Poetry Discussion LINK
Vogons are described as officiously bureaucratic, a line of work at which they perform so well that the entire galactic bureaucracy is run by them.
On Vogsphere, the Vogons would sit upon very elegant and beautiful gazelle-like creatures, whose backs would snap instantly if the Vogons tried to ride them. The Vogons were perfectly happy with just sitting on them. Another favourite Vogon pastime is to import millions of beautiful jewel-backed scuttling crabs from their native planet, cut down giant trees of breathtaking beauty, and spend a happy drunken night smashing the crabs to bits with iron mallets and cooking the crab meat by burning the trees.
In the movie, the Vogons seem to smash the crabs for no apparent reason besides pure pleasure at killing something.
The Vogons' battle-cry, and counter-argument to dissent, is "resistance is useless!"
Jeltz reading poetry to Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in the television series, is a construct by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Vogon Poetry is described as "the third worst poetry in the Universe". The main example used in the story is a short piece composed by Jeltz, which roughly emulates nonsense verse in style (example below).
The story relates that listening to it is an experience similar to torture as demonstrated when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are forced to listen to the poetry (and say how much they liked it) prior to being thrown out of an airlock.
"Oh freddled gruntbuggly
thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes.
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"
Guide description:"Vogon poetry is the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent, of his poem, Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning, four of his audience members died of internal hemorrhaging, and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council, survived by gnawing one of his own legs off...
The very worst poetry in the universe died along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings[2]of Sussex... in the destruction of the planet Earth."
A second example of Vogon poetry is found in the Hitchhiker's Guide interactive fiction game that was produced by Infocom.
An unused extended version of the poem is also excerpted in Neil Gaiman's book Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, in Appendix III.
A third example appears in The Quintessential Phase of the radio series, again written by Jeltz.
A fourth example appears in And Another Thing..., the sixth book in the trilogy written by Eoin Colfer. The poem is also written by Jeltz.
2 comments:
Since they have moved up a notch, maybe their status as second worst poets will help them strive to undo all the good done as only the third worst.
Their rhymes will foul the cosmos and cause a wobble in the continuum.
It is truly a blow to poetry that they have neared the pinnacle of putrid pentameter. My old dog Buck can retch up meals of roadkill more appealing than the Vogons verses.
Yes, and Buck was the best of friends... but some might say that if you don't retch, the poem is not worth a thing.
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