The h2g2 Post 01.02.21

Created Nov 9, 2020 | Updated Jan 31, 2021

A crest bearing the legend The H2G2 Post

Posted: 1^st February 2021

Researching the Recherché

The Post Office Groundhog in Summer, by DG.

For who hath despised the day of small things? …they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

Zechariah 4:10 (Authorised Version)

'As if we were God's spies,' said Lear. You don't have to be locked up to appreciate the little things – although what with the pandemic restrictions, it sometimes feels like that. Nonetheless, our Post reporters have been doing a lot of observing of mostly rather small things. We can learn a lot here, srsly.

At least one person last month intimated to me, more or less, that their ambition for the new year was to be 'more serious', or to 'write more serious Stuff.' I – seriously – advise against this sort of thinking. All good thinking begins with careful observation: the observation of minutiae, quite often. 'He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much,' said somebody in the Bible, and it's true. Gotta walk before we can run, and all that. Also, we're way more likely to say something profound when we're not trying to. Far too often, our attempts at high seriousness end in unintended bathos.

My personal resolution for 2021 is to try to find the world in a grain of sand, as Mr Blake suggested. I think there's a lot of that going on in this week's issue of the Post. Let me show you what I mean:

That library card is me not taking the whole 'akashic record' business too seriously. Of course, the Edited Guide obviously belongs in the akashic record. Have you made your contribution lately? For more nattering, see Deep Thought.
We have some very unusual animal pictures. One's been extinct for donkey's years, and one is being used as an oracle one day a year, while the rest of the time, it's legal to shoot it. Life is not fair. Meanwhile, some cats are posing, proving that they are both far more flexible than we are, and better-looking, too.
The rest of the photos are just as weird: a whole subset of them involve solving bizarre mysteries we didn't know existed, like who left the footprints, or what that corpse is doing on Tavaron's porch, or who decapitated the snowman.
When you're done with the detective work, worry about the supernatural: potatoes are frowning at us. Supernatural entities are sending Henry Letterbox musical instruments, and if that isn't coals to Newcastle…meanwhile, out of the past come fans. It's all too bizarre.
On a more sensible note, Paulh reviews the US inauguration for the rest of you, and FWR shares a poem about memory. It's nice to see we can act like grownups once in a while.
Of course, there are the usual humorous cartoons and comics to prove that, after all, it's only once in a while.
In this week's nostalgic film review, Awix demonstrates the lengths he's willing to go to for love, cinemawise.

We'll be back next week with more Stuff. (Send more Stuff, seriously: I need Stuff!) Keep warm, stay safe, and remember: it will keep snowing, even if you try to insult it by yelling, 'Hey, Snowflake!' May the Groundhog bless us all.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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Quote of the Week: A fact is not to be slighted or disbelieved because a false theory may have been put forth to explain it.

Robert Dale Owen, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, 1860