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

I do hope I am not offending you by suggesting that 1. You are a Frenchman if you are not 2. You are a man if you are not. I saw your posts in Mike A's guitarist survey (Have you heard of Pierre Bensusan?) and was intrigued enough to follow you home. Hallo! Very pleased to meet you! Were you in Paris when it almost blew away? What's this about Richard III?

Lil

Hello Lil
Perhaps the little humour I have comes from the non-French part of my family (my mother is Polish). As a matter of fact all the people I know here with a real sense of humour ( that is one that makes your usual ideas stand on their head) are of foreign origin... After all, who isn't!
I'm sorry not to have replied earlier but you surely know how it is with computer time and telephone bills. What do you mean by Paris when it almost blew away. Was it when there was terrerist attacks then no I was in Warsaw. If you mean the 1998 world cup the YES I WAS THERE AND WE WON IT! (hum sorry I got a little carried away. Not that I'm such a soccer fan but well we won it didn't we). And if you mean the Fireworks for y2k then yes... I was just under the Eifel Tower and it was really great.



As for Richard the Third, it's quite plain: he has nothing in common with me therefore please don't call me Richard the Third.

Oh no! I thought it was only my British friends who are afflicted with surcharges for their local calls! You mean the French have the same dastardly telephone billing system? You have my sympathies.

Paris nearly blowing away ... I meant that great windstorm you had just a few days before the New Year celebrations. We saw pictures here in the US of trees knocked down on the Champs Elysées. And there was supposed to be a clock on the Eiffel Tower.

But yes, the fireworks in the tower were just marvelous, weren't they, and you must have had a fantastic view.

I promise never to call you Richard III.

Lil

Oh... you were talking about the storm... then no I wasn't there at the time but I _lived_ in its consequences: the big tree in our garden fell down, and so did the wonderful ones in the *gardens* surrounding my (kinda old) college. And the Sceaux park where I used to spend my lunchbreaks is still closed. But you know how the human mind works: you forget very fast such unpleasant things (just like the Not Your Problem system in Life, the Universe,......
The clock thing on the Eifel Tower was not really due to the storm. Perhaps someone made a NICE joke
And you? where do you live in the US?

moi, je suis en Florida -- ugly but commercially flourishing central Florida, about an hour away from the World of Disney. We are one of the lightning capitals of the world, for frequency of strikes, and tropical storms are a way of life in the summer...

I was last in Paris in 1973, and there was still a lot of anti-American feeling, so, since I was married, I pretended to also be English. We were in a little restaurant on the Rue St.Denis one night (with a Parisian friend) when four homosexuals with toupees started flirting with our friend. On being introduced, they said to me, "Enfin! Une anglaise jolie!" Very catty!

I also had a bucket of water dumped on my head one night by some complete strangers 3 stories up, and my husband and I also fell into the clutches of the metro police because we forgot to punch our tickets. They were convinced we were students. I had to burst into tears before we were allowed to escape.

But I love Paris anyway, and intend to come back some day.
what then is the true story about the clock?

Lil

I actually think nobody knows what happened with the clock.

The fireworks were indeed beutiful. I don't think it is possible to express it with words. All I can say is that at the beginning it was like a strange combination of the strong sun at noon and the light of dusk, and that it went on with increasing beauty.
Perhaps like somekind of asteroids...
A propos, what's the origin of your name, if it's not too indiscrete?

Typolifi

Not at all.

Asteroid Lil is a play on words from Diamond Lil, so it has strong overtones of Mae West (which I don't) with an injection of SF. "She" started out as a nom de plume for a science column in an astrology magazine, about minor elements, which is what the astronomers call asteroids. There is an article about asteroids accessible from my home page...

Perhaps there never really was a clock.

Lil

I find everyone with a name which in some way means something. And thus, though mine was chosen rather randomly, I progressively begin to see if there is no meaning there. Perhaps it is the fate of humans to look for sense where there is none.

I'd hate this forum to be left in inactivity, because anyone visiting my page would think: oho this frenchman has not had any good (that is british) sense of humour since "last posting : 3 weeks ago "
And I find something very tragi-comical in a solipsistic forum.

A _real_ solipsist wouldn't be the least bit worried

But I'm glad to know that you're still about. Do you look around the forums and get in conversations on other pages, or are you badly restricted by French telephone rates? You would LOVE the Aroma Cafe!

Lil

Now look at that! You were one of the first persons to post here...
I didn't really remember actually .

Typolifi has of course the colloquialism "typo" in it. So maybe your name suggests a kind of random word-play.
I'm glad you're a salonista now.
You still haven't told me the story about the clock.

It's because I still don't know the reasons for it!

I only realised that 'typo' meant something in English a few weeks after choosing my moniker. I then thought about changing it to 'tupolifi', which would be closer to what the upsilon was pronouced in Greek, but it interfered to my ear with the russian airplanes 'tupolev'. I also thought about 'tipolifi' but it was graphically unsatisfying...

Anyway, I got used to it now.

Have you ever read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban?
http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/riddley.html

As a student of linguistics and lover of wordplay, you might find it interesting, if you haven't read it before.

Trubba Not
Lil

Well, I haven't read it yet, but it seems very interesting. I like those novelists who do not trouble with 'correct language'. Language is evolving, and not every writer knows he should be the guy making it evolve. It's as good a field of creation as onomastics (proper names) or intrigue, but usualy only poets seem to acknowledge it.

Still, I very much into academic reading ATM, and can't foresee when it'll change. Maybe on christmas holidays?