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

Hi bomdon, I'm absolutely chuffed that you came into my journal and asked me to nudge you into writing another entry. It's one of the nicest compliments I've ever had, thanks a lot.
I don't know if you've seen it, but I've started writing for the h2g2 <./>ThePost</.>, where I now have my own column, the Random Ramblings A21009287
If that's ok with you, I'd love to tell this in the next issue (end of June), because it's such a good example of the great community and friends we have here on h2g2.

Into my journal bomdon came
Telling me that he was game
To write another guide entry,
Saying that I should feel free
To prod and nudge him just a bit -
Not knowing that I now would hit
Him with an entry about carpets,
But he agreed, so that is that.


Bel

Liked your articles on The Post, especially your maiden experimentation with the future perfect tense. Good you have revived the tense because THE BOOK says that "the term 'future perfect' has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be." Of course DNA is referring tho Dr Dan Streetmentioner's 'Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations'



The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own father or mother.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. !!


Sort of makes you glad that we haven't invented time travel yet, right?

And ofcourse you can use that beautiful poem for your next article on the post. The honour would be entirely mine. (Always wanted to use that phrase).

Just to tell you again that the rhymes are really wonderful. In the right metre too.
Maybe the if the last word is 'it' it would rhyme better with 'hit' and 'bit' above too as well as with 'carpet'.

Thanks for that. It's great to know that there is somebody out there who appreciates a good future perfect tense.
And you're probably right about your last suggestion re: exchanging that with it. Now you mentioned it, it does make sense.
It's sometimes hard for me to tell how a word is pronounced, as you can see, I'd have had carpet more like 'at' than like 'it', although I guess it's in between the two.
Glad you like it.

Oh yes! You bet,
Carpet's between 'it' and 'that'

Exactly.
Very difficult to describe, isn't it?

Hi Bomdon, glad to see you.
I wasn't in London, IO was at my sister's for a few days. The weather was mostly awful, with temperatures like in winter, but we had a great time.
Have you seen that you're in <./>ThePost</.> ?

Here

A24693564

and here:

A24622553

There'll be a new telegram on Thursday, because it doesn't look as if somebody else set the new word this week.