I recently stumbled across a message I once sent to a friend (probably nearly 10 years ago now) where it could have been the case that Mr Adams popped in and took over my brain (though it's suspected to be more likely it was Zaphod, armed with a small gold lemon wrapped in a brick.
GUIDE NOTE: Reading on isn't compulsory as I do tend to go on a bit.)
*****
Hi there hunni
I hope all's well with your world?
I just wondered if you'd seen or heard anything about the BBC drama on at the moment over here called Parade's End? It's stars our Benedict and as soon as I saw it hanging around on iplayer, I thought of you because you liked the period drama thingy Downton Abbey and you like Sherlock (see what I did there? Clever old brain). If you do like the look of it and it's not being broadcast over there and you haven't found any fairies to deliver episodes to you in amazingly accurate dreams on a weekly episodic basis, let me know as I was going to attempt to copy them into my brain and then beam them over to you telepathically *grin* Of course, telepathy being what it is these days, coupled with the fact that my brain is sometimes as warped as the secret love-child of Marvin the Paranoid Android and a 1960s VW camper van I may have to resort to other measures to get the episodes to you ;-)
Marvin was always a little embarrassed about that love-child and still claims to this day that he'd been drinking a rather peculiar oil based home remedy, concocted by Zaphod, to help with the pains in the diodes all down his left side, and that it wasn't until he had downed the entire glass and finally spotted the small gold lemon with a brick wrapped around it corroding away in the bottom, that he became suspicious as to whether Zaphod had in fact, just been having him on.
Zaphod is not embarrassed at all and happily admits that by inverting the recipe for the pangalactic gargleblaster, adding a splash of diesel oil and just a smidgeon of anything-that-came-to-hand-at-the-back-of-the-toolshed-he-found-in-the-Ravenous-Bugblatter-Beast's-lair he had achieved all three of his aims {see Guide note} and therefore considered it his finest hour in the entire of those 60 minutes. He is now seeking to patent, copyright and trademark the concoction in order to make inordinate amounts of money throughout space and time, just as soon as he can persuade the Heart Of Gold to take him back to the time when he mixed it so he can copy down the recipe as after a couple of those he had trouble remembering just how hoopy he was and it scared him so much he went on the wagon for a full 45 seconds until he could find a mirror.
The Heart Of Gold is currently refusing to do so on grounds of Health and Safety, the details of which it disclosed to our reporter in confidence insisting on total anonymity so its statement is here printed in an actor's font.
"I'm not taking that lunatic back there as I know darn well that the first time we don't go exactly where he wants or that one of my mirrors doesn't show him in his best light (which incidentally is shortwave dark light, more commonly known as dark) he'll be feeding the concoction into my circuits which will entirely invalidate my warranty as I will no longer be able to function due to being melted into a small puddle with a few tiny floaters in it."
The Heart Of Gold's OFFICIAL statement goes thusly:
"I am unable to engage the Improbability Drive required to take Zaphod back to obtain his recipe as inserting a constant and immovable figure into an improbability equation renders all results finite thus making it impossible to engage my drive. In this case due to Zaphod constantly getting into trouble which frequently leads to missiles being fired at me, I am making myself into an immovable object on this subject."
The Ravenous Blugbatter Beast was also a little embarrassed when questioned regarding the presence of a tool shed and released the following statement via it's representative:
"The Right Dishonourable and Thoroughly Unpleasant Ravenous Bugblatter Beast the Fourteenth, Simon, would like it to be known that even a beast like he is can get a little bored sometimes or run into annoying little repairs around the lair or even just need a little "me time", whereupon having a tool shed is not only logical but therapeutic and in no way gay as has been implied by some members of the intergalactic press, and by his cousin, Kevin. He would also like people to know that anyone falling into the following categories with instantly be torn apart very slowly in the wrong order and subsequently devoured:
1 - Anyone implying he is gay for having a tool shed.
2 - Anyone snickering behind their hands at him as he goes past or, as is more usual, looms up behind said persons snickering behind said hands prior to their becoming breakfast. lunch, dinner, tea, supper or a light snack.
3 - Anyone sneaking into said tool shed and leaving all the lids off the containers, spillages on the benches and floor, and small pools of corrosive vomit on all available surfaces after concocting strange ointments, tinctures, remedies and/or poisons.
Please note that regarding section 3, The Right Dishonourable and Thoroughly Unpleasant Ravenous Bugblatter Beast the Fourteenth Simon would like to make it very clear that anyone sneaking into the tool shed for the mentioned purposes will not receive more lenient treatment by tidying up after themselves. Also that persons sneaking into the tool shed for other purposes, including though not exclusively but most definitely especially for the purposes of evading and hiding from himself when engaged in chasing them down in order to devour them, will not only still receive the aforementioned punishment from himself but will also be branded forevermore in history as "not a very good sport".
Anyone stupid enough to fall into section 2 and actually snicker behind their hands at a Ravenous Bugblatter Beast will be entitled to leniency as per Section 4 Subsection 12 Paragraph A in the Intergalactic Discretionary Intelligence Oversight Treaty (I.D.I.O.T) due to their level of intelligence being so low that their cells needed a calculator to divide. As such, Simon will defer carrying out the penalty stated above until he's eaten the stupid buggers.
As a show of good faith regarding this statement, to prove his sincerity and commitment to it, he has devoured his cousin Kevin under Sections 1 AND 2, with no leniency as frankly he had never liked Kevin anyway.
Furthermore, The Right Dishonourable etcetera etcetera the Fourteenth Simon would like to take this opportunity to appeal to the Vogon population to please stop feeding him their grandmothers as they taste worse than they smell and tend to scream poetry at him as he is about to eat them, which gives him a headache as his brain attempts to play Fear Of The Dark on his eardrums as a disordered attempt to make sense of the world in reaction to it, which compounds his nausea from the smell and taste of them by triggering off his vertigo, all of which leads to chronic indigestion and a generally discordial countenance, driving him into his tool shed to recover. If the Vogons do not immediately cease and desist feeding their grandmothers to him as per the recent cease and desist order issued, he will implement the deceased and insist order, in that he will insist on making all Vogons deceased.
This ends the statement from the Right Dishonourable and Thoroughly Unpleasant Ravenous Bugblatter Beast the Fourteenth Simon regarding his tool shed."
Whereupon the Beast promptly ate his representative for being lazy about saying his full name, for writing such a long-winded statement on his behalf, to fulfil his function in the natural order of the Universe but mainly because of the snide way his representative said "Simon" whilst reading it out.
Critics have often discussed the statement and the representative who wrote it and subsequently delivered it at the press conference, in part to question whether he actually had some Vogon ancestry himself. This theory was quickly discarded with a universal shudder and some spontaneous vomiting as everyone realised the implications of "having Vogon ancestry" without being an actual Vogon. The critic who first brought it up, first brought up every breakfast lunch and dinner he had eaten from colostrum onwards, then was swiftly hounded out of the world of critics for bringing it (and everything else) up in the first place, whilst all those present went into intensive therapy to try and get over having the thought put into their minds. Sadly, no one's sanity could be saved and they were all knighted and retired into running a small country to keep them out of mischief. At their last multi-species disciplinary report they were said to be "doing no worse than the last bunch of morons".
**GUIDE NOTE** Zaphod has declared his three aims on the night in question in the questionable tool shed thusly:
1 - To see if he could invent an even hoopier and froodier drink than the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster simply using the ingredients he had to hand. It's a well known fact that part of the reason for Zaphod's extra arm was to ensure that he always had a drink to hand and a spare hand to put it in.
2 - To avoid being eaten by the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast and should he fail in that endeavour, to be so blindingly drunk that he wouldn't actually care if he was.
3 - To shut that bloody robot up about his diodes once and for all either by curing his problem or by decommissioning him permanently, thus curing ALL his problems... permanently. It's actually aim number 3 which Zaphod says was, at the time, the most pressing and he therefore pinpoints that as his creative inspiration. It is also the aim which he considers himself to have failed most emphatically at.
**
Zaphod has uncharacteristically stayed entirely quiet as to how the love-child was conceived that night, in the most part because he partook of 1 or 2 of his own concoctions himself, but which he says is through loyalty to Marvin, who also on that night did him the greatest service of his life for which he can never repay the ailing robot. Until recently, we had no luck at all in discovering what it was that Marvin did for Zaphod that night behind the tool shed, but one of our reporters last week finally got the scoop. Please subscribe to The Sporadically Published Unsubstantiated News Klosh to get the story first when we publish it.... when we get around to it. We'll finally reveal who was in whose ... in S.P.U.N.K exclusively! Why was Zaphod made godfather to the love-child and where's that camper now?
(sorry about that little Marvin outburst - brain keeps doing that sort of thing lately and it takes me ages to rein it back in once it gets momentum up xx)
