PC Press: Internet/PC_PRESS.ISO/doc/fun/sig.txt

Text File | 1996-03-20 | 17.9 KB | 352 lines

  Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while 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
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from 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.
(The Guide itself in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "There was a point to this story,
but it has temporaly escaped the cronicler's mind."
(So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams)
--
  "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and reckonizable 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 Guide itself in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Not only it is a holly remarkable book [*Hitchhiker's Guide*], it is also
a highly successful one-more popular than the 'Celestial Home Care Omnibus',
better selling than 'Fifty-three More Things to Do in Zero Gravity', and
more controversial than Oolon Coluphid's triology of philosophical
blockbusters, 'Where God Went Wrong', 'Some More Mistakes of God's Greatest
Mistakes' and 'Who Is This God Person Anyway?'
(The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "'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 you exist, and so therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED.'
  'Oh dear', says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a
puff of logic.
(The Guide itself in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "I mean, here we are on the run and everything, we must have the police of
half the Galaxy after us by now, and we stop to pick up hitchhikers. Okay,
so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking,
yeah?"
(Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to
be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand
what's going on, and really being genuinely stupid."
(Tricia McMillan-Trillian and her thoughts in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The
 Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving
yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give
in and save your sanity for later."
(Ford Prefect in Life, The Universe and Everything by 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 menages to get people to let them do it to them.
  To summarize: It is well known-fact that those people who must 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 the problem."
(The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually
beginning to behave rather strangely but beginning to behave in a way that
was strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more
regularly behaved."
(Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent
could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least
being lost in space kept you busy."
(Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Mr. Posser said: 'You were quite entitled to make any suggestion or
protests at the appropriate time, you know.'
  'Appropriate time?' hooted Arthur. 'Appropriate time? The first time I
knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home. I asked him if he'd
come to clean the windows and he said no, he'd come to demolish the house.
He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wipped a couple
of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.'
  'But Mr.Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office
for the last nine months.'
  'Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them,
yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call
attention to them, had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or
anything.'
  'But plans were on display...'
  'On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.'
  'That's the display department.'
  'With a flashlight.'
  'Ah, well, the lights were gone.'
  'So had the stairs.'
  'But look, you found the notice, didn't you?'
  'Yes', said Arthur, 'yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a
locked filing cabinet stuck in disused lavatory with a sign on the door
saying "Beware of the Leopard".'"
(The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
 "We apologize for the inconvenience"
(God's Final Message to His Creation - So Long, And Thanks for All The Fish
by Douglas Adams)
--
    "Have you ever read the instructions on the packet of toothpicks?"
(Wonko the Sane's wife in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams)

    "Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth.
    Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion"
(the sign in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams)
--
  "How *reliable*?" asked Arthur. He gave a hollow laugh. "How shallow is
the ocean?" he asked. "How cold is the sun?"
( Arthur Dent to Fenchurch on Ford Perfect reliability
  in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams)
--
  "He's sort of an old friend," said Arthur, "I-
  "Friend!" cracked the robot pathetically. The word died away in a kind of
dry crackle and flakes of rust fell out of his mouth. "You'll have to excuse
me while I try and remember what the word means. My memory banks are not
what they were, you know, and any word which falls into disuse for a few
zillion years has to get shifted down into auxiliary memory backup. Ah, here
it comes"
  The robot's battered head snapped up a bit as if in thought.
  "Hmmm," he said, "what a curious concept"
  He thought a little longer.
  "No," he said at last, "don't think I ever came across one of those.
Sorry, can't help you there."
( Marvin freaking out on Arthur Dent's words
  in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams)
--
  He also heard the official from the Safety and Civil Reassurance
Administration issue instructions that the planet in ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha must
be made "perfectly safe."
( announcement that Zaphod Beeblebrox has heard
  in Young Zaphod Plays It Safe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "You're one hundred percent positive that the ship which is crashed on the
bottom of this ocean is the ship which you said you were one hundred precent
positive could one hundred percent positively never crash?'
( Zaphod Beeblebrox in Young Zaphod Plays It Safe by Douglas Adams)
--
  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, as has been remarked before often
and accurately, a pretty startling kind of thing. It is, essentially, as the
title implies, a guidebook. The problem is, or rather one of the problems,
for there are many, a sizable number of which are continually clogging up
the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and
especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.

  The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.
  This is :
  Change.
  Read it trough again and you'll get it.
(The Guide itself in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Time is illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
(Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  Ford looked at him severly.
  "And no sneaky knocking Mr.Dent's house down while he's away, all right?",
he said.
  "The mere thought," growled Mr.Prosser, "hadn't even begun to speculate,"
he continued, settling himself back,"about the merest possibility of
crossing my mind."
(Ford Perfect and Mr.Prosser
in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding
the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an
absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was
not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is
now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's
movement in restaurants.

  The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table
is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone
calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of
people who actually turn up, or to the number of the people who subsequently
join them after the show/match/party/gig, or the number of the people who
leave when they see who else has turned up.

  The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now
known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a
recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being
anything other then itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the
one moment of the time at which it is impossible that any member of the
party will arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many
branches of math, including statistics and accountancy and also form the
basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.

 The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the
relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each
item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to
pay for. (The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a
subphenomenon in this field.
(The Guide itself in Life, The Universe And Everything by Douglas Adams)
--
  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
realized 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.
(The Guide itself in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that
bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"
  "How much?" said Arthur.
  "None at all," said Mr. Prosser...
(Arthur Dent and Mr.Prosser
 in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Did I do anything wrong today," he said, " or has the world always been
like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?"
(Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "This must be Thursday," said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his
beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
( Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "This is really amazing," he said, "That is really is truly amazing. That
is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it."
(Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  One of the things Ford Perfect had always found hardest to understand
about humans was their habit of continualy 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?''
(Ford Perfect in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  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."
(Ford Perfect and Arthur Dent
 in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Computer.." said Zaphod... "if you don't open that exit hatch this moment
I shall zap straight off to your major data banks and reprogram you with a
very large ax, got that?"
  Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this.
  Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing
you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and
saying *Blood*...*blood*...*blood*...*blood*...
  Finally Eddie said quietly, "I can see this relationship is something
we're going to have to work at," and the hatchway opened.
(Ford Perfect, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Eddie the Ship's computer
 in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its
current conditions"
(Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems."
(Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up
and went mad now?"
(Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--
  "I was being perfectly serious," said Arthur; "it's just the Universe I'm
never quite sure about."
(Arthur Dent
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect,
quivering the 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?"
(Zaphod Beeblebrox and boring insect
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Listen, you semievolved simian," cut in Zaphod, "go climb the tree will
you?"
(Zaphod Beeblebrox
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "Ford," he said, "how many escape capsules are there?"
  "None," said Ford.
  Zaphod gibberred.
  "Did you *count* them?" he yelled.
  "Twice," said Ford.
(Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Perfect
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  Arthur woke up and instantly regretted it. Hangovers he'd had, but never
anything on this scale. This was it, this was the big one, this was the
ultimate pits. Matter transference beams, he decided, were not as much fun
as, say, a good solid kick in the head.
(The Guide Itself
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second
ten million years, they were worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy
at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."
( Marvin "the paranoid robot"
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "It's the wild color scheme that freaks me," said Zaphod whose love affair
with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. "Every time
you try to operate one of these wierd black controls that are labeled in
black on a black background, a little black light lights up to let you know
you've done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?"
(Zaphod Beeblebrox
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to
account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my
state of mind?"
(The man who rules the Universe
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  "The only word they know is *grunt* and they can't spell it."
(Arthur Dent
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
 "The *Guide* says that there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather a
knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and
miss."
(Ford Prefect
 in The Restaurant at The End of The Universe by Douglas Adams)
--
  Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once
working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had
decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield
sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.
(Arthur Dent in Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams)
--
  "An S.E.P.," he said, "is something that 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. That's what S.E.P. means. 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."
(Ford Prefect in Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams)
--
  "If there's anything more important than my ego around here then I want it
caught and shot now."
(Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
--