Okay. I'm thinking I need a bunch of skeptics here.

[SheilaT]

I want to start by saying I'm willing to believe in certain, shall we say, unprovable things. But that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the proliferation of some kinds of things.

You know how wire hangers multiply? But not the plastic ones. And you've noticed that socks disappear. It's generally thought that they disappear in dryers, leading some people to conclude that there are black holes of some kind in dryers. More on this in another paragraph. But the truth is, as my physicist son once said, that socks are the larval form of hangars.

Okay. Back to dryers. I have proof that there might well be some kind of black hole devices that use dryers to transport things from one place to another. Once I had a green towel materialize in a load of sheets and towels. It was a green one I'd never seen before. I never bought a green towel, trust me. But I kept it for years. Another time, some years after the towel, a pair of men's slacks showed up in my dryer. At first I thought they belonged to my brother, who lived with us, and did his own laundry. But he denied they were his. So I checked with the other males in the household, two sons and a husband. All denied ownership of the slacks. But they fit one son. So he took them.

Now, given all that background, I'm asking for help in solving my problem about pencil sharpeners. For two years I had an office. I stocked it with (among other things) a battery operated pencil sharpener. And it worked quite nicely, thank you very much. During that time, I shared the office will several other people on an ad hoc basis. At the end of the two years, when I went to close the office, there were now three battery operated pencil sharpeners. And none of the people I'd shared the office with said they'd brought one in to the office. So I'm asking, how is it that pencil sharpeners reproduce?

It makes sense that socks are the larval form of hangers. After all, you never find baby hangers, and you never find the hangers in the act of . . . well you know. But pencil sharpeners?

Oh, and there was an extra pillow that on one admitted to bringing to the office.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book ...

... and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.

One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.

And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.

When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.

There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand biro business."

http://hitch14.tripod.com/chapter_21.htm

[SheilaT]

2. Quite honestly, this problem of things disappearing

and also of appearing somewhere is one that I wish would be taken seriously.

I have a friend who lives in Pittsburgh. He once had a rather nice sweater materialize in his closet. Fit him perfectly. Another time, a pair of shoes that fit him.

[dimbear]

3. I'm sticking with Red Lantern and the Land of the Lost because the simplest answer is best.

He has several suspicious looking old razors, too.

[TZ]

4. Read this book for answers...LOL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaper_Man

[SheilaT]

5. I just might have to read that book!

In a similar vein, I like to carry on about the various deities that are in charge of certain things. For instance, the technology gods don't seem to like me, as often technology does not work correctly around me. On the other hand, the parking gods positively adore me. I ALWAYS get good parking spaces, even if I am just the passenger in a car. And believe me, I am highly appreciative and remember to say "Thank you, Parking Gods," every single time. I do not want them to start thinking I'm ungrateful and therefore on longer deserve the good parking spaces.