So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

by Douglas Adams

Let’s be straight here. If we find something we can’t understand, we like to call it something you can’t understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don’t, and I’m afraid we couldn’t have that. ‘No, first we have to call it something which says it’s ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it’s not what you said it is, but something we say it is. ‘And if it turns out that you’re right, you’ll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a . . . er, “Super-normal . . .” – not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a “Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer”. We’ll probably want to shove a “Quasi” in there somewhere to protect ourselves.