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

What, you mean I have to keep doing this? Like, from now til I die? Every single minute of every single day and even when I'm asleep?


It seems like a bit of a faff, to be honest. I'm sure I'll forget sooner or later. As if I don't have enough to do, without this!

I'm s ort of glad you don't have to think about it all the time.

I'd probably forget.

Indeed...it's a mercy of nature that all the really important processes are placed beyond our control. Breathing, the heart pumping, digestion...Mother Nature in her wisdom realised we'd probably cock it up if left to our own devices.

Imagine if, for every mouthful of food, you had to consciously process it.

"Right, first I'll squash it into a ball, then soak it in some hydrochloride acid, then give it a quick spray of enzymes A, B and C..." It would be exhausting!

It's a blessing that our conscious minds are just left in charge of things like remembering to brush our hair. If we oversleep and forget to do it, at least we won't keel over dead because of it.

Oh quit your whining and take in a *COUGH* lungful of that *HACK* *SPLUTTER* fine fresh air with all its myriad gases, chemicals and *COUGH* and particulates

Particulates are good for you. Think of all the important trace minerals they put into your body. A bloke from Shell told me so.

Exactly. And they scrub you pipes clean as you breath in and out. Win-win

I think if I was living in your latitudes, I'd only survive for about ten days. Last week, we had a couple of sunny days. Moderately warm days, but not what you would call "hot", by any stretch of the imagination. But today we have cool, rainy weather that everyone complains about, I'm strutting about in a t-shirt wanting more cold air and more rain.

This is only tangentially connected to the "breathing" theme because I've realised that my blocked-up nose stopped bothering me after the rain! It might have washed the pollen out of the air. That's my hypothesis anyway.

Would you like to experience a virtual reality simulation of riding a motorcycle in Texas in the summer?

Sit on a bar stool holding two blow dryers pointed at your face. Just like the real thing.

And I thought 2legs was masochistic. He's got nothing on you.

The air is always the first thing I notice... when I leave this putrid air in Cambridge... (and, for full affect, its even more noticlbe, of course, starting from London )....

Off out to Williams, on the bus, not really that* far outside the city, really... and breathing seems so much easier Although my favorite clean air travel trip, is to my Dads... where the air just gets cleaner, on the train, all the way, until the final stop.... which is meters from the sea... and its like breathing an entirely difernt gas Mind... I bet it'd be even more amazing a differnce, going to a truely isolated, cold place... I means, these are all fairly populated areas afterall Although, from wehre I live, down by the river is at least a bit better and cleaner/fresher agair

There are... remember... differnt types... or lvels of masochism.... The most evil suggestion I ever saw.... involved someone taunghting me with food, taht I wasn't able to eat... that was so truely delisciously evil...

Ah, I always love it when I see "Posted 42 minutes ago" next to the previous post

When ah were a lad and we used to visit't folks oop north in Liverpool, the very first thing I noticed getting out of the car as soon as we arrived was the smell of the air - soot. It was almost a pleasant smell, sort of sweet-smelling, in a way. I can't imagine what it must have done to peoples' lungs though, and within an hour or two I didn't notice it myself any more.

I wonder what they made of the suburban London air when they came to visit us posh folk dine sithe

For many years the smell of diesel soot reminded me of my trip to London in '85.

Yeah, I can see that. I rarely noticed it coming back in when I'd only been out of London for a short while, but I sure noticed the difference upon leaving and getting out into the countryside, as I do when I leave Austin, even if I only go a few miles out.

It's funny. When I was a kid, pretty much every house burned coal, and I hated the smell. Now though, because it's actually pretty rare to smell coal smoke around here, I quite like it whenever I smell it.

A dirty old fuel, but I do miss it a bit. The uniform, building-wide heat in a central heated house can feel a bit oppressive compared to a house with cool pockets and one patch of intense heat at the coal fire. I find most buildings much too warm these days, especially in winter. If you can walk about indoors in winter in a T-shirt, the heating's turned up too high!

True, there's no need to walking around indoors wearing summer attire during the winter, although I have a friend in Blighty whose flat is so well insulated (purpose-built that way) that you probably could while keeping the heating bills down to less than those in most other homes of similar size.

I loved the smell of coal when I was a kid. I'd open up the coal bunker and stick my head in it from time to time just to get a whiff of the stuff.

Me? ? No, I wouldn't say so

I loved the texture of coal. Firstly that damp, gritty feeling on the fingers...but also that texture when it went all bubbly and tar-y in the fire, and you could wedge a poker in a crack and lever a lump apart. All squidgy and stretchy.

*tries to quickly gloss over that bit about wedging your poker in a crack before 2legs sees it*

Too slow friend... far far too slow... duely noted and ed at

There are a few places round here with coal too, and a couple with wood burners, and I like the smell of both... Actually, quite nice now, walking up the hill to my Dad's house, in the winter... and as you get nearer, you smell the wood fire/burner, or coal, and know the inside is gona be nice and hot when you get back indoors