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

Oh and I enjoyed the Xhosa click video Dmitri! I still have difficulty doing the click followed by a noun, I tend to want to insert an n-sound there.

Anyways Nelson Mandela was Xhosa!

Oh ... and here is what we called the Test Pattern of early SA TV (except that this guy inserted some norty words that weren't in the original):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZJrlCjNHUg

story.

Hullo Peanut darlin'!

Ah yes, Test Card F (resumes nerd talk ). The Test Cards of childhood. Interesting, isn't it, those familiar daily images that make a child's day secure, and are associated with routine. I guess we do that as kids, make anchors, reference points.

If I think about Test Card C and D I think about a glass of milk and a packet of Smith's crisps, with a little blue paper sachet of salt in each bag, eaten in front of the TV when we got back from school.



Here's you liberating portables. . Plus a Roberts radio eh? Great descriptions! Now I just remembered so clearly about coathanger aerials!

Great to see you, luvvy!

Hullo mvp! Ah, right, so it was your Dad who thought that TV wouldn't catch on. Imagine if he was the first person televised? There's a claim to fame, but no evidence.

That Crystal Palace fire must have been so traumatic.

Dads on TV eh? That's a great story, also, Willem, about your Dad on the quiz show. Its wonderful that you still have the books!

My Dad was never on TV. Funny to think of it. Whatever the context, he'd have worn his old tweed jacket and his farm trousers with the glued on patches on the knees.

According to W*k* - therefore, cum grano salis - the first person Baird televised on his 'televisor' was named Oliver Hutchinson:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Logie_Baird,_1st_Image.jpg

But that was in 1926. Not your dad, surely? Mine was BORN in 1926...

He was using a Nipkow disk.

Another Dad on TV! Radio City Music Hall. That sounds romantic, somehow. Radio City Music Hall, I do like that. All these Dads on TV!

I keep changing postings, to keep up with all these amazing stories.

Ahh, have we identified mvp's Dad?

I don't think so, because mvp's Dad has no evidence, the televisor he was on was burned in the fire. Was it? The Lost Televisor. That would be a good story. It's good that the fire was at night, though, so that no one was hurt.

cum grano salis ... . Nice phrase. With a grain of salt? Salis. Salt.

I love salt. I was going to post about salt. But wait! Did Willem mention a Test Card?

A Test Card!

That can't be MVP's dad. This man was from Northern Ireland......

Hah! We need mvp to sort out these mysteries for us. Except she'll write a story now, involving further mysteries.

The truth of these matters should be taken with a pinch of salt! I just got the phrase.

I like Latin. And salt.

And Willem's test pattern! I love Willem's test pattern.

Sorry, I don't have much information about Dad's time at Baird's. It must have been later though - 1930s. Dad did tell a story of a fitter being sent to install a TV and falling through a roof.

You all might be interested in this unusual recording from 1938:

http://archive.org/details/BbcTelevisionReceivedInNewYork-1938

It's BBC TV - picked up in New York!

He fell through a roof? Was he OK?



That is some recording indeed!! What an extraordinary phenomenon! I love this! It's like home. Home?? Yes. Heaven home. Heaven in flickering black and white. Incredible.

I do love transmitters and radio masts and TV masts and things that pick up frequencies.

When I turn on my radio in the night (I've decided that Planet Rock is, in fact, a messenger from the afterlife)...

...What?? Planet Rock is an amazing radio station, if you like that sort of thing. You can hear Tom Petty or Led Zep or Pink Floyd filtering through the hours of darkness, and you think you have drifted into the afterlife, with Archangel Alice Cooper as DJ. heheh.

Where was I? (returns from afterlife), ah yes, when I turn on my radio at night, I imagine all the radiowaves zipping and crackling through my room. I like that.

I took two curious photos today. One is of a broken china plate lying in a pool of rainwater, on the pavement. On the plate is a kitschy drawing of a building with beams, like a pub or olde shoppe, with a sign saying Ribs of Beef. And a signature below it, which reads Piccaso. As opposed to Picasso.

Must be some kind of gimmick plate from somewhere, but I can't place it right now.

And the other photo is of a linen red rose , stuck into a green leafy hedge beside the road. Title of photo could be The morning after Valentine's Day. Which it was.



I do love a photo. One click of the shutter, there's a story. Sort of.

Talking of stories, I'm still in my writing group. If they are considering one of my pieces, I've asked them to refer to critique as suggestions for a re-mix. A text re-mix. . This way it is like re-mixing music and I don't get haunted by pressure, doom, gloom and ghostly voices from the tomb of failure.

The tomb of failure?? . It rhymes with gloom. And doom.

The thing about the text re-mix is that it is adaptable to context.

This version is a postcard to my Aunt, this version could be a story, this version could be the supper menu in the pizza cafe, this version is a meditation on the transient masterpiece, the story that gets away.



And on (and on) I ramble. heheh.

Happy days.

I just wrote a meditation, in fact, about a text re-mix, not yet shared with the unsuspecting writing group. . It's called Jim and The Lady Jessie.

I'm quite into Jim and The Lady Jessie. They follow me, even though they have melted.

What?? I think I might post them here, and spare the writing group.

Why me??? says my Journal.

Hullo Journal. It's because I like you.

It's important to me, though, to meditate upon the transient nature of ideas, the letting go of ideas, a celebration of torn up fragments, and things that melt.

Jim and The Lady Jessie

Recently, I started to write a story about an almost-elderly couple, named Jim and The Lady Jessie, who were caught in an unexpected snowstorm whilst driving out of town.

I used the name The Lady Jessie, because that was Jim's affectionate name for his adored wife. As for the phrase almost-elderly, I couldn't think of a better way to describe two unconventional people in their early eighties, joyful in spirit, and quite undaunted by their advancing years.



The blizzard was fast obliterating the motorway. Dusk was falling. Fortunately a sign loomed into view announcing a motorway services, with Travelodge hotel. Jim and The Lady Jessie decided to stop for the night.

At first light, after a warm and comfortable sleep, they looked excitedly out of the window, like kids on Christmas morning. The snow was piled up in the carpark, and the surrounding hills were sparkly winter white.

After breakfast, they built a snowman on the grass verge beside the carpark. It brought much joy, and people took photos of the delightful almost-elderly couple standing beside their creation.

Eventually the roads became passable, and so Jim and Lady Jessie returned home, leaving their snowman to guard the entrance to the snowy kingdom of the Travelodge.



At this point my story lost direction, and so I decided to let it go. Once freed, the spirit of a story sometimes returns to lead me in a new and surprising direction.

I tore up the script, and happily scattered it into the bin.



Later that night, somewhere between sleeping and waking, I saw thousands of paper fragments fluttering through the air, a paper snowstorm!

I tried to catch the fragments as if they were snowflakes. Each one appeared to be covered in words, or half words, part of a greater story perhaps, but then they melted away.

So Jim and the Lady Jessie melted away also, just figments of my imagination. Their memory makes me smile. Sometimes I sense their presence as if they are right beside me.

And perhaps their snowman will never melt, standing as a proud guardian at the entrance to the kingdom of stories, waiting to guide those who wish to enter.

The new issue of is up, check out CC's nifty image and some good stuff.

















.

I've been reading On The Road. I've never read any Kerouac, even though I'm supposed to be into the Beats.

It's good to read On The Road when I'm not on the road. A bit like watching Glastonbury Festival on TV. Bring on the comfy sofa and hot shower. .

I don't go with a lot of the attitudes, especially the approach to women, but it's good to place it in context, a radical work for its time. And I find the stream of consciousness style very appealing. I can see how it influenced a lot of the youth.

I like his character names, based on himself and his friends. He being Sal Paradise, and Dean Moriarty based on Neal Cassady.



I'm going to check out his poetry, which interests me probably more than the autobiographical novels. Mexico City Blues seems to be a bunch of poems written to a jazz beat. He wrote haiku, and a Book of Sketches, which seem to be word sketches. And a collection of poetry called The Scripture of the Golden Eternity.

A long way from Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty? Not really, we are led to believe that these guys are all searching for their spiritual essence, the theme of one of Kerouac's other books, the Dharma Bums.



That was a very literary essay of a posting was it not? heheh.



Warm sun today! Too hot in my socks. Daffodils in bud, snowdrops. Spring is in the air!

Yes. I think we should 'meditate upon the transient nature of ideas, the letting go of ideas, a celebration of torn up fragments, and things that melt.'

For some reason that reminds me of Edward Fitzgerald's poem 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'. Do you know it? It appears to urge seizing present pleasures because everything is transient:
'Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A flask of wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness -
And wilderness is Paradise enow.'

I don't know if it's a proper translation of the oringinal Persian , but I like the bits I've read.
So here's to .

Hullo mvp! That's amazing. You know, I've heard of this poem, but never ever read it! Now's the time! Thanks!