11.17.2014

life / business

"That one?" said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.

"Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."

The sign read:

"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion."

"It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."
-D. Adams.

I had started writing last week about how I felt.  It was too detailed.  Sometimes Douglas Adams does a  better job at expressing me than I can.
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update:  Eeek!  Sorry I didn't mean to worry anyone.  If you aren't familiar with Douglas Adams his books are incredibly sarcastic and funny.  Taken out of context, this might have sounded more dramatic then I meant when I was trying to be funny.  Here, I'll give a little more context, incase you feel like reading So Long and Thanks for all the Fish:

The two main characters, Arthur and Fenchurch, are trying to figure out why all the dolphins have disappeared from Earth.  They believe Wonko the Sane might have the answer, so they visit him in California, where Wonko has decided to build an asylum to house the Earth in, essentially it's an inside out building - kind of abstract.  What finally drove him to do this is when he read the instructions on a packet of toothpicks - only then did he realize how crazy the world had become.

I have always found this hilarious, and true.  I often have to give directions as such, or else things will go horribly wrong.