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December 29, 2023 - January 10, 2024
It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.
“I’ve always thought sex was really a rather tasteless way of ensuring the continuity of the species,”
“I played croquet with him only last week,” hissed the Dean to Ridcully, as the Chair wandered off. “I shan’t be happy now until I’ve had a good bath!”
What a country! Nothing was exactly what it turned out to be,
In fact, when you thought about it, beer was only a kind of runny bread,
He didn’t even think about eating mutton. You couldn’t, when it was looking at you so pathetically.
Say what you like—that brown muck was good stuff. It was the runny equivalent of dwarf bread. You didn’t really believe what your mouth said you’d just tasted, so you had some more.
what more could any natural philosopher dream of? He’d got the theories, now he could do the practice.
Little man battlin’ against the forces of brutal authority. People like that.
these men definitely had the heavy-set look of men who occupy the kind of job where the entrance examination is “What is your name?” and they scrape through on the third try.
I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED “LIVING.”
Her privacy was assured by the wizards themselves, since at least three of them would probably kill any of the others who ventured within ten feet of the palm leaves.
Now he’s being aggressively reasonable!”
Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they’re simply trying to find enough to eat. When they’ve just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it’s time to argue over the place settings.*
And Unseen University, as even wizards realized at somewhere just below the top level of their minds, existed not to further magic but, i...
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Once upon a time the plural of “wizard” was “war.” But the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morningstar. Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark
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The trouble is that it’s easy to abstain from sweets when you’re not standing knee deep in treacle and it’s raining sugar.
What Rincewind looked for in a good gaol were guards who, instead of ruining everyone’s night by prowling around the corridors, got together in one room with a few tins and a pack of cards and relaxed.
“It’s the rope, right? Three-quarter-inch hemp, the usual stuff. Authentic. probably even from the same ropemaker.
Back home, people tied a knot in their handkerchief to remind them of things. Out in the hot country there weren’t any handkerchiefs, so people tied a knot in their thoughts.
“Nice to hear someone siding with the rights of the indigenous population,” he muttered, checking the street again.
Logic could take you only so far, then you had to get out and hop.
is there anyone who you don’t want to go back where they came from?”
Everywhere in the world, someone turned up out of some strange primal mold to sell him a really dreadful regional delicacy.
It wasn’t a very big kitchen and, like most of the ones Rincewind had been in, it was full of men working very hard at cross purposes.
The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time.
A wizard in a foul temper attracts magic like overripe fruit gets flies.
He felt as though he was hypnotized. He could stop any time he liked, it was just that he didn’t quite feel like it.
form a working party to consider our survival in unknown, shark-infested waters, will you?”
When treading water in a circle of sharks, a wizard will always consider other wizards to be the most immediate danger.
Get more’n ten miles off’f the coast here and there ain’t one captain in a hundred who can stop his ship going right over the Rim. They stick very close inshore.”
But the Ecksians say this is the best bloody place in the world, so there’s no point in going anywhere else anyway.”
A real carnival procession should only take place after the pubs have been open for a good long time. It adds to the spontaneity.
“It’s not many times in your life you get the chance to die of hunger on some bleak continent thousands of years before you’re born. We should make the most of it.”
“This is fossil magic, sir!” said Ponder, speaking fast. “It’s what’s being used to create this place! We could do untold damage if we’re not careful!”
“I don’t think the place is properly, well, finished, sir. I mean, there’re no plants or animals, are there?”
“So I expect no one will miss a little bit, eh?” “No! That’s not how it works, sir! If we use it, it’s like . . . like treading on ants, sir! This isn’t like . . . finding an old staff in a cupboard and using up the magic that’s left. This is the real primal energy! Anything we do might well have an effect.”
“Temporal discontinuity again.”
“You can keep on top of it if you concentrate,”
“I am panicking,” squeaked Ponder. “I’m just doing it very slowly! Why’ve I got this horrible feeling that I’m . . . hwee . . . falling forward all the . . . hwee . . . time?” “Oh, that’s just apprehensions of mortality,” said Ridcully. “Everyone gets that.”
It was one thing to know you were on a journey, and quite, quite another to see your destination on the horizon.
The brain has far less control over the body than the body does over the brain. And adolescence is not a good time. Nor is old age, for that matter, but at least the spots have cleared up, some of the more troublesome glands have settled down and you’re allowed to take a nap in the afternoons and twinkle at young women.
Of course, more time was spent setting it up than was ever saved by using it, but this is the case in many similar fields and is a sign of Progress.
There was a sense of something small being done that was making something happen that was huge.
It was, he remembered later whenever he was in a state to remember anything, one of the happiest times of his life.
“We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?” “Why?” “It saves time.”
Like many other beings on astral planes of all kinds, he was puzzled by the wizards. They were people with the family-sized self-confidence that seems to be able to get away with anything. They generated an unconscious field which said that of course they should be there, but no one was to worry or fuss around tidying up the place on their account and just get on with what they were doing. The more impressionable victims were left with the feeling that they had clipboards and were awarding marks.
“That’s not magic,” said one of the wizards. “That’s ghosts.”
It was amazing how slang seemed to radiate its meaning even in another language.
Darkness was just darkness, but anything could be hiding in shadows.
