Language

“I watched the gorilla's eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don't listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn't been born of that life?

I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one.”

Douglas Adams, 'Last Chance to See'

Marvin. And Zaphod

"It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level." Marvin
 
Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.
‘Hey this is terrific!” he said. ‘Someone down there is trying to kill us!’
‘Terrific’, said Arthur.
‘But don’t you see what this means?’
‘Yes. We’re going to die.’
‘Yes, but apart from that.’
‘Apart from that?’
‘It means we must be on to something!’
‘How soon can we get off it?’
'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

Classic Adams :) :)

So Zaphod and Trillian are stuck on the spaceship 'Heart of Gold', floating around for days in some remote area of the Galaxy, and Zaphod is going a little out of his mind - and he's drinking.

"That he had thought about what his position actually was and the renewed shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first down and check if it was all right.

'Freedom.' he said aloud.

Trillian came on the bridge at that point and said several things on the subject of freedom.

'I can't cope with it,' he said darkly, and sent a third drink down to see why the second hadn't yet reported on the condition of the first. He looked uncertainly at both of her and preferred the one on the right.

He poured a drink down his other throat with the plan that it would head the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would get the second to pull itself together. Then all three would go off in search of the first, give it a good talking to, and maybe a bit of a sing as well.

He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that, so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully, and a sixth for moral support.

'You're drinking too much,'  said Trillian.

His heads collided trying to sort out the four of her he could now see into a single person...............

He boggled at her. He had never seen anyone sit on their own lap before.

'Wow,' he said. He had another drink.

Page 356, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe',  Part 2, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

A problem of Grammar :)

"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with...

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's 'Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations'. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it.

The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father."

Page 216, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

Didn't you hear I come in six-packs? :)

"Well, if you'd let me explain, sir,' said the insect tapping the most petulant of all the tentacles at his disposal, 'I'm afraid that isn't possible right now as Mr.Zarniwoop is on an intergalactic cruise.'
Hell, thought Zaphod.
'When's he going to be back?' he said.
'Back, sir? He's in his office.'
Zaphod paused whilst he tried to sort this particular thought in his mind. He didn't succeed.

'The cat's on an intergalactic cruise....in his office?' He leaned forward and gripped the tapping tentacle.
'Listen, three eyes,' he said, 'don't try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.'

'Well, just who do you think you are, honey?' flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, 'Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?'
'Count the heads,' said Zaphod in a low rasp.
The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.
'You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?' it squeaked.
'Yeah', said Zaphod, 'but don't shout it out or they'll all want one.'
'The Zaphod Beeblebrox?'
'No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six-packs?'

The insect rattled its tentacles together in agitation.
'But, sir,' it squealed, 'I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead........'
'Yeah, that's right,' said Zaphod, 'I just haven't stopped moving yet.'

Page 178, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

Would it save you a lot of time? :)

Therapy, at all times. Thank you, Adams.

'Are you trying to tell me,' said Arthur, slowly and with control, 'that you originally.....made the earth?'
'Oh yes,' said Slartibartfast. 'Did you ever go to a place...I think it was called Norway?'
'No,' said Arthur, 'no, I didn't.'
'Pity,' said Slartibartfast, 'that was one of mine. Won an award you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear of its destruction.'
'You were upset!'
'Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered so much. It was a quite shocking cock-up.'
'Huh?' said Arthur.
'The mice were furious.'
'The mice were furious?'
'Oh yes,' said the old man mildly.
'Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but...'
'Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?'

'Look, said Arthur, 'would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?'

Page 117, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Trilogy in Four Parts', Douglas Adams

Adams

"It's the birthday of science fiction writer Douglas Adams born in Cambridge, England (1952-2001). He was unemployed, depressed, living in his mother's house, when he remembered a night from years before. He was a teenager traveling around Europe with his guidebook The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe, and that night he was lying in a field in Innsbruck, drunk, looking up at the stars, and he thought somebody should write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well. And so years later, he wrote the radio play The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, chronicling the adventures of the kindly and boring Arthur Dent, who is still wearing his dressing gown when he is whisked away from his suburban English home just in time to escape Earth being demolished by an interstellar highway."

Thank you, Adams. It is only your insanity that keeps me sane on some days.

"Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ...
"You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."

Let us prepare!

Can one possibly go wrong listening to Douglas Adams? :) :)  My motto for 2012:

"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."

Douglas Adams

This morning's theme music, read obsessive repeat: Diversity, in here: http://soundcloud.com/dreimalbla

Someone was bound to notice sooner or later :)

Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"

"The what?" said Richard.

"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."

"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."

"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ...

"You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."

Douglas Adams

In a manner of speaking...

"...He helped Arthur to some peanuts. 'How do you feel?', he asked him.
'Like a military academy,'said Arthur, 'bits of me keep on passing out.'

Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.
'If I asked you where the hell we were,' said Arthur weakly, 'would I regret it?'
Ford stood up. 'We're safe,' he said.
'Oh good,'said Arthur.
'We're in a small galley cabin,'said Ford, 'in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.'

'Ah,' said Arthur,'this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."

'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'
Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams: Parrots, the Universe, and Everything

Best talk I've ever heard in my life.

"Blind river dolphins, reclusive lemurs, a parrot as fearless as it is lovelorn ... Douglas Adams' close encounters with these rare and unusual animals reveal that evolution, ever ingenious, can be fickle too -- in a University of California talk that sparkles with his trademark satiric wit."

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_and_everything.html

Withdumb

Douglas Adams, of course.

Definition of Withdumb: A quality you possess if you hold a popular and unfounded point of view.

Withdumb is different from herd instinct. A person who possesses withdumb could achieve the condition with no help whatsoever from the group . For example, if you were the only person in Mongolia who believed in astrology, you would have withdumb, but it wouldn't be because your herd influenced you.

It's easier to cling to an irrational opinion if you know that somewhere in the world there are lots of people who think the same way, especially if those other people seem smart or authoritative.

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/withdumb/

Towel Day :)

Towel Day is celebrated every 25 May as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. On this day, fans carry a towel with them to demonstrate their love for the books and the author, as referenced in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy :) :) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day)

See pictures and details of events that happened yesterday, world-wide - http://towelday.org/

The original quote that referenced the greatness of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams' work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
”
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Somebody Else's Problem :)

"Somebody Else's Problem (also known as Someone else's problem or SEP) is an effect that causes people to ignore matters which are generally important to a group but may not seem specifically important to the individual. Author Douglas Adams's description of the effect, which he playfully ascribed to a physical "SEP field", has helped to make it a generally recognized phenomenon. The label is now widely used to focus public attention on matters that might have been overlooked and, less commonly, to identify concerns that a depressed individual should ignore. It has also been employed as trivial shorthand to describe factors that are "out of scope" in the current context.

...Douglas Adams has his character Ford Prefect describe Somebody Else's Problem in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book of the five-book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy:

"..An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem

A suffusion of yellow

From "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul", Douglas Adams

"A suffusion of yellow." (A calculator's response to the question of any math problem with an answer larger than four.)

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.

It was his subconscious which told him this - that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.

Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication :)

It said: "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

"For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

Intelligence

"...Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons."

Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy