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

Hey Jodan

I read your Vice's Advice. You want to talk about it?

I didn't underpost, because I think you're right in sentiment, and the plea shouldn't be undermined - but I'm worried about demotivating the people hootoo clearly needs right now.

I'm talking about the Researchers who score good-to-average on the stimulating content scale but sky-high on the productivity scale. There's a couple of obvious examples. Would they write better if they slowed down, or if they tried to be more original? I'm not at all sure.

The problem isn't quite the one you're driving at. The problem is, when people do write clever, the deadhands kill it.

It's not the writers' fault, Jodes. As ever in this life, it's the editors.

(I haven't done much on Crisbecq either)

Maybe you're right, but I do feel like we would benefit if those people who write easily and often took time to examine the lilies of the field.

I have to be careful what I say here, in case you take it personally

The mystery to me is that not everyone feels the need to stretch. I feel it strongly, and so there's no satisfaction in covering old ground. Spotting easy topics and writing brightly on them doesn't ring my bell, therefore, either as a reader or a writer. Better that than nothing, though.

In these terms, the Lilies of the Field is an interesting analogy. If I'd have been in the front row for the Sermon on the Mount I'd probably have felt compelled to shout "Yeah, but they're still all the same".

Hey Jodes, talk to me.

I never know with you. Maybe it's just that you're subscribed to so many threads that some of us disappear off the bottom unnoticed. Maybe you're annoyed and not going to rise to this crap. Maybe you've gone AWOL again.

I'm still sure, though, that if h2g2's ever to change, it'll need you in the pulpit. So what's it gonna be, boy?

Just taking the luxury of consideration.

I don't know what else I can do to change anything. I've said my piece, I've banged my hands on the podium and not much has happened. I'm not surprised, it's what I expected, but certainly not what I'd hoped for.

Yeah.
I know how you feel, of course.
But you saw Trout's latest is going into the EG? Okay, I know you don't rate it, but it does surely suggest that the Towers is relenting over the pedanic interpretation of the Guidelines.
And there's Ashtabula too, of course.
Look, Jodan (mind if I still call you that?). I realise that you think the site's being sustained by shallow and uninspiring trot-outs. I guess, too, that you're p*ssed off about relative newbies talking to you as if you're some sort of dinosaur, and just dissing your contribution to the site.
It was always thus, though, wasn't it? Once we were the dissers, but we're low numbers now.
Writing's the antidote. If I pull together some bits of Crisbecq and post it as a first draft, will you be up for a joint effort?

Call me whatever you like. I'm following in the proud tradition of those who change their names and see their new name totally ignored.

Well, yeah, I think Natalie is more open minded. I don't know about the other part time italic. Who knows if he's even read the Writing Guidelines? Could be worse, of course. Ashley hadn't ever read the Hitchhikers books when he was an italic.

I don't really mind being dissed.



Well, there was one conversation with a newer researcher which really jarred me, but other than that, it hasn't bothered me much. I remember well when I was a newbie letting Mikey, Gosho, DD, Mina, the italics, etc know *exactly* how I felt about every little thing I just don't know how much more there is that I can do at this point. You say writing's the antidote? Okay. It never was my strong suit, as much as I enjoy reading a well written entry, story or book. I think I'm a better researcher than writer. And after all, when we write something for the EG, we're "researchers" aren't we? We're not identified as writers, or even "authors".

Crisbecq would be tough for me until after the new year begins, or at least after Christmas. I want to be able to take my time on it and get a few resources together.

You can tell I'm sick and without anything to do because I wandered into the back pages of and read an interview from 1999. I think this is kind of neat... Peta thought of h2g2 as a city back in the first year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A467408?skin=Classic

"You may not know everyone in a city, but you will know everyone in your local bar. What works in the real world community works in a virtual community'."

The city metaphor fits, really.
I don't much have a point to this post, but it reminded me of something you wrote, so I thought I'd bother you with it.

Collaborative entry...
Do you like Eliot?

Yep.
I considered suggesting it myself. I didn't think you'd be a fan.
Wrong, I guess.
He was a Brit, you know?

More objectively, I don't think too many people like all of TSE. A strange mix of whimsical and sombre.

Prufrock is truly brilliant.

So...how are we going to do it? I don't really want to do a straight bio. We ought to make sure there's a stretch, if not for PR, then at least for us.

I was going to suggest an entry on "Prufrock", actually. I tried writing something myself, but it's maybe a bit too much like an extended interpretation.

He was born in St Louis, became a Briton, sure. Nothing wrong with that.

I think we should do the whole canon, and the man as well as the poetry.
The contradictions are interesting, don't you think?

The time could be a theme, if you want to go with it. The shift in outlook from Prufrock to the Waste Land maps onto the course of the world in the same period. And there's the prostitution of the Cats as a later twist. The shift in spirituality too, and the plays are something else. Murder in the Cathedral would be a magnum opus in most lives.

I've never been to St Louis. I must, someday. To me, Eliot is a quintessential New Englander, so much so that he succumbed to old England.

So how do we approach this? We could maybe try the two sides of the man, one each? There was a young, whimsical and populist Eliot. There was an older, brooding Eliot too. You and me, possibly?

One entry. That would be a monster of an entry.
You'd have to give me some time to read up on the subject.

I think the two sides approach is interesting

"...it seemed like equal parts of interest, tedium and patronisation."

Sometimes this place is so discouraging I can't even stand it.

Yeah, well he's a metallurgist, you see.
I have a theory that metallurgists with a soul have a population density of about two per continent.

If it's any consolation, I don't find any of it either tedious or patronising. Apart from the special exception of Leo's New Yorker one (which is in a league of its own IMO), I haven't read a better Uni project.

Any further thoughts about TSE? Do you want to just do Prufrock, then? Or maybe The Waste Land? Or maybe Eliot's relationship with Pound?

Wo, Jodes.

We waiting for each other on Eliot? I guess the stretch would be a biography in the subject's style. Your gonzo remark brought it back to mind. I'd been reading Thompson obits done thus (mostly bad).

Crisbecq needs a balancing source, ideally American. Could we maybe show it to vets groups, and get them to crit it? There are aspects of Fritz's story that don't gel, like the range to the target beach (it actually seems to have been several miles). Also, I can't make the drum bomb details match the casemate photos.

Parts of the Entry are a bit conjectural too. Fritz wrote in German. What I've read is a translation. The most frequent word in that translation is ??????

For the critical parts of the translation, there are plenty of German speakers around here who might be persuaded into helping out. I don't know about an American perspective. I wasn't there.

As for Eliot, I'd need a bit more time. I've started on something else that will take a week or so, depending, and then I'd need to find some materials on Eliot.

I'm not explaining myself well.

I don't actually have the original German, though I suppose I could ask "JA" for it. I have photocopies of someone's translation of parts of several letters into English.

And I didn't mean you to find an American. I was asking your advice on the idea of posting on a WWII vets' site, just asking if anyone was interested in giving the view from the other side. Should I apply my usual "try it and see what happens" principles, or would that be insensitive and offensive?

I really don't like the piece much as it stands. Part of the reason I wrote it that way was because I expected accusations of making it up in PR. This time, of course, it's someone else romanticising.

If anyone comments thoughtfully from a distance, then, I think I'd try a stripped back version, in which Fritz just speaks for himself with clarifying blank narrative interspersed. This version with its second level of the personal story could then be left in the Guide with a link from the underthread.

Ah, okay.

I don't think it would be offensive or insensitive, but I don't think you'd get much of a response - WWII vets not being notably computer literate or, by now, very numerous.

I'll try it then. Mi Amigo says it's better than you think on computer literacy/survival rates.