DOUGLAS ADAMS: surely one of the greatest authors ever.
Certainly the author of the greatest book ever - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Die without reading it, and you may as well not have lived!
His famous work The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy started off as a trilogy but eventually stretched to five novels. In the fourth, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, Adams introduces us to the character Wonko The Sane:
John "Wonko The Sane" Watson is tall and gangly. He lives in an inside-out house overlooking the Pacific Ocean. That is, to visit you park on the carpet. There's a sign on the wall that reads, "Come Outside." He considers the rest of the world to be "The Asylum," because it seemed to him 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 he could live and stay sane.
"Ah yes," he said, "that's to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better."
His asylum was basically an inside-out house. He lived on the outside (inside) with his wife, because they were sane. The rest of the world lived on the inside (outside) because they were not.
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Hey-ho. You either get it or you don't.
It was only after writing this that some-one pointed out that in Adam's first book, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, the 'hero' Ford Prefect actually has an I-Ching Calculator.
Frustratingly, it always gives the answer "A Suffusion of Yellow". Sometimes the answers from the I-Ching can seem similarly obscure, but persevere! With practice, it can be invaluable, always giving you the answer that you need.
Please, consult the I-Ching now...
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Anyway, the world seems to have become more and more insane in the 20 years since Douglas Adams wrote that. Toothpicks still have instructions written on the packet, potatoes are now individually wrapped, and the police have arrested a man with an egg "with intent to throw".
So as the world still needs to be in An Asylum, news from the world is obviously "News From The Asylum".
We hope that Douglas Adams would have laughed and excused our reference to his creation...
PS An internet search reveals that there are many people out there that refer to themselves as Wonko The Sane. They are usually self-obsessed individuals writing websites or blogs full of their own opinions. They regard themselves as wacky, off-the-wall, and slightly crazy in an ironic sense. Most obviously believe that they are the only sane person around.
Most of them read like complete fruit-loops. Most of them read like absolute wankers. We thank them for deciding us to avoid their example and to stick to a website with as few opinions as possible... We simply report, and let the world speak for itself...
PPS If you are one of those guys with a website or blog that refers to yourself as Wonko The Sane, we obviously mean the other ones. Oh yes, you are very witty and ironic, and it's the other ones who are just wacky wankers. Yes. For sure... Obviously...
We would love to illustrate our website with pictures of Wonko's house. If you know of any attempts to illustrate this difficult theme, then please do put us in touch with the artist... Link
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