DON’T PANIC As my friends all know (or will do thanks to Facebook reminding you) my birthday is next month. Im not celebrating my birthday so please IGNORE it. This is NOT because I am hiding, nor because Im getting older, nor I am a dull person (I may or may not be but thats beside the point as to why Im not celebrating my birthday). I am not celebrating because Im turning only 41. Forty-One is nothing nada, zip, zilch, ZERO. Next year, however Im turning 42 and that, my friends, is, as Deep Thought has computed THE ANSWER to LIFE THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING! As such, next year Im truly celebrating my birthday and it will be HITCH HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY themed birthday. I will wear my house coat and slippers and carry a towel all day*, I will carry a book that says DONT PANIC on the cover. If Jenn arranges a party (Jenn see Life, the Universe and Everything for reference to a good party), it will be a Hitch Hikers party (guests are asked to come as Zaphod, Ford** , Trillian, a whale, a bowl of petunias***, Eccentrica Gallumbits****, Slartibartfast, mice, Deep Thought, or what have you). We will drink beer and eat peanuts, Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters*****, Jynnan Tonnyx******, or water*******. Anyway, in preparation for my 42nd birthday next year I suggest you read the 6 books in the rather inaccurately named trilogy: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 1979, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe 1980, Life, the Universe and Everything 1982, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish 1984, Mostly Harmless 1992, and And Another Thing... 2009 . If you must, then watch the movie (but its not as good as the books), you can always watch the original TV series or better yet, listen to the original radio broadcast. Im sure its on line somewhere. I’m going to attempt to read all six, watch the movie, listen to the radio and watch the original TV series. From Wikipedia ... here is the list of the published forms (in no particular order): Original radio script 1985 2005 Film release 1981 Television series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Primary and Secondary Phases (1978–80) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases (2004–05) There are a series of plays and comics as well as video games, but these are not required reading! Yes this is early warning, but I feel that 42 is such an enormously, important number. I mean you just wont believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly important it is. You may think your tax bill is important, but thats just peanuts to 42... sorry I’m rambling. So be a totally hoopy frood who knows exactly where your towel is and wait a year before wishing me a happy birthday! Im sure that this all sounds a bit egotistical, planning my birthday 390+ days in advance but, as Zaphod says, If theres anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now. *A towel, [The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy] 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-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you cant see it, it cant 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. ** fordprefect.co.uk/ ***Curiously the only thing that went through the petunias mind was, Oh no. Not again. ****GRIN! ***** en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bartending/Cocktails/Pan_Galactic_Gargle_Blaster - there are a number of recipes here I suspect I shall spend the next year figuring out which is the best, please feel free to cast your vote! ******It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N’N-T’N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian “chinanto/mnigs” which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan “tzjin-anthony-ks” which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds. What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs. ******* Ford Prefect- ... Its unpleasantly like being drunk. Arthur Dent- Whats so unpleasant about being drunk? Ford Prefect- You ask a glass of water.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:52:34 +0000