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

I haven't read the book.

I find pine woods spooky so I don't think I'd like to find myself tripping in any

Don't blame you for not reading the book. . I'm regretting everything, and I haven't even got it yet.

You find pine woods spooky? I know what you mean, woods can be spooky. I prefer wide open spaces to contemplate the nature of existence, like beaches. Or carparks. Some carparks, small carparks, with trees, a recycling area in the corner, and good long stay price.

I like breakfast best of all. Beyond the void is breakfast. Who needs altered states. hmm. I might use the book for a tray table, to eat my breakfast from. .

Woods can sometimes be spooky but it is the commercial grown pine woods give me *the* spooks

Interesting what you say about environments, Spiller heads for a forest, I tend to go for a hill near the sea

We've seen that 'Altered States' film. I agree about the cheesiness. I haven't read the book, but I'll bet it's good. Paddy Chayefsky is a great writer.

Pine woods. Let me tell you the scariest thing about pine woods...

Pollen. *atchoo*

It's EVERYWHERE in spring. We end up ankle-deep in the stuff. The deadly North Carolina pollen season.

Hah! right, so the commercial pine woods are the spooky ones... Interesting.

Atchoo! It's catchy. Sorry I mentioned pines. .

Atchoo again! Bless me. And you. And everyone else, sneezing or not.

Doesn't look like we're all going for a virtual summer picnic in the pines then. And I was going to bring . And . And



What?? Mr D, my friend, I'm gutted. . (clutches brow).

You found the ending cheesy?? Oh no! That ending is my raison d'etre. It's worth it all, just to get to that point when lerv pulls him through. Oh no! My life is in ruins.



What about Elektra, did she like the ending?

But .... but .... if it hadn't been for the love of his wife Emily, Dr. Jessup would be stuck in spooked out monkey mode forever, sometimes turning into a namless nothing in the gloopy soupy void at the beginning of creation.

What about Emily then? She put up with a lot, with her man spending all that time in sensory deprivation tanks, turning into a monkey, instead of taking her and the kids on a nice holiday.

. Now there's an advert for the movie. .



teehee, well, I'm about to read the book, so I'll let you know what happens at the end. Or not. Depends on whether you repent. hurrumph.

Hey, it wasn't a *bad* film. Not at such...

You want a great little film from that time and mind-set? Try 'The Man from Earth'. We liked it.

Who else we like right now: Dame Helen Mirren. We've always liked her, but this beats all:

http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/helen-mirren-grants-boy-dying-wish-having-tea-155902306.html?vp=1

I'm sure somebody would criticise *something*, but we found this moving.

That really is a moving story, what a great gesture from Helen Mirren!



Hmmm, not a bad film? .... ... now, let's see... stares at Dr. Jessup poster for divine guidance, haha, no I haven't really got a poster .... oh OK then I'll tell you what happens at the end of the book, just for you.



The Man from Earth looks great! I just checked the synopsis, especially the ending. haha. Same idea then, a prof, time travel, and I'm glad that Sandy sticks with him. I'm going to get the DVD because of that. .

Endings are interesting I think. I'm one of these terrible people who fast forward to endings, to decide about the beginning, and the middle bit. .

I just like to watch or read twice, because you can appreciate the structure once you know where it's going. But it's nice not to know the first time.

There was a time in the 90s when I tended to figure out the endings of films within the firsts 15 minutes. A friend asked if that were boring. I said no.

The only one from that time I didn't second-guess was 'Presumed Innocent'. Which is why I've just sprung for a supermarket copy of Scott Turow's latest book.

Great news - the POOL opens Friday! Yay!

Yay! Pool!

Happy swimming, dear ones.

That must have been interesting, being able to figure out endings like that. I'd have been onto you ... what happens then? what happens then? pleeeeze tell me what happens. Shush kid, not telling. .

I'm just trying to think of my favourite ending ever, like book or film.

hmm. Altered States! hahah. Let's see. I like the ending to Pi, when Max sits on the bench, all goopy and free, but his head is still intact, even though... whoah, never mind.

And then there's Young Frankenstein, when Frankenstein transers some of his intellect to the Monster, and inadvertently ends up with the Monster's giant erm .. asset. That's really funny.

Then there's Hitchcock's Rebbecca.

And then there's all of Shakespeare and everything.






I guess it's not possible to select just one, depends on the category, are we talking dramatic, funny, tragic ... etc. Interesting study though, endings.

I'm going to do a survey, ask people their favourite ending, book or film, be a good conversation opener, keep me going for a year or two, then I could start on beginnings.

hmmm that is an interesting conversation opener

*ponders while eating a canape*

I can't think of my all time favourite ending off the top of my head but I like happy-sad endings, like ET

not sure where the canapes came in, for some reason I had vision of being at some social thing and cc going for a conversational opener

but as they are here, canapes with your perculiar tea anyone?

Good ending - 'Animal Farm', where the animals look at the pigs and the men and can no longer tell the difference.

There are some stories where everybody knows the end. 'Titanic', where everybody knows the ship sinks. Robert Harris's book 'Pompeii', where everybody knows that Vesuvius erupts. The effect then depends on people caring enough about the characters to know whether they get out alive. Though you can watch 'Titanic' for the special effects. I personally found the end of 'Pompeii' a bit improbable.

But it's easy doing a bad end. You've given your characters a problem, and watched them try to resolve it. You pile complications on them, so by the time you're coming up to the end, you've got this big, horrible knot. And you don't know how to cut through it!

Then there are stories where, 'behold, it was all a dream'.

PK Dick notably - although with him, you never know if you'll ever get OUT of the dream.

But also something like 'Lord of the Flies'. Or Golding's other great nightmare novel, 'Pincher Martin'.

Personally, the endings I love involve frame-of-reference shifts. I think my taste was marked by that wonderful moment in the cinema when I first saw 'Planet of the Apes' as a teenager.

Take Christopher Priest's 'Inverted World'. The payoff is fantastic. Or his 'The Prestige', where the explanation for the magicians' tricks involves Nicola Tesla.

Or, on a less cifi note, the ending to MacEwan's 'Atonement'. (And yes, that is not only a superb novel. The movie's great, too.)

I was thinking about the loony zoo today. It was the hedgehogs that triggered this train of thought

The hedgehogs are back in the garden I was worried that I wasn't seeing any and for some reason my garden was being spurned I checked around the garden and realised that we we have bben digging and rearranging, access to the garden wasn't as easy as it was, so I dug out more tunnels under the fences.

Then I was on a hedgehog website wondering if I qualified as a hedgehog champion, I hope so I might have it written so on my very elaborate gravestone

Obviously the best thing if possible is replace fences with hedgerow, thinking about planting up for wildlife, also privacy and a natural defense, a is less to wade through your sloes to nick the lawn mower

So I was thinking of defensive planting in the loony zoo, frog bit, catnip, snap dragons and for comedy value peonies *wicked grin*

Evening amazing wise ones

And hedgehog champion!!! Yay, I love it. Peonies and all.

mmm virtual canapes! (selects a tasty morsel) Nice.



Funny you mention canapes, I only discovered what they were at Easter, at my bro's wedding. .

I have always been a bit scared of canapes.

So I ate one. It proved to be quite harmless, even though later I stared in the mirror and thought I was a haunted playwright who was at party of theatre people.

They had offered me canapes and asked me about the script. All I could remember was a black and white flickering stage set with hieroglyphic designs, paper birds and an actor who was so charismatic he stole the show, even though he said nothing at all, and left the stage seven minutes before the interval, never to return.

Oh that is just so stooopid.

heheh. I had a friend who taught acting. She told me about this guy she had seen in some play, he had a very minor part, but all eyes were on him, he was so charismatic, an indefinable stage presence, strange how it goes. It's nothing to do with handsome or beautiful, or even brilliant acting ability, it's something else. The masked actor. Who is that person?



Great endings! Wow! And the untying on knots, and frame-of-reference shifts. Now I'm obsessed. That's deep. I love that.

Is a frame-of-reference shift like seeing the world in a different way?



Later I had a peculiar daydream about an ending .... it was hazy ... not dissimilar to the visions of the haunted playwright, in above paragraph. Nothing like a haunted hazy half dream. Hmm.

Later I thought about the ending to Mamma Mia .. the movie ... with Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth in sparkly Abba clothing, which was much less intense. .



Talking of strange stage sets, last night we live-streamed an incredible performance from the Brighton Festival. It was this cult theatrical trio called The Tiger Lillies. Their act is based on Brecht/Kurt Weill, pre-war Berlin cabaret, surreal gypsy punk circus type thing.

I'm not clever enough to get all these influences, but their performance was their own take on .... The Rime of the Ancient Mariner! ahhh ... with amazing 3D stage set.

I've ordered the CD .

http://tigerlillies.com/134073/music/albums/rime-of-the-ancient-mariner

What was most extraordinary was sitting in our flat in Devon, live streaming a performance from the stage of the Brighton Dome.

Can't remember how the performance ended, need to see it again. hah! And now I've forgotten how the original poem ends......

Yeah. Frame-of-reference shifts create aha moments. Like the ending of 'The Sixth Sense'.

I've never seen The Sixth Sense. Is it scary? For a girl like me?

I'm into the sixth sense as a sense. It makes sense to me.



Bank Holiday. Check. woooooargh

Still alive? Check. No.

Good one? Check. Matter of fact, ours was great, quiet, bikes, swam in the outdoor pool at leisure club, I recorded piano pieces into digital thingy and added funny filters and strange beats.

candle smiley?

with moving flame

nice

The Sixth Sense is not scary. It is touching, really.

It's about healing.

That's good, healing? I like healing.Thanks! I always did wonder about that film.



Twitter experiment going well, still anon and observing. Finding a path through the noise. Addicted. Purposely following art mags and music and photography and galleries and design projects and out of my depth, and h2g2 Guide Ed and muse and choose and grovel and incred tweets and yikes ....

...to bring on inevitable bug sensation, a mere bug in the wide world of talent, a leveller, splat! but no! bug is doing fine. Happy bug. Appreciate-life bug. In-breath bug. One-sentence bug. Small scale bug. Six legs is enough bug.

Shut up bug.



Notes on Endings

Who would believe my love story would end like this, how blessedly absurd to end with a kiss.

All those lovers knots I created from strands of light and tangled sentences, in those endless nights of the bright white moon, trying to untangle them in the stark reality of morning. No chance. And now it has come to this, a kiss.