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

...oooh...just relearned how to write a smiley...

Smileys!!!! Yes!!!!! I love a smiley!!!!





Smileys are a tiny artistic miracle. I shall bow down to them, and offer them flowers and poems about paradigms.

What is a paradigm? is it like a blueprint, a new pattern?

<Similar:model..pattern..example..standard

The professors in graduate-level classes liked to bandy that word about...a "dime" is the 10-cent American coin..."Brother, can you spare a dime?"...I always thought of two dimes...

Haiku #1
Brother, can you spare a dime?
A growing COVID-19 paradigm.

Haiku # 2
only wish we had the time,
to mute the presidential slime...

Ah right! Thanks for the definition. I don't know why I always like that word, I have no association with it. At least I know what it means now. heheh.

Pair a Dime. I love it!

Haiku poet guy!

These are great! Topical! Witty!

You're in top form, you are, Mister!



I don't know why I printed out two buses and Mars?? That's the nature of smileys, they take me to abstract places, where I write curious words on bus tickets.

I was just rereading "wet start" from the beginning...what an interesting time capsule...and Cactuscafe chimes in on post 21...

You're reading the Campfire from the beginning??! There's going to be some classic postings in there. Preserved for all time. No click delete. I actually said that .. I did??? Oh no

No, seriously, The Campfire on h2g2 will always be a very fond memory for me. I wish we could lure back Hyp and Xantief to read it with us..

Leo added a dimension and perspective...She collaborated with me on several edited articles, including our exposé on dead cats in the freezer...

Leo! Where's Leo??

Come back Leo! Phreddy is talking about dead cats in the freezer.

Leo changed her name to "Leo-68 dead"...I googled and found an article about a cat hoarder who had 68 dead cats in the freezer and a partnership was born...

Leo was actually talking about dead citizens of Isreal...but was intrigued by the google results that come back from searching "dead cats in the freezer"...t

o tell the truth I pulled the plow on that story...

Leo was younger than most of my grand-daughters are now...she would be about 35 now...off to a busy career in NYC?

What?? I wonder, does Leo regret leaving the surreal delight of this site? heheh.

Don't run out to get a copy of "Under the Glacier"...based on a recommendation, I bought it and have labored through 2/3rds of the text...

Maybe it's partly my eyesight. Words on the page change completely if I can manage to find enough light to make them out...so I have to reread things a lot...and the lighted magnifying glass is a pain to maneuver...so my reading speed is down from 2,000 wpm to about 100.

But the book basically is not very funny or interesting...I don't care how it comes out...

OK I won't go under the glacier then. Give that one a miss.



That was an appetising array of smileys! Campfire time! heheheh.

I don't read a lot of text these days. I always lose my glasses for a start, but mainly I like text mixed in with pictures.

I am currently reading Derek Jarman's Garden, and also Daphne Oram An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics.

The Derek Jarman book is full of amaaaazing photos, and Daphe's book is full of quirky diagrams of capacitors and oscillating energy fields.

Daphne Oram, she is my hero. A pioneer of her time (1925 to 2003) when women didn't do things like she did.

In fact she just about invented the synthesiser, and was a composer in her own right, plus being the brains behind many electronic sound effects.

She doesn't get often recognised for the genius and inventor that she was.

She began her career in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and in later years had her own studio in a converted oast house in Kent. I wish I'd met her. I didn't know about her till after she was gone, otherwise I'd have tried to meet her in Tower Folly, her studio.

She was the inventor of the Oramics technique, drawing onto 35mm film stock, and then turning the drawings in sound.

All there in W**k* if you're interested. If I had the capability, I'd write about 700 h2g2 Guide Entries on Daphne.

mmmmmm nice burgers. Hope they're veggie. Where *did* that javelina go, the one that was sniffing about here earlier. haha

Turning the drawings in sound. hmmm. Interesting typo.

I meant turning the drawings into sound, naturally.

Turning the drawings in sound. This could be poetic. I think typos can be quite poetic. Hmm, maybe not this one.

I love diagrams of capacitors and fluctuating energy fields...our reading interests probably only intersect with ZMM...

I'm a conventional American elderly white man...my tastes are very non-literary...I like Norman Mailer, Carl Haasen, Ray Bradbury, James Jones, John Steinbeck, Steven King, John Grisham, Douglas Adams, Michael Connely, Tim Dorsey, Larry Niven, JD Salinger, John Barth ...tell stories that can take you somewhere else...I've never enjoyed any important stuff like "War and Peace" or Proust...Non-fiction can be good escape stuff too...

I needed a transformer in a little town in Italy...I drew a picture of two different sized coils and the guy brought me a 110/220 transformer...I went to Electronics school in Mississippi in 1963...love capacitors...and resistors...and vacuum tubes...

Somewhere I read about the Hooverville participants...the director said that one participant rebelled against his role as a shopkeeper and imagined a different reality for himself...or something along those lines...I guess it's all in the book...

Have you done any more reading on the Hoovervile conversations?...

Morning!

How fascinating, to think about what we read, eh? I'm very interested in your reading list.

Well, in fact I'm now thinking about capacitors a lot, in my case, thanks to my hero Daphne .

And now my hero you.

I'd like you to draw me diagrams of capacitors, while we eat hotcakes, in a ZMM roadstop. I'd treasure them, and stick them in my notebook.

You could write an article for the Guide about capacitors!

Its so funny because I am obsessed with synthesisers, but don't entirely understand how they work, like all the circuits. The way that music can come from electrical circuits! The perfect balance of science and art!

I look at pictures of the circuits all the time, to me they are as amazing as a wonder from the natural world. I wish I could create them myself, but I have to surrender, and let others have the technical knowledge, and express their mystery in my own way I guess.



Heheh. Yes. Hooverville. No, back reading is proving to be difficult for me. I am currenly once again confronting my shy problem, to do with every daft word I ever spoke being recorded in the h2g2 archives.

Although... I now need to find something to do with Hooverville, my own visit there. It'll be in my journal, I might have to venture.

The Hooverville project I think was an RPG, a role playing game, and I love a bit of play and banter, but there's no way I could sustain being in character for a month, unless it was a character of my own creation.

I would be a hopeless actress, how do they stay in a character from someone else's script, on the stage for maybe months on end?

In fact I'd be hopeless in an orchestra, or any group activity. A friend of mine once called me The Stranger At The Gate. I quite liked that actually, The Stranger At The Gate.

I'm always being affectionately hassled in aspects my life. Oh H, people say, why do you always insist in going in the opposite direction to the one you're supposed to be going in?

I'm a Director's nightmare.

But I did return to Hooverville ... when I realised I couldn't join the project, I travelled to the scene myself, just for a few hours, and ended up sitting on the steps of the Waffelhaus Cafe in the middle of the night. It was like I was saying goodbye to someone I'd known before. It was very moving for me, I got right into it, but I can't remember what the details were...