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

Heavens Willem! An earthquake? That certainly shakes the nerves. Glad you're OK.

Cor honestly, what about earthquakes then? I know the earth is moving around all the time, but even so, earthquakes bring out the ant feelings in me. Like, how tiny I am, scuttling around on this fragile crust.

hmm.

Ant needs a drink.

I heard a tremor once, also in Greece, sounded like an underground train rumbling through the centre of the earth. That was scary enough.




Interesting place names. Orkney, Centurion, Polokwane. Very interesting place names...



Evening all!

Back in a minute, have to catch up on previous postings!

Those clouds are amazing, Elektra! Now I'm hungry to take an unusual cloud photo.

Ant looks heavenwards with its camera eye.

Can an ant see the clouds? Can other creatures see the clouds? I guess birds see the clouds all the time, but do they mean anything?

Back in a minute, going to check more previous postings. I'm scutting backwards tonight.

Yes, I know what you mean, SA, about the roots and anchor points of our childhood world. I think the returning home to find that the home has changed is often a source of haunted inspiration to writers and artists.

Haunted inspiration eh? I quite like that. Getting arty now.



I still do that, I like to make mental maps, using features from the landscape. Like, we've just moved, so I've been charting our new territory for weeks. Church spires are a notable feature of Exeter, from certain places you can see the spires of the churches of St Davids, St Michael, the Cathedral, St. Leonards.

And then there are clocktowers. I do like a clocktower. And then there are pylons, and radio masts. And interesting buildings. And trees and weather vanes. My maps get quite detailed.

If I was a bird I would fly around and land on all the high points of my maps. Which is irrelevant, but it would be so great.



Some people like seeing a lot of new horizons. I'm not so good at too many new horizons. I like my anchors.

I'm good at inner horizons, though. I can cross hundreds of them per second. I'm safer with inner horizons.

That was interesting wasn't it? No?

Why do some people like more familiarity than others, I wonder?

OK, now I'm venturing into the desert! You folks are so interesting. You take me to new horizons. I'm OK with that. Hootoo travelling is always different.

ahhh, the desert! I love these plants, ITI! Thanks for the info! I am now officially inhaling this posting.

I love frankincense. It's my favourite incense. It drives me crazy, in a good way. It transports me to worlds. And myrrh. I love myrrh.



And I love gold also. If I was a king, and wise, I'd be a good magi.

Myself, I live in earthquake country.

I can see the San Andreas fault and the plate tectonic boundary between the North American plate and the Pacific p!ate from where I live, though they're on the other side of an enormous rift valley, so I monitor earthquake activity along with the weather.

The first night I ever spent in Palm Springs, I was wakened at the dawn by a small earthquake, thought, "It must be old Tahquitz in his cave, sending his greetings."

Tahquitz is a local tutelary spirit, a sinister one, credited by the local native Americans with causing earthquakes.




Had a close encounter with a bark scorpion in the garden while watering last night.

It stepped around a large flowerpot, saw me, threw up its claws in fright, turned and fled, whi!e I jumped backwards.

Eeeek (girlie eeek )! about the bark scorpion. What's a bark scorpion?

(puts bark scorpion into Google images, massive girlie eeeeeeeeeek!).

It's really weird, you know, today I was in our yard, emptying out an old terracotta pot, for the purposes of restoring it with linseed oil, and a little centipede scuttled out, and I thought about things that can appear from pots.

And lo! I check into hootoo, and you write about a bark scorpion appearing from around a pot.



I did wonder if you lived near the San Andreas Fault, I was going to ask you.

Can you insure buildings if you live on or near the Fault? Can you get earthquake insurance?



That's so interesting about Tahquitz. I never heard of Tahquitz. Funny how spirits can become immediately believable, especially if they're Native American.



Ohmigod. Thinking of flower pots. Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men! What??? I just remembered a really spooky TV show for kids. In the early 60s, I was raised on it. .

There were these two characters made of flowerpots, Bill and Ben, and they talked in this kind of jibberish language. It was in black and white, and there was this incredibly annoying sunflower that said weeeeeed all the time.

That's really druggy. . Should five yr olds have been watching it? No wonder the kids raised in the 60s are all a bit strange. . Speaking purely for myself of course.

I'm spooked now. Bill and Ben were really spooky.

Hi cc, sorry I haven't been around. We went to France and back but now I should be here for a while.
I don't think I have any flowerpot stories but I remember going into the barn of our house in France one spring and putting on a pair of gardening gloves. Something stung. When I took the glove off, a sleepy queen wasp fell out and flew away. She must have been annoyed at being disturbed from hibernation.
Like Peanut, I like dragonflies and damselflies, particularly the blue-winges beautiful demoiselle and banded demoiselle.
http://www.british-dragonflies.org.uk/species/beautiful-demoiselle
They belong to an ancient order and their ancestors were probably the first creatures to fly.

Hullo mvp! Great to hear your news! You two are gadding around, nice to do a bit of gadding around, that's what retirement is all about, you deserve some deluxe gadding. heheh.

Did you hear about the massive fire on Eastbourne Pier? I was really sad about it.

Those dragonflies are amazing. I always did wonder if they're really ancient in origin. I wonder what their ancestors looked like? Probably not a lot different?

Did you see any mantises in France? Somehow dragonflies remind me of mantises. Same kind of ancientness.



eeeeeeek again! I'm having a rough evening. . Scorpions and now a queen wasp in the gardening glove.

Cor honestly, now I'm going to have to leap out of bed and check for stingy things.

http://www.plexuseco.com/EPOW/EPOW-Archive/archive_2005/EPOW-051212.htm

Eeek! ...that's what the scorpion said, too...

Though the bark scorpion can be dangerous (if someone is stung, immediately csll 911), they are usually very self respecting and do their utmost to stay out of trouble.

...besides, its against the law in California to fire on fleeing suspects... ...and it hadn't really done anything wrong... ...and was clearly very frightened, when it fled...

...to be sure, I was frightened too, but that's no excuse for behaving badly...

The local variety is colored as depicted and usually about 4"-5"/10cm-13cm in length when fully mature.

Female bearing young:

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/centavo/2297311594

The way they carry their young on their backs is someting they have in common with prawns, crawdads and lobsters.

There is an even larger subdued yellow green colored variety locally, for which I've not been able to find an adequate picture, 9"-10"/22cmm-26cm in length, not considered a threat to humanity.

I had one of those, once, hanging about in a crevice between some rocks in a rock garden area.

The first time I saw it, I was watering and it came boiling out of its crevice, retreated to a safe distance, waited patiently till I was done, then calmly and sedately walked back to its crevice in the rocks.

From then on, when I was watering in that area, I'd give its pile of rocks a light spray to let it know I was coming, wait till it had cleared the area, do my watering, and when I was done the scorpion would calmly and sedately return to its crevice.

This went on for about a year before my job called me away for a considerable time.

Scorpions generally do not like getting wet and tend to go into states of blind panic if hit with a stream of water, so its important to be especially alert when watering.

Otherwise, I usually treat them as just one more useful insect control critter.

We don't get scorpions but we do get praying mantises in France. I saw a pair mating in a tree in our garden. The female was bloated and full of eggs. Then the male disappeared and I wondered if she'd eaten him.

But we'll give cc bad dreams with all these stingy, creepy things.
Have a pot of perculiar and a good nights sleep, cc.

On earth quake safety and insurance, there are insurance programs available and risk of serious damage beyond things being knocked off shelves, is actually very low.

The two regions in the state most at risk, the San Gabriel Valley and the San Francisco Bay area, respectively, have quakes serious enough to produce structural damage about every 20 years and about every 80 years, once in a generation and once in a lifetime.

The seasonal brushfires in southern California are an annual event and a much more serious hazard.

My own home is a mobile with a massive steel girder frame, seated on foundation jacks and is very unlikely to suffer structural damage in an earthquake.




Afterthought on scorpions, when I was a kid, Doc Smith, the science fiction writer, worked with my boy scout troop, and once, on a camping and field trip to the Twenty Mule Team borax mine, where he worked at the time, near Death Valley, he cautioned everyone to shake out their footgear and gloves (if any) before putting them on.

I've always been careful to do so, ever since.

Hello Daydreamers, thank you for your stories

Back from the woodland and hills with no wifi, there were windturbines, which people can have a polarising opinion on, I like them. Tawneys (heard not seen), buzzards, crows and magpie, some lovely teenagey ones, all squawking at adults when they were around, perfectly able to fend for themselves, and amongst themselves when the adults weren't around

Love they walk, hop and bounce about.

Visited some cove beaches which have gorgeous geology fortunately for all the changes and turmoil etched in the past, presently very stable geology

Lively Sunday here weather wise, good sunny spell, well breezy with the occasional bout of heavy shower after a good drenching last night

The pumpkin has made it through so far and dragonflies visiting, speckled woods doing a courtship dance, in a sunny time, and sheltered part of the garden, hats off to them

Plenty of Perculiar to go round, alas no sloe gin, we drank it in the woodland, stocked up black current rum liquor, unfortunately we seem to have drunk that too

love and best wishes to all

Hello MVP, so you are settled for while, gives quick before you go gallivanting again

I saw beautiful blue, earlier in the season, they are just stunning aren't they

Evening all!

Ahhh, Perculiar ! slurp slurp, what, no slow gin? Peanut drank it all. heheh. That's good, sign of a good holiday.

Yes, I did have a good night's sleep, thanks mvp, although I checked under my pillow for stingy things. . Doc Smith would be proud of me.

Hullo Peanut, me luv, , your trip to the woodland sounds great, with the teenagey birdies hopping and bouncing around.

I don't know what to think of wind turbines, I've not been in close proximity, and I don't know my facts.

There was always a debate going on where we used to live, because someone made a wind farm, and yet a lot of the eco people got in a huff about it. I never could figure the paradox. I thought wind energy was good.



Hah! Yes! The mantis. I do love a mantis.

I read this account once, it was on the subject of synchronicity. I can't quite remember the facts, but there was this guy who lived in New York, and he'd just had a very vivid dream about a mantis. He didn't know why, because he'd never seen a mantis in downtown New York, he never even thought about them.

The next day he was in his apartment thinking about the dream, and thinking about Jung, wondering what it all meant. For some strange reason he was somehow called to a window at the back of the apartment, that he hadn't opened in years. He looked out. There was a mantis on the wall.



And then there's the bark scorpion. Yes! Great descriptions, ITI, you make vivid pictures with words! Do you write a lot?

Yes, imagine how huge a human looks, to a scorpion.

That's profound, you were frightened too, but that's no excuse for behaving badly. Who needs any further politics, eh? That sentence, if put into practice, could make life easier on this turbulent and wounded earth.




I love the piccies. I can't believe all those baby scorpions on its back. That's quite miraculous. How do they know when they're grown up enough to go it alone? Do they leave all at once, like do they one day just jump off their mother's back, never to return, or do they come and go a bit, I wonder.

Like Peanut's teenagey birdies.

The new issue of is up, Daydreamers and there is a Super big moon out tonight if you can see it.

Woke up in the night and got a brief glimpse of the on a very cloudy night, lucky me

Never saw the moon last night, it was a bit wild and stormy, and I closed the curtains and watched a Columbo movie.

(the one with the boy genius, the computer, the robot, the basset hound)

Seen a lot of photos, though, today, of last night's moon, it looks amazing.

I wish I had one of those cameras that could photograph the moon with all the craters and footprints and rocks and things. I think it's called a telescope.

Have to dream instead. Especially about the footprints. I once dreamed about trails of rabbit paw prints hoppiting over the moon. As if ghost bunnies had been hoppiting around up there.

...the rabbit on the moon?...

I think that may have been an allusion to Neil Armstrong's Irish background.

My husband was in the habit of taking photos with telescopes cc.

He'd put the telescope on its tripod in our garden in France and align it on the Pole Star . Then he'd attach his digital camera. He'd spend a while finding something he fancied photographing - standing in the garden with binoculars trying to locate a galaxy or a cluster usually. Then he'd take a number of timed shots. The next day, when he'd finally got up, he'd load the photos on his laptop and run a couple of complex software packages to produce decent pictures.

This was always too complicated for me and I do wonder what our French neighbours thought of these crazy English people cavorting about in the garden at midnight.

heheh Perhaps my dreams are deeper than I think.



You delightful English eccentrics, mvp! I love it. So your husband really took photos with a telescope? That's amazing. It does sound a bit complicated, but I'd love to see the results. Does he publish them anywhere, or are they in a private collection?



I've been ill, , twelve hours of chukky uppy. Just a passing bug. Better now though. Lightheaded.

Probably do some of my finest works. I work well when I'm lightheaded. Trying to work on more Post contributions. Need to photographically channel my pianist. Pianist? What pianist? . And then there's The Afterlife Cafe. What??

I need to catch up on lost meals.



What about Robin Williams then? What a tragedy, who would expect the suicide of a comic genius. Depression is tough.