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

I wouldn't faff too much hun, a simple 'nice shot' is worth more than a thousand links to someone else's photos!

heheh. Right, thanks luv.

I think I just had to open it all up, ask questions, then usually my answer appears to greet me with a grin.

I feel happy now, I've sorted out my way. And its the thought that counts, eh?

The thing about me is that I'm totally one way when it comes to contexts like my journal here, but when life requires another kind of discipline and focus I like to try to respond accordingly. Always been like this.

In places like the AWW (Alternative Writing Workshop) I did sometimes feel a bit of a spare part because I was aware of the fact that people were usually needing critique and constructive comment, because it was a writing workshop, and they got me instead . But hey ..

Sorry you were fliffed and flaffed - glad you've got a plan for commenting now. It is always a pleasure to see you around, as I love how Post Entries and comments spark ideas off each other

"I think can be quite a big deal for a contributor to offer work to the Post. When I first offered writings and photos there it was like, yikes! still is , but a challenge also, and that, despite my shyness, is a constructive thing."

Yes, I know what you mean indeed - I find it daunting in some ways, putting something 'out there' when I'm not sure it is 'good enough' (whatever 'good enough' is), but it is a worthwhile challenge to do it for h2g2, with the bonus of comments that are "not raising up my work or knocking it down, more like poetic and unusual and help me see my work from different angles." as you say

Enjoy your watermelon I love how watermelon looks, as the colours of a slice are great, but for me it doesn't taste as good as it looks. Apples are more my scene xx

Hullo Sasha!

Hey, thanks, I'll unfliff and unflaff now, and give everyone a break.

Yup, I've got a comments plan now. I like my plan. Tis true, Post entries and comments spark ideas off each other. I love that.

So, you like an apple eh? Mmmmm a crisp juicy apple.

Watermelon can be reeeely disappointing if you bite into it expecting that delicious sweet refreshing taste to follow its gorgeous look, and its all woolly and weird.

Mind you, fruit can be like that generally. I tend to spontaneously splatter it all over the place if I bite into a bad plum or something, best not eaten in public.

Love it 'woolly and weird' yes indeed!

Yes, fruit is much better enjoyed in the comfort of one's home I cut my apples up with a knife, but even then it can get a bit messy when the apple is delciously crisp and juicy! Vegetables are generally more well behaved, but even then we have to watch out - lettuce can be a challenge, and peas in particular like to escape if they can

Folks it sounds to me like you haven't had proper watermelon yet! Over here we get the good kind and it is really refreshing and crisp and delicious! We also have the wild ancestor of the watermelon which is the Tsamma melon. They're in the wild about the size of a tennis ball. Wild melons are made to attract things that want to eat them. They're not as sweet and the fruit are more watery but that's what attracts many things since they grow in desert and dry regions so the water they offer is very valuable. They have huge root systems going deep down in the sand to collect all this water. So the critters come and eat them and then they poop out the melon seeds ... so propagating the plants! Watermelons have been selected and bred by humans to be sweeter and to have much, much larger fruits.

Watermelons must be popular worldwide. My Vietnamese students used to tell me that they would buy them by the truckload to take back to the village, and the whole village would have a watermelon feast.

When I was a kid, watermelons tasted better, because they were not anything like seedless. We'd sit out in the farmyard on rocks, eating them and spitting out the seeds.

Our parents and grandparents would insist that if we ate the seeds, a watermelon would grow in our stomachs...

Erm, just leaving this here because I thought CC might like it......this appeared on Twitter...the twitterer who retweeted it is a very talented expert on sexual history...Twitter has drawn some interesting conclusions about appropriate dress for pulling down statues from those paragons of fashion, the Vandals...

http://twitter.com/not_a_teacher/status/1276198470345388034

What?? Good evening ye universal marvels.

Considers a posting entitled From Fruit to Nuts.

Ooooh lots of completely naked Vandals tearing down statues. How very extraordinary.

Looks like my beach afternoon, in fact, apart from the statues. Add a pink inflatable flamingo to the scene instead, and Vandals who'd sooner float about on the water, you got it.

So, Vandals? They've been around for a while then. This word will have an origin. This person will find out.

Lettuce can definitely be a challenge, Sasha. And peas can escape, this is true.

(considers the challenging lettuce)

Interesting melon facts, Willem!

I see, so the wild melon really needs to be eaten. I've never thought about that. Mostly, nature seems to have defenses so that it doesn't get eaten by passing hungry things, but the wild melon will positively encourage it.

Ah, so the watermelon as we know it, bred by humans.

It is soo delicious when crisp and sweet. The chunk I got today was crisp and sweet. I devoured it like a passing hungry thing.

I'll bet you did.

A village watermelon feast? How interesting!

They do seem to be everywhere, no doubt. I remember seeing truckloads of them in Greece.

Seed spitting! When working in Greece, in fact, C arranged a seed spitting contest for the community. Like, obviously, the furthest spit wins. People got really into it. Good old homemade entertainment, eh? heheh.

I love that childhood memory, sitting out in the farmyard, on rocks, eating watermelon, spitting the seeds. I can so picture that somehow.

I was just considering the challenging lettuce and found a video of a rabbit demonstrating a technique similar to mine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkhgYBOQtEM except I eat each leaf the other way round!

Captain Mac was the first kid's TV program in our Metropolitan Area. The program had a contest for the best  Verner'sginger ale poem so I wrote one and got on TV with Captain Mac to read it. I was ten. I plagiarized some from Dr. Sueuss.

Would you like some Vernersr's? Oh Boy! Is it good!
It's the only cold drink mellowed four years in wood.
It's delicious, nutritious..has vitamins too.
It's mineral packed with calories few.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant.
Verner's iis good...one hundred percent.

So I won a green Verner's  ginger ale picnic cooler and a case of Verner's ginger ale. in glass deposit bottles

We didn't like the taste. We tried it with ice cream as a float and with Seagram's 7 whiskeys. Nobody could drink straight or as a mixer it so we poured it out.

I took the bottles to the local Kwik Check grocery store and traded them for a watermelon.

I love that they micced up the rabbit and called it ASMR - the college-age kids' favourite thing these days. What a cute rabbit! And what a good video.

That black-and-white bunny reminds me so much of Maxi, our friends' rabbit in Cologne. Maxi was a very self-possessed bunny who roamed our friends' apartment, herding around a half-dozen guinea pigs, usually. Maxi was the Boss.

One evening, the local police knocked on their door to ask about a complaint one of their neighbours had lodged about the noise the bar downstairs was making - see if they had noticed it.

Maxi wasn't having any. He saw boots, and thumped. The startled cops jumped backwards, to the total delight of the two kids in the family.

'Maxi scared the police!' they told me proudly.

You were drinking Seagram's 7 at ten?

Congrats on the poetry, though!

"I want them and their work to feel recognised. A personal message from me. Sharpness and focus seem to be my key words." [cactuscafe]

I want to make the peron who provided the photo/article feel noticed in a friendly and entertaining way. Other researchers (not just the one who posted the photo/article) may be intyerstedi n my comments.

"a simple 'nice shot' is worth more than a thousand links to someone else's photos!" [FWR]

That's good advice .

"Watermelon can be reeeely disappointing if you bite into it expecting that delicious sweet refreshing taste to follow its gorgeous look, and its all woolly and weird." [cactuscafe]

I haven't had watermlon in a long time. Watermelon grows in the wild in West Africa. I don't know what it thinks of its cultivated cousins.

"That black-and-white bunny reminds me so much of Maxi, our friends' rabbit in Cologne." [Dmitri]

We have a lot of Eastern Cottontails of all sizes here in the Park. Well, none are the size of elephants, but you know what I mean.

"'Maxi scared the police!' they told me proudly. "



Yes, the video was great with the ASMR in it - I enjoyed that Excellent to study the eating technique, too - the video was just what I was looking for, and it is a bonus that the rabbit is indeed cute in the right sort of way A87984607

Great poem, Phred - a worthy winner, but a shame you didn't like the prize Reminds me that my dad and I used to enter a lot of 'slogan' competitions in the late 1980s/early 1990s and had a couple of successes - we got two very large teddy bears that we didn't really know what to do with, but we also won one plastic playset that provided hours of fun for me and my sister

Good evening, ye salad eaters.




That's a rather sweet and hilarious video, the bunny eating the lettuce leaf, Sasha.

One of my Aunties used to sprinkle sugar on her lettuce.

An interesting leaf is the lettuce. I wonder if it has good vitamin and mineral content, like, is it worth the effort?