Know Where Your Towel Is

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 - 11 May 2001)

I put off reading Douglas' last book, The Salmon of Doubt--which wasn't so much a book as a collection of random entries found on his computer after his death and lovingly compiled by his editor--for as long as possible. When I finally did read it, about two years ago, I laughed and laughed.

And then I cried.

No one will ever make us laugh the way he could. Ah, Douglas, we hardly knew ye...


... any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
~Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

CLIXBY (adj.) Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
SHOEBURYNESS (abs.n.) The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom
WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.
~The Meaning of Liff

It was a couple of days before Kate Schechter became aware of any of these things, or indeed of anything at all in the outside world. She passed the time quietly in a world of her own in which she was surrounded as far as the eye could see with old cabin trunks full of past memories in which she rummaged with great curiosity, and sometimes bewilderment. Or, at least, about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid, and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine-tenths were full of penguins, which surprised her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her own subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.
~The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul

Mark Carwardine's role, essentially, was to be the one who knew what he was talking about. My role, and one for which I was entirely qualified, was to be an extremely ignorant non-zoologist to whom everything that happened would come as a complete surprise.
~Last Chance to See

I've heard an idea proposed, I've no idea how seriously, to account for the sensation of vertigo. It's an idea that I instinctively like and it goes like this. The dizzy sensation we experience when standing in high places is not simply a fear of falling. It's often the case that the only thing likely to make us fall is the actual dizziness itself, so it is, at best, an extremely irrational, even self-fulfilling fear. However, in the distant past of our evolutionary journey toward our current state, we lived in trees. We leapt from tree to tree. There are even those who speculate that we may have something birdlike in our ancestral line. In which case, there may be some part of our mind that, when confronted with a void, expects to be able to leap out into it and even urges us to do so. So what you end up with is a conflict between a primitive, atavistic part of your mind which is saying "Jump!" and the more modern, rational part of your mind which is saying, "For Christ's sake, don't!" In fact, vertigo is explained by some not as the fear of falling, but as the temptation to jump!
~Last Chance to See

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.
~The Salmon of Doubt

Random quotes:
In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese and it took some time to realize the job was in fact taken.

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until a drop of blood forms on your forehead.

It takes an awful long time to not write a book.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.
~MIT (1999)

P.S. National Towel Day is Friday, May 25.