E TA STEW

(Estimated Time of Arrival: Six To Eight Weeks)

Because there obviously has not be enough plagiarism in this blog already, I present you with this passage from Chapter 22 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams, being otherwise known as the second book in the five-book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy:

The problem with most forms of transport, [Arthur Dent] thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.

I had been intending to include this quote in a blog entry for some time, but now it seemed especially appropriate as the passage was on my mind recently when I fell ill and had to drive myself home from work in a rather woozy state. Ordinarily, I love driving, although I am fully aware of the evils that it unleashes on the environment, and so I try to use my bus pass whenever it is both possible and safe to do so. On the particular day that I refer to, it was not possible to utilize the bus system, because I had mistaken my alarm for a herd of wildebeests sporting bullhorns stampeding though my bedroom, and had thought to myself, “Goodness me, they do get up quite early in the morning, don’t they?” – and went back to sleep. The rather groggy realization that February generally isn’t bullhorn season for wildebeests in California came to me in time avoid being late to the office, but only if I drove. So later, when I had to make my sickly journey home, I felt a bit trapped in my air-contaminating conveyance, realizing that for the next 45 minutes I was stuck, and that even if I had taken the bus so I wouldn’t have had concentrate on the road while ill, I would have been stuck at least a half hour longer, breathing in the surrounding exhaust and body fumes. Somebody let me know when the telekinetically equipped office I ordered from that infomercial last night arrives. If you need me, I’ll be under my proverbial rock in my proverbial cave chewing my proverbial thumb.