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

Good Morning Earth.

This morning I opened the front door and this tiny white moth (a real one) was fluttering around in front of me, then it landed in the neighbour's shrubbery. This means everything, yet strangely nothing.

I am listening to Jethro Tull (especially a track from Heavy Horses, called Moths).

I am also listening to Van Der Graaff Generator, I am in love with VDGG, which might lose me friends, yet perhaps I will be understood in the kingdom of moths. .

I wrote some Notes entitled Bug Eyed Biro Doodle.,

Recently, I met a friend in town, who I used to live with the 80s. There were a group of us around that time, all doing weird drawings and things. We used to trade drawings, even do joint works. Kinda inspiring, mostly it was just therapy, except for a few who made it in the professional art world. I didn't make it. . Never wanted to. However, my friend said she held onto one of my scrawly biro drawings, kept her going through some dark times. I was like ??? I can't imagine one of my biro drawings giving anyone any sort of hope. . I would have thought it would make the problem worse. . You never know, eh.

Erm, so I will write the Notes in the next posting, if I can navigate this funny format. Looks cool though. Funny how the graphic landscapes of hootoo can change, if you leave for a week or so. I love it.

The names, circumstances and the drawing itself are fiction, but the feathery antennae are pure fact. . Its a celebration of the sharing of ideas. And a celebration of black biros. I love black biros. Still one of the cheapest products on the market, and yet you get such a great quality line.

Bug Eyed Biro Doodle

(A doodle in words) (this work contains reference to insects with feathery antennae, of the maybug variety)



One morning in early summer, about twenty five years ago, I sat in a bus station cafe making a sketch of my surroundings, with a black biro. I call it a sketch, although it was more like the 5.34 am doodlings of a bug-eyed traveller, waiting for an early coach to a faraway town, to visit a friend called Dave.



When my friend Dave saw the sketch he asked if he could keep it, so that he could draw all over it with a black biro, to illustrate a science fiction story he was writing. I agreed, provided that if his story was successful I could disown my ruined masterpiece.



His story wasn't successful of course. Dave's writing was never destined for mainstream recognition.



The illustration didn't help. Dave covered my drawing with black lines, which looked like interconnecting roads or veins. He added some bug eyed entities with feathery antennae, which I thought looked like maybugs. He said they were travellers in a bus station cafe, waiting for an early coach to a faraway town.



Of course, all this was all long ago, and I never thought much more about it, although I went on to create many an inky doodle.



I saw Dave last week, though, for the first time in years. He never made it as a writer, although it seems he kept his story and the drawing.



He told me that when his wife first saw the drawing she almost fainted, thinking it was a scene from her home town, from which she was long estranged. So powerful was the experience that she decided to vist to this forgotten town, but she only stayed for twenty minutes, and caught the last bus out of there.



It seems that a friend of theirs, a psychologist, had seen the drawing and thought that it was the perfect graphic depiction of a panic attack.



Of course Dave had the drawing with him, so we could look at it together and have a laugh.



It was strange to see it again. It wasn't exactly a masterpiece of biro art, but it reminded me of interconnected roads and veins, and bug eyed travellers blinking in the lurid science fiction dawn light of bus station cafes.



For a moment the lines looked exactly like a street plan of a town I once knew. I felt the first stages of a strangely inspired panic attack coming over me, but I put this down to a hyperactive imagination.



Dave is thinking of rewriting his story, using the drawing as a central theme. He offered me a black biro, and requested that I sign my name along one of the feathery antennae, along with his. I declined the offer.



He also asked me if he could add a few more interconnected lines, to add effect to his theme. I said he could, provided he didn't add any more maybugs.



I don't think his story will achieve mainstream recognition, although I wish it well.



I think it will be enjoyed by travellers who find themselves in a bus station cafe at 5.34 am, waiting for a coach to a faraway town.



And I will think about the drawing as it continues its journey along the interconnected roads which run like veins through the science fiction light of new dawns.



end

Wow. Just wow.

We thought of you last night, when we were watching 'Doctor Who'. The Doctor said the most popular tourist destination in the universe was 'the Coffee House Planet'.

Nice planet. . Very nice planet.

long time no cee cee, cee cee!

i hope that everything has been ok, and it's just work that has kept you occupied


well - you've done it again! pulled another stonker of a word movie out of the bag

i like the way you've woven the threads of reality and story together - so that your introduction and narrative maintain a hint of reference to each other, just below the surface

also, it's cool the way the echoes of some descriptive images, eg., like antennae and the lines in your drawing, morph into one another at different points - and the repeated reference to different 'players' in the account being in the bus station, at a certain time, bound for a similar destination


i suspect this will be a winner with Dmitri, too - i bet he's into antennae, the old scoundrel!


no poems from me - i surprised myself the other day by starting to write another account, but i seem to have become becalmed in the sargasso sea of inspiration


take it easy

You two should write one together. The Post is waiting...

Yep. You've sussed my secret antenna fetish. (KB once said he could see the emotional state of the alien from the set of his anntenae in the G'plex cartoon. What have I done?)

heheh - i do not think the World it is ready for the combined leetle grey cells of cee cee and mee mee!


antennae fetish, eh? ...that wouldn't be a 'whip aerial' by any chance, Mr G?!?


>>> "What have I done?"

phrase usually heard just after mad scientist creates monster - anything to declare, Dmitri?

oh yes we are!

You've been reading my oeuvre, ALS.

don'ta worry, boss, i keepa da secret - nobody know this, 'cept, you, me... anda the person in that filing-cabinet!

Dr Hacken-a-bush ...



uh oh ... what's going on around 'ere then??

order! order! order in the journal! ....

s'cuse me, I need to change skins, from Pliny the Elder to Isambard Kingdom ...

back in a minute ...

Very interesting fellow, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Designed our home station, Exeter St David's, and also Bristol Temple Meads I think? And lots of other things.

Lots of other things? ....

I think I will give up the antennae and write a Guide Entry on Brunel. In my dreams. heheh.

OK so back to creative writing ...Imagine a piece written by all of us ... DG, Prof, ALS and .. not me ... I'm escaping ..



A word movie. A word movie. Ah yes I love the idea of a word movie. Funny the things that get in there when one starts to write a word movie .. all the bits and pieces, the flotsam and jetsam ... memories, emotions, fragments and textures ...

I just went over to Google to see how to spell jetsam and I see that Flotsam and Jetsam are a thrash metal band, formed in Phoenix Az in 1982 ..

but that's not relevant right now ... although I might order a CD ...

the maybug appeared (with its dreaded feathered antennae) , because I was listening to Jethro Tull, a track called Moths, and there's a maybug in the lyrics ...

and the bus station bit is more true than I dare to admit .... ah haunt haunt ... the magnetic haunting of those textures that almost defy expression...

what?? that was a very arty paragraph...

becalmed in the sargasso sea of inspiration .. mmm I love that ...

I think we all need times of rest, when the waters are still .. restore our creative energies ..

.. but can't wait for your next poem or piece, so get on with it .... .... teehee....

take care dear guys

PS

Oops, sorry. Re the Jethro Tull track entitled Moths, I said that the word maybug appears in the lyrics, but it doesn't, its May-bud. . I always heard maybug. I just checked one of those song lyric sites. .

That's so funny. Well, quite funny. Not that funny really.

Now I have to rewrite my entire word movie. .. out, damned maybugs!

No! No! I have no time, other movies clamour for my attention.

Notes (to myself) for making word-movies

Set the scene, weave the theme. Check light settings, zoom the detail, focus.

Love the spirit, holy journey. .

Get haunted, be daunted, follow the sensory mystery.Remember peppermints, biros and sixth sense. Have a laugh. Come home to eat an omelette.

Go away.

What? Who said that?

.

Ignore all electronic voice phenomena. Elektra and I were talking about Nikola Tesla over at the pool yesterday...

Rose Maybud is character in Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Ruddigore'. My favourite work by them, it's a Gothic soap opera...no surprise there...

Rose is kind of dull, though, addicted to the etiquette book. The *real* cool lady is Mad Margaret. You'd like Mad Margaret, CC, though she'd give you a cup of coffee 'as if she were administering a bowl of deadly nightshade'.

Ah, me. Here's a song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmBri9kvptE

Yep, that's Vincent Price.

ah - dear old Vinny - my role model!


...and so, Dmitri - courtesy of cee cee's insistence, i have just managed to drag myself out of my self-imposed sargasso sea and 'complete' a (non-poetry) submission for consideration as a Post item

at a very rough guesstimate, i'd say it is about 1400 words long

how should i submit it? As a 'Not for Guide Review' post - all as one temporary item, to await Post review? - or as two or more sections (if the latter, what sort of size each?)

thanks - and be please, be gentle with it - for it is a weak and unsuckled creature ...and it knows not to which Tavern its mummy has pushed off

Hm...you could put it in the AWW, and then we could all talk about whether one part or two parts would be better...

Or, if you want it to be a total surprise - you could send it to postteamhg - at- gmail - dot - com, so CC can't see it first.

dear cee cee - WRT 'maybugs', i suspect it is Jethro Tull who have got it wrong!

they SHOULD have written 'maybugs' but somehow, as the result of an accident with a typewriter and a time-machine, the lyrics came to be printed as 'maybuds'

i'll write to Ian Anderson forthwith (and straightaway), explaining their mistake in some detail, and demanding a hand-written apology from Ian - i'll also include a gratuitous attempt to get you two free tickets to their next concert down in the Brunel Kingdom land

how does that sound?

fairs fair, i think!

ah, great, Mr G - many thanks!!

the email option sounds just right - then NOBODY but the team can see it, if it's deemed to be a total anagrammatic heap of C-A-R-P!

i'll go and blow the dust off my trusty electronic pigeons...

ok, pigeons primed & released - there should be a big THUD in your mailbox any year now, Dmitri !

...Incoming!!! ...

Now that the Fortean Times has finished crashing my browser, I will go and look.