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

A very strange thing happened to me. Yesterday I was watching Notting Hill (mostly for Spike, played by Rhys Ifans, possibly the funniest Welshman I'd seen all week. Well, you know what I mean, anyway) and there's a part where Hugh Grant says to Julia Roberts that meeting her is not like reality at all, but is like a dream. She asks him what happens next in his dream, and he pauses. In that pause, I started thinking about what I'd say if someone asked me such a question.

Hugh Grant says: "well, I'd, er, kiss the girl ..." or some such.

However, I would have said: "well, I'd kiss you and then hand you the pot of jam, which you'd need for the secret it contained. However, I'd also warn you not to eat the jam, as it was deadly poison. I'd be walking away to find you the other charmed objects, and I'd turn as I went and see you put your finger in the jam and taste it. The air would become like treacle and although I could normally run fast enough to prevent you, my feet would lift off the ground and I would be unable to move fast enough to reach you, and you would fall into a coma. I would then be forced to freeze time locally to stop you dying. I would spend the rest of the dream seeking the antidote, which I would have picked up earlier but which would subsequently have disappeared, and would end up asking for its location from a sequence -- possibly a repeating sequence -- of people of near-total imbecility, who would make nonsensical but euphonious statements like 'ah, it is the treasure you seek, oh-yee-kay, without delay'."

...

This fact may explain why I have such trouble with women.

hhhmmmm....
I think that may well explain why you have trouble with women!

Although I'm hardly one to talk - my dreams are getting increasingly surreal it seems. I keep dreaming of Spike (which is why I had to write something here...), but not the one from Notting Hill, but the one from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.....
Last night he was dressed as some weird fantasy Australian cop (I have no idea why Austalian, he just was) and came and rescued me from a hairy monster trying to pimp me off outside a cinema multiplex that had 80 screens all showing the latest installment of Star Wars.

Never seen Spike from BTVS, or indeed more than one episode. I spent the entire episode listening to a record, too, which caused some very funny near-synchronicity moments. This was in my student days and I considered myself too liberated to be watching Buffy.

Also the only episode of Baywatch I ever saw was dubbed into French, which probably improved the quality of acting marginally.

Oh, yes ... ever read any Raymond Smullyan?

No, should I have?

If you're into the Tao, probably. He's cool, although (as he assures us repeatedly) not a sage.

sounds interesting, I'll have a little look-see.

Nice. You may also enjoy http://www.ripe-fruit.co.uk/photos/html/photos.htm

I'm telling everybody!

ok, that's strange...
I've recently started reading a novel about the game of chess, mathematics, music and the occult/mysticsm. Maybe not too strange in and of itself, but hang on a bit..

you mentioned Raymond Smullyan so I looked him up. Turns out that he's a chess player, a mathematician and a musician...hmm.. .

Synchroncities abound it would seem!

Oh, what was that link all about that you posted?

It's all about everything.

[falls asleep]