked. He started seeing various punctuation marks floating around him (which is quite impossible); he thought: "Wow! What's all this?" - but soon all was .,..';``"{-([]).,;';,,';'-{}{{``,..., for a while at least.
He was falling through begonias and daffodils and petunias of course and hibiscus and dandelions and forget-me-nots and what do you call those pretty little ones, tumbleweeding his way across a plane of unfinished jobs, swimming with all his might for all it's worth, until he surfaced, gasping and panting and spitting salt water, on the same piece of sea that this story started on, with the islands and fish and so on. He

you lot still on about this nighthoover rubbish?. Look the bloke has gone get over it

remembered the words of his teacher, and yoga expert sansee, and channeled his fears, directing his worys, almagimating his prepostus annoyance at the aubergine, and saw it, as if a light had light in a darkened room it came to him... This was where he had started... this was where he now was... the punctueation was all mainly irrelivent except the full stops, which were quite handy he now reallised... he had gone full circle... from where he began, he now was.... but the beginning was the end... for the end was the beginning... and he realised it was also the middle...for he was there all the time... they all were, then, as he looked around he saw the others seemingly matterialise from thin air, first George Formby and then the

rest of them, which is at this point quite a long list so we won't repeat their names now. The lady, which hasn't played any role in the story for a while, took off in the hovercraft again. A pile of pizza boxes materialized from nowhere. Nobody came out of the ambiguous depths waving a string of beads. The fish were bubbling around a mailbox. Calamity and Continuity were tugging at Dawn's sleeve. A train passed briefly through the air, on its way from point A to point B. Another train left point B fifteen minutes earlier on its way to point A, but that did not seem relevant. The sky was turning darker and darker, like the face of a newborn programme, and a cold wind swept the sky and collected the stars into a dustbin. Night was now drawing quick sketches of nocturnal scenes on faraway hedges. It was the kind of time when things

prepare themselves for the nightly hoovering. The skirting board trilled with glee. The sofa cushions twittered with expectation. The dust bunnies and loess leapords ran fro cover. The knick-knacks shivvered at the prospect of a dusting. Calamity and Continuity willowmied with anticipation. Boxing Baboon swelled with blasphemy. And George Formby