This is the Message Centre for Lisa the Freak // Poet by the Toga
Going for the longest
Lisa the Freak // Poet by the Toga Started conversation Oct 3, 1999
forum entry in one posting. So here are:
Hitchhiker Quotes:
Hitchhiker's Guide Qoutes… Long forum beware
"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who
want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it
caught and shot now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ford, you're turning into a penguin; stop it!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"This must be a Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people unhappy and been generally regarded as a bad move."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In other words," said Benjy, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain-so we want to buy it off you."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If you want to survive in life, you've got to know where your towel is."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ah!" said Benjy. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled the phrase around a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent! Sound very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie, baby, we are made!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
"And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Life!" said Marvin, "Don't talk to me about life."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I had to go down to the cellar."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch," Arthur continued.
"Ah. The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"Well you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes. Yes I did. I found it at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A computer chattered to itself in alarm, as an airlock opened and closed
for no apparent reason.
This was in fact because reason was out to lunch."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself into its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it."
"And what happened?"
"It committed suicide."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Have another drink," said Trillian," enjoy yourself."
"Which?" said Arthur." The two are mutually exclusive."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No, don't move...You'd better be prepared for the jump to hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"McDonald's, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The ships hung in the air, the exact same way that bricks don't"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Okay, baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't mention it," said Marvin." Oh, you didn't"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone 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 is another that states that this has already happened."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on it's lips.
"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on it's haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hindquarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Parking cars. What else do you do in a car park?"
"Okay, alright." Zaphod hung up the phone.
"Let's go guys, Marvin's down in the car park."
"The car park? What's he doing in the car park," Arthur asked.
"Parking cars, dum dum. What else?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
and I got Sidney's leg."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arthur: "Er...Tell me...tell me did the computer say what was occupying it? I just ask out of interest"
Their eyes were riveted on him.
A: "and, er... well, that's it really, just asking."
Zaphod: "What have you done to it Monkeyman?
A: "Well nothing in fact. It's just that I think a short while ago it was trying to work out how to..."
All: "Yes?
A: "Make some tea."
Computer: "That's right you guys, just coping with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...and the Universe," continued the waiter, determined not to be deflected
on his home stretch, "will explode later for your pleasure."
Ford's head swivelled slowly toward him. He spoke with feeling.
"Wow," he said, "what sort of drinks do you serve in this place?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You mean that's it?" said Ford.
"That's it"
"Six by Nine. Forty-two"
"That's it. That's all there is"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life, The Universe, and Everything
"How are you?" she (Trillian) said over the general intercom.
"Fine," he said brightly, "terribly well."
"Where are you?"
"In the bathroom."
"What are you doing?"
"Staying here."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They knew when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at the midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications, or even just a child with a retroussé, that, too, would often be taken as a sign.
So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.
And each new sign signified the same thing--that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He drained (his drink) quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first one down and check that it was all right.
'Freedom,' he said aloud.
Trillian came onto the bridge at that point and said several enthusiastic 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. He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that so he sent a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support.
'You're drinking too much,' said Trillian. "
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I will go mad!" he (Arthur Dent) announced.
"Good idea," said Ford.
Arthur's brain somersaulted. His jaw did push-ups.
"I went mad for a while," said Ford, "did me no end of good."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important facts from Galactic History, number two:
(reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book of Popular Galactic History.)
Since this Galaxy began, vast civilisations have arisen and fallen, risen and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be:
(a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick history sick or some such thing, and
(b) stupid.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish!
"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc.and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around.
Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mostly Harmless
"Why do we need to think? Can't we just sit here and go BLBLBLBLBLB with our lips for a bit?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"O, sandwich maker from Bob!" He pronounced. He paused and furrowed his brow with pious contemplation. "Life will be a very great deal less weird without you!" Arthur was stunned. "Do you know," he said, "I think that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And you want me to be its restaurant critic," said Ford.
"We would value your input."
"Kill!" shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The villagers were absolutely hypnotised by all these wonderful magic
images flashing over her wrist. They had only ever seen one spaceship
crash, and it had been so frightening, violent and shocking and had
caused so much horrible devastation, fire and death that, stupidly,
they had never realised it was entertainment."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You think I'm going to tell you just like that what it took me forty
springs, summers, and autumns of sitting on top of a pole to work out?"
"What about winter?"
"What about winter?"
"Don't you sit on the pole in the winter?"
"Just because I sit up a pole for most of my life," said the man,
"Doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I go south in the winter. Got a beach house.
Sit on the chimney stack."
"Do you have any advice for a traveller?"
"Yes. Get a beach house."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Some creatures that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but then creatures that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyway, so their opinions can and SHOULD be discluded."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know as they are not of the same kind. What I see and what I know cannot replace what you see and what you know because that would be to replace you yourself."
--- The man on the pole
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Some of the villagers wondered why almighty Bob would send his only begotten sandwich maker in a burning, fiery chariot, rather than one that would have landed more quietly instead of setting the forest on fire, filling it with ghosts, and also injuring the sandwich maker quite badly."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anything that happens, happens"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anything, 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."
Some Information to Help You on Your Way
1. Area: Infinite.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "infinite".
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow, that's big," time. Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
2. Imports: None.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.
3. Exports: None.
See Imports
4. Population: None
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there most be a finite number of inhabited worlds. And finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any person you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
5. Monetary Units: None
In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altarian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. It exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Nigis are not negotiable currency, because Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.
6. Art: None
The Function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough- see point one.
7. Sex: None.
Well, in fact there is an awful lot in this, largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art or anything else that might keep all the non-existent people of the Universe occupied.
However, it is not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now because it really is terribly complicated. For further information see Guide chapters seven, nine, ten, eleven, fourteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one to eighty-four inclusive, and in fact most of the rest of the Guide.
Going for the longest
Lisa the Freak // Poet by the Toga Posted Oct 3, 1999
Hitchhiker's Guide Qoutes… Long forum beware
"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who
want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it
caught and shot now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ford, you're turning into a penguin; stop it!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"This must be a Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people unhappy and been generally regarded as a bad move."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In other words," said Benjy, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain-so we want to buy it off you."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If you want to survive in life, you've got to know where your towel is."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ah!" said Benjy. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled the phrase around a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent! Sound very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie, baby, we are made!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
"And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Life!" said Marvin, "Don't talk to me about life."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I had to go down to the cellar."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch," Arthur continued.
"Ah. The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"Well you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes. Yes I did. I found it at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A computer chattered to itself in alarm, as an airlock opened and closed
for no apparent reason.
This was in fact because reason was out to lunch."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself into its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it."
"And what happened?"
"It committed suicide."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Have another drink," said Trillian," enjoy yourself."
"Which?" said Arthur." The two are mutually exclusive."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No, don't move...You'd better be prepared for the jump to hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"McDonald's, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The ships hung in the air, the exact same way that bricks don't"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Okay, baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't mention it," said Marvin." Oh, you didn't"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone 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 is another that states that this has already happened."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on it's lips.
"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on it's haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hindquarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Parking cars. What else do you do in a car park?"
"Okay, alright." Zaphod hung up the phone.
"Let's go guys, Marvin's down in the car park."
"The car park? What's he doing in the car park," Arthur asked.
"Parking cars, dum dum. What else?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
and I got Sidney's leg."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arthur: "Er...Tell me...tell me did the computer say what was occupying it? I just ask out of interest"
Their eyes were riveted on him.
A: "and, er... well, that's it really, just asking."
Zaphod: "What have you done to it Monkeyman?
A: "Well nothing in fact. It's just that I think a short while ago it was trying to work out how to..."
All: "Yes?
A: "Make some tea."
Computer: "That's right you guys, just coping with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...and the Universe," continued the waiter, determined not to be deflected
on his home stretch, "will explode later for your pleasure."
Ford's head swivelled slowly toward him. He spoke with feeling.
"Wow," he said, "what sort of drinks do you serve in this place?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You mean that's it?" said Ford.
"That's it"
"Six by Nine. Forty-two"
"That's it. That's all there is"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life, The Universe, and Everything
"How are you?" she (Trillian) said over the general intercom.
"Fine," he said brightly, "terribly well."
"Where are you?"
"In the bathroom."
"What are you doing?"
"Staying here."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They knew when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at the midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications, or even just a child with a retroussé, that, too, would often be taken as a sign.
So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.
And each new sign signified the same thing--that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He drained (his drink) quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first one down and check that it was all right.
'Freedom,' he said aloud.
Trillian came onto the bridge at that point and said several enthusiastic 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. He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that so he sent a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support.
'You're drinking too much,' said Trillian. "
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I will go mad!" he (Arthur Dent) announced.
"Good idea," said Ford.
Arthur's brain somersaulted. His jaw did push-ups.
"I went mad for a while," said Ford, "did me no end of good."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important facts from Galactic History, number two:
(reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book of Popular Galactic History.)
Since this Galaxy began, vast civilisations have arisen and fallen, risen and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be:
(a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick history sick or some such thing, and
(b) stupid.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish!
"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc.and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around.
Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mostly Harmless
"Why do we need to think? Can't we just sit here and go BLBLBLBLBLB with our lips for a bit?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"O, sandwich maker from Bob!" He pronounced. He paused and furrowed his brow with pious contemplation. "Life will be a very great deal less weird without you!" Arthur was stunned. "Do you know," he said, "I think that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And you want me to be its restaurant critic," said Ford.
"We would value your input."
"Kill!" shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The villagers were absolutely hypnotised by all these wonderful magic
images flashing over her wrist. They had only ever seen one spaceship
crash, and it had been so frightening, violent and shocking and had
caused so much horrible devastation, fire and death that, stupidly,
they had never realised it was entertainment."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You think I'm going to tell you just like that what it took me forty
springs, summers, and autumns of sitting on top of a pole to work out?"
"What about winter?"
"What about winter?"
"Don't you sit on the pole in the winter?"
"Just because I sit up a pole for most of my life," said the man,
"Doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I go south in the winter. Got a beach house.
Sit on the chimney stack."
"Do you have any advice for a traveller?"
"Yes. Get a beach house."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Some creatures that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but then creatures that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyway, so their opinions can and SHOULD be discluded."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know as they are not of the same kind. What I see and what I know cannot replace what you see and what you know because that would be to replace you yourself."
--- The man on the pole
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Some of the villagers wondered why almighty Bob would send his only begotten sandwich maker in a burning, fiery chariot, rather than one that would have landed more quietly instead of setting the forest on fire, filling it with ghosts, and also injuring the sandwich maker quite badly."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anything that happens, happens"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anything, 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."
Some Information to Help You on Your Way
1. Area: Infinite.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "infinite".
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow, that's big," time. Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
2. Imports: None.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.
3. Exports: None.
See Imports
4. Population: None
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there most be a finite number of inhabited worlds. And finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any person you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
5. Monetary Units: None
In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altarian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. It exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Nigis are not negotiable currency, because Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.
6. Art: None
The Function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough- see point one.
7. Sex: None.
Well, in fact there is an awful lot in this, largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art or anything else that might keep all the non-existent people of the Universe occupied.
However, it is not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now because it really is terribly complicated. For further information see Guide chapters seven, nine, ten, eleven, fourteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one to eighty-four inclusive, and in fact most of the rest of the Guide.
Hitchhiker's Guide Qoutes… Long forum beware
"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who
want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it
caught and shot now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ford, you're turning into a penguin; stop it!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"This must be a Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people unhappy and been generally regarded as a bad move."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In other words," said Benjy, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain-so we want to buy it off you."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If you want to survive in life, you've got to know where your towel is."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ah!" said Benjy. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled the phrase around a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent! Sound very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie, baby, we are made!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
"And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Life!" said Marvin, "Don't talk to me about life."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I had to go down to the cellar."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch," Arthur continued.
"Ah. The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"Well you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes. Yes I did. I found it at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A computer chattered to itself in alarm, as an airlock opened and closed
for no apparent reason.
This was in fact because reason was out to lunch."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself into its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it."
"And what happened?"
"It committed suicide."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Have another drink," said Trillian," enjoy yourself."
"Which?" said Arthur." The two are mutually exclusive."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No, don't move...You'd better be prepared for the jump to hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"McDonald's, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The ships hung in the air, the exact same way that bricks don't"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Okay, baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't mention it," said Marvin." Oh, you didn't"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone 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 is another that states that this has already happened."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on it's lips.
"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on it's haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hindquarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Parking cars. What else do you do in a car park?"
"Okay, alright." Zaphod hung up the phone.
"Let's go guys, Marvin's down in the car park."
"The car park? What's he doing in the car park," Arthur asked.
"Parking cars, dum dum. What else?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
and I got Sidney's leg."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arthur: "Er...Tell me...tell me did the computer say what was occupying it? I just ask out of interest"
Their eyes were riveted on him.
A: "and, er... well, that's it really, just asking."
Zaphod: "What have you done to it Monkeyman?
A: "Well nothing in fact. It's just that I think a short while ago it was trying to work out how to..."
All: "Yes?
A: "Make some tea."
Computer: "That's right you guys, just coping with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...and the Universe," continued the waiter, determined not to be deflected
on his home stretch, "will explode later for your pleasure."
Ford's head swivelled slowly toward him. He spoke with feeling.
"Wow," he said, "what sort of drinks do you serve in this place?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You mean that's it?" said Ford.
"That's it"
"Six by Nine. Forty-two"
"That's it. That's all there is"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life, The Universe, and Everything
"How are you?" she (Trillian) said over the general intercom.
"Fine," he said brightly, "terribly well."
"Where are you?"
"In the bathroom."
"What are you doing?"
"Staying here."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They knew when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at the midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications, or even just a child with a retroussé, that, too, would often be taken as a sign.
So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.
And each new sign signified the same thing--that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He drained (his drink) quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first one down and check that it was all right.
'Freedom,' he said aloud.
Trillian came onto the bridge at that point and said several enthusiastic 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. He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that so he sent a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support.
'You're drinking too much,' said Trillian. "
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I will go mad!" he (Arthur Dent) announced.
"Good idea," said Ford.
Arthur's brain somersaulted. His jaw did push-ups.
"I went mad for a while," said Ford, "did me no end of good."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important facts from Galactic History, number two:
(reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book of Popular Galactic History.)
Since this Galaxy began, vast civilisations have arisen and fallen, risen and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be:
(a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick history sick or some such thing, and
(b) stupid.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish!
"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc.and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around.
Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mostly Harmless
"Why do we need to think? Can't we just sit here and go BLBLBLBLBLB with our lips for a bit?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"O, sandwich maker from Bob!" He pronounced. He paused and furrowed his brow with pious contemplation. "Life will be a very great deal less weird without you!" Arthur was stunned. "Do you know," he said, "I think that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And you want me to be its restaurant critic," said Ford.
"We would value your input."
"Kill!" shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The villagers were absolutely hypnotised by all these wonderful magic
images flashing over her wrist. They had only ever seen one spaceship
crash, and it had been so frightening, violent and shocking and had
caused so much horrible devastation, fire and death that, stupidly,
they had never realised it was entertainment."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You think I'm going to tell you just like that what it took me forty
springs, summers, and autumns of sitting on top of a pole to work out?"
I can't fit any more in!
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