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

Somewhere in the Carolinas - 26 October, 2006

We travel 100 miles to attend a mediation in a Carolina courthouse. We drive in on Highway 220.

We arrive 30 minutes early and go to a convenience store for two coffees and twos. The clerk says we can save 89 cents by buying six s instead of two, so we throw away four extra s and pocket the savings. My son suggest leaving the extra s on the sidewalk in case a hungry policeman comes by...

Outside the store, a car has a large neatly lettered sign in the rear window. It says:
If you are going the wrong way
on Highway 220
It is legal to do a U-turn

I try to puzzle out the hidden meaning behind this sign and immediately think about catching large black flys abd tying them to my lapel on thin nylon threads.

We enter the courthouse for the mediation. The parties are groups of geezers who are fighting for control of the Board of a Homeowner's association. A homeowner's association is a form of corporation that collects dues to expend for purposes that benefit all the owners. The homeowners elect a board to manage the association affairs, usually as unpaid volunteers. The old board apparently gained power by staging a bloody coup-d-etat which was overturned in an expensive legal battle...now the new board wants to humilate the old board and extract a pound of flesh by suing the old board for the personal recovery of some expenses they claim were inappropriate ...two things are sure...there is much bad blood here among the "cooperative" homeowners and all the homeowners will lose when this mess comes to trial...neither set of geezers will budge in the mediation....we leave after four hours and order Stromboli for lunch...I look for flys but it's too colfor flys this time of year.

I make a note not to buy a condo or run for a office on a Homeowner's board of directors. Life is too short to deal with geezers squabbling about when to drain the pool and whethor someone's grandchildren have been visiting for too long.

I like the flies idea.

That U-turn notice is sublime. Perhaps it's the driver's way of saying 'Forgive me, for I know not where I go'...

Leave the donuts for the poor hungry cops, by all means!

I can't even hazard a guess at what made you drive a hundred miles to witness such mundanity.

Did the at least have sprinkles?

I wanted to watch my son in action...no sprinkles...

Do you know how hard it is to find a decent lemon filled in WC? Makes a lemon lover downright cranky.

I tend to gravitate toward chocolate icing s with custard filling.

There was a scene in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" where a Savananah resident in a cafe has large black flys tied to his lapel that are buzzing around on short strings...he also had a small vial which he claimed contained enough poison to kill everyone in town as soon as he dumped it in the water supply...Southern towns tend toward the bizzare sometimes...then of course the was Lady Chablis, a real person, and the servant taking an empty bulldog collar on a leash for a daily walk though the town squares...we spent several hours taking pictures in the aforementioned graveyard in August...spookly place at midnight...we should be there Halloween...maybe some midnightshots and a chance to use the new Acme Ectoplasmometer?