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

There is a Romanian saying, 'Apa trece, pietrele ramin.' It means, 'Water flows, little stones remain.'

heheh. Hullo me luv! I like that Romanian saying. Is that Romanian then? I guess it is. It wouldn't be a Romanian saying in a completely different language.

Except ... it might, with you. teeeheee.

No, that's Romanian. I just can't spell it right on h2g2. We don't have the diacriticals.

There's a song! (I didn't know that.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feI6enzCMOk

Hmm, always good to have yer diacriticals to hand.

Nice video.

Not as good as ..

OK I won't go on. I'll go find out what a diacritical is.

The byplane was out again today, flying over the beach.

Loop de loop entertainment for Brighton, except the nudistas aren't remotely interested, but ...

Actually I am a bit taken with his loop de loops, as it were.

Why, when naturist beaches are mentioned, does everything sound like an innuendo.

Anyway, innuendos aside, what he does is turn the plane upwards, then somehow he cuts the engine sound and falls downwards out of the sky, round and round, loop de loop, till he corrects it, and flies onward over Brighton Pier.

I think he comes from Shoreham airport, which is small airport, just along the coast. A lot of people fly private planes from there. He's an unoffical entertainment.

Its a bit strange in fact, because in the summer of 2015 there was a terrible accident at Shoreham airport, during the airshow. This guy flew a Hawker Hunter too close to the ground during a manoeuvre and landed on the A27 main road, killing 11 people, and injuring quite a few. We drove that road all the time from the West Country to Brighton, could have been us, what's the chances? It was awful. They don't have the airshow any more.

I don't know if I should watch Mr Loop de Loop, in memoriam of those who died. Maybe he doesn't come from Shoreham. I'm going to find out.

I don't think he's being disrespectful, he just likes loop de looping.

I think if I was a pilot I wouldn't do loop de loops, but that's probably because I'm a girl.



I'm having these weird random thoughts right now, probably because its gone half midnight and I should be sleeping.

I always wanted to go barnstorming, but the closest I ever got was being a passenger in a 1920s Ford Tri-Motor. Which was a lovely ride.

OK final random thought. For now.

Someone once told me that when Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road, stream of consciousness style, the text appeared on a long roll of paper that just kept flowing out of his typewriter.

It was so long that a spaniel, (I don't know who's) ate a part of it, but he just kept going.

This of course could be urban myth, who knows. Has anyone else ever heard of this?

Anyway, I kind of like the idea.

I could write a one line word painting, based on this.

The dog ate chapter fifty, chapter fifty one had to ..

Had to what??

Oh. I don't know. Maybe I'll never know. Some wordpaintings don't get beyond the almost. Its late. I think I should sleep.

Sleep is a wonderful invention! How amazing it is that, as a species, we have to cut out and go into a completely altered state for four hours, or eight hours if one has time. I have time. Goodnight.

(wakes up again)

A 1920s Ford Tri-motor? That sounds somehow extremely romantic. I wonder what a tri-motor is?

Ford trimotor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ9f206YnyU

Does a bear, er, poop in Hooverville? Yes, it does. We have bear droppings in our yard...also, he raided the bird feeder...

"How much land is there at the trailer park, like in acres?"[cactuscafe]

The park covers nine acres, but we only did landscape gardening along the entrance ramp, and around a stump at the entrance (we call it the Stump garden), and next to the dumpsters (why not make dumpsters look nice?) and recycling bins, and the Common Area. That was plenty of coverage, as we only had two or three people, who had other things going on in their lives.

"Why, when naturist beaches are mentioned, does everything sound like an innuendo." [Cactuscafe]

With so much grim, dreary news all around us, what harm is a little innuendo?

" in the summer of 2015 there was a terrible accident at Shoreham airport"

See what I mean? You never hear of a wonderful or cheery accident, just a terrible one.

"I always wanted to go barnstorming" [Dmitri]

"Someone once told me that when Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road, stream of consciousness style, the text appeared on a long roll of paper that just kept flowing out of his typewriter" [cactuscafe]

I heard about that. I also saw the film version of "On the road" [2012] with Garrett Hedlund. A fine movie.

"Sleep is a wonderful invention! How amazing it is that, as a species, we have to cut out and go into a completely altered state for four hours, or eight hours if one has time. "

Many other species sleep. It may be a basic factor in life. Even plants stop photosynthesizing when it gets dark.

Jack, What kind of paper did you use writing the book?

“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.”
― Jack Kerouac

He ended up living with his mom near here, in Indian Rocks beach. I had a friend who claimed to have met him in a local bar in the 60s...I think Jack spent a summer in a Washington State National Park fire tower lookout, writing Desolation Angels...

Can you actually buy rolls of typing paper? typewriters...floppy disks...rotary phones...8-tracks

Here's what NPR said about the scroll story (complete with .gif).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11709924

May I recommend 'Blue Highways' by William Least Heat Moon? If you like road trips. Really good writing.

The Ford Trimotor is a plane???

Oh. I thought Ford only made cars. . How very extraordinary.

Is Ford one of the most successful companies ever, in the States? Like, Henry Ford, was he a genius or a very good businessman, or both and all?

Henry Ford was a terrible person.

He owned an antisemitic newspaper. He also believed he was a reincarnated pharaoh.

His cars were very successful. He originally intended them to run on corn oil, I believe.

Ah right! Kerouc! Fascinating character. I wonder what he was like to live around? I read an article once written by his daughter, but I can't remember anything about it. It was in a book I had, entitled Women of the Beat Generation. Must refresh the brain on that one.

Ah yes, Desolation Angels.

Yes, can you get rolls of typewriter paper? And do spaniels eat them?

I knew this guy, way back when, he was living in London for a year. He saw himself as some kind of Beat writer, carried a typewriter in his rucksack. He tried to charm me with this, and suggested I returned home to America with him.

Me? Why would I fall for a chap with a typewriter in his rucksack??

Typewriters sound quite retro romantic now, but having had to use one as a tool of my trade as BBC secretary, I remember how clunky and annoying they were, and Tippex, don't remind me of Tippex. That's the white paint you used to conceal a mistake. Brilliant stuff, but then you could never get the paper straight again, having corrected the mistake.

Actually, am I right in thinking that the mother of Mike Nesmith (Monkees! ) invented Tippex?

Suppertime! Back later to consider paul's landscape gardening, innuendos, bears in the yard and probably quite a lot of other things.

Ok...so the dog ate chapter 50 wasn't just a literary hallucination.

I kept seeing him in a fire lookout tower with a typewriter, looking around for long rolls of paper.

If you don't want to have to use Tippex, then make no mistakes.

But I warn you: don't expect to type 100 words per minute. Sure, you can probably achieve a low error rate at 10 words per minute, but you'll be ninety before your first draft is done. Or maybe hat doesn't bother you? Well, on with it, then.

Mike Nesmith's mother did, indeed, invent Tippex. As she was raising the kids on her own, I heartily applaud her. As did her son.

I am not a fan of Mr Kerouac. My favourite Beat poets are Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti.

The greatest invention in the typewriter era was the electronic typewriter with the cassette ribbon. I loved these. First, I no longer had to bring the whole typewriter into the shop and get laughed at - even I could change a cassette. (I could NEVER manage to thread a typewriter ribbon, God's truth.)

And then, the cassette had the white-out stuff on a separate tape, and the machine had a 20-character memory, so all you had to do was spot the typo in that time, backspace, and retype. It was a brief era, the 80s, but inventive.