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

I hope you will suspend your learned judgement and take, for what it's worth, some satisfaction that <./>AggGag</.>/CAC has 'liberated' your Post 350 @

F19585?thread=283765&skip=249

By liberated I mean we have made a copy A1082954 over which we have sole editorial control. We have thus stolen your sole.

We do this not of malice but because we hope to offer our readership a link to those fine lines in an upcoming issue. We intend to credit you, U219914 , as the author.

Consider this your one opportunity to complain, whine or otherwise object to these actions. We'd like some assurance that the post is entirely yours and would appreciate your comments if you notice any error or omission in our typesetting. Any attempts to dissuade us from sharing your genius will be summarily dismissed and likely only encourage us to make your verse a regular feature.


~jwf~

Hi jwf,

I am of course deeply flattered, honoured, delighted, dismayed, delirious, distracted etc. etc. that out of the whole interminable morass, indeed moer ass, that is the Ballad of Grimley Moer, you should have chosen etc etc..............

I have tried to interest some of the God-threaders in this version of the cosmic painting-by-numbers. But I think they think I'm being flippant, if only they knew.

You might also enjoy an earlier bit in which the origin of the universe is clearly depicted. The link is ( if I can find it...

F19585?thread=283765&skip=166

( "First I would like to thank the Laaaaawwwwwwweeeeeerrrrdd, and Maaaaaaaaam and Daaaaaaaaaad, and the creeeeeeewwwwwww and all the guys in rehab and........ )

May I humbly suggest that you include the time-reversal conclusion to the twitch of the saga you selected, in which the unfortunate Sage comes face to face, or voice to voice with His Creator, in a word GOD. The link is:

F19585?thread=283765&skip=253

Furthermore, I can absolutely assure you that the contents of those postings marked HNM Chaiwallah SABS and bar... are nobody's symptoms of incipient insanity but mine. Oh! the shame of it, the glorious, grovelling shame of it...........

PS jwf, interested to see you emerge from lurk mode on the God thread

Now I better go and look and see if I can spot the improvements you may have unwittingly made to my screed.



wallah

Hi jwf,

Since scrawling the above, I have a) been to visit the AggGAg site, and b) have re-read the Grimley chunk you want for it.

a) I guess the suggestions I made about the other bits above don't really apply, except inasmuch as presumably it's like anything else on AggGag, I can just offer to submit, and you can accept or reject as you think appropriate. I just felt that the time-reversal, deeply ironic author involvement and all that post-modernistically incorrect stuff might complete it , in some inconsequential way. Or not.

b) You don't seem to have improved my text at all, except for a couple of places where two verses have stuck together ( maybe they fancy each other ). I'll have to nip over and check out which ones ( because not all my "ballad" verses are so restrained as to be a mere four lines long.)

Other than that, it looks fine, and again, I am actually quietly thrilled to have been asked.

Ta,

wallah

Hi again.

OK, There are two illicitly co-habiting verses, well four if you pull them apart.

Verses 32 should break between lines ending "slide" and "spark"

Verse 34 ditto between "floor" and "Dhiro."

It's clear enough when you look because it's where the rhyme-word changes. Usually, I leave the verses to lengthen where the rhyme-word remains the same, though sometimes not.

Ta

wallah

[^^^Prisoner U219914^^^Maximum security Wing, Block C. Murderer of HM's Eng. Lang. 20 years to life. U2 for short. About 5'8"]

Three beers for the man 'imself

Cor, thanks mate. I'd never even heard of AggGag before this. I presume you are a regular contributor. If not, you ought to be.

Not exactly regular, I think I *sent* them Olivardez Spoon A885828, which was put in the post, but you've been head-hunted!

Not so much head-hunted, more postpoached.

Anyway, what have you been up to? And what's happening to Bridged? And Grimley Moer's eternal cricket match. Actually, that cricket match could become reminiscent of "Last Year In Marienbad" the famous existential "hell" film. Indeed, the entire Grimley Moer saga could be a sort of existential hell. God help our poor characters. Right now I'm torn between

(1)wanting to see Joicelyne marry the Captain of the good ship Lollipop ( I guess we'll find out its name eventually ) ,

(2)taking the aged Sage ( and I guess he might have a name too, though I suspect part of the deal with being a sage is that you give up your name ) through the Tibetan Buddhist hungry-ghost hell realm and

(3)going back to see if the Flergel Flea is going to eat the Gangly Bard Blay, or expire of boredom listening to one of Blay's endless wails...I'd like to work in a joke about Welsh there, but there are some nice friendly Welsh over on the God thread that lurk about there and I wouldn't want to upset them, or indeed any other Welsh threaders.

(4) wanting to reveal that Dandy is Jamaican! But then we'd be accused either of tokenism, or condescension, or political in/on/un correctness. There could be quite a stink if the Bosun or the Captain started to abuse poor Dandy on the basis of his skin colour. No, we better stict to the primaries, like blue. Now there's an idea.

Maybe there are some issues it's safer to avoid. Irony is so easily lost in print, and totally lost across the great western water. I think that this brand of nonsense is a very British Islesy type of thing. From Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, through Lear and Carroll, to the unapproachable, incomparable Spike Milligan, and beyond, it's a very particular type of humour requiring a cery particular type of audient/ce.

Mind you, I'm quite curious to see how far in certain satirical directions we can go before we incur the wrath of the italics. Nuff said. Awaiting with bated breath your next injection.

Recumbentman is contemplating a major chunk on Brigid/t/isms, but over the last few days he's been painting the railings in front of his house in the sunshine, and has been shamefully neglecting his Grimley duties.

I'm very aware of wanting to get the plot moved along by a certain amount before I go off for my summer hols next Thursday. Not too sure how I'm going to handle the withdrawal!!!!!!!!!

To be honest, I've forgotten what the Dandy is up to, isn't he still on some misguided errand in order to save the flea, long enough to find the gold and then kill him again? Or perhaps I need to re-read.

I'm starting to see it develop into something like 'Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines' or 'Monte Carlo or Bust' with the growing number of odd characters chasing the gold. Alliances and backstabbings, love interests and general confusion, like that which I hope to see with the two maidens, identical but for a couple of letters. I do like what you've done with the sage, more eagerly awaited.
What on Earth is going to happen when the Ventral Snaith gets wind of all that gold?
Holiday? You simply have to cancel! Or take a notebook.
I'm off to see if I can work in an appearance from Terry Thomas somewhere.

Well indeed,

For some reason I am finding it very hard to bring the gibberish-type nonsense into my balladitis. I know that Dandy and the Antwerp Eagle should really be sailing to Blaggerty in a sieve, but in the interests of keeping the narrative moving, however laterally, along, I'm inclining more to the "Walrus and the Carpenter," than to "Jabberwocky" or "The Jumblies."

But that's why I'm delighted that there are Ventral Snaiths lurking just offstage, awaiting the appropriate moment for re-entry. And interminable centuries-long cricket matches being remorselelssly played out on Grimley Green.

It is delightful to me that this thread has become a multi-coloured carpet-bag of infinite dimension ( rather like the Library in Ankh Morpork's Unseen University ) containing whatever we want it to contain. Of course, the further we go, the harder it is, in a sense, for anyone else to join in.

Though I have tried to persuade an old school mate of mine ( Shane Briant, movie actor, now in Oz, formerly Hammer Horrors ) who is a published thriller-writer with a bizarrely twisted sense of humour, to join. He and I regularly swap nonsense emails as various characters. The only trouble with his particular sense von humour is that he might find it amusing to "sink the ship." One can never tell. But probably, he needs to keep his writing focussed on the movie-scripts he's developing from his novels at present.

As for the holidays, I have every intention of bringing a notebook, and take comfort in the fact that the friends with whom I'm staying have a computer, or two, and do much of their work on-line (both writers, one of UN documents, the other of children's books and biographies.)

In the meantime, I'm hoping to see Dandy and the AE at least as far as Blaggerty, via the dreaded Waterspout, before then. And doubtless the Sage, in his lust for Bridged and greed for gold will have a few more bad trips.

Tara for now ( depending whether your Tara is the ancyent Seat of the High Kings of Eirin, or the Proctectress Goddess of Tibet, the artiste formerly known as Smashantara, Kali of the Charnel Grounds, whom the Sage met the other day. Either way, the deep end!)

Recumbentman is being very lax in his duties, and the Flergel Flea is languishing, but as I had always hoped the Flergel Flea wouldn't even enter the picture till much later ( hence Dandy's side-order of green Meercow whiskers etc.) I'm very happy for the Flea to languish. Sort of like Waiting for Godot.

Anyway, I had to give Recumbentman a fairly severe telling-off for dragging the story so abruptly Flea-wards. He actually told he he felt the whole, thing had gone on "long enough!!!" So I sorted him out. Fortunately he is a very good, old friend, and quickly saw my point of view, as I sez to im I sez, If you like yer facial features, arms an legs bein just where they are at the moment, you won't make that mistake again, sonny Jim. Actually, I seduced him by reminding him that as a degree-laden philosopher, he should see the ballad as the ideal forum for his weltanschauung (?)which is post-Dawkins evolutionary neurobiological pessimism tempered by Berkelian idealism.

Who says I can't write gibberish?

Ta ra, again,

wallah a.k.a o

Thrice (in as many days) have I composed postings here only to have the site go all wonky and time out, leaving my words flung willy nilly into cyberspace. Brilliant they were too.

So this time I will limit myself to the essential business of informing you that I have made the corrections inserting additional breaks after 'slide' and 'floor'. A copy should be appearing on your homepage as 'AggGag/CAC option' but the title will shortly be changed to the one you gave the piece and I will link to it in next Thursday's issue of .


~jwf~