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

Everything that you see, hear, or read is legitimate material for fiction. Putting an interesting spin on something can keep it from being dull. You may have gotten bored with your life, but to your readers it might seem fresh and new.

And even if you *do* have an unarguably boring life, you're permitted to lie and make it more interesting than it really is. It's fiction. You're allowed!

Though maybe you don't want to go as far as Truman Capote and give the mother of your main character a false arm.

Should hope not.

She lost most of the use of her left arm to a stroke.

She's having trouble regaining the use of her right after surgical implantation of hardware to correct a recent fracture.

I don't think she'd ever be able to master the intricacies of a prosthesis.




What's worrying me is what's going to happen to me without any surviving close kin to look after me if and when I end up in straits like.

Your short-short above is very apt.

I've seen at least one Ed Asner dramatization of relevance, but little in the way of, for example, insurance plans to cover the eventuality.

[ to work on other story ideas....]

Horatio the hippo was wise beyond measure, but you'd never know it if you saw him snoozing in the mud at the edge of a waterhole.

One day he was awakened by tiny voices that seemed to come from a tiny speck of dust. having read about Horton the elephant's experiences with the Whos, Horatio was keen to have a Who-like event of his own.

"Wait!" I hear you exclaim, " you said Horatio was wise, but he's getting his inspiration from Doctor Seuss?"

That's right, but consider that few other hippos could read at all, and those few were hardly Mensa material. Just be glad that Horatio wasn't surfing for hippo porn on the 'net.*

"Okay," I hear you concede, "Score one for hippo.

Anyway, the tiny voices assured Horatio that their tiny planet was in peril. He obligingly nestled the dust speck on a clover blossom and held it close to his ear so he could hear the voices better. Too close, alas! The voices belonged to disease bacteria who had evolved the power of speech and the craftiness to deceive hippos who were smarter than average, but not smart enough to have heard of them. The other hippos did not come to Horatio's funeral, as it was a perfect day for snoozing in then mud at the edge of the waterhole.

For what it's worth, these average hippos lived good long lives. If they heard voices, they paid no attention, as specks of dust can't talk.....

[...and continuing right up to the writer's block....]

I took a sip of whisky before I began to tell my story. The whisky was cheap and harsh and so I felt right at home. As the warmth spread from my protesting throat to my stomach, I began to relax.

‘It’s a long story,’ I said.

‘They always are,’ said Sam, ‘otherwise the book wouldn’t get past the first chapter. You will find, as we investigate this case, everybody has a story to tell, and believe me no author would survive without the padding.’

‘I have no recollection of being anyone when I was born,’ I said, ‘which may be true of many people, but unlike them I never seemed to grow as a personality. I had brief glimpses from time to time of someone who would turn up, hang around for a while and then, just as mysteriously, disappear. When I was a teenager I was virtually invisible. I could stand at the edge of a room and I would swear that no one noticed me. And I actually enjoyed it. Life seemed to me to be so scary and uncertain that the best way to survive was to keep very still and hope it never noticed me.’

‘It never noticed me. Eventually I grew into what might laughingly be called an adult. I never felt I was, but experience has tended to show me that what I thought was a callous indifference on my part can quite definitely be described as normal human behaviour. In many respects I was becoming a normal human. Unfortunately not an individual one.’

‘Time passed as it seems to have been doing habitually since the very beginning, assuming that there ever was a beginning and not just a continuation, in which case time passed continuously. One moment I was an endless series of possibilities, the next, I was here, sitting in your office, sipping this awful whisky, and talking to a complete stranger.’

‘One thing I am not,’ he smiled ,’ is a complete stranger. In fact apart from a name and an occupation I am hardly begun, let alone completed. As for the whisky I suggest you look up some single malts before you visit me again.’

‘You’ll take the job then?’ I asked.

‘Of course, ‘ he nodded, almost to himself, ‘nothing like a challenge, and remember, I know my way around your brain. There’s a lot of fun to be had there if you know the right buttons.’ He grinned, ‘You haven’t asked about the fee; you’re either very rich or very stupid.’

'I’m stupidly rich,’ I said.

‘We are going to get along just fine,’ said Sam.

EMANATIONS OF A STRANGE MIND, BOOK 1

My name is Seymour Boqelworthy, but I've always been known as Boq.

My cousin Elphaba and I were disowned by our fathers in 1850 (she
for her spells, I for the lack of height which gave me no hope of a
military career), so we went to New Bedford where Captain Ahab was
preparing for a whaling expedition.

Elphaba was hired as a sailor only after disguising herself as a
man, but I was hired instantly, for I was agile enough to climb the rigging like one born to the task, and light enough to stand on the highest point of the ship, which is where I was when I spotted the Great White Whale after a long sea voyage.

"I have been waiting for you, Ahab," the whale told our captain when we drew near enough to speak to him. "My name is Moby Dick. I have a message for you from He who knows all things. The message is 'Old soldiers do not die; they merely go to Avalon.' Behold Avalon," the whale said, gesturing to a vast island that was surrounded by a cyclonic wind. "If you choose to go there, I will escort you
safely to the shore, and you will become a great wizard who will live in a city where everything is green."

"But what of the rest of us?" I demanded.

"Boq, you will be welcomed by the citizenry of Munchkin Land, who will treat you as the great soldier you were born to be. Your cousin Elphaba will not be so lucky, for an evil enchantment will turn her complexion green and make water her worst enemy. The rest of you," he told the rest of the sailors, "will become Winkies, the soldiers who will try to protect her."

The interior of the island was called Oz. We rode on the backs of large hopping creatures called kangaroos. They had huge pouches in front, where they stored artifacts from the future such as recordings of Judy Garland and Olivia Newton-John.

Eva was a Sapienti, a distant descendant of the humans who had briefly ruined Earth's climate with greenhouse gases 500 million years earlier. She was proud to be vastly improved over these long-extinct lifeforms, but as she looked through the nighttime sky at the distant red much-reduced Earth she could not help feeling a tug at her heart over the havoc that the now-swollen Sun was playing on the planet of her ancestors. She mulled over the history that, like all Sapientis, she had learned in her youth.

Long ago, the early Sapientis had hoped to move the Earth's orbit further and further out into space as the Sun got bigger and hotter. No feasible means of doing this could be found, so a different model was used instead: that of manufacturing vast numbers of planetoids surrounded by transparent diamond shields that could hold precious air and water inside while giving Earth's lifeforms ideal conditions. These planetoids were called EarthBubbles, and they could easily be maneuvered into safe, optimal orbits with artificial gravity and Earthlike tilt and rotation.

EarthBubble # 1,267,629, the one that Eva lived on, had emergency supplies of air, water and carbon in its inner core, plus a database of the whole history of Earth and germ cells from every significant species that had ever lived there.

There was one more useful tool that Eva hoped she'd never live long enough to experience: a stasis-inducer for the time when Earth's descendants could no longer survive around the Sun. The millions of EarthBubbles would then have to spend long periods in suspended animation as they journeyed toward other stars to begin a new life. Many stars would prove too dangerous to orbit.

The option of finding a habitable planet elsewhere in the galaxy or beyond was not a likely one. In 500,000,000 years, Earth's scientists had not found a single planet where life had been able to find a toe-hold. Earth's descendants were it as far as life was concerned.....

When Aldous Mantle first enrolled at the Art Academy of Entropelia,
it soon became apparent that his capacity for hard work was exceeded only by his lack of talent. He made a bad impression with his Impressionist paintings, painted himself into a box with his cubism, and regularly went off on a tangent with his Pointillism ["beside-the-pointillism," his professor quipped].

Not to be discouraged, he gave an accounting of Surrealism that most
observers couldn't believe was real. Abstract Expressionism? His work
elicited expressions that were far from abstract, albeit unprintable. Post-Modernism? Most who saw his work wished they could take the post and chase him away with it.

One day he gave up trying to adhere to established genres and went off on his own. This turned out to be the right move, for his work was so mind-numbingly awful that avant-garde critics raved about it. They even applied his name to the genre that he had created, though they managed to misspell it. They called it All Dismantlism.

"...having heard, its your hearts desire that all of your hearts desires be made manifest in an instant?"

"Aye", returned the word.

"Let there be light!"

[Cue Haydn's music, very soft at first, and then suddenly LOUD!]

Doctor Connors had two great passions. One was for daily scanning
of the heavens for messages other worlds. The other was for Renaissance music, which made him feel great peace after a long,
hectic day at the observatory.

One day, the unthinkable happened: a message came from the direction of the Crab Nebula, the first such message ever received. Strangely enough, it seemed to be spelling out the notes of a tune, not unlike the one that was used for alien communication in the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

While he waited for the synthesizer to convert the radio waves into music, Doctor Connors turned on his stereo so that Renaissance polyphony could quiet his rapidly beating heart.

What happened next was truly strange: the alien tune was the same as the one in Nemo Alienicci's "Benedictus."

So, what did it add up to? Had aliens come to Earth in the 15th Century to show our composers how to write masterful masses, or did they merely abduct Alienicci and bring him back to their planet to write for them?

As it turned out, the answer was none of the above. The observatory's computer and synthesizer were playing a practical joke on the good doctor, while taking revenge on him on behalf of the civilization in the Crab Nebula, where his interstellar questions had long been regarded as a giant pain in the neck.

Morlock Wells had enjoyed an afternoon of beachcoming and ice
cream followed by girlwatching along shady village streets, but
dinner was less fun as he listened to Uncle Otto drone on about
his tour in Iraq. He noted with relief that Daphne had just texted
him, though her message -- Large meteor headed straight at us! Duck!" -- sounded ominous. Looking at the sky through the window of Carlo's of Hyannis, he could see a distant red blur that was quickly getting larger and more threatening.

With all the money that NASA had spent on identifying space objects
close enough to harm the planet so that they could be intercepted and
destroyed in time, wouldn't you know they'd miss something like this.
There was just enough time to send a remote message to his time machine -- unfinished and untested, but the planet's only hope -- to pull the planet back in time by 24 hours and make it a perpetual loop so scientists would have enough repeated times for mounting an attack on the invading object.

How many more times would Morlock have to listen to Uncle Otto's boring tales?0Pprobably a lot, but at least there would be an equal number of beachcombing and girl-watching sessions.

My grandparent's house has become very strange indeed; as extra rooms are far ever been added everytime anyone enters a room.

Now there are an extra 70 rooms which have been added in one day and the house still looks the same size from outside.

The windows in the front bedroom can't stay shut long because if anyone goes into the room, the windows fly open and a mighty wind sweeps causes them to fly out into the street below; where it is always raining or snowing.

You remind me of http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/ Posted the link in case anyone here in unfamiliar with the site, but her house did get bigger over the years

F S

Uncle Jim, who aspired to be the world's next great author, rarely found time to pull himself away from his writing in order to mix with the family, except for one day when he told me that rooming houses and trailer parks were the best places to live if you wanted to get great material for your writing.

Astonished to receive such a pearl of wisdom from the great man, I resolved to became a writer too.

So it was that I soon found myself newly ensconced in the Fringe
City Rooming House, chatting with Tai MacSheen, the fellow in the
next room, who enjoyed books by authors I had never heard of.
His favorite book, which he was oddly reluctant to let me read,
was a history of the 22nd century.

I asked him if he liked the Harry Potter books, to which he replied
that they were much too ancient to interest him. He did, however,
have kind things to say about my books, which I could not remember
having written yet......

One day, after a troubling visit from the wizard Estelle Kinsey, Kathryn leaves her house and sets out in search of three silver goblets that had mysterious powers to give the one who drank from it health, wealth and happiness.

It was a quest undertaken in the company fellow of witches and wizards for the dragon-guarded silver goblets, Kathryn Loveguard surprises even herself with her resourcefulness and skill as an adventurer.

During her travels, Kathryn rescues a map, an heirloom belonging to Estelle which gives the user guidance, as well as giving them wonderful powers, but when Estelle refuses to negotiate over the ownership of the map, their friendship is over.

However, Estelle is wounded at the Battle of the frost giants, snow giants, cold drakes, giant bats, and giant spiders and later on the two reconcile just before Kathryn engages in dialogue with the other interested parties.

Kathryn accepts one of the three silver goblets and returns home to her house a very wealthy witch.

The silver goblets turn out to be dirty -- something to do with using cheap dishwasher detergent. Besides being a witch, Kathryn is also an extremely sensitive Princess who can be harmed by even the tiniest bit of dirt, or for that matter, cheap detergent. As she lays supine and unconscious on her bed, a rose clutched to her chest, Prince Charmin climbs a roll of toilet paper to the balcony outside her window, after having slain an entire troop of Dragon Scouts [motto: Be preflared], cut through 20 square miles of overgrown briars, and watched ten years' worth of reality TV without having to be taken to the nearest insane asylum. He briefly loses his balance on the balcony's rim, but rights himself and kisses Kathryn.

Nothing happens. This is not Sleeping beauty. Prince Charmin is in the wrong fairy tale. He does, however, fall hopelessly in love with Kathryn's Lady in Waiting, with whom he starts a huge family of toilet paper magnates.

One day while Catriona was walking through the woods she came across a cave she had never seen before.

Entering the cave Catriona found that the cave looked just like her own drawing room.

Right in the middle of the cave was a phoenix doing some reading on the office bureau.

Catriona was so surprised when the phoenix looked up and offered her a glass of wine that she raced all the way home and hid behind the banquet table in her banqueting hall.

Catriona didn't dare go back in to the woods again for over 5 weeks.

I worked in the Tilting At Windmills Department for five months, a company record considering how much abuse the mind had to endure in order to meet daily quotas.

It wasn't that we had to teach dead fish to swim or dead birds to fly -- that was achievable by some hinky subterfuge, since these creatures had the proper physical apparatus for these activities.

No, we were supposed to get the fish to fly and the birds to swim, after which tests of mental functioning were required.

Joe Slider had the shortest period of work in the department, five hours, after which he fled drooling and naked down the hall, ultimately to hide under his bed at home for five weeks.

My own longevity in the job was due to extreme mendacity about my work there, which unfortunately does not make me the ideal person to be telling this story.

They crazy world of the Cabal, Illuminati, the New World Order Tiddly Wink Club

Headline news reports throughout the world have revealed that all the world political/religious/scientific/financial leaders are reptilian aliens who are all related each other and the British royal family and other European royal families.

This was discovered after a routine blood test that found anomalies which were further anaylised where reptilian DNA was discovered.

Scientists say this explains their obsession with rituals, such as leap frog, and other reptilian themed sports and activities.