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

Hello, ladies and gentlemansters. I am Buford Bleffleman, the author of an excitationous new book called "Bleffleman's Befuddlacious Dictionarism." From an early age, I was regularitiously arrested by the Dictionary Police for usitationing wordisms that *they* said were incorrectional. Sacretive blouse! I was so ashamefulentious! But now I can documentate every wordence I say, and they leave me alonious. Buy my book. Or writivitate one of your own!

I wondered what had happened to George Bush

~Walk Toward the Light~~

The darkness was sudden and complete, but as she became accustomed to it she realized that she could see without eyes, and hear without ears. She moved -- or rather floated -- in the direction of a lighted passageway where a man in a suit made entirely of green leaves floated by, saying, "Hello, Madam, I'm Adam."

"Don't mind him, he's harmless," said a familiar voice, and she found herself at a desk where her beloved husband Jason explained that his long career as a travel agent had made him ideally suited to be a greeter in the afterlife. "We love to deal with Hindus, he continued, "because reincarnation is an easy process, and they're generally delighted to find that everything is as they expected. My people skills come in handy, though, when I have to reason with people who expect a big Old-Testament-style Heaven with all the
bells and whistles, or who expect a welcome from loved ones who in reality want nothing to do with them."

"What do I have to look forward to?" Helene asked timidly.

"You can choose anything you want except a resumption of the life you've just left," Jason said softly, "but as your afterlife travel agent, I urge you to sit beside me here and welcome other souls for a good long time to come. An eternity, even...."

Brilliant.......is it Heaven or is it Hell?

["Brilliant.......is it Heaven or is it Hell?"

It's entirely what you want to make of it. If I had had more than five lines to work with, I would have painted a sympathetic portrait of Adam, who had no human role models to show him how to deal with women, children, and parenting. On top of an unsatisfying Earthly experience, he then got dumped into an unpopulated afterlife. He patiently waited for an appointment with God, who is still too busy to see him, as there are loose ends to tie up in some of the universes. I would have explored the possible fate of the atheists who expect everything to stop once they die -- for many of them, reincarnation would seem like a good choice. ]

~~National Birdbrains Day~~

"We've got to feed these adorable birds, Henry," Mrs. Gulliboob gushed, "give me those crackers you've got in your jacket."

"They're stale by now, Emma," Henry said, slowly reaching for them -- he was still a bit hungover from the Saint Patrick's Day party two days earlier.

"Yes, but the birds'll love them!" she insisted as she watched them dive for the crumbs as if they hadn't eaten in ages.

Suddenly, Emma and Harry felt themselves becoming airborne, heading across the bay toward a mission church that loomed in the distance.

Meanwhile, at Capistrano, thousands of tourists waited patiently for the swallows to return. "I see something coming," said a tourist guide, gazing intently through his binoculars, "but it looks like the Gulliboobs again. Henry, call over and have them let the cats out. That will remind the swallows of where they need to be..."

[..in which no fear is shown...]

The graduation year of the Institute for Unneccessary Fashion was agog with exitement.

Today was the day of the announcement of the winner of the 2011 student design award.

This year's theme had been scarves (unless the design was for dwarves in which case it was scarfs) and the final choice had come down to a straight fight between the work of Clarissa Thrumb and Algy Snork.

"Well" demanded the obnoxious Algy, as the tutor prepared the announcement, "did my design win?"

"I am afraid it didn't," said the tutor, "it was a tie."

[...the pen is mightier than the sword, but if you get the choice go for an AK47...]

Adam was bored; bored, bored, bored.

The Garden of Eden was all very nice but there was little to do and no neighbours to talk to and, between you and me, he did think that Eve was a bit of an airhead.

It had also been a difficult day for him as a parent; the kids had been fighting again and now one of them appeared to have run off, and his wife had been nagging him about his diet and how he should eat more fruit.

"Tell you what," said Eve," to cheer you up, lets get a take-away and spend an evening in front of the vivarium watching the snake."

"OK," sighed Adam, "but not spare ribs again."

[Sorry, I can't compress this next story into five lines or less. It would not have the impact that it deserves to have. It's not teribly long in terms of words.]

~~Stop the World~~


Hal Temporio was halfway through his sixth cup of coffee when it happened -- or, perhaps, when it *didn't* happen. The constant rumble of the highway two blocks away was suddenly gone, as were the plaintive notes of the mourning dove that had serenaded him all morning from its perch on a wire above his yard. He glanced at the clock, and saw that it too had stopped. Things got stranger when he stood by the window, praying fervently that what he was seeing was just a dream: the mourning dove was still sittimg on its wire but was frozen, as were the cars on the highway.

There was one message on his answering machine, left there one hour earlier: "Hi, Hal, this is your sister. I just heard about this on the TV. If you didn't catch it, then you need to know about it -- not that knowing will matter much. The astronomers missed one. The big one. The one we could have blown up in space had we known about it in time. It's going to hit one hour from now, probably close enough to send us all to Kingdom Come. Funny, isn't it, how we always think there's plenty of time left to finish our projects? Well, now there isn't. It's been great knowing you. I have to hang up now, because in another minute I'm going to start crying....."

Hal put the receiver down and everything went .

~~William the Conqueror addresses his men~~

"This is it, men. Once we board the boats and enter the Channel, we must be totally silent. Any questions you have must be asked now. Yes, you in back!"

"I'm Norman Boucher, Sir. May we bring our wives?"

"No. Once we win, you may send for them or take new ones. Next question."

"I'm Norman Le Coq. How shall we find food once we arrive?

"They have farms. Next question."

"I'm Norman Lebrun. The blacksmith just died. My brother is skilled in blacksmithing, so can he join us?"

"What is his name?"

"Pierre Lebrun..."

"This is the Norman Invasion, Monsieur. He's not Norman enough..."

Mom and Dad didn't really want to move into that assisted-living facility, but my sisters and I could no longer drop everything and rush them to the Emergency Room when she fell or he forgot to take his meds. We solemnly promised to spare no expense in helping them feel at home, and this seemed like a noble solution -- until Melinda (my oldest sister) called me to say that Mom was pining for her favorite spruce tree. I was the one Melinda called because I was the only one who had the money to dig the darn thing up, place it in a pot, and transport it to the corner of her room, where it would became a sort of year-round Christmas tree -- I was grateful she hadn't asked for the old gnarled oak that we had fastened our swings to when as kiis.

A few weeks later, Melissa (another sister) mentioned Mom's desire for the brook that ran in front of her old house.

"There's a perfectly charming little brook that's visible through her window!" I retorted.

"Yes, and it's so charming it reminds her of her own brook," Melissa said, feeling as exasperated as I did.

I crossed the facility director's hand with silver, hired a landscaper to make the nearby brook look just like the one Mom remembered, and then told her it was the same brook.

Dad's eyes lit up when he saw what we were able to do for Mom -- was he about to make a huge request of his own? -- but it slipped his mind before he could say what it was....

[With apologies to the Disney film "African Cats."]




"Can't talk, Babs. Stalking a gazelle."

"I know. A bird just tweeted me, LOL. FWIW, I think you can let this one go. IMO, a better herd's across the river."

"Can you have the bird check on my cubs? I hear a pride of lions has crossed over to our side."

"A cheetah mother's life is never easy, is it? Why don't you go to that Disney casting call tomorrow in the veldt?"

"I don't trust 'em! My kids could be kidnapped and end up in some zoo! Plus, the Mouse has no idea how we really live these days."

"AFAIK, they're like all the rest of the humans. Uh oh! The bird says hyenas are heading for the area where your cubs are. It's your choice, Chita. The zoo or a hyena's belly. 'Bye for now!"

A note to Paulh and others he's led down the twisted ways of Darkness. The initial guidance was for five sentences, not 5 lines. And it was only guidance, so don't worry.

Have a look at Post 1, and if I'm wrong, don't worry anyway.


Jabberwock

[A note to Jabberwock. I am indeed twisted! But I *try* to cap my stories at five sentences, or 150 words if there's a lot of dialogue. Literary publications that accept stories tend to limit by number of words rather than sentences. Sometimes I run afoul of *both*, but usually it's only one or the other.

The thing is, sometimes the difference between an average story and a great one is one or two sentences. I just want the best possible stories....]

"The thing is, sometimes the difference between an average story and a great one is one or two sentences."

Sound advice from a living legend.

If I can reduce my submissions to three sentences, I could achieve greatness,

Thanks for the kind words, Pebblederook. I know what my problems are, though. There probably *is* a way to say more with fewer words and sentences, but I can't seem to get to that level. Maybe progress wasn't intended by the schematics in post 1. Picture for yourself a medieval painting or stained-glass window in which the central character seems to be struggling to break out of the flat, two-dimensional framework that imprisons him.

Scriptus was at his usual table in the least-frequented corner of the coffee shop when he realized that someone was staring at him. "Please, whoever you are, there are lots of other empty tables, and I really need to finish this story, if you wouldn't mind," he said politely, suddenly aware of a familiar sulphurous odor.

"You weren't much of a writer when I first took you under my wing," said the visitor, sitting across from him, "and now look at you: ideas flood into your head, you're the star of the 'Short short stories' thread, everybody loves you; there's just one little thing wrong...."

"I know, I know, I haven't corrupted anybody with my dark and twisted habit of stringing long sentences together," Scriptus admitted, still not looking at his Mephistophelian mentor in hopes of finishing his story.

"You have not led a single other writer astray, not one," the visitor said, hate etched into his voice, "and your long, sad string of serial episodes has not been copied by anyone else either. From now on, your only other story ideas will be about banalities like cute little elves, and your stories will run to no more than five sentences."

The visitor was gone, as was the smell of suphur. Scriptus sat sobbing at his table, for the coffee shop was beginning to fill up with elves and unicorns....

~~Viking Elephant Boats~~

"Tell me again why we're doing this," Twinkle said as she twirled on her hind legs, scuffing the bottom of a Viking longboat that was in Logan International Water Park in Boston, Massachusetts.

"We're doing something that the humans call ballet," said Pixie, who
was doing the same thing in the next boat.

"They wanted to use mastodons, to represent the original fauna of North America, but those critters can't do ballet," sniffed Imp in another boat.

"I can't believe that two million humans want to watch us do this stuff," Twinkle said, leaping and twirling in the air before landing precariously.

"It's the Tricentennial," said Elf Bells, "so they needed an extravaganza to make them feel good again after a big piece of Antarctic ice shelf collapsed and drove ocean levels up 20 feet...."