""'People of Earth, your attention please,' a voice said, and it was wonderful. Wonderful perfect quadraphonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep.
'This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,' the voice continued. 'As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.'
The cult of Douglas Adams is a bit different than other kinds of cults. For one thing, we don't take ourselves remotely seriously. If we did, I wouldn't be making any plans past the end of the week, when the Vogon Destructor Fleet is due to demolish the Earth to make way for a new interstellar bypass.
Friday marks the day when the "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" will appear on big screens everywhere (view trailer at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/trailers).
Decades-long fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (H2G2 to fans) are a bit torn this week: we're ecstatic that our favorite cult book/radio show/low-budget television series is coming to the big screen after years (and years and years) of delay, during which time its creator (the late great Douglas Adams) expired, but we're also trepidatious about its big-screen treatment, and somewhat unwilling to share our special secret goofiness with the general public. (Though admittedly, considering the number of copies the "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" has sold over the decades, the secret society is rather large and none too secret.)
In the countdown to the release of the film (this is truly the week to keep your towel handy, as it's the most massively useful item in the Universe), a special news item showed up (and was spotted by fellow blogger and TMC editor David Butcher) on Reuters: the BBC's launch of a new service to mobile devices that covers "Life, the Universe and Everthing." Essentially, the service will be maintained by registered users and with the use of Wikipedia. (View news item here: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-04-25T122422Z_01_L19322167_RTRIDST_0_NET-MEDIA-BRITAIN-HITCHHIKERS-DC.XML
The BBC will edit entries for pertinence and content before information becomes available, and improper posters will be fed to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
TES
