confessions

douglas adams

- author

  1. total entries 45
  2. follower 1
  3. score 5486

governing people

douglas adams
The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

(also: people)
(also: problem)

space

douglas adams
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space

If you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However, what with space being the mindboggling size it is, the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.

(also: infinity)

real life

douglas adams
It is often said that a disproportionate obsession with purely academic or abstract matters indicates a retreat from the problems of real life.(also: life)

However, most of the people engaged in such matters say that this attitude is based on three things: ignorance, stupidity and nothing else.(also: stupid)

Philosophers for example argue that they are very much concerned with the problems posed by "real life": like for instance "What do we mean by real?" and "How can we reach an empirical definition of life?" and so on.

One definition of life, albeit not a particularly useful one, might run something like this:

Life is like a grapefruit: It's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half of one for breakfast. (also: breakfast)

One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some sort of grip, whether it's the intoxicating seas of Santraginus V where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in, the fire storms of Frastra, where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere.

new york

douglas adams
(n.) a city
In the winter time the temperature falls well below the legal minimum, or rather it would do if anybody had the common sense to set a legal minimum. The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

In the summer it's too darn hot. It's one thing to be the sort of life form that thrives on heat and finds, as the Frastrans do, that the temperature range between 40,000 and 40,004 is very equable, but it's quite another to be the sort of animal that has to wrap itself up in lots of other animals at one point in your planet's orbit, and then find, half an orbit later, that your skin's bubbling.

Spring is over-rated. A lot of the inhabitants of New York will honk on mightily about the pleasures of spring, but if they actually knew the first thing about the pleasures of spring they would know of at least five thousand nine hundred and eighty three better places to spend it than New York, and that's just on the same latitude.

Fall, though, is the worst. Few things are worse than fall in New York. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but most of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyway, so their opinion can and should be discounted. When it's fall in New York, the air smells as if someone's been frying goats in it, and if you are keen to breathe, the best plan is to open a window and stick your head in a building.

(also: new orleans)

bypasses

douglas adams
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.
(also: airbus)
(also: boeing)
(also: toyota corolla)

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

douglas adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book.
In fact it is probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either.

(It is not an Earth book, and has never been published on Earth.)
(also: Earth)
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one-more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?(also: God)

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great :Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.(also: DON'T PANIC )

It looks rather like a largish electronic calculator. It has about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looks insanely complicated, and this is one of the reasons why the snug plastic it fitted into has the words Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device is in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.

the creator

douglas adams
(also: god)
The Great Creator
Otherwise known as "Some guy trying to do his dissertation".

The wonders you see before you were created during undergraduate study of English and Contemporary Media in Cardiff Metropolitan University.
The wily little git managed to worm his way out of writing 10,000 words for a dissertation, but got more than he bargained for when he took on this ridiculous project.

He is quoted as saying:
"Creating universes is hard work, I've no idea how all those other deities manage it!"

What an arse.

earth

douglas adams
A computer built by a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings to calculate once and for all the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, to which the answer is 42.

This computer was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet - especially by the strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program. And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense.

Sadly however, just before the critical moment of readout, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way - so they claimed - for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever.

digital watches

douglas adams
Odd little electronic devices worn around the wrist (or other convenient appendage). The apparent function of these instruments, is to determine the time of day, though their actual suitability for this purpose is somewhat questionable.

The problem is that the process of programming one is so insanely complicated and involves so much stress, anxiety and general irritation, by the time you have actually figured out how to set it to, say, 5:42 p.m. you are much more likely to cut off your hands at the wrists and dispose of them, watch and all, than do something so thick-witted as to actually wear it. For this reason most enlightened regions of the Galaxy have given up on the whole business, and they are now extremely hard to come by.

One of the few remaining civilizations still hanging on to this affectation is the planet Earth, whose ape-descended lifeforms still consider the digital a pretty neat idea.

(also: time)



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