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

Which instrument do you play?

I learned playing the recorder when I was little, but I've not played for ages.

I've always had trouble with hitting the fast forward button when I want to hit play.

Yes, although the old machines had really large buttons.

I know.
I've got an ancient Telefunken Magnetophon Automatic reel to reel.
I collect old tape machines.
I actually used some of them, like the Roberts and Wollensak, but I wore most of those out.
The ones I have now are just antique curiosities, including a 1949 Dukane and a 1968 Craig.

I once had a Norelco five incher that had two-inch wide buttons. It didn't work when I got it, so I parted it out for fun and kept the microphone, which I still use.

I also collect manual typewriters and slide rules.

That sounds like a lot of stuff.

I don't collect anything, if you don't count books.

Nah. I just trip over piles of them.

So do I.

I almost never go to the Public Library anymore.
I have so many books and magazines in the house that I keep finding ones I'd forgotten I had.
gotta build some more shelves.
most of them went out the door with the ex five years ago.

I wouldn't know where to put more shelves, so I have heaps of books lying about.

i was thinking of getting some of that furniture with the shelves built-in. Chairs, bunkbeds, toilets....

I was reminded the other day about a bicycle I used to own: a Steyr Puch Waffenrad. I bought it new in the mid-eighties. It was very black. And big.

The other day, I saw a photo of such chairs you mention. Don't recall what it was, though. I think it was a 'designer' chair.

I wish I had a bicycle. Mine is broken, an I don't know how to mend it.

Don't recall what it was, though. I think it was a 'designer' chair."

IKEA sells some.

"I wish I had a bicycle. Mine is broken, an I don't know how to mend it. "

I have a bike mechanic I take mine to. The same people I bought my last three bicycles from.

My husband claims the bike is beyond repair.

"My husband claims the bike is beyond repair."

I have a couple of those sitting around, too.

I was reading your editorials about your son and conscription and the possibility of public service...

and thinking again about how strange the world is to me, that there are so many different ways of doing things...

As an Asperger's person, I've found the places I've lived in in this country, Illinois, California, Texas, Ft. Benning, Georgia, to be very strange and unfamiliar to me. Only in libraries, bookstores and music stores do I feel at home. I don't even feel at home in retail stores, even though I have worked in them more than I like to remember.

Yet, for me to take my mind and imagine me living in Germany, where they don't even call it that, is a stretch. My daughter took German in High School for four years and even now attends an old-fashioned Lutheran church in Austin... she dreams of traveling there someday so she can hear a real Deutscher accent instead of the flat Texas accents of her teachers...

and though I would like to get some German films or television shows on DVD, this is almost unpossible unless I get a DVD player for the correct region and the correct television, because the line format and voltage is apparently different... but a friend mentioned today that when I get my new lapdog computer, I will be able to download all sorts German stuff from YouTube if I wish... wow...

I want to find "The Shoe of Winatou". I've always wanted to see that.

I couldn't imagine to live in America! It seems to be such a violent country.

Bookstores and libraries are great places to be. I quite like the shop where I've worked for more than 15 years now. It's small, in a friendly environment. I know I'll have difficulties to adapt to a differnt work environment, but I'll have to.

Der Schuh des Manitu is a great film. Very funny.
Unfortunately, I don't have the DVD, or I'd send it to you. (the data, that is). But now I'm watching various scenes on youtube.

I couldn't imagine to live in America! It seems to be such a violent country"

You might be surprised how much the violence is overplayed. I have spent four years working in a convenience store on the night shift and seen a lot of things, but it's not like on TV or the movies.

People's perceptions and misperceptions of other people's countries are often very funny.
The average Amurrican doesn't think about Deutschland beyond beer and war movies.

We have an ethnic group known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. They aren't from Holland. They were originally a religious group from Frisia or someplace like that called the Schwenkfelders (sp?). The locals couldn't pronounce Deutsch, so it became Dutch.

The Pennsylvania Dutch are often confused with the Mennonites, another immigrant sect.

There are also the remains of Hessian mercenaries who came over with the Britisch during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and were either captured or deserted.

In the west are descendants of the first major wave of eastern european immigrants, including Germans, Austrians, and Alsacians, who came over during the Nation-building events of 1838-1849. Some of them ended up in Mexico and South America, particularly Argentina and Chile.

And the Celts, whom a lot of white Irish and Scots hold up as the epitome of ancient uncivilization, were first found in places like modern Germany, before they moved to Spain, from which they supposedly discovered the homeland of the Picts.

Since there are more people in the United States than there are in most of the EU, it is not difficult for statistics to show that it has more crime and violence than a smaller country...
although when you consider that there are criminal countries on the planet, where the only crime their citizens commit is breathing on their sick government's time...

Perception is a funny thing.

You are absolutely right, of course. It's all about perception and what you make of it. I'm sure the majority of US Americans are as peaceful as anybody else. And we're being manipulated by the press.
Oh, and I knew about the Pennsylvania Dutch. I've even got a booklet about it somewhere, focussing on the emigrants from Schleswig-Holstein (which is where I hail from). It's very scientific, though, so not really your reading material as a bedtime story.

"Schleswig-Holstein"? Okay. So, where's Frisia?


Yes, well, I've never learned to trust the press to do anything but keep the advertisers happy.