best joke from the Hitchhiker's "trilogy"?
 

Mine is calling the end of the universe a "gnab gib."

Oh, man, it's been too long since I read the books. I enjoyed all of them but the last one. As one of my old friends said of it, "He lost his sense of humor."

You can listen to the radio shows here.

After #4, I quit paying attention even as I read them. I think it was because the stupid joke in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish about whether Dent had a sex life irritated me. I don't know whether Adams lost his humor so much as he grew lazy. Because that's what toilet humor and blue humor are: lazy. Put it this way: After Life, the Universe and Everything the series was a gnab gib.

I have read that, when the original radio series aired, Addams would often be revising the script of an episode while it was airing.

I tried listening to radio episode of Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective once, and didn't make it halfway through.

Not so much a joke as a funny scene, where Zaphoid is being executed by the machine that shows him how insignificant he is to the universe and he walks away unharmed with the total conviction that the is the center of the universe.

I've always appreciated https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/123...logize-for-the ;)
It explains a lot :)

I'm sure there are many others, but it's been a while since I heard/saw/read any of the story.

It's not a quote , but the scene were Marvin the Paranoid Robot who literally has a "brain the size of a planet" has been waiting for the other characters to arrive for ten's of millions of years and has been put to work as a car valet menially parking cars at a parking lot for the entire duration.

re biker-rat; which reminds me of the soon following scene
:)

the one that I remember frequently – and I wonder why – is when, on Magrathea, Marvin and Arthur are left alone and Marvin interviews Arthur about his planet. Roughly: “Are there oceans?” – “Yes, great wide beautiful oceans” – “I hate oceans”.

SEP camouflage: The spaceship becomes “Someone Else's Problem”.

I only saw a few of the early tv programs. But you need a team, or a maniac to keep that up. Presuming Douglas Adams was neither, I'm not surprised the quality went down.

I remember the PBS series. There were so many good jokes that it is hard to pick one.

Arthur Dent's house being demolished at the same time that the Vogons are demolishing the earth. The bum carrying the "end is near" sign turned out to be right.

Deep Thought being a parody of powerful computers. "The answer is 42".

Disaster Zone being a parody of rock bands.

Marvin the Paranoid Android was created by the "Sirius Cybernetic Corporation" (word play on "serious").

The earth was built by commission.

The infinite improbability drive.

The guide was a remarkably accurate prediction of technology three decades later.
Ed

The best one I saw along those lines was a cartoon of an angry student type guy holding a sign saying "God is dead!" As he held this, he was slowly being squashed into the concrete by a 50 ft (15 Metre) forefinger :D.

42!

Yeah that was good, unlike the subsequent question the next generation computer worked out. Of course, Douglas Adams hadn't accounted for the rapid progress in Electronics.

The discussion between these stressed mice, when they had to figure out a question that could be answered by “42”. And the one they finally retained was “How many roads must a man walk down?”.

And much later, when I saw that famous interview of Bob Dylan I had to laugh twice about his answer to "How many folk singers are there in the US". Not 42, but anyway...

just a perfect cup of tea--surely that's not to much to ask of an infinite improbability drive...

Have you guys swallowed the book or something? I'm worried by the way you can regurgitate factoids from it at will.

Something like that.
I cannot claim that my approach to Douglas Adams were representative in any way. But I stumbled over his books at a time when my grasp of the English language had become thorough enough to read satire (or grotesque) and even comprehend some of it. Douglas Adams was just the right size – Dirk Gently inclusive.

Well, I may have no use for geek culture, but to my consequent discomfort, I'm still a geek; and one of our usual distinguishing features is remembering everything that ever interested us, no matter how unimportant. So yeah, we generally remember what was in the books, even if we read them decades ago. I gave up Douglas Adams years ago, having tired of his nihilism (and simultaneous vanity), and am not sure I still own any of his books.

I have over half a million miles on my old dodge, and the way I don't fall asleep behind the wheel is: audiobooks. I can listen to those stories over and over and never tire, and on each revisit, I hear a new twist that I hadn't noticed before.

I'm not really the out & out geek type, but definitely the nutty professor/eccentric type.

I spent a lot of time boxing above my weight in Industrial Electronics Repair and developed a single track mental process so if I can't split concentration. I totally get the long recall. I can still recall stuff from a disgusting number of decades back. I haven't started forgertting yesterday either.

I'm on the out and out... I used to have single track focus, especially in the middle of the nights when everyone and the phone was asleep so I couldn't be interrupted--but today, not only have I forgotten yesterday, I've forgotten a few moments ago. Luckily, I have a 12-year-old son who tracks and organizes all my tools, because its faster relying on him than upon my own memory of where I last set that tool...

That was a consequence of having owned a VCR. The "Hitchhiker's Guide" appealed to the 20-something me (along with "Airplane!" and "This is Spinal Tap").
Ed

I haven't been fit to drive since 2015. Hopefully a modified automatic/electric next year? But I'd love to have something like that going with the Bible. I'll have to try it.

I would have used music, something lively with variations, so nothing can become sleep-inducing. The reading of a book would be likely to take my attention away from the oncoming traffic accident...

It's a case of whatever you have become accustomed to. Unfortunately I became accustomed to silence. trying it now.

God's last message to his creation, say's. it all.

Whassat?

Spoiler alert!
 

from so long and thanks for all the fish, at the end just before marvin dies.
SPOILER ALERT!

Actually, see my post (#6) - I already covered that one .. ;)

There's only so many funny jokes in that thing. Personally, I never got into the zone enough to think most of them funny at all. Maybe I'm just not nerdy enough

That begs the question "What are you doing here then?"

I'd fall asleep through all the begets :)

There's a limited amount of that in a few places, and 'beget' or 'begat' means you're in a dud translation.:tisk:

Nah, it just means you're in an older translation requiring patience. But yes, the begats don't show up everywhere. And when they do, they serve the purpose of establishing geneaology, lineage.

The biggest problem with old translations is old words which are still in use but whose meaning has changed: I'll give a few of the many examples from the KJV

• The KJV uses 'prevent' in the sense of 'come before.'
• It uses 'allow' in the sense of 'approve.'
• It uses 'let' in the sense of 'hinder.'

Of course you also have the obsolete words like Genesis 25:29 where it reads "And Jacob sod pottage." Go figure.

A few years ago my niece refused to read out a verse from the KJV because it started with the phrase "Oh my god". We didn't even get close to the passages that describe what men do against walls.

Back on topic, my favourite bit in Hitch Hiker is the comment about the relative intelligence of humans and dolphins, but while it's humorously done, I've never been sure it was a joke.

I don't envy you when she comes to various prophets condemning the "dungy idols." Or the passages in various books where they speak of killing "Everyone (descendant) of some bad guy who urinates against a wall," meaning every male.

Tell her the Bible is not censored. Prepare herself to be shocked. She'll love that! Not everything done in the Bible was right, either. A lot was wrong, very wrong.

Re Dolphins vs Human intelligence...
Yeah, I reckon he was only half-joking :)


BTW, another one that really suits my (twisted ?) sense of humour re Vogon Constructor Ships
;)