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

Hi! There are only thingites around, and I don't know what to do, so I decided to get on your nerves (nice, isn't it?). I was reading the introductions of some people. You know what I found out? Sit down.
There is some kind of Buffy fan club here!!!!!!!!!! Isn't that sad? All these young people...
By the way: Did you know that all people leave a conversation immediately when I drop in? I not even have to write something, I just read it and everybody is gone.
There certainly is some kind of conspiracy...

That should be enough. Thanks for listening to my laments.

ok...

Don't care. It really doesn't hurt at all, you get used to brain damage over the years...

I wouldn't know... I've only had it a few days.

How did you get rid of it? But I don't think it whould help me anyhow. I had it far too long. I've always been like that.

Who said I hadn't got it anymore? On the contrary, it is starting to take over my very DNA and drain all likeness of me away into an unregognisable parallel whom will kill everyone in the known universe with a virus called 'Septasocial 87'

Septasocial 87, so that's what it's called.
I had something even more dangerous last year. I went to a technical school, but it was so boring and the teachers so -how shall I call it?- unintelligent (?), that I feared to die because of something I call "The Implosion Of The Brain". You know, if you've got really nothing to think about, the brain stops working. I had already reached the level, where it was just a little ball of coal, rolling around when I moved my head. But I survived by going to university.
Otherwise, the implosion whould have been unavouidable. People don't take such things serious, but a whole civilisation can die out because of such things, and the result is a black hole. Every black hole is the result of a brainless civilisation. That's my theory. (I wrote an essay about it)

Is that what happened to Matilda?

The second time I'm ashamed today, just because of you. I certainly have to know about Matilda and somewhere in the depths of my brain a little bell is ringing when I read it (or is that just an illusion?), but somehow it's very dark in this region, the bulb is broken and I don't know where I have put the new ones...
PLEASE HELP! Tell me about Matilda.

Are you sure the bulb isn't just above your head?

Matilda: Homosapien female from fiction in the book 'Matilda' by Roald Dahl (who is actually a direct descendant of William Wallace, anyway) Matilda is the cleverest student in her bottom year class and can do stupid sums like 565 + 443 in a matter of seconds. Anyway, the headmistresss wouldn't let her go into the top class because she was evil and she'd committed fraud (not the wording used in the book)by owning the house of Miss Honey the bottom set teacher of Matilda. Matilda worked out using the spare brain power left over she was able to make objects levitate just by telling them to and picked upp some chalk when the Headmistress was in the classroom telling her it was the ghost of Miss Honey's father and told her to go far, far away, which she did.

Oh, yes...
Yes, that's exactly what happened.

I've just read your entry. Squirrels. What shall I do if I meet any?
I still don't know what to write. I realised a lack in renaissance artists on h2g2, I've already written something, but it seems to be rather a book than an entry.

If you meet one of the terrorist squirrels and see it holding semtex or something this is what to do:

1) Stay still

2) Back away slowly and leave a trail of salted peanuts behind in front of you

3) As you approach a street corner (preferable away from any trees (ambush) run like hell.

or if you have no salted peanuts on you smile and run like hell anyway.

You MUST write an entry on renaissance artist because I know nothing whatsoever about them (well apart from Michelangelo was one of them)

Thanks, I'll always take peanuts with me.

I've decided to write an entry about renaissance in general and then a second one about Leonardo da Vinci, I could then add another one about the Last Supper. There is so much to tell about all that. Very difficult to decide what I shall write. I've got a whole paragraph about Leonardo's landscapes, that's too much.
But in the first entry I have to say something about the Netherlands too, not only about Italy. I can't ignore Brueghel.

Sorry, the last bit just went "........"

I've just started an articel of Alexander the Great becuaes there is not one in the whole guide!

Perhaps your article will shed some light on my ignorance.

I hope I'll finish my entry tomorrow, before the next semester starts on Tuesday.
Alexander the Great is a very good idea (what I wanted to say: to write about him is a very good idea). Will you say something about his military tactics too? I saw something about that on TV, how he won against the Persians (were it the Persians?).

There is nothing about egyptian mythology too. I have to write something and wait with Leonardo da Vinci.

Ah can you write something about Set cutting Osiris into little bits then?

Yeah, it was the Persians under King Darius and the Phonicians and the Thracians and the Indians and everyone who wouldn't bow down to him. He didn't have a laser positioned on Mars though.

I HAVE to write about Osiris lying aroud everywhere. But there are so many gods, I can't write everything about everybody. Again I could write a second entry only about egyptian arts and why it had to look like this.
But I'll start thinking about all that AFTER the Renaissance entry.

OK. I'm useless at art, it wouldn't be so bad if i could draw but no...

Does Egyptian arts include statues and stuff?

Statues are one part, but they also had paintings on walls. I'm sure you have seen these funny figures somewhere. They always show the head in prifile, the body frontal and the legs in profile again.
The tricky thing was, that this art was to remember the dead king of his life, so it always had to show his whole body, no intersection of lines, because otherwise the king could have e.g. only one hand in afterlife, just becaus it is behind the body in a picture. The more important a person was, the bigger he or she was on a picture, and all other persons - and even hieroglyphs - had to look at him. They also had statues, which should serve the king in the afterlife (Ushebtis they are calld I think). The statues of the king could serve him as a body, e.g. in the funerary temple, where he received the gifts of his people.
To destroy the picture or statue of someone was like destroying his afterlife, because he could only live as long someone remembered him and his name. That's why they destroyed cartouches (carvings of names) and pictures of people like Echnaton.

I really tried to write a short summary.