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

Hi dmitri!

Just figured that the joining thread in Dragon House might be a joining thread...

Talking opera, I´m very fond of baroque music. I had the opportunity to see a Handel (or Händel!) opera at our local opera house a few weeks ago. It was abbreviated of course.. Originally Händel´s operas lasted some three hours or so...

It was Julius Caesar, cut down to one hour. Quite nice, and since I´m not familiar with the libretto I didn´t notice that some of the arias was switched to other characters than Händel wrote.

Yes, a really good idea to switch threads, and not bore the s and s. Not really intellectual, that lot.

Haendel's my favourite baroque composer. (Sorry, my keyboard won't do umlauts, which is bad because I'm on the German thread as well!) 'Judas Maccabeus' is a good one, too. I've never heard 'Julius Caesar'.

I understand there's been an upsurge in interest in baroque opera lately. I think they did one at the Met this year.

I agree totally concerning the intellectual level in dragon house...

Draco, the guy that entered RL in stead of wasting his time here, seemed to have more inside anyhow. I just popped in to him briefly, but got better answers... I think he is a little older than the other boys...

Judas Mackabeus I´ve never heard. The only other Händel opera I´ve seen live is Amadigi (not sure of spelling...). It was also an adapted version given in a ruin of a medevial convent in Visby. Visby is a town at the island Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The city was founded around the 12th century and the city center still harbours many old buildings.

Later I bought a CD with the opera, less adapted, and it was very different from what I had experienced live. It´s by no means bad, it´s just different.

That's . I've read about Visby.

I'm a mediaevalist myself, and I like all music except rap and hip-hop, which is unfortunate when you live in Philadelphia.

hiphop

one of my hatchlings is a hiphop DJ. Fortunately there are two doors to be closed into his room... He´s less wigger now than he was in his teens... but the so called music...and the values that it stands for... No way!

I hear you! And I don't want to hear it!

The problem with all the electronic music is that it cuts down on the singing, and music-making, that you do yourself. Nobody wants to hear anything any more, because it isn't 'professional'.

Actually I enjoy some metal, especially when I´m fed up ...but if I´m really p****d off then it´s the Valkyrie Ride or something similar

Early music, as Monteverdi, Palestrina or Hildegard von Bingen is also sometthing I enjoy listening. Especially when I work and have to be very concentrated.

I'm a fan of folk music (I know, boring).

I knew some young guys back in the nineties, motorcycle types, really tough, who were attending a community college. The college had a Dutch musician who taught a really interesting music appreciation class. He really gave them something to think about. They all became fascinated by Wagner, which they decided was a lot like heavy metal. They came around to the radio station to share this wonderful 'discovery' with me.

Yes, compared to Wagner most metal are like lullabys

But Wagner is not easy listening, I was in my early forties before I started to appreciate him. There are plenty of time to listen to Wagner when you´re waiting for a teenager to come home... You know, supposed to be home at midnight and shows up at 2.30am...

Also good for the mood, I imagine...music to get steamed up by...

I've got to now, catch on on the flip side...

nah, it´s usually no idea to yell in the middle of the night... just makes it more difficult to fall asleep - and the youngster intended to get the yelling is not always in shape to get the point of it... better wait until the day after...

BTW, do you have any connection to the Romanian city Gheorgheni?



logging off at 1pm

I think you meant 1 am?

My name comes from the romantic Romanian town of Gheorgheni. I think I explained it somewhere in my journal. It's just a cover name for some of us extraterrestrials, because we're so spooky. (Also, I liked Romania when I stayed there a long time ago as a student.) I also like being unnecessarily mysterious.

Although, come to think of it, the Gheorgheni name was picked off a map, years before I ever set foot in Romania. How strange...

I used to amuse my friends in school as a child, making up stories about the Gheorghenis and their doings. Some of them are vampires, you know, but good ones. Well, sort of good ones.

Well, check in with you later.

yes, it was 1am This am/pm thingy is something very american, I think. Now it´s 12:10 and nothing else.

Ten minutes past midnight is 00:10 and not 12:10am. Ten minutes past midday is 12:10 and not 12:10pm

So, are the Gheorghenis good, bad or as the rest of us?

Gheorghenis are good for the multiverse. Whether they're good or bad for anybody else depends on goodwill. (I suspect they're very good for everybody at hootoo!)

I'm off up the road in a very small car, with two people and a Shih-Tzu in it. I'll check in tomorrow afternoon (no more ams or pms, I'll stick to 24-hour clocks from now on, promise!), as soon as I get some internet access at my sister's farm.

Keep well.

Godspeed and drive safe!

Greetings from Sugar Valley, Pennsylvania. It's hot and humid, but lovely. I am, appropriately for a Gheorgheni, near a cemetery, outin the countryside.

Hope it´s not a "Pet Semetery"...

I´m not much of a Stephen King fan myself, but dragon princess read his books quite a lot when she was in her early and mid teens.

Humid, yes - hot, no way. June 28th and +10C...that´s even cold for my home town The good thing is that I don´t have to water the flowers outdoors, the rain takes care of that. Not that there are so many flovers left. digs them up since she considers the big flower pots to be her "viewing spots" and just moves away the flowers that are in her way.

I've just been to heaven - my sister's place in western Pennsylvania. They have about a dozen right now, most of them less than a year old. They climb trees and laps with equal abandon. My dog was very happy; he loves s. But it was in the high 90s (F) part of the time.

We went to the local Walmart and bought a small pool for the little ones (not the s, but they jumped in anyway); the well water was icy cold, but three-year-old Cathy and six-year-old DJ loved it. Hardy stock, they.

If the cemetery, which is nearly as old as the farmhouse, I think, about 200 years, was a Pet Sematery, there would be too much business, with all the wildlife. Wild turkeys were seen, deer, possum, bluejays, squirrels, etc. As well as the tame ones: cats, dogs, a horse, goats, chickens and assorted poultry.

I wish they wouldn't keep dogs, though; the poor things are chained up because they are potential -murderers, and s are number-one creatures to the Custer family (and yes, they are rumoured to be related to Goldylocks Himself, which is funny because they are part-Indian on the mother's side).

Anyway, I am back within easier reach of the internet, which pleases the . The farm is in a mountainous area with high metallic content; everything electrical must be turned off at the slightest sign of rain. The place is an epicenter for lightning strikes. The phone was fried when we got there.

Welcome back to the civilized parts of the world then!

Fried phones... when I was a kid the electricity supplies in the remote parts of the Icy North (aka the northern parts of Sweden) were not thunder proof. My maternal grandparents lived in a small village in the forrested interior just east of the mountains. Their house was the last (or first) in the village, which meant the electricity lines and telephone lines (not sure of english terminology here...)ended just outside the house. When a thunderstorm was around the lightening occasionally entered the house and fireballs flew around in the kitchen... My mother used to tell stories about lightenings and thunderstorms a lot, and she´s still sort of scared - and she´s in her seventies.

So even if I grew up in a town, where there with lightening conductors and such, Mum always picked out all plugs and refused to answer the telephone when there was a thunderstorm anywhere near.

Now Mum lives in Long Island, NY, and calls me to tell when there has been a thunderstorm there...she still somehow believes she´s in her native village...

Wow! That's so mythic...fireballs in Nordic kitchens!

I think most everything in Long Island is surge-protected, although I believe there was a brownout along the coast earlier this week, while I was away. It was really hot here, especially in NY, where it reached 100 degrees F in parts of the state.

It's cooled down to the 80s right now, quite comfortable, really.