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

Welcome to H2G2! I'm an ACE - Assistant Community Editor. If you have any questions about H2G2, feel free to ask me.
You might find these links useful:
The ACE's home - http://www.h2g2.com/A214796 - links to interesting bits and bobs, designed for newcomers;
The Newcomer's forum - http://www.h2g2.com/A5752 - Find other new researchers, and various helpful people (hopefully)
Don't hesitate to start chatting in various different forums, it's an excellent way to get to know the other researchers. A good start for this would be the Forum & Firkin at http://www.h2g2.com/A187508 or the Aroma Café at http://www.h2g2.com/A202924.
When you're ready, you might like to write your own Guide Entries. These can be of any subject whatsoever which interests you. A good subject to start with is about where you live.
There are plenty of helpful comments and helpful people about if you get stuck. If you run into problems, don't panic - click the Don't Panic! button in the goo at the top of the screen. And finally, remember that the front page of H2G2 (access it by clicking on the H2G2 logo in the top left of the screen) is updated with interesting new entries every day.
So, what kind of writing/publishing have you done under these various aliases?

Thank you Peregrin for the warm welcome (even if I do suspect most of it is form letter)! I'm just thrilled that I got noticed.

I've already written and submitted two guide entries, one on where I am currently living, and another on Mongolian Barbeque.


> So, what kind of writing/publishing have you done under these
> various aliases?

Poetry, mostly. Its the easiest to get published. My Johnny Fusion persona usually wrote articles about the hacker culture, computer underground, "cyberpunk" type stuff. Mostly on-line. The name Johnny Fusion was actually a character in some Cyberpunk Stories I have written. Come to think of it, when I had posted some on the USENET newsgroup alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo , it was while using the "Johnny Fusion" handle, so the stories about Johnny Fusion where written *by* Johnny Fusion. I think the one called "At Yoshiwara's" lives on the web here and there.

"KeltBoi" writes humour pieces about the Celtic-Pagan community.

I also have written under the Pseudonym "Cal L. Kent" for a couple issues of Intel's Computing News (an in-house publication for Intel) years back. It was the humour collumn, but I did not create that character, I just wrote for it for a few months.

Ofcourse there is much more *unpublished* work than published..

Sounds impressive
I've done a bit of writing, generally wierd fantasy fiction in the style of Terry Pratchet, but it's generally too silly to be published!
The good thing about H2G2 is that people enjoy reading what you've written whatever it is about... I'm about to start doing various official editing things on H2G2, reading through people's submitted articles and deciding whether to approve them as 'proper' guide entries... it's an eye opener

I would also like to welcome you to h2g2, even though I've only been here a short while myself. And, no, this one isn't a form letter - I just saw the word 'Zen' on the 'who's on h2g2' pop-up window and came beetling along here, recognising a possible boddhisatva (or whatever the word is).

'Mondo' is actually Italian for 'World', by the way, not Spanish. In Spanish I think it's 'Mundo'. Just to be tiresomely pedantic.

All the best, Lear

Thank you Lear! I have made the correction on my page, and have credited you with a footnote!

As to being a bodhisattva (I checked the spelling!), I'm probably a few reincarnations away from that. Not that I would recognize one if I saw one, though I'm guessing perhaps John Lennon was somewhat divine...

--ZenMondo

Hello, I saw your post in the Freedom From Faith Foundation, and thought that I would stop by.
Wow, you've only been here a short while and have managed to submit two articles, that's excellent. Well I am a sub editor for the guide, and if I get one of your articles to edit, I'll drop by to inform you

I thought the term 'bodhisattva' (thanks for the correct spelling!) could also be used in a general way to greet 'fellow travellers', if you see what I mean, as well as in connection with the spiritual enlightenment side of things. I seem to remember the term being used in that way in one of Kerouac's novels, probably 'The Dharma Bums'. But I might have realised that would hardly be an authoritative source...

Anyway, I see you've found your way to the FFFF forum - I'll probably bump into you there, if I don't see you around anywhere else. All the best...

- Lear

It is my understanding that a bodhisattva is one who has worked out all of his or her karma, yet chooses instead of entering Nirvana until everyone else has made the cut. I have not read "Dharma Bums" yet, but it has been on the top of my "to read" list as soon as I pay my library fine for quite a while now.

-- ZM

I was never a great fan of Kerouac myself, to tell the truth, but I find 'The Dharma Bums' less hedonistic and self-indulgent than some of his other books, and more reflective / philosophical in its tone. I think he wrote it in the late '50s not long after the solitary couple of months he spent living on a remote mountain somewhere in north west America, studying Buddhism and searching (unsuccessfully, it seems) for enlightenment...

I just picked up a copy of the book earlier today and started re-reading it, for the first time in many years. I'd forgotten how much I like it... In particular I like Japhy Ryder, the narrator's travelling companion in the novel, and general expert in Zen philosophy. Ryder is the character who keeps using the term 'Bodhisattva', by the way, although, as I say, generally he seems to be using it more or less informally as a way of hailing 'fellow travellers'...

The character of Ryder, if my information is correct, was based on the poet Gary Snyder - a friend of Kerouac's - who was himself a bit of a key figure in '60s American counterculture. But I think Snyder's interest in Eastern philosphy was rather more serious than Kerouac's - he spent ten years in Japan studying Zen during the 1950s and 60s, for example. Whereas Kerouac merely drank himself into an early grave, of course...

Anyway, I recommend that you make peace with your librarian and grab hold of their dog-eared copy, if not 'pronto' then in due course...

Subsequent reading reveals a factual error in my above posting. Snyder didn't actually *live* in Japan for ten years, although he did visit for extended study trips during the late '50s and throught the 1960s. Apologies...

It may be less painful in the finances department to just PURCHASE a copy of Dharam Bums, and I may do just that. I actually have the good fortune of living just a city away or so from a bonafide Zen Master, that I may have to look up before too long. Its just a matter of making enough room in my life to accomodate some "emptiness"

I'm just reading through the bit near the end where Kerouac gives an account of his solitary time on Desolation Peak. Sounds like it was a bit of an extended 'dark night of the soul', so to speak... You know, some say he never really got his creative drive back after this spell in the wilderness. The record seems to justify this - most of the writing that he is known for was done before the late '50s, and his '60s output was patchy at best. The only notable exception, as far as I can see, is 'The Dharma Bums' itself...

Does this suggest that 'emptiness' may be bad for your health? Or at any rate, for the creative drive? And if so is this necessarily a bad thing anyway? Am I just talking nonsense? Or merely amusing myself in the void...

Well went to the bookshop today looking for Dharma Bums, but to no avail. 3 different printings of _On the Road_ however. And a somewhat biographical thing called "about the dharma" or some such. Wasn't what I was looking for, didn't look past the cover. I guess its time to pay of the Library after all...

-- ZenMondo