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Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.
Everyday took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede.
The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe give it all up and start again as a stand-up comedian on the scampi-in-a-casket circuit. It swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity.
Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place.
It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, de-capita could be arranged.
Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason.
“Yo!” said the Dean. “Yo what?” said Ridcully. “It’s not a yo what, it’s just a yo,” said the Senior Wrangler, behind him. “It’s a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and masculine bonding-ritual overtones.”
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
A high-speed fusillade of hollow snapping noises suddenly kept time with the music. “Who’s playing the maracas?” Death grinned. MARACAS? I DON’T NEED . . . MARACAS.
