Oh No, Not Again!
Ways "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" is bizarrely relevant to everyday life
To read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is to add a patina of whimsy over the rest of your life. It’s the oddest thing, to be doing some banal task and suddenly catch yourself thinking:
“This is just like that time a sperm whale and a pot of petunias spontaneously came into being and splattered onto the ground of an alien planet”.
And yet, that’s the nature of your reality after being exposed to this awesome trilogy. (So awesome that it couldn’t be contained in just three books.) Below are the mundane happenings that most remind me of the strange characters and concepts in Douglas Adams’ much-beloved science fiction comedy.
Taxing reasons
“He’s spending a year dead for tax reasons” explains Hotblack Desiato’s bodyguard while the legendary frontman of Disaster Area, a band whose decibel range puts them in contravention of several strategic arms limitations treaties, is propped up at a platinum table, stuffed into an equally platinum suit.
Gloriously inert. Utterly impervious to inanity. Such bliss.
While tax avoidance tops the list, the utility of spending a stint as a stiff is endless. Does the hairdresser want to chitchat about my weekend plans? No can do; I’m spending my trim temporarily dead. And every baby shower and team-building exercise. I’d love to attend, but I’d just be deadweight.
Happy Vertical People Transporters
The cowardly (or merely prudent) artificially intelligent elevators manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation have a mind of their own; they’d rather not go down to the lobby floor—seems kinda dangerous.
In terms of intransigent technology—we’ve all kicked a misbehaving CPU or two—things can only get much, much worse with sentience.
Six nine
Everyone knows the answer to life, the universe and everything in it is the number 42.
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”
Later on, the absurd ‘question’ to this answer is divined by pulling tiles out of a bag, it’s “What is six multiplied by nine?”*
Learning the solution doesn’t mean you ever understood the question.
Art of flying
One time while getting cash out of the ATM, I forgot my PIN. It’s 3896, by the way.** The harder I thought about it, the more the digits eluded me, slipping out of my mind’s grasp like a Water Wigglers Sensory Tube. Or a slinky. Or some other popular-in-the-90s toy. Fortunately, it was at that moment that I recalled the trick to flying:
There is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Easy. What I needed to do was relax and let muscle memory take over. I simply needed to forget that I’d forgotten my PIN.
Don’t panic
The Guide is emblazoned with the words “Don’t Panic” which is always stellar advice.
Ameglian Major Cow
Found at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, this breed of cow wants nothing more than to be braised in white wine sauce—and will tell you so solicitously. Every time I chow down on a steak I wonder what vegetarians would make of such an animal.
"Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there."
Is consent really the be-all-end-all? And are you having the shoulder or the rump?
Lack of perspective vortex
“It is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.”
There's a little corner of Youtube where books are primarily prized as rectangular decorative objects to be stacked under vases or stored spine first in bookcases to achieve a trendily minimalist backdrop known as “BookTube”.
Whenever the typical BookTuber reviews a non-fiction book, I can only wonder: what’s the point of a recitation of its main points? Why not connect what you’ve read to other bits of knowledge acquired or events experienced? And if you can’t, why not read 15-minute summaries instead? You’ll save time and, apparently, lose nothing in the process.
What many BookTubers are doing is the equivalent of being hooked up to the Total Perspective Vortex machine which can relate the entire universe to just one object, such as a piece of fairy cake, and then stumbling out of it with only things to say about the sponginess of that particular baked good. Against all odds: de-contextualised cake despite a tool—the mind—that can see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.
Mostly harmless
“Mostly harmless” is how the Guide describes Earth. It is also how I’ll be describing myself in job interviews.
Why do panellists resort to “describe yourself in three words”? Yes, I can string together several positive adjectives—just watch me. Driven, proactive, shoe—dammit, foiled again!
Digital watches
Speaking of Earth, there are many possible explanations as to why we haven’t been graced with a visit from an alien ambassador (or a fleet of warships). Perhaps aliens have simply decided against visiting:
…an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Could Earth be… mostly charmless?
Really puts things into perspective. It also reminds me to rein in my enthusiasm for smartwatches, lest any aliens were to think me unsophisticated. (It’s important to dedicate a lot of your energy to worrying about what others think of you, including hypothetical Little Green Men.)
Fenchurch station
Arthur’s girlfriend, Fenchurch, is so named after having been conceived in the ticket line at Fenchurch railway station. I think of her every time I’m in a mile-long queue.
Vogon poetry
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me, (with big yawning)
As plurdled gabbleblotchits, in midsummer morning
On a lurgid bee
My litmus test for how unendurable any given situation is is to ask myself if I’d rather be listening to Vogon poetry.
Arthur and Ford choose the cold vacuum of space and certain death over having to hear another stanza. Would I do the same to get out of every workplace meeting? (Yes.)
Cathedral of Hate
“DO NOT BE ALARMED”
It’s important to develop neuroses based on incredibly unlikely scenarios, such as, “Was that bug I smooshed also killed by me in its past life? And in the one before that? And before that when it was but an innocent bowl of petunias?” If so, does it have a little grudge on me? I’m blushing just thinking about it!
It’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven with a Buddhist twist, except that it will take place in your personal hell, inside a cathedral your most ardent enemy has built as a monument to their utter loathing of every molecule of your being. (So flattering!)
Don’t be petty about their right to homicidal rage; turnabout is fair play. Oh, and don’t try telling this poor tormented soul, “It’s just a coincidence”—they weren’t reincarnated yesterday, you know.
The Asylum
After finding step-by-step instructions on a set of toothpicks, Wonko the Sane (formerly John Watson, marine biologist) created The Asylum by turning his house, an insanity-free zone, inside out. It’s hoped the rest of the universe, now safely institutionalised, gets the help it needs and makes a full recovery.
Madness and bedlam, everywhere I turn, but at least I have the sanctuary of my home.
Dirty telephone receivers
Trapped with the passengers of Ship B, destined for the sun but rather ending up on prehistoric Earth, Arthur and Ford learn that most of them held various useless occupations, such as telephone sanitiser, back on their home planet.
At my first office job fresh out of uni, I got a full-on rash from a telephone receiver and was reminded of the leaders and scientists of Ship A and the artisans of Ship C who succumbed to a terrible disease shortly after colonising their new world. The culprit? A dirty telephone receiver.
Much like the passengers aboard space arks A and C, I’m positive some innocuous wrench in the works will be the end of us all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go disinfect my phone.
Footnotes
*Apparently, in base 13, 6x9 does indeed equal 42. Furthermore, 42 in ASCII is an asterisk symbol (a wildcard for everything) meaning life’s what you make of it.
**If this is, in fact, your personal identification number, I apologise unreservedly for publishing it on the internet.
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