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

So I see the name "Strider" various places around the guide, and as a Tolkein fan I was intrigued... after visiting your site I have to be friends with you. You listed a lot of my favorite music, authors, and you are an American. Hmm... one question, do you like all the works of C.S. Lewis,just his apologetics, just the Narnia Chronicles, or just the Sci-fi trilogy?

Feel free to check out my personal space, I just learned enough about guideML to start, I just haven't done much with it other than experiment, so there's not a lot there... but I hope to hear back from ya!
Y.S.

Wow, somebody knows who I am! I'm famous!

Anyway, that aside...

I actually don't really know much of CS Lewis's non-Narnia books, so I could only honestly say that I'm a Narnia fan, but I'm sure I'd like his other stuff too.

I noticed that you're listening to Abbey Road... one of my personal favs, of course. Anway, off to whatever I end up doing today!

So, were it possible to only have one track of Abbey Road (perish the thought) which one would it be?

By the way, read your Tolkein write up... very good. I just read a biography of him this last winter, and ended up in a very heated debate with a literary friend about man as a sub-creator. It was partly just to debate, but I have always been interested in why people write and read fiction so compulsively.

Lewis's sci-fi trilogy is really worth a look, very different than Narnia though. Last night I was reading Oscar Wilde (I'm at my parents house and haven't been to the library yet), and comic books of the Gary Larson variety.
Y.S.

Wilde? What Wilde? I have to say, I nearly broke a rib laughing when I read Ernest (the importance of being). And Larson? Excellent selections. You know, I think comics basically died in general when he and Bill Waterson stopped writting. I mean, without Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes....

One track of Abby Road? The one on the second side. Ok, that's cheating, I'll admit. But it's as good an answer as I have. Actually, I think I like each song on the first side (excepting Octapus' Garden) than any given tune on the flip side, but like the flip side (combined) better than any track on the A-side.

I hope that last paragraph makes more sense over there than it does over here, because it makes precious little over here.

Fair enough... I must have been crazy to ask for a favorite Beatles song... it's like asking which nostril you prefer.

Watterson was amazing... I don't know how you could retire from characters that epic. Currently I am reading Get Fuzzy comics, which are marketed right toward geeks like me (they smack of Bloom County).

I was reading Wilde's collected fairy tales, and some choice selection of Ernest (saw it at the Canadian Stratford Festival back in high school... so funny). Dorian Grey is too much for a caffiene infested mind. I haven't seen the new movie interpretation of it yet. I would love to get to plays more often... but I am a broke soon to be college student (I took about 3 years "off" but am going next fall).

So what is fun out in your neck of the woods?
Y.S.

What's to do? Not much. Otherwise, why would I spend as much time as I do on this totally and completely rediculous site? Friends' houses, mostly. It's pretty woodsy this neck of the woods (go figure). But it is, seriously. I'm sitting directly in the middle of a forest at the moment. That is, my house is sitting directly in the middle of the forest, and I'm sitting directly in the middle (well, not really, but somewhere in) my house.

Hmm... Get fuzzy. I'll have to check it out. I like Bloom County quite a bit, so...

Where're you going to go school (if you don't mind me asking. I'm doing college apps/visits right now)?

Speaking of Beatles, I'm starting an entry on Sgt. Pepper. Feel free to have a look at it (although it's very incomplete as of yet), and maybe even tell me how I should write it, since it's pretty damned difficult.

Get Fuzzy isn't nearly the masterpiece of Bloom County, it's cute... but only a few people I know laugh out loud at it like I do.

I'm applying to Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA. They like homeschoolers there (I was homeschooled for the 7 years prior to my senior year)and have a standard of excellence that has attracted ivy league type students. Plus they are a Christian College, which is important to me. I originally looked at Hillsdale in Michigan... but I like that PHC is new (founded in 2000) and kind of avant garde in their scholastics. My friends attending are quite pleased with it overall. The major I'm pursuing (CLA in Creative and Professional Writing) has some neat classes, including "Biblical Themes in Tolkein"... unfortunately I will also have to take either Latin or Greek. The other unfortunate thing is that all the scholarships I have amassed at this point are federal, which the school will not take on principle.
Anyway. I will be sure to see how the Sgt. Pepper write up is going. That album used to creep me out as a kid because before I even heard it my brother used to tell me all the ghastly proofs that Paul was dead.
later! Y.S.

Hey, I was homeschooled for a couple years (second and third grade)! Good to know that other homeschoolers actually exist out there .

Right. Paul is dead, man, misshim miss him miss him. 28 if. Sure... Speaking of which have you seen "The Rutles?"

Rutles? No... is it a movie? Should I see it? Last movie I rented was Royal Tenenbaums. I liked it a lot in a kinda disturbed way.
So applying to colleges? How old are you, and what are your scholastic interests (if you don't mind the inquiry... if you do, just ignore it)? What are you doing with yourself in the interim?
Later.
Y.S.

Yeah, a movie (sort of). It's an Eric Idle creation. Search the Guide for Rutles and for Eric Idle, and you'll find out about both of them. The Rutles entry isn't the absolute greatest, but the Eric Idle one is.

I'm sixteen, but don't hold that against me. I'm too damned hairy to be a sixteen year-old anyway. All the schools ask what my scholastic interests are, and I really don't know. Oh well.

Hey, I still don't know quite what my scholastic interests were, but I definantly had them! Won't "hold it against you" that you're 16... that's a great age, one of my best years ever was my 16th.
Eric Idle is a complete genuis... Love him to bits. It was so weird... right after I said I didn't know who the Rutles were, I was watching a bit with Eric Idle and Gilda Radner (it was a best of Gilda show) and it was a Rutles piece! DId you ever see "One Foot in the Grave"?

Nope, sorry.

Yeah, Idle Idle Idle. The cheeky one

Weird thing, isn't it? The moment somebody tells you about something, you start seeing it EVERYWHERE. Makes you wonder if there's just alot that you usually don't notice...

Yup... ever notice it's like that when you have a crush on someone? Like all the sudden there are products with their names on it, or everyone you meet is like them... the harder you try not to think about it, the more your subconcious surfaces and messes with you.
I think more of those things go on then we notice... but our lives are so loud, we can't hear over them.
Hmm.

Quite. hmm...

So why were you homeschooled? Did you like it? Where do you go now? Do you have a job? Enquiring minds want to know!
Y.S.

I was homeschooled because as a little boy school was too stressful for me, and I'd started to develop nervous ticks. Of course, I didn't notice them, and my parents didn't tell me that until years later. I thought that the reason I was homeschooling was because school was holding me back and not teaching me enough, which was also true. I loved it.

Now I go to a nearby private high-school. It's good for me, and I like it. I work a) as an assistant at a religious school and b) as a bouncer at a teen centre. Good combo, eh?

Great combo! Sounds like a lot of fun!

If you loved homeschooling so much, why did you stop? I stopped after my junior year because I had enough credits to graduate, and thought a year at boarding school would be a good life experience (I was right). I am also a drama freak, and ended up with a lead role in our school play (whoop-dee-do.). My senior year was awesome because I had all electives and a great batch of friends. The downside was that I am kind of a hippy freespirit type as far as dress goes, and the schoolday dress code was minorly depressing. I came to appreciate it though.

I think that there came a point when I'd either have to stop learning primarily from my parents, which either involved my going back to school or going to other people, which really fall into the same category in my mind.

Additionally, homeshcooling was beginning to hurt my relationship with my parents. Being around them as much as I was was becoming stressful, and I was seeing them as more of an athority figure than either of us wanted.

Anyway, I only spent one (very easy) year in public school before I enrolled in the private school I'm still in, which I love.

Private school is awesome. I have just started staff initiation at the one I work at... can't wait until the students get here. The really cool thing about SVA is that it is a boarding school, so as a homeschooler I really had a sense of independance and found out what I was like without my folks around.

I love learning, and I love seeing people get excited about it... that's why I joined the guide in the first place. Talking to people from all over the world and reading their research is just so neat.

Absolutely. The single worst thing about institutionalised learnigng (an frequently, "structured" learning in general) is that it makes learning a chore. A chore!