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

Happy Daffodil Day one and all

and the sun has come out

Yay! to the sunlit daffodil day!

Evening all!

I am still reading my book, Inner Paths to Outer Space, I've been reading it for weeks, I'm a very slow reader. . It has coloured pictures in it, which is what has delayed me, I always get delayed by coloured pictures, they take me home and yet far away to that other home, that home where poets stand on bridges, listening to rivers of pure light, and there are lit up towers and masts in the distance.

The pictures in my book feature the works of scifi artist Slawek Wojtowicz, and there's a giant mantis, and every time I see this giant mantis I fall over because I've seen it before somewhere. What is it about the mantis?



Life is good. It is snowing on the daffodils, but I love this cold wind, it keeps me sharp.

DG just reminded me about journal writing and Elektra just reminded me about Philip K. Dick. I am so keen to support hootoo, sometimes I think that my contribution is so thin and ragged, a vagrant journal that has no place to go but the place that it is in, but I'm fine with that really, and I have been writing writing writing channeling that spirit, file under mental junk haha, good times, back soon must eat.

Yeah, and I go to two supermarkets and end up writing nonsense about check-outs and paperbacks. I've stood on that bridge, and will again...

Mental junk drawers are interesting places. Be sure you click on today's Google Doodle - it even says,

Ah yes, I'm planning to read your supermarket piece later, after I've been to the supermarket. . The weird light effect in supermarkets inspires me to buy things I wouldn't buy in normal light, like sparkling mineral water with strange fruit flavours, that makes your thirstier the more you drink.

It's not often I get to buy orange flavoured water, unless let loose. . Yippeeee! One time, when visiting Brighton, I went into a supermarket for a bottle of plain water, and came out with a bottle of Tequila, a family sized tub of hot chocolate powder, a packet of dried tomato soup, a washing up brush, the DVD of Apollo 13, a mouse for the laptop, and no plain water.



Yes, I saw the Douglas Adams google logo yesterday! Amazing! So inspired I am!

Tequilla and Apollo 13, I think that is inspired shopping

Talking of inspired have you seen Willem's Warthog Landscape
in A87787084

Holy saints, if I could draw a warthog like that...splendid Willem!

Hullo Peanut! , how's things?



Welcome to the roach motel of the internet.



Just quoting Dmitri there.



I'm very happy about the roach motel of the internet.



I almost had a story there, almost almost. I was about to write paragraph six, having written five paragraphs on paper about a bike trail through a canyon, and a lady named Margaret.

I don't know who Margaret was, although she was very amiable, I was hoping she would feature later in the story. However, the space for paragraph six was suddenly obliterated by a tiny tan dog with foldover ears, which appeared from the top right corner of my page and refused to move for twenty minutes.

When it finally did move I realised I had fallen asleep whilst reading a magazine, and had dogeared the top right corner of the page, because it was a very interesting article about a mountain bike trail through a canyon. Not that I will ever ride a mountain bike trail through a canyon in this life or the next, but it was interesting anyway.

During my sleep I dreamed I was writing a story about a mountain bike trail through a canyon, and it's a lesson not to dogear pages, because it ruins the magazine, and tiny tan dogs with foldover ears appear from nowhere and ruin paragraph six, and the rest of the story, and now I will never know who Margaret was.

End of automatic writing session, file under mental junk. hahah.

Welcome to the roach motel of the interent.

I must eat.

You're going to get me in so much trouble with Pastey, Robbie, and Lanza...there are grown-ups around here, you know...

Morning

Things are, well, difficult. Coming here and reading about little dogs and Margeret is a tonic I tell you

The interesting stats I mentioned on Charlie thread is this

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/classic/info?cmd=conv

that link seems to work *keeps fingers crossed*

Sorry things are difficult for you, my love .

Glad to be able to provide a tonic or sorts , perhaps Margaret is a healer, I think she is. . I think she is a healing spirit, who resides in a canyon in Arizona, and recites peculiar poetry to passing cyclists, who then think they are hearing things, and the meter is terrible, so they swerve, narrowly avoiding a giant lizard who is planning to tell them its life story in fifteen languages.

Those stats are interesting! Thanks! I will keep a check on them.



So, erm, right... oh dear, wouldn't want to get the Ed into trouble, I think the roach motel of the internet is a wonderful nod to the Beats, who influenced the history of art forever ..

.. and also a celebration of diversity, the glorious diversity of life, and there are such great writers and thinkers and dreamers and philosphers here on hootoo, it's good to celebrate the diversity, the glorious diversity of life the .....

yeh yeh yeh . True though, I mean it.

For me, hootoo has always been so great, because I can express spirit and beauty, whilst being different, an outsider artist, a refugee, an outcast from the mainstream art world, and I can be playful, serious and quite stupid sometimes, and it's a place to go and meet lovely friends, a trusted spiral. .

I think if it wasn't that any more, I'd slink off and lie under the table at the flower show and write poetry to failed pumpkins , , but I would understand also.





And meanwhile, the moment is vibrant with extraordinary beauty, in all its weirdness and wonder....I must create! yes!

... oh ....I've been thinking about some of the writers who were around when I first joined hootoo, I'd like to try to find their work, think about them all again. There was Xantief, and Michaeldetroit, and Optic Nerve, and many others, I must go digging in the archives, and celebrate them. They used to write this amazing work, and I would go wowwww all wide eyed and in awe. . Still do.

Peanut, I hope things work out for you.

Cc, I think I could write verses for failed pumpkins.

Oh pumpkin, I think I understand
how you felt as your seeds exploded
across the floor. You were grand
on the allotment, but when they folded
you in silver foil and gently placed
on the judging table, some deep fear
awakened, your pulses raced
and you burst. Oh far and near
the people wept at such a fate,
but for me, you were always great.

Hey, Peanut



mvp!!! that is an incredible poem, right now at 2.24 am it makes me cry, , in a good way, it says it all.



I know I was having a laugh and banter about failed pumpkins and things, I know I mess around and play and be stupid quite a lot, but this expresses the deep truth under my banter about the pumpkin, and I feel like that pumpkin when confronted with aspects of the world with all its lure of prizes and consequent failures. . Uh oh .... Thankyou, and that last line .... wah again.

And it's too early for a coffee.

The healing power of poetry. mvp, you are a healer poet.



Strange thing, I woke up just now and was feeling a bit wobbly about my place on hootoo, perhaps I'm not right for the site any more, not grown up enough. I don't know who anyone is except for you guys who talk to me here, help! I'm spooked, so I turned on my laptop to talk to you guys...

And then your amazing poem was there.



I guess Douglas Adams was playful though. It's OK to be playful isn't it?

Breathe deep, trusted spiral

Is there an insecure part of me that wants to prove here on this site that I am deep and serious as an artist?, like write a piece that stuns everyone, prove myself to all those people who I don't know, like hey! I'm deep, notice me! I want to be loved, I want to be noticed, I'm as good as the rest!

Probably. .

Hmm, although fortunately I'm too old to get into that, , that's some other world, I've never felt the need to do that here on hootoo, that's why I came here. That's back to the pumpkin, the prizes.



Perhaps I need to write an intense journey piece, how I have journeyed beyond edges and boundaries, limping like an old old lizard, that has lost too many scales and tails.

How many tails can a lizard re-grow? I remember watching lizards in Tenerife, the old ones had very dry scales, they looked like ancient tiny dinosaurs. Magic. I love lizards.

Perhaps I should lurk under a rock for a while. Like, for about twenty minutes. .

Well, that was a talk. I'm going to sleep now.

And thanks all for being so amazing, and thanks mvp for the middle of the night poetic jewel. Strange how things appear, just when you need them.

Cactuscafé, I think reptiles can regrow tails indefinite times. But the new tails are not quite as nice as the old ones, they're usually a bit shorter and not well formed. Sometimes this happens:

http://www.sareptiles.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=118&t=10376

Cc, hopefully most of us are more like the three-tailed lizard than the exploding .

I'd been watching Masterchef where one contestant, Emily, fled because her lamb dish wasn't cooked enough to present to the judges. But I expect she'll pick herself up and go on.

Morning all! And thanks Willem for the little three tailed gecko, yikes! we had better take care of our tails, and our tales and fables, although I could be a three tailed teller of fables, strange tales, tales from the far country of the mind, bearing proudly the scars from that far country.

uh oh. Moving on now from the far country .... .

Yes, whoah, yikes and fear and shivertremble, that must have been awful for that Masterchef contestant, comes to us all I guess, part of life's road. I know performers who have frozen up on stage, got into all kinds of trouble, and they are pros. Comes to us all.

OK, I won't be an exploding pumpkin, although mvp I just love that exploding pumpkin poem, you said it all for me, I think it's a talismanic poem, I've copied it into my notebook, copyright you of course, hope you don't mind,I'll keep it private.

The exploding pumpkin poem will help me to move on and not be an exploding pumpkin, except when I am.



And anyway, I believe in the healing nature of art, it's a force, a process, that's what I'm about, so I'll just continue to scuttle on here when I can, ah hootoo , with my five hundred tails. .

Strange coincidence this morning ...

Wait, have to go find the book .....

... so I was peering at my Inner Paths to Outer Space book early this morning, in search of vision or coincidence or juice or proof or halo or glory or innerspace visitor in the guise of a kitsch martian who would offer me cheese sandwiches, hope and chocolate milk,

...and I got to a chapter which is a series of accounts and experiences written by innerspace travellers, and each account has a heading, and I never saw this heading before ......

serious ... hand on heart .... it read like this ....

Revelations, Cosmic Unity, Entity Contact ... by Peter Pumpkin

Notes from the Far Country (written erm.. a bit spontaneously)

It's a journey alright, some journey! be it tiring or inspiring, are we frozen are we chosen, are we scary or neurotic, are we wary, idiotic, are we pure or insecure, are we searching for a cure..

..or are we warm and sunlit glowing in our knowing.



Yet it seems as if all of us are here on some road or other, the human crowd! we're the human crowd on a crowded road, that bunch, this bunch, strange bunch we are, infamous or famous or nameless or priceless, tough or rough or sainted or tainted.



And I have a hunch that our human bunch is going to be OK in some way. The human crowd, I celebrate us aloud! I'm optimistic, unrealistic, futuristic, idealistic, and yet I love the human bunch, I think I'll trust my hunch.



We're born to die, we walk on by, embrace or kill, we're well, we're ill, we kiss, find bliss..

..but I'm sure we're all on some road or other, the human crowd, on a crowded road.



It's a journey alright, some journey!

Wow, thanks CC. This really spoke to me. It's really good to me. I love the interspersed heavenly bodies through smileys.

That's an amazing post cc. It should be sung, to a guitar possibly, by the light of a campfire, or the .

Guys - put that together. Write us a manifestor. One I can illustrate.