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He had extracted himself from the Cambridge one-way system by the usual method, which involved going round and round it faster and faster until he achieved a sort of escape velocity and flew off at a tangent in a random direction, which he was now trying to identify and correct for.
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Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious. Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her. "Why's this fish so bloody good?" he demanded, angrily."
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fish
funny
humor
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2ed1dfe
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I have terrible periods of lack of confidence. I just don't believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view.
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self-esteem
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8d7211e
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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 wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.
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Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, 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 Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of ..
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On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying "Wait."
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Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.
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mr-prosser
incompetence
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I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash." ... Arthur asked him to repeat what he had just said because he hadn't quite understood his meaning. Ford repeated it. "The wash?" said Arthur. "The space time wash," said Ford. Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat. "Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?" "Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum." "Ah," n..
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It's easy to think that as a result of the extinction of the dodo, we are now sadder and wiser, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that we are merely sadder and better informed.
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life-lessons
extinction
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c3b8f84
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Will you stop counting!' snarled Zaphod. 'Yes,' said Ford Prefect, 'in three minutes and thirty-five seconds.
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There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.
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There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!
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I'm very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are..
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relationship
dirk-gently
fundamental
interconnectedness
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the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
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The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn't feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck anyway, and certainly not whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying.
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In the stillness, a fly would not have dared clear it's throat.
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There is no "tropical island paradise" I know of which remotely matches up to the fantasy ideal that such a phrase is meant to conjure up, or even to what we find described in holiday brochures. It's natural to put this down to the discrepancy we are all used to finding between what advertisers promise and what the real world delivers. It doesn't surprise us much any more. So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear describe..
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Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.
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There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
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There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.
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He was a man who was charged with the work he did in life because he was not one to ask questions - not so much on account of any natural quality of discretion as because he simply could never think of any questions to ask. ... On the strength of which he had guaranteed himself regular employment for as long as he cared to live.
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humor
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Dirk Gently is the name under which I now trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself." "Absolutely, I know how you feel. Most of the fourteenth century, for instance, was pretty grim," agreed Reg earnestly."
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The Universe, the whole infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small.
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Proving nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer to speak my weight." "I can do that for you, sure," enthused the computer, punching out more ticker tape. "I can even work out your personality problems to ten decimal places if it will help."
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Zaphod left the controls for Ford to figure out, and lurched over to Arthur. "Look, Earthman," he said angrily, "you've got a job to do, right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right?" "What, that thing?" said Arthur, "I thought we'd forgotten about that." "Not me, baby. Like the mice said, it's worth a lot of money in the right quarters. And it's all locked up in that head thing of yours." "Yes but ..." "But nothing! Think about it. Th..
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Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax.
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The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.
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One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living.
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living
wisdom
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There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with the feeling.
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Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems."
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After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows p..
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humour
zaire
douglas-adams
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Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its 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 hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them. Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Something off the shoulder perhap..
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All right," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not from Guildford at all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?" Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way. "I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer. "Why, do you think it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?" Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment, what with the world being about to end." --
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alien
aliens-abduct
arthur-dent
betelgeuse
dent
douglas
douglas-adams
ford
ford-prefect
world-ending
planet
arthur
pub
prefect
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The Babel fish 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 the nerve signals picked up from the s..
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I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin,"
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he found the idea of someone who was not only privileged, but was also sorry for himself because he thought the world didn't really understand the problems of privileged people, deeply obnoxious.
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4131c63
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It's quicker, easier, and involves less licking
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licking
fans
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9f2ef4b
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In Santa Barbara they stopped at a fish restaurant in what seemed to be a converted warehouse. Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious. Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her. "Why's this fish so bloody good?" he demanded, angrily. "Please excuse my friend," said Fenchurch to the startled waitress. "I think he's having a nice day at last."
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Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink.
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music
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dde7de5
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My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber
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5d1a076
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And the most interesting natural structure? A giant, two-thousand-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News. The photograph was very convincing, and I'm only surprised that more-reputable journals like New Scientist, or even just The Sun, haven't followed up with more details. We should be told.
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jupiter
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Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.
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b5b717a
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Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.
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Totally mad,' he said, 'utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.
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