1. Zaphod has recently stolen a large and very valuable spaceship, the starship Heart of Gold. This will doubtless terminate his term as President.

2. The best person to rule the galaxy is someone who doesn’t want to do it. The person who is actually in charge is not aware of his pivotal role in galactic politics, and spends much of his time talking to a cat.

Zaphod Beeblebrox may have figured this out, and it may have something to do with point one above, and his subsequent visit to the dead planet of Magrathea.

The Goth subculture unashamedly celebrated the dark recesses of the human psyche. A fascination with medieval, Victorian and Edwardian history, music, and literature. Dark sensuality, sweeping sadness, morbid fascination, forbidden love, the beauty of enduring pain, the moribund fascination with cemetaries, excessive Romanticism… They also tended to spout a lot of fishnet (more usually on the arms for men) and had a distinctive style of makeup, with very white faces and lots of black eyeliner (for both men and women). Hair was usually dyed black, crimped and backcombed. Picture a room full of morose people dressed in black with white face paint, and you can’t help but laugh… it was a self-deflating culture that, on observing such a scene, would have laughed at itself as the Goth subculture delighted in self-parody and in ridiculing itself.

Goth made angst and depression a lifestyle and was adopted mostly by young under-achievers. Marvin the Paranoid Android, if painted black, might have fit right in. “Ohhh… the pain….”

2. The words “Goth” and “Gothic” have had many, largely unrelated meanings throughout Earth history:
- the name of the Germanic Visigoth tribes that overthrew the Roman Empire. From this source arose the concept of a Goth as an uncivilized person, a barbarian.
- a style of architecture in Western Europe which was popular from the 12th to the 16th century.
- a style of horror/mystery literature that is dark, eerie and gloomy.

In computers and the Internet, a geek is a person who is inordinately dedicated to and involved with technology to the point of sometimes not appearing to be normal, and indeed, geeks are NOT normal. Being a geek also implies a skilled and refined capability with the technology. Although historically, computer and Internet programming and hacking has been a male thing, there are now many “girl geeks” or “grrrl geeks.” The term “hacker” generally connotes competence more strongly than “geek” does, but make no mistake, geeks are just as competent as hackers and most geeks do hack from time to time.

The term “geek” emphasizes dedication and weirdness, although recent use of the term suggests greater social acceptance and tolerance for geeks. (Historically, a geek was a circus person whose role in the side-show was to bite off chicken’s heads or perform other bizarre feats. Eric Raymond describes “computer geek” as “one who eats (computer) bugs for a living.”)

The term seems to be used by many in the general populace for anyone who spends a lot of or too much time at a computer. (more…)

There are several ways to receive a geas. A parent can grant one to her children at birth, a chieftain or druid can impose one upon a criminal as a punishment, or a druid can determine by oracular means what geasa a person already has. In heroic mythology there is a trend in which male heroes receive their geas from women, as in the cases of Cu Chullain and Diarmaid ua Duibhne. A hero may lose a gamble of cards or a chess game to a hag, and she imposes a geas upon him as her reward for winning; typically a geas of that kind is a requirement to perform some impossible task.

The risk of breaking geas is great. To break a geas is to act contrary to the forces of nature, and the result is the death of the person, or some other great social catastrophe. Knowing this, many heroes met their end when their enemies discovered the heroes’ geas and plotted a situation in which it was impossible to avoid breaking them. For example, Cu Chullain was under a geas not to eat the meat of dogs, and also to always sample food being prepared at a roadside. On the day he was killed in battle, he stopped to sample some food according to his geas but it was dog meat, and so he could not avoid breaking one or the other geasa.

Each geasa is unique and appropriate to each person, and can have any sort of purpose whatsoever. A geas can be a blessing or a curse. Cu Chullain’s prohibition against eating dog meat is related to his name, “the Hound of Cullain”, so it would seem that for him to eat dog meat would be a kind of cannibalism. This personal and intimate aspect is why the geas is so serious to those who possess them, and why they are usually kept secret.

2. Geasa : A modern Celtic “black metal” band, often classified as Goth, whose music is recorded under the Season of Mist label. A review of their 1999 album “Angel’s Cry” can be found here.