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

My superhuman powers keep on increasing every time I have a panic attack or under any type of stress. Last night my sideburns were waking me as I could hear my hair on my face prickle up; which caused my hearing to become extremely acutely sensitive. Now I can hear a pin drop as far away as Upminister wich is 5 miles away from me.

They were in the third-floor study when the shelling started outside, followed immediately by sirens in the distance. "Come with me," Winona told Bertram, pulling him hurriedly down the stairs--shuddering with the impact of nearby bombs--to the second-floor solarium, which looked out on gale-force winds that were snapping
the branches of the ancient weeping willow. "Is there no place safe in this whole house?" she cursed, taking his hand again and yanking him toward the other wing, where Mrs. Malmsby was cooking the evening's supper while watching the snow fall outside.

The first floor was no better, for at one end of the house the flooding river waters were up to the second rung of the staircase, and at the other end the pirates were busy tying up the family members who had foolishly not risked war, hurricane, and blizzard in the upper floors.

Winona impulsively pulled the plug on the computer, hoping the author would take the hint, but sadly it was a time when all the good story ideas had been exhausted, so far-fetched ones were all that were left to try.....

Company mission statements and sales buzz words that sound so empty and its done to create the illusion by company bosses that they care greatly for their customers but in reality all they ever think about is their profit margins and sales figures. And these phoney statements that cost millions to create are funded by the loss of so many of the compnay's staff. And in turn it means that their customer service has greatly deteriorated at the expense of producing a false image.

Superman had been dreading the day for a long time, hoping against hope that human technology would move so slowly that he would be long gone. But now, as he sat at his computer monitor as Clark Kent, he could see that Lois Lane, in the next office, was going to interview the scientist who had just invented a time machine. Jor-El,
whose holographic likeness had spoken to him many times over the years, was sure to get wind of the new breakthrough and use guilt to make him go back and rescue all the residents of Krypton, changing destiny in innumerable ways. The Kryptonians had not been nice people (Jor-El excepted, though even he was intolerably longwinded and overdramatic at times, but Superman had a plan to thwart the time machine by using it against itself. An hour later, after having executed his plan, he noted with satisfaction that Lois Lane would still be interviewing the same man as before, except that in
his youth he had heeded a caped man's advice to give up the time machine quest and take up wind farming instead...

I woke up in the middle of the night hovering over the roof off the block of flats where I was living. It was quite cold as I was wearing only my long nightie and my neighbours and passerbys were taking photos with their mobile of me. It lasted 10 minutes and in that time the police and ambulance arrived but I had already disappeared and gone back into my bed.

[TT, that's a lot like some of *my* dreams ]

Mr. Bomblesnood came yo us in the third month of the Ministry 's existence, but his influence was enormous. It was his idea to shorten the Ministry's name from "Ministry of Checking Everything Again" to the shorter acronym MOCEA. The Prime Minister was delighted
by the move, mistakenly thinking the new acronym was "MOCHA," his favorite coffee flavor, but Bomblesnood tactfully corrected him with the explanation that this was simply a streamlining effort consistent with the Ministry's mission, though the real, unstated, truth was that the public assumed (rightly) that most of our projects were redundant and unnecessary, and they needed to be shielded from the truth by an exotivc name. Bomblesnood's next genius idea was to recheck the math in the mathematical tables that had been used in our country for hundreds of years. The impetus for this came from a none-too-bright student who had complained to the Prime Minister that one of the imaginary numbers was missing; naturally ours was the Ministry that he immediately thought of for the job.

"I've been thinking about Blimguel a lot lately," said Stephen, gazing at the mountains in the distance.

"Lovely place, isn't it?" Arthur agreed, "especially at Christmas, so I suppose you'll want to hitch a ride there with me?"

"I burned it down when I was finishing 'War and Peace,'" Stephen corrected him, "but maybe it was just as well, because I got the medication I needed for my delusions as a result of that terrible incident."

"Nonsense, I was there yesterday--in fact every day of 1972 so far, and it is still there, as grand and majestic as can be," Arthur protested, "not like *this* place, which couldn't be bothered putting in windows so we could see outside...."

The nurse had started her medication rounds and would soon arrive where they were, so they chatted about Agincourt and the recent Titanic sinking while they waited.

Nancy when I woke up, I found that Professor Charles Xavier was at the front door along with Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Beast, Shadowcat, Jubilee, Rogue and Gambit. They came with their offers to join the X-Men as they heard that I could turn my day dreams and dreams into reality. I could dream up anything including a intergalatic starship that was also a tardis, with all the technology of both. But I also got calls from Torchwood and SG1 to join them, so I decided to go free-lance and only work when they need me.

When I tell people that I work for Howard Jackson Applegate, the older ones are apt to mist up with nostalgia for his early years as a rock star, while the younger ones generally put their hands on my shoulder for sympathy. The Howard Jackson Applegate that I work for now went on to make billions in computer software and then became reclusive and paranoid, so I never have to meet him to get assignments like the one I have now: travelling to places like New Orleans several times a year to make sure they are still there.

Anyway, all I have to do is travel to these places, stay a few days in luxury hotels, eat fantastic food, enjoy tours of the most famous tourist spots, and then file a report reaffirming that, yes, the place is still there, and it's in great shape, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But this particular time I notice that the Colosseum is where Bourbon Street should be, the Eiffel Tower has sprouted from the roof of the Jazz Preservation Hall, and the penguins are absolutely everywhere, even selling small jade Buddhas on every street corner.

I figure that this must be a dream, but it sure hurts when I fall into the Grand Canyon, which has replaced the Mississippi River....

Whenever I go on coach trips to Loch Lohmond and the other bonny places in Scotland, we always sing merry songs. We started off One man and his dog went to mow to the much annoyance of the driver. Other songs included 10 green bottles hanging on the wall, Ever seen a fly on the wall, and she will be coming round the mountain was our final song. It was a long journey as we started off at 5am and finished off at 8pm, with several stops on the way before reaching our final destination.

"Proudly in Print Publishers," the switchboard operator said in a nasal voice, "How may I direct your call?"

"Thelda, it's Marty," said a familiar voice, "and I need to talk to Mr. Grumshalck right away about a gross injustice that has been perpetrated on my book...."

"The one about Godfrey Klevitz, which I laughed and laughed at?" Thelda exclaimed, unable to control her mirth.

"Yes, they retitled it 'Life of Gommer Blevins,' and they got the author wrong, too, and I'm gonna sue 'em for everything they've got."

There was a long, awkward pause as Marty and Thelda both realized what had really happened, after which Marty just said "Never mind" and hung up.

Ws stayed at the 'The Unicorn' Inn in Loch Lohmond where we heard was people who had too much to drink and singing off key badly. We then went downstairs for breakfast and told him about last night; only to be told by the manager that what we saw and heard were the ghosts of a former manager of the Inn and guests who died there after having one too many whiskies. And every night for an hour, they re-inact their hour long drinking bout.

"I hope you'll be comfortable," said Mrs. Maggins, escorting him to room 216, which was on the third floor, "I mean with the ghosts and all..."

"Now, please don't worry about that," Zickles said gently, "'cause I've been in haunted hotel rooms on every continent, and as a rule ghosts like me."

"Ah, but these ghosts be verrrra strange, laddy!" she cautioned him as they reached the top of the stairs and found that the door to the room in question was wide open. Tiptoeing to the doorway, they peaked in and saw the trial of Joan of Arc being enacted in Klingon by Alice in Wonderland characters.

Evidently pleased by the sight, Zickles pulled a Mock Turtle costume from his suitcase, put it on, and blithely joined them.

"Turtles" they thought, but no, these were not even tortoises, the Galapagos Islands being eight miles high.

"Then it must be Terrapin Station and we are the Grateful Dead?"

" Unless it's Easter, look, it's Friday, good man that one, solid as a rock."

zdt

"Mrs. Rencroft, I am sorry, but your husband is dead."

"I just want to know if you checked his feet, because *sometimes* he pretends to be dead, but his feet give him away..."

Agnes pressed "rewind" and then watched the scene again.

"Dear, I don't understand why you watch that scene over and over, when you've done so many other movies, nost of them better than that one," said Algernon from the hall as he headed for bed, cup of tea in hand.

Agnes turned around and glared, so Algernon just shrugged and continued down the hall, wondering for the hundredth time why it was that his feet always hurt whenever she watched that video.

*The 1,002nd Arabian Night*

He rubbed the lamp, and out came a genie who asked him three questions.

"Do acorns grow on horses?" was the first one, to which he answered "Neigh!"

"Who's on first?" to which he answered "Yes, and Chang is on second."

"How do you make a clock talk?" was the final question, and his answer was, "You must first annoy it so it gets ticked off at you."

Having answered the three questions correctly, he let the genie escape, and took his place in the lamp.

Thhe coach party got up at 5 am for their breakfast which consisted of slices of haggis, white pudding, black pudding, square sausages, beefburger, devilled kidneys, lamb fillet, potato fritters, fried onions, fried tomatoes, baked beans, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, pork and beef sausages, fried mushrooms, fried bread as well as a bowl of porridge, toast with choice of marmalade and jams; taken with glasses of various fruit juices and/or tea or coffee. This made the coach party very full so that they had to sleep it off and have a lie down for two hours before they went on the long exploration of Scotland.

THE CASE OF THE DUTCH MOUNTAINEER

It was 11:00 on a Tuesday morning, and the great Liechtensteinian detective Azuminoc Frotkin was annoyed because he had called a ten o'clock press conference, but none of the big American wire services were able to send any reporters because, being American, they had no idea where Liechstenstein was.

"To be honest, sir, we don't know either," said his assistant, Doctor Rotcod, "though I admit that this place *looks* the way I've always imagined Liechtenstein would look."

"Not to worry, Rotcod, Liechtenstein is primarily a state of mind, and secondarily an actual place, though the Liechtensteinians don't see it that way and must never find out that I have just said that. Anyway, Ms Capituliani met her demise as a result of falling from the top of a very tall mountain in Holland, though no one can explain what a tall mountain would be doing in Holland, given that the country is at such a low elevation generally."

"By Jove, Frotkin, that means that she was *not* in Holland at all, but rather in some other country that could supply tall mountains without the bother of trucking them in from elsewhere!" exclaimed Rotcod, thereby solving the case, and bringing renewed glory to Liechtenstein, which he was still not sure he could find.

As the coach party woke up from the short rest at 9 am, they took their packed lunches with them on the coach for the long journey to Loch Ness. Where they will have high tea with the Loch Ness Monsters who will entertain them with playing the bagpipes and dancing. The Loch Ness Mondsters have opened a cafe where they serve food and drink as well as blether to their customers.

They go out on the lake, father and son, to fish for sharks. Being inexperienced, they forget to bring their boat, but it's okay because the lake has forgotten to stock up on sharks.

The father complains that he is getting wet. The son says he should be happy about it. The fish complain that the father and son do not taste very good.