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

Hildegarde rummaged through the trash barrel, but found nothing she wanted to put in her shopping cart. Mort Corpuscle, voluminous in yellow plaid shorts and a white tank top, raised an eyebrow at the sight of her, but said nothing, which was not surprising because he had not spoken in 26 years.

Minksy, hurrying through Downtown Crossing because she was late, quickly handed her a coffee and a jelly stick, as she had done every morning since God knows when.

Finally Hildegarde pushed her cart into the elevator at 156 Summer Street, pressed the button for Floor 26, and was right on time to preside at the 10:00 a.m. Board Meeting.

"Jerry, I'm going to have to postpone my dinner date tonight, as I have
accidentally fallen through the patio...."

"Not good, Claire, you're 60 floors up, and there's nothing to break
your fall, so I hope you managed to grab hold of some part of the
patio."

"I did grab something as I slid through the hole, but it broke off too, so I'm in free-flight...."

"Yes, I see, I have a good view from the Quaverley Building, and you seem to have no chance at all."

"But that's absurd, I've *got* to survive for next month's...."

Inspector Dafty and the Celebrity Roast

When a murder occurs during a celebrity roast, it makes sense to question the guest of honor, except when said guest is everywhere and nowhere--in other words, God. All that Inspector Dafty could say for sure was that the bolt of lightning had struck Dr. Evan Falconing--the great English cosmologist whose bestselling books about the universe's history were owned by almost everyone but read by virtually no one--just after he had made some quip about God's first toy being the Big Bang.

So, Dafty had started by questioning comedienne Janine Brookes, whose joke about God being so old that even Big Blue's computer couldn't figure out which childhood He was in now had been interrupted by a plague of frogs.

After that. he had suffered abuse from the insult comic, Don Ripples, who was still on edge about the plague of locusts that had cut short his quip about men's nipples and Senile Design.

The big break in the case came when Inspector Dafty was walking by the botanical gardens and was approached by a snake who said, "Can we talk?...."

Arthur the awful pun master, spent his days as a writer of very old jokes. And would pun his way through archives of ancient humour, getting the best or should I say the worst corniest riddles and puns.

He would then go and relay his experiences when he went to the chiropodist when he had his corns treated, to see if the chiropodist would find them funny or not.

Being the daughter of Elf King Dinoculus should have made Valery very
popular with the eligible bachelors of the Kingdom, but alas she was
the youngest of the seven daughters, and her face was not going to launch 1,000 ships unless they were likely to sink.

With this kind of unpromising storyline, it was little wonder that Valery looked to other stories for salvation, with the result that she now ran the Short-Short Story thread's only Character Rescue program.

Her first rescue had been that of Grandpa and Viola, who were grateful for escaping death in the quicksand, but (a.) Grandpa was more of a dirty old man than an eligible bachelor, and (b.) neither the two had a dime to spare for reimbursing Valery for the service she had provided.

Next came the beautiful man with the broken nose, who promised eternal friendship for her expert healing services as he headed back upriver to his longtime girlfriend.

Rescuing Claire from certain death had required materializing a deep swimming pool directly below her, and this was certain to cause problems when her father went for his customary after-lunch swim and found his pool had been morphed into another story.....

"Please join me in welcoming tonight's special guest, professor Zaini Skeems, who claims to have perfected a new type of tomato that can grow on the surface of the ocean."

"Thank you, Quonin, now as you know, the burning of fossil fuels puts a lot of carbon dioxide into the air, which then washes into the ocean by the action of salt brine. The oceans cover three-quarters of the Earth's surface, and the ocean waters are getting more and carbon dioxide--which plants love!--so my lab has developed seaweed plants that produce tomatoes...."

"Excuse me, professor, wouldn't it be hard for tomatoes to come to fruition without bees, which are only found over land?"

"We're developing a special type of ocean-going bat that can pollenate the tomatoes, pick them when they're ripe, deliver the ripe tomatoes to our headquarters, and finally create a delicious Bolognese sauce that has already won prizes for us at some of the world's most pretigious cooking competitions...."

I have never heard so much Thunder as I did yesterday. To celebrate the unique day I played The ride of the Valkyries, watched the dvd of Beowulf and then episodes of Stargate with guest staring alien Thor. But my neighbours celebrated by having an argument and a fight about who will use the karaoke machine. With my other neighbour throwing her furniture around as she laughed on the the telephone.

So far that day, she had rearranged the living room furniture six times, putting an immense strain on the backs of her amiable but increasingly annoyed sons. It wasn't a matter of not liking the results, but of the furniture stubbornly wandering back to its original configurations as soon as the weary humans left the room.

She had tried leaving the lights on after she left, with no success. She had tried carrying--or having her hapless sons carry--the marble statue of Adonis into the room, also with no success.

Finally, they all slumped miserably on the sofas to snack on crackers and cookies, which somehow induced the furniture to move to her preferred arrangement after they left.

"We're fortunate enough to have Hubert Grass with us today, to bring us up to date on his new movie, "Three Funerals, a Seance, and Some Very Angry Spooks." Tell us, Mr. Grass, was the movie based on real events, or did you make everything up?"

"We made up less than than we originally planned, thanks to the three-headed camels and the red-eyed giant cobras that barged through the Gates of Hell before we could get them closed again...."

"Mr. Grass, we've all heard the rumors about your sister's intervention to get these beasts back to H*ll....."

"Yes, that was a *really* close call, and hers was the only exorcism service that could do it on such short notice, but she claims it was a piece of cake compared to what she had to do to stop naughty Uncle Jasper when she was growing up...."

My nattering neighbours cannot stop talking and at the drop of a hat will blether about anything. They would even talk in the middle of the night, aloud with all the windows and doors open, to make sure that everyone can hear them. And they are always are joined with other blethers who have a compulsion to gabble on until the wee small hours. Then it always ends with a fight about the right to throw their rubbish in unspecting neighbours garden.

I was the Queen of Behookastan for thirty years, until my country
overthrow the Royal Family and sent us into exile. It was mostly
my fault, as I kept showing up at fundraisers for people like Jean-Claude Duvalier, Pinochet, and the Shah of Iran, who all seemed to insist that I make inflammatory statements in support of their causes.

One thing led to another, and now my family is scattered across half a dozen countries, as we cannot agree on which one is best for exile.
My husband chose the one with the Taj Mahal, my son has a nice view of the Effel Tower, and my daughter walks past Westminster Cathedral
every day on the way to her job at a dish and chips place.

I chose the country that has Disneyland, but I was appalled to find that Paris Hilton was not a luxury hotel!

By 2023, headlice had completely taken over the entire planet. Yes, people still existed, as did anything even slightly hairy, but the humans and other mammalian types, were really only farmed, as commodoties by the lice. The technologically well-developed lice, had genetically engineered all living ,(and hairy) creatures, to produce only the tastiest, most nutricious blood for their own well-being. They had managed to achieve immunity to anything that man-kind could throw at them. The humans, and other living creatures, believed that everything was going along as normal, butonly knew that they were extremely itchy.

In truth, though, man had become grossly iron-deficient, and scientists were blindly grappling, with the modern onset of fatigue and depression, which had now reached pandemic proportions. They knew not, that the lice were already controlling the Earth, now, and tomorrow, had plans for the entire Universe.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the sea, raging in its storm-whipped fury, viciously smashing into the land. Which was odd, considering I was in Hyde Park and it was a warm Spring day. No sooner did I see the sea than it ducked around me so I could see it no longer. I turned back quickly and caught it, which was unfortunate, as I fell into it and was soon fighting to survive as it swirled around me, hurling me time and time again at the iron stanchions of Brighton pier. As I fought for my life, ice-creams, sweet wrappers and spotted dogs floated gently past, the dogs mostly upside down.

I lay in my ancient four-poster, - I had owned it most of my life, and it had always been a refuge from the world when things got rough.
A Mickey Mouse clock hung from a red scarf, tied to the top, back, beam, and I kept a basket of comforting books beneath it. People had always thought it odd that I liked to go to bed early and forsake television, but my uncomfortable, lumpy bed was cherished by me, and had travelled with me across the world. It was from the era of Queen Ann, and I'd stuck with my childhood fantasy that it had once belonged to her.

Now, though, as I lay drowsy in the morning, I saw for the first time, a multitude of death-watch beetles emerging from its carved crevices, crawling up my duvet towards me, though 98, my imagination was intact, and I easily understood the meaning of this omen, and let out my final sigh of relief.

I got up this morning and that's the first sentence. I cleared my system and had a quick bath, and that's the second sentence. They came for me, and that's the third sentence. They took me off to court, and that's the fourth sentence. Twenty years for armed robbery, and that's the final sentence, the one I wasn't looking forward to.

( means that it was a great story, jab, not that the protagonist ended up incarcerated, though Valery might come along later and "rescue" him )

Letitia had always been a bit different from the other cows,
but she knocked everybody for a loop the day she announced
that she wanted to be a geisha when she grew up.

"How on Earth does she get such strange ideas?" scoffed Mirabelle
to her sister.

The reason, of course, was that Kurawagasi, the only geisha who
had ever become a nuclear physicist, had performed in the theater-
in-the-round at the junior college across the street a few months
earlier. Letitia had stolen a peak at the geisha's planet-studded
kimonos, and heard some of her "Music of the Spheres" songs by
listening next to the stage door.

Letitia's mother, hoping that this was just a passing fancy, was hoping that next month's performance of "Oklahoma" at the same theater would induce Letitia to change her ambitions to something more cowlike.

I dreamt I went on a train to travelling to an unheard of state in the US, where everyone was dressed as they were in the late Victorian period.

I do not know how I ended up in the US as I live in the UK. It was called the state of Geronimo, where people sold large squashes and pumpkins at every petrol station.

This large unheard of State had very few people living in the cities but the villages were very heavily populated.