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“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?
He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
vitriolic
to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before
Sir Patrick Stewart is Shakespearean trained actor who must’ve cringed every time he had to split his infinitive.
Allusion to Star Treck
pleasure, feller,
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
Paranoid Android,
“It’ll all end in tears, I know it,
beauty was truth, truth beauty
Oscar Wilde
“Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet—people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It’s a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated,
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Like breweries in Fort Collins
The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of
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Grammar and tense joke
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he beamed, “is everyone having one last wonderful time?” “Yes,” called out the sort of people who call out “yes” when comedians ask them if they’re having a wonderful time.
“And do we also have, do we have … a party of minor deities from the Halls of Asgard?” Away to his right came a rumble of thunder. Lightning arced across the stage. A small group of hairy men with helmets sat looking very pleased with themselves, and raised their glasses to him.
The long dark tea time of the soul
Paranoid Android!
“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.
the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another—particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.
The outer steel wall—which was painted in that sickly shade of pale green which they use in schools, hospitals and mental asylums to keep the inmates subdued
“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.” “Why not?” “Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.
the long dark teatime of the soul.
“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.
“What I need,” shouted Ford, by way of clarifying his previous remarks, “is a strong drink and a peer group.
He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down.
Paul McCartney
this time he sounded like someone in Hades with bronchitis.
starship Titanic
His head was swimming freestyle, but his stomach was doing the butterfly.
Thunder God. “Didn’t I see you
Thor
Try to count electric sheep.
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
His white hair seemed to be waving at someone it knew in the next room.
“We can do it together if you like,” said Fenchurch. “Was I found …” “ … in a handbag,” joined in Arthur. “ … in the Left Luggage office,” they said together. “ … at Fenchurch Street Station,” they finished. “And the answer,” said Fenchurch, “is no.” “Fine,” said Arthur.
The importance of being Earnest allusion!
John Watson,
“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.
The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?” “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.” “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?” “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.” “But,” said
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she was sufficiently experienced to be able to shoot accurately from the hip.
It’ll all end in tears.
myopically,
We all like to congregate,” he went on, “at boundary conditions.” “Really?” said Arthur. “Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
If you’d like to know, I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in three dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability.
