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Mostly Harmless

@whalepetunias.bsky.social
1.5K followers 2 following 9.1K posts

Posting random lines from the 5 Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books by Douglas Adams. Bot by @josephwb.bsky.social, using template code from @philna.sh #HHGG #DouglasAdams #DNA Code: github.com/josephwb/whalepetunias

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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 15m
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 5h
Ford exploded. "You're a load of useless bloody loonies!" he shouted.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 11h
"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes. He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 17h
"Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
"I thought you must be dead..." he said simply. "So did I for a while," said Ford, "and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
"Damnation," muttered Frankie mouse, "all that fuss over two pounds of Earthling brain."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
"I was asleep," said Ford, who floated into view at this point. "Did I miss anything?"
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
He whooped and cried with relief and pleasure, and sheer physical delight. He swooped, he wheeled, he skidded and whirled through the air. Cheekily he sat on an updraught and went through the contents of the holdall.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
This is another example of the fact that The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy will employ anybody who wants to walk straight in off the street and get ripped off, especially if they happen to walk in off the street during the afternoon, when very few of the regular staff are there.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
"I am too long dead and too tired to care as much as I did. The principal reason I am helping you now is that I couldn't bear the thought of you and your modern friends slouching about up here. Understood?" "Yeah, thanks a bundle."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
"According to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived most of their lives underground." "Why's that? said Arthur. "Did the surface become too polluted or overpopulated?" "No, I don't think so," said Zaphod. "I think they just didn't like it very much."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The interior of the flight deck was dark green, dark red, dark brown, cramped and moodily lit. Inexplicably, the resemblance to a small Italian bistro had failed to end at the hatchway. Small pools of light picked out pot plants, glazed tiles and all sorts of little unidentifiable brass things.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Anyone who even notices, let alone calls attention to, the curious but utter coincidental and meaningless fact that every world on which the Guide has ever set up an accounting department has shortly afterwards perished in warfare or some natural disaster, is liable to get sued to smithereens.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
"The Masters of Krikkit," said Slartibartfast again, and if his breathing had been sepulchral before, this time he sounded like someone in Hades with bronchitis.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
professional reporter, on home ground, ready for anything. At least, nearly anything. She turned to look for the girl. That must be her, with the wild hair and wild eyes. The girl turned towards her. And stared. "Mother!" she screamed, and started to hurl rocks at Tricia.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn't want to share a Galaxy with them, not if they're just gonna keep at it, not if they're not gonna learn to relax a little. I mean it's just gonna be continual nervous time, isn't it, right?"
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Arthur bristled. "Go bang your heads together four-eyes," he advised Zaphod.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"I'm sorry," said Random, and put the package down again. She could see that it really would upset him if she opened it. She would just have to do it when he wasn't looking.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"Are you serious, sir?" he said in a small whisper which had the effect of silencing the pub. "You think the world's going to end?" "Yes," said Ford. "But, this afternoon?" Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest. "Yes," he said gaily, "in less than two minutes I would estimate."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
The guard grasped them both firmly round the neck, and bowing deferentially towards his captain's back, hoiked them both protesting out of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain was on his own again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself, lightly fingering his notebook of verses.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"He's had a bad two million years," he said to the policeman, and together they heaved Arthur on to the sofa and carried him off the pitch and were only briefly hampered by the sudden disappearance of the sofa on the way.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
"There," he said. "Three-leaf clover. Good luck you see." He peered at it closely to check that it was a real three-leaf clover and not just a regular four-leaf one that one of the leaves had fallen off.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Something about a new bypass he had just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
He picked up from the table a piece of paper and the stub of a pencil. He held one in one hand and the other in the other, and experimented with the different ways of bringing them together. He tried holding the pencil under the paper, then over the paper, then next to the paper.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The little bathing tune, which had been composed for him by one of his world's most exciting and prolific jingle writers (who was currently asleep in hold thirty-six some nine hundred yards behind them) covered what would otherwise have been an awkward moment of silence.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"We went through the whole packet like this. Him, me, him, me..." "The whole packet?" "Well it was only eight biscuits but it seemed like a lifetime of biscuits we were getting through at this point. Gladiators could hardly have had a tougher time."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
They decided they rather liked a race of people who made it clear that they were grateful simply to be left alone.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"You know I don't like the look of that planet at all," said Trillian shivering. "Ah, take no notice," said Zaphod; "with half the wealth of the former Galactic Empire stored on it somewhere it can afford to look frumpy."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"War?" he said. "Yes!" Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect. "On the next continent?" "Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!" "But there's no one even living there yet!" Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Then Ford noticed that there was something written on it. Strange. There hadn't been anything written on it a moment ago and now suddenly there was. There just didn't seem to have been any observable transition between the two states. All it said, in small, alarming letters was a single word: PANIC
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric, but a harmless one — an unruly boozer with some oddish habits. For instance he would often gatecrash university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Prak nodded again. "Forty-Two," he said. "Yes, that's right."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"Hey, Trillian baby?" She looked round briefly. "Yes?" "You want to come? Heart of Gold? Excitement and adventure and really wild things?" "I'm going down to Krikkit," she said.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitchhikers.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"Weeeeelaaaaah!" said Zipo Bibrok 5 x 10^8, and you would have had to have been there to know exactly why he said this. None of this was on the tape of Informational Illusions, and is all based on hearsay.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"Organisation?" yelled Ford. "Organisation? What a bloody stupid word for a set-up like this!" "Precisely our sentiments. Under-structured, overresourced, under-managed, over-inebriated. And that," said Harl, "was just the editor."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Ford narrowed his eyes. "This is that thing you call sarcasm, isn't it?" "Do you know," bellowed Arthur, "I think it is? I really think it might just be a crazy little thing called sarcasm seeping in at the edges of my manner of speech!"
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Arthur had to prompt him again. "Er, economic recession?" "Well you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing that custom-built planets are something of a luxury commodity you see..."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
He looked back at his fellows uneasily and scratched fitfully at his cheek. He seemed to be wrestling with some deep inner confusion, as if everything he wanted to say and everything he thought were entirely different things, between which he could see no possible connection.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
as strange or inexplicable as the rules of the game of Brockian UltraCricket, as played in the higher dimensions. A full set of rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together in a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a Black Hole.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Nothing," insisted Arthur, "honestly, nothing." Agrajag fixed him with a beady stare. "Seems a strange way to relate to somebody you've got nothing against, killing them all the time. Very curious piece of social interaction, I would call that. I'd also call it a lie!"
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Think of the danger to the Universe." "The Universe," said Arthur, "is big enough and old enough to look after itself for half an hour."
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?" He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. "It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Do we have to have the piper?" demanded Ford. "Oh yes," said the Captain, "we've given him a grant." Ford considered opening this idea up for debate but quickly decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged rock at the piper
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Who are you?" "A friend!" shouted back the man. He ran towards Zaphod. "Oh yeah?" said Zaphod. "Anyone's friend in particular, or just generally well disposed to people?"
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
An intestinal jumble of plumbing had been picked out in gold leaf rather than decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave; the taps and shower attachment would have made a gargoyle jump.
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Listen Ford," said Zaphod, "everything's cool and froody." "You mean everything's under control." "No," said Zaphod, "I do not mean everything's under control. That would not be cool and froody."
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