DeDanaan

Parable : Usually simple in form and substance, a parable is a story that is intended to teach a moral or spiritual lesson. Many parables are to be found in the scriptures and texts of the major world religions.

Pan : Pan is the Greek mythological god of woods and fields, flocks and herds, and shepherds and huntsmen. Since in Greek “pan” means “all or everything,” the god Pan pervades all things, including food or fertility. He is the son of either Mercury or Jupiter or even various other parents. Though he walks upright, he has horns, legs, and a tail like a goat’s, while his head, arms, and chest are like a man’s. His musical pipe — which he is credited with inventing — is called “syrinx” and is named for a nymph who was changed into a reed to escape Pan’s advances. His companions are often satyrs, half-man, half-horselike creatures. Pan was worshipped as a nature deity and so is one of the most ancient of the Greek gods. The Greek festivals to Pan were later taken over by the Romans, who identified him with the nature spirit Faunus. You use his name when you say the word “panic,” for, though he was considered a good guy, he was said to frighten lonely travelers who thought the strange sounds they heard at night were made by him.

Puella : (Spanish) pron. “p’wAY-lah”
1. feminine; woman, girl

Quite frankly, we think one of our hitchhikers got lost somewhere south of the Equator. Perhaps we’ll send a rescue team out looking… though it could take half a lifetime to fill out the paperwork first.

Prosser, L. : Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr. L. Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats. He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous worried man.

President of the Imperial Galactic Government : The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. An orange sash is what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wears. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had. He spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Prefect, Ford : Only one among many roving researchers for the now-defunct Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. His most recent assignment was to an insignificant planet in an unfashionable end of the galaxy known as Earth. He chose his name in the belief that he would blend nicely in to the native culture, but this was a slight translation problem. Intending to stay for a week, he was stranded for fifteen years. Although sometime worse for wear due to excessive consumption of Ol’ Janx Spirit, he always knows where his towel is. He’s not from Guildford, as he usually claims. He actually comes from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. His minimal research told him that Ford Prefect would be a nicely inconspicuous name. He had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was plausible enough. He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking, but not conspicuously handsome. His hair was wirey and gingerish and brushed backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards from the nose. There was something very slightly odd about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn’t blink often enough and when you talked to him for any length of time your eyes began involuntarily to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about to go for their neck.

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 gate crash university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out. Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and stare into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what he was doing. Then he would start guiltily for a moment, relax and grin. “Oh, just looking for flying saucers,” he would joke and everyone would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for. “Green ones!” he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an enormous round of drinks. Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his skull on whiskey, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain to her in slurred phrases that, honestly, the colour of the flying saucers didn’t matter that much really. Thereafter, staggering semi-paralytic down the night streets he would often ask passing policemen if they knew the way to Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually say something like, “Don’t you think it’s about time you went off home, sir?” “I’m trying to baby, I’m trying to,” is what Ford invariably replied on these occasions. Ford Prefect’s original name is only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster. Ford’s father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, after which he came to live on Betelgeuse Five where he both fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue. Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the MultiVerse. The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as “boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven”. Zaphod Beeblebrox is his semi-cousin. They share three of the same mothers.

Pós, pósadh : (Gaeilge-Irish) pron. “pohs”
1. Marry
2. Marriage

Poghril : Poghril was a planet in the Pansel System. The starship Heart of Gold’s Infinite Improbability Drive caused two hundred thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs to materialize there. Unfortunately the entire population had already died of famine, with the exception of one man who died shortly afterwards of cholesterol poisoning. This riddle was the only ray of sunshine in the otherwise rotten life of the Poghrils. One Poghril would say to another: “Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena-offal?” Whereupon another Poghril would reply: “I don’t know. Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena-offal?” To which the first Poghril would say: “I don’t know either. Wretched, isn’t it?” On the whole the loss of the Poghril tribe was not among the great ones in the history of the Galaxy.

Poetry : Poetry, well written, can be a spiritually uplifting experience. Badly written, it can be an experience of buttock-clenching horror. Vogon poetry is of course 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 died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled ‘My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles’ when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth by the Vogons. It involved decaying swans.

Examples of good, if long, poetry can be heard on the planet of Golgafrincham, home to the great circling poets of Arium.