The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – heh I lol’d

5 of 5 Laugh-Out-Loud Stars – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Usually, I don’t remember books very well. I have to review books right after I read them, or I wouldn’t be able to tell you a damn thing about them. This book, however… I have the entire thing pretty much memorized. So much so, that I can’t read the book anymore. I know every goddamn sentence by heart.

Here, let me quote from memory some Vogon poetry:

Oh freckled grunt buggley
Thy mytriations are to me
Like furgled brathey-flap
of warthog’s be

Groop! I emplore thee!
With crinkly bingle worms
And froopishly thrangle thee
With arm-pit germs

For otherwise, I will rend thee
With my burgle-crunchy
See if I don’t!

I’m sure that is only slightly similar to the original, but you get the idea. I cannot get this shit out of my head! It’s there to stay, I tells ya.

It’s not because I have read the book so many times, even though, yes, I have read it more than 20 times, I’m sure. It’s because I once had a driving paper route, back in the early 90’s, and I played the audio version of this book in my car every morning, for like an entire year. Every morning I would hear the complete book, while delivering papers in my car. That’s like 300 goddamn times, or more, that this book was pounded into my head. So yes, every fucking word of it has been permanently burned into my brain.

I say that like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. I fucking loved it. I would read the book aloud, along with the tape, giggling like a goddamn school girl the entire time.

I distinctly remember one evening, when my wife woke me up, and asked “What the fuck is a ‘burgle-crunchy’?” Apparently, I was reciting the goddamn book in my sleep, and kept tossing and turning, screaming, “No! Not the burgle-crunchy! Anything but the burgle-crunchy!”

The book is about Arthur Dent, a rather lazy fellow, who spends the entirety of this book in his bathrobe and slippers. He is whisked away, into the cosmos by his best friend Ford Prefect (who gave himself the perfect Earth name. Because he thought the vehicle, the Ford Prefect, was the most dominant life-form on the planet.) who just happens to be an inter-galactic hitchhiker who writes for the famed guide book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Once Arthur and his friend begin their journey through the cosmos, hilarity ensues. Well, to be fair, hilarity ensued from the very first page, but it really gets going once they’re hitching rides through space.

And space… Whoa, Nelly. Let me tell you about space. It’s big. Really big… So big, that… Again, pulling lines out of my head from this goddamn book.

Why is Arthur Dent so important to this story? Well, because his brain was part of a computer program to determine the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Okay, that’s not entirely true. The program was actually trying to find the ultimate Question of Life, the universe and everything. Because, the pan-dimensional mice already knew the answer to life, the universe and everything. It’s “42”, of course. Duh.

Does any of this make sense? I didn’t think so. That’s what makes it so bloody awesome. That, and Zaphod Beeblebrox. Because, “He’s just zis guy, you know?”

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