we apologize for the inconvenience

this will be one of those OMGWTFBBQLOL moment.

if you have not read, or thought about reading, because obviously that's one way to start off the first verb, the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series, i suggest you pick up a copy and start reading them.

and if you've read the first one, go pick up a copy of the restaurant at the end of the universe and read through that one, sentence by sentence. and after that, pick up a copy of life, the universe, and everything, and do the exact same thing you've done with the restaurant at the end of the universe. and after that, pick up a copy of so long, and thanks for all the fish, and do the same thing you've done twice. repeat the procedure, which by now you should already be aware that it is rather repetitive, and therefore will no longer be repeated, because then it will be redundantly repetitive, and that's... well, not a good thing, for mostly harmless, which is the last book of the series.

i myself finished so long and thanks for all the fish just exactly fourteen minutes ago, and was extremely pleased to finally understood god's final message to his creation. on my way back to the dorms i was contemplating whether or not i should spoil it here for you who are too lazy to go through four books to find out what it is, and exactly seven minutes ago, which you should add two minutes from the last time i mentioned something along the same line about the time when you are calculating backwards in order to find the exact time this happened, because two minutes have gone since then, i decided not to. why not? well, to quote the book,

there is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

god's final message to his creation is, or rather doesn't, of course, address what the universe is for and why it is here, but because i had gone through nine minutes of thinking, throughout which also included changing into sweatpants and setting up my powerbook so that i could blog this, and finally came to a conclusion that it is as equally significant, it would probably be for everyone's best that i do not spoil it, because then god would instantly change it so that people would still have to pick up a copy of the book in order to know what it actually is, and that would waste my effort of trying to tell you what it actually is.

that is part of the reason, but mostly because i am perfectly aware that nature hates me and tends to always screw things over and that something similar to the following might happen:

and then, one thursday, nearly two thousand hears after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. this time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.

that was how the first book started. it then continued on with

this is not her story. but it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.

it is a very intriguing way to start a book, in particular the fourth book which i had just finished thirty-one minutes ago, with the exact same two paragraphs, or rather, the exact same first paragraph, since the second was elaborated to inform the reader that the terrible, stupid catastrophe was that the earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, but then continued on with

this is her story.

douglas adams is an excellent writer. i have always been befuddled whenever a random online form asks me to fill in my favorite author, since i've never actually had one. jonathan swift usually comes to mind, but that's because he's the only one i could remember from senior english class in highschool, and never gets picked because i hated his stupid satire. that, and the fact that it is a rather hard thing for a foreigner who had never been confronted with the english language for more than two days a week, one-and-a-half hour each day, to have to read his modest proposal and write an essay on it. alexander pope comes to mind next, but people often mistaken him with one of those old men from vatican who has got nothing better to do than to shepherd a herd of imbecilic catholics, or so they say, so he never gets picked either. then isaac asimov comes to mind but gets flushed down the toilet almost instantaneously because i have never read any of his artificially intelligent book. george w. bush is next in line, but then the brain dumps three hundred fourty two megabytes of error messages saying that he is not an author, has never written a book, is not capable of writing one, and in fact, is not capable of writing at all.

then the train of thought stops there because the brain rather obviously crashes for not being able to cope with the extremely, remarkably, and utterly absurd thought of george w. bush attempting to write. it is so extremely, remarkably, and utterly absurd, in fact, that the brain once threatened to retire and teleport itself to a happy little peaceful life inside the head of a turkey if i ever thought about such a thing ever again.

but now it's different. the brain can live peacefully inside this small head because there will no longer be any absurd train of thoughts. not ones concerning george w. bush and books, at least. i have now found my favorite author, writer, philosopher, or whatever in zarquon's name you want to call him.

and for those more critical human beings who, on every possible waking moment, always go through what the first book claims to be the three distinct and recognizable phases, those of survival, inquiry, and sophistication, otherwise known as the how, why, and where phases, i will elaborate as a respond to the inquiry phase.

because first of all, quadruple-compounded triple compound sentence is an ingenious sentence type to use in any piece of literature which main intention is to create a flabbergasted look on every reader's face and make them re-read the entire paragraph at least three times, even though the paragraph only consists of one sentence.

inserting a statement such as "the previous sentence makes sense. that is not the problem." a little past halfway into the fourth book to implicitly inform any reader who have not noticed that such a sentence type has been used over and over throughout all four books is another story which i will not digress into for now.

the statement above, of course, refer to the previous sentence, which is of the type that i have briefly describe two paragraphs above and, by itself, makes up half of a short paragraph at the beginning of chapter twenty-one. it goes like the following:

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is, as has been remarked before and often accurately, a pretty startling kind of a thing. it is, essentially, as the title implies, a guidebook. the problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizable number of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.

and two lines below the statement goes: read through it again, and you'll get it.

the second thing that will further address the inquiry phase is of course, the infinitely majestic digression that almost every single long paragraph in all four books possesses.

the third that will justify douglas adams' supreme position as my one and favorite author, the way arthur dent justified the supreme position of the towel in the list of the most useful thing to take with you when hitchhiking round the galaxy by putting it over his head so he wouldn't have to see what he was doing, is his ability to insert the best, non-cheesy romance scene i have ever read, in a book that is full of bizarrely non-sensical things, and to start such a scene with almost a whole page of satirical comment on english sandwiches. refer to chapter twelve of so long and thanks for all the fish, and you'll understand why i think it is by far the best romance scene a novel can have. also read chapter eleven to understand what lead to such a well-written romance scene, and chapter thirteen and fourteen for the nature-influenced conclusion of such a well-written romance scene.

i am a physics major, a third year undergraduate, and if there's anything i've figured out about nature, it is that it always manages to screw you over.

but if there's anything i've further realized about nature, it is that it upholds the old saying BALANCE OF NATURE extremely well.

so long,

and thanks for all the fish.