Tag Archives: Douglas Adams

Did Dougles Adams indeed channel current Patriots

Synchronicity can be a scary thing.

Having just finished the Iron Web by Larken Rose I ran into a short excerpt from one of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide books…

[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship…]

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

“What?”

“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”

“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”

Ford shrugged again.

“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

This great picture of today’s world of rulers and ruled finally prompts me to verbalize my thoughts on Mr. Adams. I do not want in any way diminish his accomplishments, but I think he was a medium channeling all these great pieces of wisdom packed into his books.

I watched, many years ago, after I was already totally enthralled by Mr. Adams nuggets of wisdom, a BBC show with and about Douglas Adams. It presented, amongst many other great info about the Hitchhiker’s Guide and it’s beginnings, some interviews with Mr. Adams. From his statements in these interviews there was no other possibility than that of external influence. The man being interviewed just did not seem to have the capacity to come up with mind-boggling wise answers to the question on how to learn to fly, which is, as any Douglas Adams reader knows, “You throw yourself to the ground – – – and miss.”

As said earlier, my intention is not to take away from Mr. Adams accomplishments, it just is in a little bit different arena. He was the man who picked up these gems of insight from all over the space-time continuum and packaged them in a form that is – and there is no other more fitting word – mind-boggling.

Just take the quote above – is there still anybody who does not see – at least for a moment – how ridiculous it is that we accept, without revolting, our political system of governmental lizards that everybody hates but votes for every few years nevertheless?

Back to the scary synchronicities I mentioned in the beginning – for me, finding this parable and reading the Iron Web, all within a few short day, is like an 11:11 event that breaks open the solidity of the universe and slaps the fact into my face that things can be seen very differently.

Towel Day at the Country Club

Yesterday, May 25th, was Towel Day. I spend bigger part of that day at the country club and have to admit that I was not sure of all these people with towels were really celebrating towel day or if the just brought the towels to dry themselves after the dip in the club’s lake.

I certainly hope that the crowd, from the 3 year to the 70 year old are aware of the significance of this day in memory of the late writer Douglas Adams, but the only person I actually was sure about was this gentleman…

towelday-02

He wanted to stay incognito, but confirmed my guess that he was indeed aware of the importance of towels in interstellar travel by answering my question by a firm “Don’t Panic!”

Keith Barry on TED with some real Magic

Many years ago I watched a performance by David Copperfield on TV. We were sitting together in amazement watching Mr. Copperfield fly. It was a show he performed in Las Vegas in which he freely flew over the cuckoo’s nest – no wait – across the stage.

It was really impossible to fathom how he could do what he did with all the accepted laws of physics in full force. You could imagine strings – but then again – he flew through loops. There was just no way how all this could be possible – but still, we saw it with our own eyes. OK, not quite, there was a camera, lots of technology and a TV screen between us, but this was a life performance from a stage in Vegas and we all discounted the possibility that video tech was used to fool us.

I finally decided that the only possibility was that he was simply able to fly – and why not?

Should I be able to manage that feat now, I could imagine that I would create curiosity in form of a magic show to make some serious money (David Copperfield certainly did, and even managed the magic trick of convincing Claudia Schiffer to marry him.) Curiosity is, after all, the biggest magnet of attention, so if he would have gone around and demonstrated to everybody without a doubt that he could fly, he would have ended up in some government labs and he would have never been able to offer his island for rent for a mere 32,000 dollars a day. So, leaving it open to doubt that he could indeed fly was definitely a smart move.

But I am digressing a bit, I actually wanted to look at the possibility that something that’s not possible, IS possible – like flying! Douglas Adams gives us a simple recipe on how to learn. He teaches us that you just have to throw yourself to the ground – – and miss!

Sounds silly, but I actually believe, it’s true – honestly!

I remembered all this today when I watched another great magician who had demonstrated his abilities on the TED conference in 2004 – Keith Barry. He sampled some amazing tricks that probably keeps lots of people awake trying to figure out how he did it within the framework of accepted physics.

For me again the question was why accept the restriction of accepted physics? There are many things normal to us today that certainly appears to be magic to a person traveling on a time machine from 1500 AD. I am sure that physical laws have changed since then to allow for 400 ton chunks of metal hanging in the air for example. The first who bent and maybe broke the laws a little did it in a crude way, but they opened the floodgates for the changes.

Just take a look at what he amazes us with and tell me that this is NOT real magic…