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From: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Ford Prefect
Message-ID: <7327@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 22-Jun-85 22:31:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.7327
Posted: Sat Jun 22 22:31:31 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 03:23:54 EDT
Reply-To: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins)
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 33

In article <3139@garfield.UUCP> jeff1@garfield.UUCP (Jeff Sparkes) writes:
>
>        In Hitchhikers, it says that Ford Prefect had  mistakenly
>chosen  his  name  to  be "especially inconspicuous".  What is it
>about the name that makes it overly conpicuous?   It's  a  little
>strange,  but  not  THAT strange.  Is this some British joke that
>I'm not aware of?
>
>				Jeff Sparkes

	I took the joke to be that no name is "especially
inconspicuous" - i think that is amusing in itself. I mean, how
seriously can you take a book with statements like "the ship hung
in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" and "the
liquid tasted almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea", and
situations in which the protagonist presses a mysterious button
only to have the button light up and say "please don't press this
button again". This is not material to be taken lightly!
	By the way i recommend this trilogy (of _four_ books!) to all
who find the following piece of dialogue amusing:
Alice: "..that's not what that word means!"
Humpty Dumpty: "Words mean what i say they mean - i pay them extra". 
	(None of these quotations are exact - my books are at home -
but i hope i've captured the sense correctly... which reminds me
of another Carrolian twist - "take care of the sense and the
sounds will take care of themselves").

	..these people are so amazingly primitive they still think
digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
	:-) Greg.
-- 
Gregory J.E. Rawlins, Department of Computer Science, U. Waterloo
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