Archive for June 2008
The Guide
The most wholly remarkable book in the entire known universe, with DON’T PANIC written in the bold letters is called “THE GUIDE”. A must-have for an intergalactic hitchhiker to survive and thrive in the immeasurable inky-dark voids what we call the universe. Douglas N Adams – a genius, an earthling, a homosapien with 99% of its own DNA matching to a far less superior bipedal primate, wrote the story of another homosapien living in the spleen of England, Arthur Dent, whose friend – with a slight chance of being a girlfriend, Tricia McMillian a.k.a. Trillian, the only girl who had given him any attention in his whole life, was taken away by the president of the Universe with two heads – Zaphod Beeblebrox, whose best friend – Ford Prefect, was from another planet, and whose home – Planet Earth was destroyed by Vogons to build an intergalactic highway.
I’d quote the entire series of his works but there are copyright issues… so here are few which I really like..
The Guide on the Alcohol
Accroding to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the effects of drinking one of these is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.
To get more details on -
i. On which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are brewed ?
ii. How much you can expect to pay for one ?
iii. Which voluntary organizations exist to help you recover afterwards ?
iv. And last but not least, how can you mix one yourself ?
- read the guide!
The Answer
The answer to the universe , life and everything else is……….42
Conversation between GOD and Man
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. Q.E.D.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
GOD’s last message
WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
Life of Arthur Dent
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Thoughts of a Whale and a bowl of Petunia falling from the sky
“And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like… ow… ound… round… ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?”
“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again.”
A Duck
i. One’s never alone with a rubber duck.
ii. “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
Learning to Fly
“There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
The Point of View
“It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.”
Zaphod Beeblebrox – The president of the Universe
i. “There is nothing wrong with my sense of reality. I have it thoroughly serviced every fortnight”
ii. “If there’s anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.”
Marvin, the depressed paranoid Android
i. Why stop now, just when I’m hating it?
ii. “That ship hated me,” Marvin said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.
“That ship?” said Ford in sudden excitement. “What happened to it? Do you know?”
“It hated me because I talked to it.”
“You talked to it?” exclaimed Ford. “What do you mean you talked to it?”
“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin.
“And what happened?” pressed Ford.
“It committed suicide,” said Marvin
iii. “`The first ten million years of the universe were the worst,’ said Marvin, `and the second ten million, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.’”
iv. “That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.”
v. “Here I am, brain as big as a planet ….”
vi. Marvin’s lullaby
Now the world has gone to bed
Darkness won’t engulf my head
I can see by infra-red,
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
vii. Marvin: “I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.” Zem: “Er, five.” Marvin: “Wrong. You see?”
viii. “Ha! What do you know of always? You say ‘always’ to me, who, because of the silly little errands your organic life forms keep on sending me through time on, am now thirty-seven times older than the Universe itself?”
ix. “Life? Don’t talk to me about life”
Being Ejected in the Space from a Vogon Ship
“So … er, what happens next?” “Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds of course …” said Ford. He stuck his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum an old Betelgeusian battle hymn. To Arthur’s eyes he suddenly looked very alien. “So this is it,” said Arthur, “we’re going to die.” “Yes,” said Ford, “except … no! Wait a minute!” he suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried. “What? Where?” cried Arthur twisting round. “No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.”
The Universe
i. “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
ii. “There’s a theory that states that if someone ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There’s another theory that says that this has already happened.”
The Air
“The air seemed to stand still around them, waiting. Arthur wished that the air would go away and mind its own business.”
The Normality
“Please do not be alarmed by anything you see or hear around you. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you.”
The Past
“how can i tell that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”
Poetry
Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
Drunk
“What’s so bad about being drunk?” “Go ask a glass of water.”
The Mighty Ships and a small dog
For thousands of years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across – which happened to be the Earth – where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
The Destination
Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
I Refuse
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer…”
Few more good ones – Uncategorized
i. “One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continuously stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day,’ or ‘You’re very tall,’ or ‘Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?’”
ii. Did you realize that most people’s life are governed by telephone numbers?
iii. what the photon is it?
iv. “We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty”,
v. “Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock”
vi. “She was trying hard to remember what it was that she was trying to forget”
vii. anything that happens, happens. anything that in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.it doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
