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

The Question: Just what are tonsils really for, anyway?

That out of the way, I'm 55 years of age. (My best gypsy fortune teller tells me I'll live to 94 and she's probably right, though I intend to better that if possible.) Most of my life experience has been so bizarre I learned long ago its usually better not to talk about it, since as a rule my audience will never believe me anyway. Still single, despite repeated long term relationships. (Of two 7 year liasons, one failed on a legal impediment and the other over an issue of incompatible political outlook.)

I've spent about equal amounts of time living in inner city urban, suburban residential, rural agrarian and wilderness environments. On the last, when I still had time, I used to set out on wilderness adventures with a mountaineering pack on which I'd carry my camping equipment with a yoke over the top of it, a duffel bag on either side, full of laundry on one side and food on the other, staying out usually six weeks or more at a time.

Interests include horticulture (forest floor endemics often make wonderful houseplants since they are well adapted to lower levels of lighting), quantum mechanics and cosmology, epistemology, personality theory, archetypology, mythography, especially tutelary animal fables; (Ardreys' "The Social Contact" is a wonderful accompaniment to studies of animal fables)(the Korean versions of Aesops' fables are often more detailed and intelligible than the rather abbreviated versions that came to the Mediterranean world over the trade routes)(Ben Caxton is to this day still the best English language author on Aesops fables)(There is a wealth of tutelary animal fables in Native American lore that do not appear in Aesop).

New to h2g2.

I do not know what tonsils are for.
I think they are like the appendix.

Somebody told me they are part of the lymph system.
Whatever that is.

Where did you run across me on this site?
Did I say something interesting?

I am male.
What are you?

"Most of my life experience has been so bizarre I learned long ago its usually better not to talk about it, since as a rule my audience will never believe me anyway. "

Here at H2 anybody will probably believe anything.
I've met expats from four countries who have lived all over the world. I've met actors, doctors, scientists and soldiers.

Welcome to H2G2 and feel free to ask about anything.
I may not know the answer but I can find out or come up with a decent lie.

Item by item:

I'm still wondering about tonsils, have been for years.

I know what the vermiform appendix is for, a vestigial stomach like the predigestor of the even toed ungulates or the koala.

I wouldn't know, but the picture in Grays' Anatomy suggest olfactory or pheromonal receptors. [tonsils]

An important part of immune system, also the system that manufactures blood plasma. [the lymphatic system]

The who's online screen. I had just plunged in on the first occasion I logged in, responding whenever a moment of whimsy struck me.

It was your sobriquet itself that stimulated the response.

Male, single, 55 years of age, currently not seeking feminine companionship, merely stimulating conversation. I'll talk to just about anyone though and frequently get down on all fours barking back at the dogs and romping with them when they come running up excitedly to greet me on my return after a long absence.

I'm not sure I want to get started on that one, or even know for sure what it means. In the early stages of a retirement process over which I need to reinvent myself over the next five years.

I hope not. I actually value sound criticism and the occasional appropriate correction. [...believe anything... ?]

Self educated wizardry, my best academic adviser suggests I should go back to school for a degree in philosophy.

Thanks for the welcome.

Philosophy on the ethics of the lie: The sole possible justification for a common falsehood is protection of innocence. Under that paradigm it sometimes becomes ethically mandatory.

...taken as distinct of course from fictionizing, hyperbole, whimsy etc. ... .

"Philosophy on the ethics of the lie: The sole possible justification for a common falsehood is protection of innocence. Under that paradigm it sometimes becomes ethically mandatory."

Fascinating.
I prefer to believe that one of the best reasons for lying is the protection of the ignorant. Some people are better off not being aware of their lacks. And the truly stupid won't care.

I am big fan of dogs meself. There's a great pyrenees across the back fence that I spend a lot of time with. I'm not allowed to adopt him as I can barely feed myself, but he is more interesting at ten months than most humans are at thirty years.

Remind me again what the hell a sobriquet is. I thought it had something to do with a backyard barbeque brassiere.

There isn't a word in the English Language which hasn't more than one meaning. This is one of those words: "innocence".

Sobriquet: nickname, username, etc.: the hifalutin generic for the immediately preceding.

Connotations: "Co - notations", listed by number in the more comprehensive dictionarys.

'There isn't a word in the English Language which hasn't more than one meaning'

That's one of them double negative sentences. I find their circular grammar hard to follow. Unless it is a double anti-positive where two rights make a left and two wrongs make an aeroplane.

Of course, I live in a milieu where the most common interoggatory I get at the store I work within is: "You ain't got no...?" or "You ain't got no more?"

I could have made it: "Every word in the English language has more than one meaning." However, they don't contradict one another and its double negatives that contradict one another that render a statement ridiculous.

I can't help it. I'm cylothymic and proud of it. I often deliberately combine opposing views in the same sentence under the principle by Niels Bohr that there are two kinds of truth, the trivial kind, the opposite of which is a falsehood and the profound kind, the opposite of which is another profound truth.

Algonquian forms: "unh, huh": the affirmative. Yes!

"anh, anh": the negative. No?

"anh!": the half negative: I don't know. or: Are you sure about that? or: Maybe.

There are many Algonquian loan words in the English language. For example, "Yankees" is taken from the Algonquian word "Yenguese", which merely means: "English". Of course the Comanche use the term "bela hana" which is simply Greek or Russian for "white man". The Sioux on the other hand speak a Siberian derived dialect distantly related to Japanese and Manchurian.

Amusing rally.



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I'll admit Philip K. Dick sometimes reminds me of something Alice Cooper once said about his stage persona. He said if he met someone like that on the street, he'd be afraid.

Tell me something about Sylvia Plath.

I hope you'll forgive me my dead pan antics. Coming across all but insanely serious minded is an ever popular comedic device.

Sorry, I was replying to your other comments on the other thread. I forgot about this one.
I've been battling seasonal depression and haven't been much on here for a couple weeks.

My mother was almost raised in a place called Moweaqua, Illinois.

On seasonal affective depression, it can hit anyone. Sunshine and fresh air help if available. Also bright sunny yellow (the color of a sunflower) lamps and windows with preferably translucent, not transparent, covers that stop everything else.

I've never been to Illinois.

the native american name is what I was pointing out.

It's hard to have any say about lighting when you work the graveyard shift in a 7-11

The native american name? Which one?

Graveyard at the 7/11. Depends on what kind of lighting you've got. Alternating sodium and mercury vapor lamps (banked side by side in doublets) helps, more closely matching natural sunlight and can make things more comfortable for the customers too if you've got fluorescents. I always feel as though I'm groping half in the dark when I've only got one or the other. ...and sometimes you've just got to tough it out... ... ancient Greeks used to train their athletes to have an expression on their face like they were loving it, no matter how bad it hurt. Mirror at hand?

>...Yo?...<
>......<

Sorry, I have been dealing with a plethora of deaths around the store and a kinda very personal crisis for the last few days.

Moweaqua, the town my mother grew up near, has a Native American name.

The lighting in my store is 118 single tube flourescent fixtures.
The sodium vapor lamps are out by the gas pumps.

Deaths?

Personal crisis? If you want to talk about it.

"Mowequa", a new one on me all I know for sure is that its in the Algonquian group of languages and Huron (Seneca) confederation country.

Perhaps they'll allow a sodium vapor personal reading lamp at your work station?

my bosses mom died christmas day
a co-workers father died the next week.
one of my favorite customers died christmas eve.

A lot of that going around. My stepfather died last August. The first time I'd actually cried in as long as I can remember. Then about six weeks later I broke down and cried again.

Retirement plans: Have you looked into annuities? You're still young enough you can use them to good effect, providing a little much needed retirement income.

I'll either be a millionaire by then or I'll die in harness.