And Another Thing... (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book 6)

by Eoin Colfer

Guide Note: Remembering is generally a two-stage process involving dialogue between the conscious and subconscious parts of the brain. The subconscious opens proceedings by throwing up the relevant memory, an act which releases a spurt of self-congratulatory endorphins.

Every time she looked into her daughter’s eyes, it was like staring into pools of her own guilt.

“Favor?” spluttered Ford, not giving a damn who heard. “If you wanted to do us a favor, you could have transported us away from the exploding planet.”

Throughout recorded history people have used constructs to avoid reality.

For years things were rosy, all happy snores and money in the bank, until the computer happened to randomly wake up five people who did not have the population’s best interests at heart. These people, let’s call them assholes, realized that while the cats were indulging themselves in their favorite virtual fantasies, the mice could strip the planet bare and live like les grandes fromages in the real Universe.

is going to be great, you tell yourself. I am about to experience an energy shift to a new plane of existence. What will it be like? Will I make new friends? Do they have beer?”

The man barely had time to glance skyward in confused wonderment before an emerald death ray blasted him and his ginger companion to atoms.

Ford cradled Arthur’s cheeks in his palms. “Life is about moments, Arthur,” he said seriously. “That’s the secret. Moments are longer than you think. If you add up all the good moments, then, you know. It’s like ages.”

Planetary catastrophes are no big deal. They happen all the time.

Lol!

Physically Vogons are not attractive creatures. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the beholder won’t be a Vogon, because even Vogons know how ugly they are. A Vogon head resembles nothing more than a giant prune with extra deep wrinkles for the eyes and mouth. The body is a vast green buttery mound of flesh with too few bones per square foot and too many folds and flaps. The limbs are weak and ineffectual, and seem almost random in their placement. If a disturbed child were given a hard-boiled egg, a raisin, and some spaghetti strands to play with, whatever the child came up with would look like one Vogon or other.

Whenever Jeltz played the epithet game, he always came back to his father’s pet name for him. Jeltz the Utter Bastard. That said it all, really.

Toadstool mandarins are a form of toxic jellyfish whose tentacles are loaded with entheogenic venom. The effects of a mandarin sting are threefold. The first is a sharp stinging sensation; the second a nasty red welt, which may fester if not treated with a salve of toadstool mandarin doo-doo. And the third is a bolt of self-awareness, thanks to the entheogens in the venom. Having been stung, a victim’s typical reaction will be something like: Owww. Zark, that hurts. Then: Oh no. Look at this nasty red welt. I’m in the swimsuit competition later. And finally: What? I’m a latent misogynist with father issues!

Throughout recorded history the ability to “state one’s case well” has generally had about as much success as “talking things out reasonably” or “putting aside our differences.” The people who use these tactics generally mean well and would make excellent motivational speakers or kindergarten teachers, but on no account should they be put in charge of situations where lives are at stake.

Lol!

Strolling into a meeting wearing a comfortable robe and smelling of incense, with a sincere desire to iron out difficulties, is, perversely, a surefire way to get everyone killed.

“So. An old standard next. Presuming your application is successful, where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” Cthulhu brightened. Thank you, Hastur, he beamed into space. “In five years I will have razed this planet, eaten its young, and stacked your skulls high in my honor.” He sat back satisfied. Succinct and informative, a textbook answer.

Zaphod pounded the air like a frustrated philosopher trying to force an existentialist concept into a pragmatist mind.

As a child, Zaphod had been diagnosed with ADHDDAAADHD (ntm) ABT which stood for Always Dreaming His Dopey Days Away, Also Attention Deficit Hyperflatulence Disorder (not to mention) A Bit Thick.

Ha! Ha! Ha! What an alphabet soup.

There must be a way, he thought. A way to save the Earthlings and not get myself flushed out of a torpedo tube.

“Listen, odd child. You may learn something.” “From you? No thanks. I think I’d rather stay stupid.” “Your wish has already been granted.”

“Don’t judge unless you want someone else to come along, possibly someone green, and judge you, and you’ll say, Come on, what’s all this judging for, don’t judge unless you want someone else to come along and judge you, and so on.” Ford paused for breath. “I’ve had a few beers so I’m paraphrasing.”

Hillman quickly realized that when a god put in a line on page two about taking a sabbatical for divine contemplation, that actually meant that he had been unemployed for the past ten thousand years.

“Appease the Cheese,”

Beer, beer, wonderful beer. The more you drink the more you fear.

Not true.

Shark eye knothead. or Zark. I’m not dead.

“And if you have any complaints, please feel free to write them on a bumpy log then hammer said log into your auditory canal.”

It was easier to be a Vogon if you were an idiot.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a hundred percent accurate. Reality, however, is not as reliable.”

“there is no such thing as an ending, or a beginning for that matter, everything is middle.”

Arthur amended his last thought to They might not kill each other for at least a month, then caught the fire in Random’s glare and realized he was being about a fortnight too optimistic.

Guide Note: The whole martyrdom concept has been working well for gods since the mid-morning of time when Raymon the Louche, resident God of Tarpon VII, avoided making a ruling over who owned what baby by faking his own death through orgasmic overdose. Raymon realized that people liked him much better now that he was dead and they tended to base their decisions on third-hand hearsay of stuff he might have whispered under his breath to a deaf leper in a cave. Raymon’s check still went directly into his account, and now all he had to do was appear in shadowy form to a virgin once every few thousand years and say something cryptic like The pebbles will save us all, be sure that you covet the pebbles. The Raymon method became such a successful model that soon gods all over the Galaxy were faking their deaths and cursing Raymon for copyrighting death by orgasmic overdose.

Lol!