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

hello there. i tonight i'm friend hunting. i waited for a long time for someone t o came and talk to me and that just didnt work so now i'm out trying to talk to people. i sympathise with you , i have writers block all the time. maybe i just wasnt ment to be a writer... i live in canada and the weather has really started to be quite lovely. how's your weather?

G'day.

I'm just dropping by for a moment... I'm at w*rk so I'll have to keep this brief. I'll be online in a few hours' time at home, and I'll get back to you then for a decent chat.

Today's weather: clear, 17 degrees C. A bit windy for my liking. No rain either; we haven't had any for ages. Usually we get about 54mm in April here in Canberra; this year we've had 1mm and we've been in drought for a couple of years. All a bit depressing really.

I'll be back later...

Ivan.

well i'd love to talk to you then but unfortunately i'ts already 10:35 pm here so i wont be on in a few answers. however if i ask you questions now then you can answer them later and i can reply to them even later. first about me... i love to read and i love to watch movies. i'm a major star trek fan als black adder and red dwarf. i like most music but i cant stand rap. so how about you?

Blackadder is fabulous!

Anyway, here I am, later then advertised, after a spell at the pub after work. I couldn't escape.... so please excuse any typos that might appear. Maybe I should have another go when I'm sober(ish).

In the meantime I'll just say some possibly daft things about meeting people on here. Most of the people on my 'Friends' list I met on conversations. A good thing to do is subscribe to Askh2g2; join the conversations if you feel you have something to say. If not, then not. When I first signed up I'd been reading the site for quite some time. Then I finally moved through the looking glass and found myself talking to some people who had appeared to be characters in another story. Very odd. But some of them are now on the Friends list... That's what I like about this site - it's real but unreal at the same time.

I'd better stop now - the beer's talking, not me... I'll be back in the morning.

Ivan.

Askh2g2 was meant to be a link, but I got it wrong; at any rate, you can find it at A148907 .

well thats sort of funny. i just woke up aftertelling and mow you're back. so who's your favorite character in black adder?

Definitely Baldrick. But the various incarnations of Melchett have their moments, and any character played by Miranda Richardson is a good thing.

(I've just been reading a thing about Mary Q of Scots, and there is a real-life person called Edmund Blackadder in the Index... Very odd.)

Oh blimey, I'm still under the influence. I think I'll leave this with a question, which I can follow-up tomorrow. What do you like to read? Fiction or non-fiction? Any particular genre or author? (Books are on my mind; I'm having more bookshelves delivered tomorrow.)

i wish i was having bookshelve delivered tomorrow. my room is filled with books and i need more places to put them. i mosly love to read star trek books. but only the ones with kirk or piquard. i also love a good mystery story. agatha christie or sir arthur connan doyle. i tend to not like non fiction books because they're either really boring or someonei likes dies. i hate sad endings. i cried and cried when i thought sherlock holmes was dead. one good thing about the star trek books is that they're written by fellow fans so they dont want to see anyone die either. it think thats kinda neat for fans by fans... but any way. i liked harry potter but that last book was a dud. it was like running in circles and harr started to be a real jerk. everyone tells me its just because he's a guy but i'd like to believe that not all guys have to be jerks. of course i like doughlas adams. you walked int o a trap by asking me that. i could on on and on and will fi you want me too but this is getting to be more like a letter than a message so i'll stop now. i'm always happy to talk about books

Feel free to go on... Books rock, that's what I say. I've got about 200 of the things cluttering the house.

Whereabouts are you? Which province? I won't ask for a more precise location than that, though I'll be happy enough if you give it; I'm just trying to get a mental picture of your landscape.

Oh heck, it's 1am; I must go to bed. Soon. Very soon. But h2g2 is so horribly addictive.

By the way, what do I call you? Your first post was under a name starting with 'S', I think; (was it 'Swirly'?) shall I call you S?

Not 200 books; try 2000. Drat this typing while tired & sozzled.

it was swirly and i live in b.c. i'd love to give you a more specific loation because i dont think you're goning to get on a plane and fly over here just kidnap me. but my paranoid mother would kill me. i can tell yo however that i like on a mountain, that is beautiful to walk on when you're all by yourself,and the mountain is really near the water. so close i could walk if i wanted t go for a long one and cross the highway. i dont know what to tell you to call me my mom would shoot me of i actually gave out my real name. you see i'm on this site only after much pleading and and i have some very very strict rules about personal info. seeing as i have trouble finding people on h2g2 and seem to loose them after the initial conversation i'll give you my email, [email protected] this however os not my currently used email it is my old one that i now use when i sign up for things online and for potentially 'hostile ' people or what ever its really just a back door. i dont check it that often but i do check it. but for a name S will suit me just fine. how about you what book do you like and what shalli call you? ivan?

My eyelids are drooping now, S, so this is my last post before hitting the pillows.

I think your mother's doing the right thing by keeping an eye on what you're doing online... I am 33, but my mother's *still* a bit edgy about me talking to strangers online; that's what mothers are for, and it will never matter how old you are, that's just what they do. Of course, my mother's 1300km away, but that doesn't seem to matter.

On this site I'll answer to 'Ivan'. No, that isn't my real name. That is available if you use the email address on my personal space; I have my own reasons for not using it here.

Now I really am too tired to continue. I'll be back some time tomorrow.

Ivan.

good night ivan.
i just hope that you're tomorrow is my tomorrow i dont know how the whole time thing works. i guess that is what moms are for. tell me tomorrow what books you like...

If it helps, it's now 11am on Saturday 1 May.

Favourite books - that's a tough question. I think I'll just jot down some authors who are worth the trouble. Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, Robertson Davies (especially 'Murther and Walking Spirits'), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess, Jane Austen, W M Thackeray (especially 'Vanity Fair')...

In less arty/highbrow stuff, there's Gerald Durrell, Tom Holt and the sadly-missed Spike Milligan.

Travel writing is a favourite genre of mine; the best travel books I have are by Freya Stark, Dervla Murphy and William Dalrymple.

History - I'm interested in English history, Russian history, Estonian history (my mother's Estonian), European history in general, Chinese and east Asian history (I studied this at university)... Oh, just History, I guess.

The three books I'd most recommend to anyone, and which I tend to give people when I can't think of a better present, are 'The Towers of Trebizond' by Rose Macaulay; Samuel Pepys' Diary; and - the best of the lot - 'The Berlin Diaries' by Marie Vassiltchikov.

wow it sounds like we're really into different stuff. i' love science fiction. all those infinate possibilities. any thing you can imagine. and if you liik far enough it could even be out there. i dont really understand why people think there isnt anyone elsee out there. life forms dont even have to be carbon based. they might mot even be like life as we know it. the universe is so big and its constantly expanding. there must be someone out there. i guess you could say i believe in aliens but not aliens in the traditional sence. not nessecarily hostile little green men that try to take over the word and then must all be killed the american army. not like the ones in movies. space just facinates me, it always has. of course i like the star trek characters too. i always thought spoch was so hansome. it was really hot here today its now 6:43 and 24 degrees celsius out.

Science fiction isn't one of my favourite things, but I do enjoy it once in a while. I'm an historian, and my interest is in things that have already happened and how, because of them, we ended up in the mess we're in today. Sci-fi, of course, is usually about things that *will* happen... there's a great gulf between the two viewpoints.

But that being said, I do have some on the shelves. Douglas Adams, of course, and some HG Wells. There's also Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', but I'm not sure if that's strictly sci-fi. It's more a futurist dystopia / vision of a future hell than anything else. I do have a soft spot for Ursula le Guin's 'Left Hand of Darkness', though.

i've never read brave new world. is it any good? i tend to not like history because i get attached to the charactors than one of them died and i'll be depressed for the rest of the day. i have a guitar lesson at 1:30, i'm trying to learn but my fingers dont move fast enough and they dont want to go to the right places. do you play an isntrument?

'Brave New World' is worth the trouble; it's one of those 'future visions' that no longer seems possible, but some bits are still horribly relevant. Give it a go. Apart from anything else, it influenced a lot of sci-fi that came after it.

No, I don't play an instrument. I have no musical abilities whatsoever. I can't even carry a tune.

sorry to hear about your musical abilities. the tent catterpillars are invading my back yard. they're everywhere. they're all creepy crawly and disgusting. how are the insects where you live?

Australia is the Land of Insects. Butterflies, moths, lots of species of flies, mantises... we've got the lot. Not so long ago I had a four-inch-long preying mantis in my bedroom; he was there for days before he finally went to the front door and I could let him out. The cicadas were particularly noisy a couple of months ago at the height of summer.

And I won't even start on the spiders... Lots of them, usually massive, and usually poisonous.