Share & Enjoy

Share & Enjoy

Since literature is allowed for this derby, I have selected one of the two pieces of literature that are responsible for me almost getting thrown off an Amtrak train in college, Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy :

"‘Share and Enjoy’ is, of course, the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.

The motto stands—or rather stood—in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax—‘Share and Enjoy’. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the underground offices of many talented young complaints executives—now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read ‘Go stick your head in a pig,’ and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.”

I was almost thrown off for, according to the conductor, disturbing other passengers with my laughing.

Share and Enjoy!

(Coincidentally, the other work of literature that almost got me booted was another Adams: Henry Adams. In that case, while reading The Education of Henry Adams , other passengers were disturbed by my snoring.)