Most of the quotes here will be from the wholly remarkable book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", by Douglas Adams. After all, who else is worth quoting!
THE MORE THAN COMPLETE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE
by DOUGLAS ADAMS
Book 1: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Page 21
"The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the
subject of towels.
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 (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if your can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); 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: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his
towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, 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 hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker 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 know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you
sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where
his towel is.” (Ford Prefect is one of the main characters. Sass: know,
be aware of, meet...; Hoopy: really together guy; Frood: really
amazingly together guy.)"
Page 17
Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterward.
The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.
Take the juice from one bottle of the Ol’ Janx Spirit, it says.
Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V - Oh, that Santraginean seawater, it says, Oh, those Santraginean fish!
Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost).
Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those happy hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia.
Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odors of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle, sweet and mystic.
Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink.
Sprinkle Zamphuor.
Add an olive.
Drink ... but ... very carefully ....
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.
Page 28
Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.
He is ideal presidency fodder!*
*....... The President in particular is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria, Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had - he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Page 39
Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.
They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.
Page 41 "You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
Page 42
“The Babel fish,” said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leech like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
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