Earth

A Really Hoopy Place To Live These Days...

This article is classified "Real"

The Earth (also known by smart asses as Terra) is an incredibly hoopy place
to be, if for no other reason than because we don't know of any other place
to be.  Although many people have suggested going into outer space, and
living there, more people have complained about everything that would entail,
such as the longer commute to work or school, atrophied limbs in near-zero
gravity, cramped quarters among spacecraft, horrible in-flight food and
movies, and, of course, the amazingly large cost of sending a person
anywhere outside the Earth.

The fact that we haven't left the Earth for any amount of time really hasn't
upset anyone, though, since Earth is the only place where one can find a
considerable number of video game machines, nice beaches, jobs, and members
of the opposite sex.  It is also the home of that wholly remarkable book, The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and its four sequels, all written by a
certain human named Douglas Adams, and was, in fact, the sole inspiration for
another wholly remarkable creation, Project Galactic Guide, the result of
which you are now perusing.

For some truly outstanding figures about the planet Earth, you may wish to
consult a recently published world almanac, which will give very interesting
tidbits of information about the Earth, such as its size (approximately
24,900 miles around, with a surface area of 196,938,800 square miles), its
moons (one, commonly called The Moon, but many smart asses call it Luna), and
other things like the fact that Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California,
on August 15th, 1912, and that, in 1987, the tallest building in Des Moines,
Iowa, was the Ruan Center, which stood at an entirely uncolossal 457 feet
tall.

The Earth is the only place we know of to date that has intelligent life
living on it.  This could, of course, be because of some global government
cover-up (very likely), truth (least likely), or just because many people
seem to be very troubled about the idea that there might be other creatures
in outer space, and particularly that those creatures are probably more
intelligent and evolved than they are (more likely than the cover-up idea,
which was very likely, and thus is probably true).

The Earth is the third planet is the Sol star system, although the
inhabitants are more likely to call Sol, their sun, The Sun, most likely
because very few people have figured out exactly how to pronounce "Sol," but
even more likely because they rarely talk about other suns, except as stars.

The Earth rotates on an axis at an angle, and orbits Sol in an elliptical
orbit, the result of which is that the inhabitants feel different seasons,
where, depending on their exact location, the average temperature will dip or
rise, and various department stores will hold something called "Sales Events"
as a form of acknowledgement to the passage of time.  The Earth rotates on
its axis once every 24 hours, and spends 365.25 sets of 24 hours (each set is
called a day) in orbit, before reaching its original point, which isn't
wholly true, as it is well known that the entire Sol star system is moving
through space at an uncomfortable velocity, so uncomfortable that most people
tend not to think about it, and, as a result, are not usually affected by it.

And to dismay any contrary opinion, to human conception, the Earth is indeed
spheroidal, though not a perfect sphere in and of itself.  Why this is is not
important to most hitchhikers, however, and is left to brainy types, who have
nothing better to do than to calculate the dimensions of our planet.

If you have any more questions, consult almost every other part of the Guide,
or ask the nearest human, as they'll most likely know a little bit about the
Earth (unless you're somewhere other than the Earth, in which case, if you do
in fact find a human, they will be less likely able to tell you about the
Earth).