His Hitchhiker's series were perhaps my second introduction to British humor--Monty Python being the first.
Funny about that, ain't it? I think Black Adder was my third, but I was getting the hang of it by then. But first there was The Ticking Scotsman, and then there was Arthur Dent. Incidentally, does anyone remember the Infocom text-adventure game?
Mr Adams also gave me my first piece of truly Universal wisdom:
Have you ever read the instructions on a box of toothpicks? Of course, I'm someone who's amazed that someone might
need the pictoral instructions on the inside of a box of condoms. Am I the only person perplexed at the presence of a safety warning stamped on the barrell of a handgun?
But Mr Adams is classified in my life in quite paricularly: few people occupy this place, but it's people like Steven Wright, Garry Trudeau, and the Gaiman/Pratchett one-two punch of
Good Omens all helped shake off a certain perspective that retrospect tells me was my parents' psychosis. Dennis Miller ...
It's turning into a hit-parade, so I'd better stop. But that's what happens when I start thinking about these things ....
From one member of the third most intelligent species on the planet to the next, may no one get nailed to a tree in Rickmansworth today.
arkleseizures,
Tiassa
