*A* *R* Please Post FEET OF CLAY Annotations *HERE ONLY*
Mike
All of a sudden dozens of *A* subject lines have started to spawn. Several
people have simultaneously discovered what happened to A Certain Corsican and
have taken an interest in 1970s American TV programmes.
In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our esteemed
Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together all the
annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet another new thread.
If you haven't finished the book yet, please keep your annotations to yourself
and not start another annotation thread until you have.
If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
****************************************************************
Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
****************************************************************
***********************
vvvv Down Here vvvv
General things:
Carrot, Angua and Due South: I think it was particularly clever for PTerry
(having seen Due South) to steal back all those G!G! books, re-write them
and put them back in our houses in exactly the same position. This has been
discussed several times already. Having said that, there are several bits in
FoC that are somewhat morphically resonant.
Golems and The Laws of Robotics. I'm pretty sure that Golems had these laws
built into the "Words In The Head" before the Laws of Robotics we invented.
The DeNobbes coat of arms: Is it a "V" sign and a sign of scrumped apples?
PTerry is letting us stew on those apples.
The candles: PTerry said "(It) *has* been used in real life, in an attempt
on the life of Leopold I, Emperor of Austria. An alchemist called Guiseppe
Borri sussed it out, tested his theory by feeding the shredded wick of one
of the candles to a dog and, I seem to recall, found there was so much
arsenic in the heavy candles used to illiuminate Leopold's bedroom that
they weighed more!"
Also, there was an episode in "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" where the
candles were poisoning the air of the temple.
Specifics:
Inside Front Cover: ".. a werewolf suffering from Pre-Lunar Tension."
The Discworld lycanthrope's version of PMT
p17 and another later (um..) "...so be d*mned to the lot of them."
An Internettically correct way of swearing involving faulty keyboards.
As in "Oh b*ll*cks". Quite Baconian.
p21 "Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his
drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called /Animal
Husbandry/. He'd been a bit worried about the title - you heard
stories about strange people in the country ..."
Seems to be in just about every comedian's repertoire, but more
specifically from the introduction to 'In Old Mexico' on the album
'AN EVENING (WASTED) WITH TOM LEHRER' (see <http://www.anglia.ac.uk/
~systimk/humour/Lehrer/An-Evening.Html#OldMexico>)
p36 "Excretus Est Ex Altitudine" and "Depositatum De Latrina"
Latatian for "Sh*t on from a great height" and "Down the pan" perhaps.
p52 et seq. "Something inside his coat went:`Bing bing bingley bing!'".
PTerry likes gadgets. So, for that matter, do AFP'ers. Where ever there are
two or more Pratchetteers collected together there will be a table with
small grey plastic boxes that open up and sometimes go `Bing bing bingley
bing!' or `Tadaaaaa' or `clang'. Does PTerry have a sound card and
microphone? I'm sure several AFPers would like their Psion Organisers to go
"Bing bing bingley bing" in a speeded-up PTerrrySample.
p65 "And that seemed about it, short of stripping the wallpaper off the wall."
also:
p147 "... you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad.
Mind you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
p190 "The old, dusty, musty wallpaper. [...] Could you actually be
poisoned by the *walls*?"
Some say that Napoleon (whilst in exile on Elba) was killed by the Arsenic
compounds in the wallpaper somehow being ingested/breathed in/whatever.
Apparently, certain types of green dye do contain small quantities of
arsenic, which was long held by some to be the method by which the Emperor
was introduced to his demise; there was green wallpaper in his bedroom.
This theory suffers from the same flaws as in FoC; namely that the
quantities involved are minute, and that the wallpaper hadn't been changed
since long before any illness was apparent.
Recent tests done on his hair seem inconclusive.
p77 "Ah, h'druk g'har dWatch, Sh'rt'azs!"
Not really an annotation, but look carefully at the translation of
"Littlebottom" into Dwarvish.
p110 et seq. "...licking his fingers delicately to turn the thin pages."
This is exactly how most of the deaths occurred in "The Name of the Rose"
by Umberto Eco. Paper impregnated with poison. Also the same as the death
of the King in "La Reine Margot"
p115 The YMPA is fairly obviously equivalent to the YMCA . . . will we
later see Nobby, Colon, Carrot et. al wearing big moustaches singing
"Young - erm - person, there's no need to feel down . . ."?
p144 "While I am doing this, why not take some time to fill out your
registration card?"
One of the many wonderful parallels between the "15-function imp" and
modern software. This particular one reminds me of the ceaseless
reminders given by Microsoft products during installation...
(Particularly Windows and the MS Office packages)
p177 "Nothing beats an earl except a duke..."
Doesn't a Marquis come in between? Duke Marquess Earl Viscount Baron
Baronet, that's what I thought... could there be a Marquess of Morpork
hanging around somewhere...?
p189 "What was it those dwarfs said the other day? One said something like,
'She feels the need,' and the other one said, 'Yeah, the need to
feed.'"
Remember Top Gun?
Tom Cruise : "I feel the need"
Both of them : "The need - for speed!"
p197 "... in extreme cases, enough pieces of old junk and tools to
make a fully functional armoured car."
Another reference to "The A-Team", and not MacGyver, because MacGyver's
creations were always plausible.
p222 "Well, it's putting itself together."
In Terminator 2, after being frozen and shattered, the robot re-assembles
itself like this. I don't imagine that this is the original but it is
probably the best known.
p230 "`I had that trouble when I put up them kitchen units for Mrs Colon'
said the sergeant. `The instructions on how to open the box were inside
the box-'"
Sort of a cross between MFI kitchen/bedroom kits (which traditionally have
a screw missing) and the video recorder which comes with a tape telling
you how to install it.
Tamar says: "It's older than that. When the (now-standard) zipper was
first invented, tobacco pouches with zipper closures were sold with the
instructions on how to use the zipper neatly packaged inside. Some
purchasers on the American frontier had to search for months to find
someone who knew how to open them. 19th century."
p260 "We can rebuild him"
Surely everyone must have seen "The Six Million Dollar Man"? Steve Austin
was fitted with bionic legs, arm and eye.
p272 "Undead Or Alive, You Are Coming With Me," said Dorfl
A Robocop reference, original: "Dead or alive, you are coming with me"
p280 "What are your duties?" said Vimes.
"To Serve The Public Trust, Protect The Innocent, And Seriously Prod
Buttock, Sir", said Dorfl.
Another Robocop reference, original: "To serve the public trust,
protect the innocent, and uphold the law"
===========================================================================
Attributions and thanks go to:
Terry Pratchett (for writing it)
Roger Barnett
S. Beale
Alan Bellingham
Colm Buckley
Mark Burbidge
David Buttler
Stephen Judd
Paul Menage
David Radford
Thomas Womack
Tamar
Terry Pratchett (for annotating himself)
No doubt I have missed something and someone out (sorry!) All the cock-ups
are probably mine. Leo, you have my sympathy, appreciation and respect, I
hope this helps rather than hindering you.
Mike.
Tony Finch
In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk>,
Mike <ze...@myth.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> The DeNobbes coat of arms: Is it a "V" sign and a sign of scrumped apples?
> PTerry is letting us stew on those apples.
Another peculiarity of Discworld Heraldry: on this planet, chevrons
point upwards, so the de Nobbes arms would include a chevron reversed.
Also, in British heraldry, green roundels [circles] (conventionally
depicted as spheres) are blazonned as pomeis, from the French. I
suspect that apples proper are a rare charge indeed.
FTony.
Secretary-elect,
Cambridge University Heraldic And Genealogocal Society [1]
--
"Laugh? I almost started." -- a Discworld Herald's reaction to canting arms.
[1] so there
Alison Willis
> ****************************************************************
>
> Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
>
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> ***********************
>
> vvvv Down Here vvvv
>
>
> An Internettically correct way of swearing involving faulty keyboards.
> As in "Oh b*ll*cks". Quite Baconian.
and on a similar theme, relating to the golem argument see p121
}She thought about the wall again. "Some of theme got quite emphatic,"
}she added, remembering the size of some of the lettering. "If they were
}human they'd have been shouting..."
Sound familiar?
--
Alison Willis
Terry Pratchett
>
>
> All of a sudden dozens of *A* subject lines have started to spawn. Several
> people have simultaneously discovered what happened to A Certain Corsican and
> have taken an interest in 1970s American TV programmes.
>
>
> In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our esteemed
> Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together all the
> annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet another new thread.
> If you haven't finished the book yet, please keep your annotations to yourself
> and not start another annotation thread until you have.
>
>
> If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
>
>
>
> ****************************************************************
>
> Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
>
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> ***********************
>
> vvvv Down Here vvvv
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> General things:
>
> Carrot, Angua and Due South: I think it was particularly clever for PTerry
> (having seen Due South) to steal back all those G!G! books, re-write them
> and put them back in our houses in exactly the same position. This has been
> discussed several times already. Having said that, there are several bits in
> FoC that are somewhat morphically resonant.
Er...hold on... I'd got a 'policeman' with a 'wolf' before Due South was aired
in the UK, and for all I know in the US too. I think that has been established.
If I *continue* to use them, it doesn't suddenly reverse the time flow.
By the way, I pers'nally think that the bit about Carrot having his breakfast
and deducing there was a robbery going on in the bakery opposite had a
certain Dirty Harry feel. But I could be wrong.
> Golems and The Laws of Robotics. I'm pretty sure that Golems had these laws
> built into the "Words In The Head" before the Laws of Robotics we invented.
Too right. Several centuries:-) The golems in FoC are, with certain minor
changes for plot purposes, pretty traditional golems. Btw (re stuff
about Terminator below) golems have glowing red eyes. These seems to have been
established for very many years. I've seen stills from a Czech film
which was pretty definite and there they are, glowing. Representations of
golems vary from big dough men to large, very human looking creatures. They
mustn't work on the Sabbath and they cannot speak.
> The DeNobbes coat of arms: Is it a "V" sign and a sign of scrumped apples?
> PTerry is letting us stew on those apples.
Yep.
> The candles: PTerry said "(It) *has* been used in real life, in an attempt
> on the life of Leopold I, Emperor of Austria. An alchemist called Guiseppe
> Borri sussed it out, tested his theory by feeding the shredded wick of one
> of the candles to a dog and, I seem to recall, found there was so much
> arsenic in the heavy candles used to illiuminate Leopold's bedroom that
> they weighed more!"
> p17 and another later (um..) "...so be d*mned to the lot of them."
>
> An Internettically correct way of swearing involving faulty keyboards.
> As in "Oh b*ll*cks". Quite Baconian.
There is Life beyond the Net! Substituting another character, like '-' or '*'
has long been an acceptable way of bowdlerising a naughty word for several
hundred years, I think.
> p21 "Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his
> drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called /Animal
> Husbandry/. He'd been a bit worried about the title - you heard
> stories about strange people in the country ..."
>
> Seems to be in just about every comedian's repertoire, but more
> specifically from the introduction to 'In Old Mexico' on the album
> 'AN EVENING (WASTED) WITH TOM LEHRER' (see <http://www.anglia.ac.uk/
> ~systimk/humour/Lehrer/An-Evening.Html#OldMexico>)
A clutched straw, sorry. It's just an obvious line.
> p52 et seq. "Something inside his coat went:`Bing bing bingley bing!'".
>
> PTerry likes gadgets. So, for that matter, do AFP'ers. Where ever there are
> two or more Pratchetteers collected together there will be a table with
> small grey plastic boxes that open up and sometimes go `Bing bing bingley
> bing!' or `Tadaaaaa' or `clang'. Does PTerry have a sound card and
> microphone? I'm sure several AFPers would like their Psion Organisers to go
> "Bing bing bingley bing" in a speeded-up PTerrrySample.
Right. The d*mned thing is every d*mn pocket gadget you've ever played with!
Most of the other stuff is pretty well spotted.
No one is every going to believe this, but Robocop/Terminator was not at
the top of my mind when I wrote FoC.
Things happened because of narrative necessity.
It was so obvious that Dorfl had to learn to think for himself.
And ditto that there would have to be a showdown with the king golem.
And, since golems are so strong, there were very good plot and
metaphorical reasons why I'd need Dorfl to be involved.
Then when they were fighting in the factory I thought, oh d*mn. And then
I thought, what the hell.
But Dorfl's no Robocop. I don't know how much of a role he's going to have
in future books, but I think he's a lot less predictable than Murphy.
Since every decision he makes is based on careful moral analysis, I imagine
he'd be quite capable of being extrememly 'disobedient'.
Golems look like robots because, well, they were/are. When I were a lad,
every book about the history of robots mentioned the golem legends. The glowing
eyes, the strength, the programmability...it was all there. It's a shame
they're not so well known now, because they have had a deep influence.
Terry
Jan H. Haul
On Sat, 01 Jun 96 00:28:02 GMT, Mike <ze...@myth.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>p110 et seq. "...licking his fingers delicately to turn the thin pages."
>
> This is exactly how most of the deaths occurred in "The Name of the Rose"
> by Umberto Eco. Paper impregnated with poison. Also the same as the death
> of the King in "La Reine Margot"
>
>
Also reported of one of the "peculiar four novels" of ancient China,
the Kin Ping Meh, quite obviously written as a revenge in a court
battle... however, it has never been proven that the pages were
actually poisoned; the loss of face of the victim, depicted as a
lazy, dumb and generally incompetent guy, dying on an overdose
of Nanny Ogg's more powerful recipes, seems to have been just enough to
kill him off socially.
Jan
Mike
In article <833703...@unseen.demon.co.uk>
Ter...@unseen.demon.co.uk "Terry Pratchett" writes:
>Er...hold on... I'd got a 'policeman' with a 'wolf' before Due South was aired
>in the UK, and for all I know in the US too. I think that has been established.
>If I *continue* to use them, it doesn't suddenly reverse the time flow.
Oops! (Blush) Sorry if it came out wrong Terry. Mebbe that's why I'm not a
Rich and Successful Author(tm) :)
>Golems look like robots because, well, they were/are. When I were a lad,
>every book about the history of robots mentioned the golem legends. The
>glowing eyes, the strength, the programmability...it was all there. It's
>a shame they're not so well known now, because they have had a deep influence.
Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
Dorfl sounds like he could (figuratively) be the love child of two Star Trek
and Next Generation characters turned through 90 degrees and put through a
blender. Yummy! Oh sod, I'm doing it again, making something sound derived
when it's actually incredibly original and interesting. I think that Baconian
sandwich I had for lunch is repeating on me so I'll shut up now...
Mike.
P.S.
Did I say how good I thought FoC is? No? FWIW (about a tenner) very!
Different enough from G!G! and MAA (shame Lady Sybil only got a cameo) and
with an excellent plot (why don't many books have decent plots nowadays?)
Julian H J Loaring
Mike <ze...@myth.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Quite a lot really, but I suspect much of it was cut and pasted...
He's my desperate attempt for APB immortality
P254 Angua "...there must be a back way out of here"
... said the joker to the thief. Sounds like a reference to the Bob
Dylan song "All Along The *WATCH*tower" made famous by Jimi Hendrix
(1968) and lovingly preserved by The Hamsters.
The actual opening line of the song is "There must be someway out of
here said the joker to the thief".
As a supplementary would the over-sized Carrot qualify as a
"Watchtower" ?
Julian H J Loaring
//////////////////
One more dried frog pill won't hurt, they're not at all addictive
T.A.Wa...@student.lboro.ac.uk
>In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk> ze...@myth.demon.co.uk "Mike" writes:
>
>>
>>
>> All of a sudden dozens of *A* subject lines have started to spawn. Several
>> people have simultaneously discovered what happened to A Certain Corsican and
>> have taken an interest in 1970s American TV programmes.
>>
>>
>> In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our esteemed
>
>> Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together all the
>> annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet another new thread.
>> If you haven't finished the book yet, please keep your annotations to yourself
>> and not start another annotation thread until you have.
>>
>>
>> If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
>>
>>
>>
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>> Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
>>
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ***********************
>>
>> vvvv Down Here vvvv
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
"Going to melt down their helmets, are they?"
Echoes of Wimmin's Lib? Presumably, dwarves have no bras to burn....
--
- Tom's random .sig quote of the week:
" We can rebuild him. We have the pottery. "
- Captain Carrot, Ankh-Morpork City Watch.
Terry Pratchett
In article <833757...@myth.demon.co.uk> ze...@myth.demon.co.uk "Mike" writes:
spoiler space...the final frontier
>
> Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
I think it is or is derived from the Czech for 'work'
> Dorfl sounds like he could (figuratively) be the love child of two Star Trek
> and Next Generation characters turned through 90 degrees and put through a
> blender. Yummy! Oh sod, I'm doing it again, making something sound derived
> when it's actually incredibly original and interesting. I think that Baconian
> sandwich I had for lunch is repeating on me so I'll shut up now...
Although I just made up a name that sounded right, Jewish friends say
'Dorfl' suggests, in Yiddish, someone from a small village. Which fits his
nature quite well, I think.
Terry Pratchett
Mark Burbidge
In a message posted on Mon, 3 Jun 1996 21:17:11 GMT to the newsgroup
alt.books.pratchett, T.A.Wa...@student.lboro.ac.uk wrote:
3
2
1
>p.286 - Angua is talking to Cheri about female dwarves;
>
> "Going to melt down their helmets, are they?"
>
>Echoes of Wimmin's Lib? Presumably, dwarves have no bras to burn....
Perhaps not, but they may have the opportunity to burn their brass.
(followups set accordingly)
Mark Burbidge http://www.ftech.net/~monark/
--
"The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends
towards the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature
abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight."
- A SchoolPupil
David Radford
On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Mike wrote:
> Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
I thought it was an accronym? Doesn't it stand for Remote Operated
something-or-other? But I could be wrong, I usually am.
Dave
Malcolm Fraser
In article <Pine.SGI.3.91.96060...@tower.york.ac.uk> David Radford wrote:
-> On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Mike wrote:
->
-> > Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
->
-> I thought it was an accronym? Doesn't it stand for Remote Operated
-> something-or-other? But I could be wrong, I usually am.
->
-> Dave
I think the word first came into common use in this way in the title
of a play by Karl Capek (sp? I know there should be an accent over the
C.) about a man-made worker, hence Robot from the Czech. Sorry, can't
be more precise than that without some digging.
--
Malcolm in Sunny Berkhamsted.
... Information is any difference that makes a difference.
Noel Foster
>In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk> ze...@myth.demon.co.uk "Mike" writes:
>
>>
>>
>> All of a sudden dozens of *A* subject lines have started to spawn. Several
>> people have simultaneously discovered what happened to A Certain Corsican and
>> have taken an interest in 1970s American TV programmes.
>>
>>
>> In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our esteemed
>
>> Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together all the
>> annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet another new thread.
>> If you haven't finished the book yet, please keep your annotations to yourself
>> and not start another annotation thread until you have.
>>
>>
>> If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
>>
>>
>>
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>> Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
>>
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ***********************
>>
>> vvvv Down Here vvvv
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
p91 Constable Visit-... "I've brought you the latest _Unadorned Facts_
magazine sir, and also this month's _Battle Call_,..."
Unadorned Facts = The Plain Truth (Scientologists?). Thanks Len.
Battle Call = War Cry (Salvation Army)
Love the foot-note on p 46. One of my step-daughters is a Jehovah's
Witness. At least when they call I can say "I already have one".
Noel.
--
When a person puts his best foot forward and it gets stepped on - that's life
Dr. Laurence Peter, 5000 Gems of Wit & Wisdom.
Wolfgang Schelongowski
In <833826...@unseen.demon.co.uk> Terry Pratchett <Ter...@unseen.demon.co.uk> writes:
[spoiler space no longer needed]
>Although I just made up a name that sounded right, Jewish friends say
>'Dorfl' suggests, in Yiddish, someone from a small village. Which fits his
>nature quite well, I think.
'Dorf' is German for village. One way to build a diminuitive form is
appending 'lein'. IIRC in southern dialects they just append 'le' or
'l' instead - Hans turns to Hansl.
But you wouldn't want to call anybody Hansl, trust me ;-)
--
Wolfgang Schelongowski w...@xivic.ruhr.de
Mustela locuta, causa finita. (With apologies to St. Chris)
Malcolm Reid
In article <833826...@unseen.demon.co.uk>
Terry Pratchett <Ter...@unseen.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In article <833757...@myth.demon.co.uk> ze...@myth.demon.co.uk "Mike" writes:
>
>
>
>
>spoiler space...the final frontier
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>>
>
automatons (i.e. not golems), and since they had no free will they were called
"Robots", the play was called "Rosco's Univeral Robots". I think I've heard
it mentioned as "R.U.R" in a couple of English textbooks (first sf thing I saw
in an english lesson.) and then of course, Asimov wrote a story about them,
coined the word "Robotics" and now it's in common usage.
*****************************************************************************
* Malcolm Reid * Mal...@SV.Span.Com * 85.5% on the Purity test *************
*****************************************************************************
* http://www.ourfiles.compuserve.com/homepages/Malcolm_Reid * McQ compliant *
*****************************************************************************
cd skogsberg
Yea, let it be known that in <833826...@unseen.demon.co.uk> the
scribe Terry Pratchett <Ter...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote thus:
> In article <833757...@myth.demon.co.uk> ze...@myth.demon.co.uk "Mike" writes:
> spoiler space...the final frontier
Full of interesting Azathoths and so on...
> >
> > Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
> I think it is or is derived from the Czech for 'work'
I believe the word 'robota' means worker in Czechian (or however you
spell that language - why can't everyone speak Swedish instead?)
cd
--
\\\\\ HFF Spokeshuman, Head of the Quisition /////
\\\\\\\__o Archbishop (Church of Hedgehog) o__///////
_\\\\\\\'/____CD Skogsberg/c...@alfakonsult.se____\'///////_
Join us in bringing Jimmy and Hedgehogs to the Common Folk
Alex Ridge
On Wed, 05 Jun 96 19:52:13 GMT, Malcolm Reid <mal...@sv.span.com>
wrote:
>>> Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
>>
>>I think it is or is derived from the Czech for 'work'
>No , it's Polish for slave. It came from the first play to mention mechanical
>automatons (i.e. not golems), and since they had no free will they were called
>"Robots", the play was called "Rosco's Univeral Robots". I think I've heard
>it mentioned as "R.U.R" in a couple of English textbooks (first sf thing I saw
>in an english lesson.) and then of course, Asimov wrote a story about them,
>coined the word "Robotics" and now it's in common usage.
It's strange that the word 'roboticist' has never entered wider usage.
Ok. Maybe it isn't then. See if I care.
--
Alex the Eternally Harassed.
Harass me at Al...@dial.pipex.com or Al...@conduit.co.uk
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/alexr/
NiceHair
On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Terry Pratchett wrote:
> In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk> ze...@myth.demon.co.uk "Mike" writes:
All ahead stop. Here there be spoilers...
<cue text to fill in the screen>
I'm going to admit that I don't usually read spoilers (even when I've
read the book), but this one had Pterry's name on it, so I had a go.
I've got to say, sure some jokes need explaining to the hard of thinking
(including me), but the line by line disection of the book is a little
too far in my eyes. CAn't people be happy with a good readable book.
Personally, I've always found that about a month after i read the book, I
get an unbelievable urge to read the book again, just to find some more
of the references and the subtletys (?sp) of Pterrys writing.
Sorry, I know that if I feel this way, I shouldn't have read the file,
but I did.
6
5
4
3
2
1
> > p17 and another later (um..) "...so be d*mned to the lot of them."
> >
> > An Internettically correct way of swearing involving faulty keyboards.
> > As in "Oh b*ll*cks". Quite Baconian.
>
> There is Life beyond the Net! Substituting another character, like '-' or '*'
> has long been an acceptable way of bowdlerising a naughty word for several
> hundred years, I think.
I'm not sure about the length of time, but yes, I agree. I've only been
on the net for six months or so, and I can definately say this is not a
net. thing.
> > p21 "Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his
> > drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called /Animal
> > Husbandry/. He'd been a bit worried about the title - you heard
> > stories about strange people in the country ..."
> >
> > Seems to be in just about every comedian's repertoire, but more
> > specifically from the introduction to 'In Old Mexico' on the album
> > 'AN EVENING (WASTED) WITH TOM LEHRER' (see <http://www.anglia.ac.uk/
> > ~systimk/humour/Lehrer/An-Evening.Html#OldMexico>)
>
> A clutched straw, sorry. It's just an obvious line.
It's a joke for gods sake. Can't a joke be a joke?
> It was so obvious that Dorfl had to learn to think for himself.
> And ditto that there would have to be a showdown with the king golem.
> And, since golems are so strong, there were very good plot and
> metaphorical reasons why I'd need Dorfl to be involved.
>
> Terry
Only a small point (and the real reason I posted this back), what about
Carrot's sword? I know that the book would have been a lot less if Dorfl
hadn't been in it, but I would have liked to see Carrot *try* the sword.
Oh, well. I'll just sit back and wait for the flack that's coming my way.
Seeya, NiceHair
/------------------\
/------------------+ Paul Mabbs +-----------------\
| Mort | | NiceHair |
+------------------+ pj...@le.ac.uk +-----------------+
| \------------------/ |
| "Psst," it said. |
| "Not yet," said Rincewind, "but I'm working on it." |
\-------------------------------------------------------/
Jean Lamb
I thought it was a made-up word from a Czech author, Karl Capek, who
wrote R.U.R. (Rossem's Universal Robots).
>David Radford <dmr...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Mike wrote:
>> Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
>I thought it was an accronym? Doesn't it stand for Remote Operated
>something-or-other? But I could be wrong, I usually am.
>Dave
Jean Lamb, tla...@gp.magick.net
Queen of her own Universe, Unrealty Office opening soon!
See her story "Galley Slave" in the August _Analog_.
T.A.Wa...@student.lboro.ac.uk
In article <Pine.SGI.3.91.960608100713.17677B-100000@hawk>
NiceHair <pj...@le.ac.uk> writes:
No, not here. Down there...
>
>Only a small point (and the real reason I posted this back), what about
>Carrot's sword? I know that the book would have been a lot less if Dorfl
>hadn't been in it, but I would have liked to see Carrot *try* the sword.
>
>Oh, well. I'll just sit back and wait for the flack that's coming my way.
He did use his sword - the golem king swatted it out of the way. I
presume that's what you were talking about...
>
>Seeya, NiceHair
-or should that be "WonderfulPersonality"? :)
--
++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
Eike Michael Lang
On 04-Jun-96 14:35:11, dmr...@york.ac.uk posted something in alt.fan.pratchett
that looked like: Re: *A* *R* Please Post FEET OF CLAY Annotations *HERE ONLY*
>On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Mike wrote:
>> Isn't the word "robot" Czech/Romanian/Hungarian/Whatever for servant?
>I thought it was an accronym? Doesn't it stand for Remote Operated
>something-or-other? But I could be wrong, I usually am.
Sorry to say so, but you are wrong, Mike is right, though I cannot say more
precisely than he, what language it came from, but it's an eastern european one
for sure, the translation "servant" is AFAIK pretty much in the ball park.
Ciao,
Eike
PGP-Public Key available upon request
Only AMIGA makes it possible!
Mary Novak
(I've built my thoughts on this over several months of the occasional
similar post; please don't feel personally attacked OR that you're the
only person who feels this way. I'm just using your post to give my own
statement on the position and see if anyone wants to discuss it.)
Well, you answered yourself--if the annotations bother you, you needn't
read them. And at the extreme, if you don't like discussing the books at
all, what are you doing on abp in the first place? Afp's the forum for
discussing *around* the books. (Actually, it was a cross-post, so maybe
you do avoid abp.) There's nothing at all wrong with not being
interested in this particular aspect of the net Pratchett experience--I
know there's other people on afp who view discussing the books as
*entirely* extraneous to their experience of the group. But why even
bother to try to cut in on my enjoyment? I like annotating and
discussing the books, sometimes line by line. It's how I enjoy books.
It's why I enjoy this group--in my real life, there's nobody who enjoys
reading books as closely as I do AND deigns to apply that close reading
to "light" authors such as Pratchett.
Looks to me like your complaint, given that you *do* have a book issue to
kick around and are somewhat interested in what Pterry has to say
whatever the topic, is that some of the annotating looks like needless
picking the book apart--and that ruins your enjoyment. Sooner or later
we all think along those lines, because some of the annotations
(including, or especially, mine) are stupid, some of them are wrong, some
of them are absurdly tenuous. But *some* of them are right, and are for
my part facts that I would be unlikely to encounter in any other forum,
and some are wondrous and new to me and illuminate my life in a small
way. You have to take the good with the bad, if you're going to read the
annotations/discussions at all. It's just two approaches to the
Discworld experience--you wait for your life to kick up bits of knowledge
that then inform on your understanding of the books; I use the books and
other people's experiences of them to inform on my life.
I'm endlessly fascinated by the way books are constructed--*how* they
work, not just enjoying *that* they work. I don't look on it as ruining
the books I read--I view it as my attempt to see the structures, to
understand the *architecture* of the buildings I explore, not just wander
from room to room passively admiring the decor. There's nothing wrong
with not enjoying things my way (and nothing wrong with killfiling me
since that's about all I do here--that's mno...@rlem.tamu.edu). If you
stick around long enough, you'll eventually figure out who mainly
discusses topics you enjoy and who to avoid--selectivity's the key to
enjoying the net, s'far's I can tell.
Once again, that's: Mary Novak
mno...@rlem.tamu.edu
NiceHair <pj...@le.ac.uk> wrote:
>I'm going to admit that I don't usually read spoilers (even when I've
>read the book), but this one had Pterry's name on it, so I had a go.
>
>I've got to say, sure some jokes need explaining to the hard of thinking
>(including me), but the line by line disection of the book is a little
>too far in my eyes. CAn't people be happy with a good readable book.
>Personally, I've always found that about a month after i read the book, I
>get an unbelievable urge to read the book again, just to find some more
>of the references and the subtletys (?sp) of Pterrys writing.
>
>Sorry, I know that if I feel this way, I shouldn't have read the file,
>but I did.
>Only a small point (and the real reason I posted this back), what about
>Carrot's sword? I know that the book would have been a lot less if Dorfl
>hadn't been in it, but I would have liked to see Carrot *try* the sword.
>
>Oh, well. I'll just sit back and wait for the flack that's coming my way.
>
>Seeya, NiceHair
R Biegler
T.A.Wa...@student.lboro.ac.uk writes:
>NiceHair <pj...@le.ac.uk> writes:
>>Only a small point (and the real reason I posted this back), what about
>>Carrot's sword? I know that the book would have been a lot less if Dorfl
>>hadn't been in it, but I would have liked to see Carrot *try* the sword.
>He did use his sword - the golem king swatted it out of the way. I
>presume that's what you were talking about...
I am wondering whether the Watch has accidentally entered a narrative
arms race. In Guard! Guards! it had Carrot, with "a punch even trolls
had learned to respect". Still, when he intervenes in the troll and
dwarf marches in Men at Arms it's his krisma that saves him, not his
fists. He can push a sword right through an assassin and a granite
pillar, but what gets him out of the guild is Detritus and his siege
crossbow. Seeing that the bolt smashes through stone walls, it would
presumably be effective even against a troll. Yet in Feet of Clay that
crossbow fails twice against golems, once when Nobby fires it at Dorfl,
then when Detritus fires it at Meshugah, the golem king (has anyone
mentioned yet that meschugge means crazy, I think in Yiddish?). Now
Dorfl has joined the Watch. Being fireproof he could presumably even
deal with a dragon if another one turned up. If there should be another
book about the Watch, is there anything left they couldn't deal with
easily? Unless there is again an escalation in the power of whatever
causes the problem. It's the sort of arms race that sometimes happens
in fantasy series, where as the heroes get more powerful, the author
must keep inventing bigger problems, until the universe gets too small
for either problem or heroe. [1, 2]
Robert Biegler
[1] Which does not necessarily imply being male, as illustrated in the
following quote from "The Ever-After" by Eluki Bes Shahar:
Ruana Rulane was a hero. Practically speaking, in terms of semantics
and sex, she should have been a heroine, but heroines are rather more
associated with the staunch maintenance of husbands, children, and the
gentler arts of domestic order.
But Ruana Rulane was a hero - which is to say, vastly inconvenient
except in times of war. And this was peacetime.
[2] and anyway, I never quite knew how to pronounce "heroine". I
suppose it must be different from "heroin"?
Martin O'Nions
Nothing to do with the Rossum's Universal thread, but a couple of possible
annotations below. Sorry if I'm covering old groupnd with any of them, but
I'm not reading ABP much at the moment and have had to try to trawl the
existing *A* theads from my news spool to see if I'm repeating earlier
suggestions.
Spoiler space - shouldn't be necessary, but there you go.
NiceHair
Erm.... Yes I agree, you don't need spoiler space when you've got no
spoilers :)
Oh, well...
Martin O'Nions
NiceHair <pj...@le.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>On 10 Jun 1996, Martin O'Nions wrote:
>
>> Nothing to do with the Rossum's Universal thread, but a couple of possible
>> annotations below. Sorry if I'm covering old groupnd with any of them, but
>> I'm not reading ABP much at the moment and have had to try to trawl the
>> existing *A* theads from my news spool to see if I'm repeating earlier
>> suggestions.
>>
>> Spoiler space - shouldn't be necessary, but there you go.
>>
>Erm.... Yes I agree, you don't need spoiler space when you've got no
>spoilers :)
>
>Oh, well...
Yeah. Serves me right for posting from Nutscrape. I hit send a fraction
of a second before spotting I'd got a single '.' on the line beneath the
comment. Not only did it feed this unescaped (so terminating the post)
but it doesn't give me a convenient way to cancel the post, so it took
about five minutes to get the cancel out. I'll repost the list tonight
from home - didn't get a chance yesterday.
Apologies to those who read the post before it was cancelled.
Martin
--
Martin O'Nions SMS Datacare Ltd mar...@pdc.nhs.gov.uk
Opinions contained herein may differ from those held by my employer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I'm stubborn as those garbage bags / that time cannot decay"
(Leonard Cohen - Democracy)
Mary Novak
Two leetle annotations; if I was organdized to the point where I kept the
page numbers on hand when I don't have the book in lap, my whole life
would be different.
Anyway, early on Dragon mentions he doesn't prey on humans, sticks to
humans and if necessary goes to a kosher butcher. (I think this was in
Reaper Man too.) Corrections welcomed, I'm just a shiksa, but I think
the vampiric appeal of kosher butchery is that kosher is all about the
specific ritual used to slaughter the unfortunate beast--specifically,
its throat is slashed with a very sharp knive (with *no nicks*) and it
bleeds to death quickly. It's meant to be as humane as possible.
Fred and Nobby are hung over and Nobby says "We are all on our backs in
the gutter, Fred, but some of us are looking at the stars"--it's a
paraphrase of an Oscar Wilde quote, I know not from what, but I've seen
it used as a .sig before.
Mary Novak
mno...@rlem.tamu.edu
Mary Novak
Spoilers for just about everything below.
bie...@tattoo.ed.ac.uk (R Biegler) wrote:
>I am wondering whether the Watch has accidentally entered a narrative
>arms race.
(snip)
If there should be another
>book about the Watch, is there anything left they couldn't deal with
>easily? Unless there is again an escalation in the power of whatever
>causes the problem. It's the sort of arms race that sometimes happens
>in fantasy series, where as the heroes get more powerful, the author
>must keep inventing bigger problems, until the universe gets too small
>for either problem or heroe. [1, 2]
Yeah, it happens. Terry seems to have forestalled it somewhat on two
counts (and it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation--if
they hadn't at least tried the things they had, we'd all be "So what
happened to that siege crossbow, eh?"): the villains have certainly
gotten smarter over time--doesn't take much to defeat the Things From The
Dungeon Dimensions, who we haven't heard from in a long while--but they
haven't gotten more powerful in a linear way (this evil sorceror is EVEN
WORSE than the guy we defeated in the last book, he's got all the same
spells PLUS X, Y, Z), they're powerful for different reasons--Lord Hong
and Vorbis had tremendous control over populations, Lillith had expert
magic, the dragon had amazing strength, Cruces, Lord Dragon, and whatsis
from M! are schemers, and the baddie in Soul Music was a
fiendish bureaucrat. With such diverse villains, you don't expect the
same things to work every time anyway. And taking the Gonne right back
out of Discworld after only one book was a very good idea--things have
accelerated as it is, but by officially halting the arms race at guns,
Terry has to use his ingenuity to devise new weapons in the same
medieval frame of reference.
Mary Novak
mno...@rlem.tamu.edu
David Wald
In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk> Mike
<ze...@myth.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our esteemed
>Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together all the
>annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet another new thread.
>If you haven't finished the book yet, please keep your annotations to yourself
>and not start another annotation thread until you have.
>If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
> ****************************************************************
> Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
> ****************************************************************
>p17 and another later (um..) "...so be d*mned to the lot of them."
>
> An Internettically correct way of swearing involving faulty keyboards.
> As in "Oh b*ll*cks". Quite Baconian.
Especially since the convention has been used for years completely
outside the realm of computers. E.g., Partridge's dictionaries of
slang used this to avoid fully writing out certain words.
-David
--
============================================================================
David Wald http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~wald/ wa...@theory.lcs.mit.edu
============================================================================
David Wald
In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk> Mike
<ze...@myth.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our
>esteemed Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together
>all the annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet
>another new thread. If you haven't finished the book yet, please
>keep your annotations to yourself and not start another annotation
>thread until you have.
>If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
> ****************************************************************
> Major, Minor and Baconian S P O I L E R S Follow
> ****************************************************************
>p17 and another later (um..) "...so be d*mned to the lot of them."
>
> An Internettically correct way of swearing involving faulty keyboards.
> As in "Oh b*ll*cks". Quite Baconian.
While I'm annotating, and since I haven't seen this yet, a quick guide
to some of the Yiddish terms used as Golem names in FoC:
(p138) Dibbuk -- (n.) an evil spirit or demon, especially one which
posesses a person. (From Hebrew.)
(p196) Meshugah -- (adj.) crazy. (From Hebrew.)
(p283) Klutz -- (n.) a clumsy clod or bungler. (From German.)
(p283) Bobkes -- (n.) beans, but only metaphorically; something
worthless or nonsensical. (From Russian.)
(p283) Shmata -- (n.) a rag, or piece of cloth; used both literally
and to describe a person of weak character. (From
Polish.)
Two notes on the etymologies.
1) They all come from Leo Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_, a
rare combination of dictionary and joke book. Recommended
reading.
2) Don't take the etymologies too literally; for example, the form of
German from which much of Yiddish derives is not, if I remember
correctly, a direct ancestor of modern German. I've been told the
same for much of the Polish, as well.
jsi...@vnet.ibm.com
In <WALD.96Ju...@woodpecker.lcs.mit.edu>, wa...@theory.lcs.mit.edu (David Wald) writes:
>In article <833588...@myth.demon.co.uk> Mike
><ze...@myth.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>In an attempt to keep all the annotations together before our
>>esteemed Annotator-In-Chief Leo comes along, I have strung together
>>all the annotations so far. *Please* add them here and not in yet
>>another new thread. If you haven't finished the book yet, please
>>keep your annotations to yourself and not start another annotation
>>thread until you have.
>
>>If you (F)ollowup, *please* edit the text. Thank you.
Here are a few annotations. Please forgive if someone has done these
already:
That end bit with King and Dorfl, seems a iddy bit like Terminator 2. And
the King sticks itself back together like the super T in T2.
"Today is a good day for someone else to die" a different version of
the (I think) native american saying - "today is a good day to die".
The Group of Anonymous people getting together to decide things,
similar to the X-files. Lots of plotting.
You all probably think I'm thick as shit now, well ok.
J Siddle
Tim Gerrish
bie...@tattoo.ed.ac.uk (R Biegler) wrote:
>[2] and anyway, I never quite knew how to pronounce "heroine". I
>suppose it must be different from "heroin"?
if you want my tuppenceworth (inflation being what it is)
heroin = heh-row-in
heroine = heh-row-een
That's the way I've always done it, anyway.
(:l)
Tim Gerrish |
ti...@dvi.co.uk | They say I'm too old for hangovers...
Born to lurk . . . | I wish someone would tell the hangovers #:(
Martin O'Nions
jsi...@vnet.ibm.com wrote:
>The Group of Anonymous people getting together to decide things,
>similar to the X-files. Lots of plotting.
>
I suspect that it may be a bit more generic than that - readers of
Robert Rankin's Armageddon trilogy may remember the parody of just
this sort of meeting in pre-X-Files days. It's one of those wonderfully
disquieting setups - the no-accountability idea - that has become
something of a movie cliche.
Justin McGuire
This posting is 99% spoilers for Feet of Clay. You have been warned.
Continued below
|
|
|
\ | /
\|/
I have just finished reading FoC for the second time. This time I thought
I would make some annotations as I went. I haven't been able to read AFP
much lately, so most of these will probably fall into one of three
categories: 1) the ones you already know about, 2) the bleeding obvious
and 3) the ones you don't care about. Nevertheless, here we go.
Incidentally, everything here should have an IIRC before it.
General: There are many bits which call to mind Terminator 2, Robocop or
other robot based stories.
Blurb "...the truth might not be out there at all." reference to the X-files.
p17 "Cable street peculiars" = Baker Street Irregulars from Sherlock Holmes.
p23 "I want someone who can look at the ashtray and tell me what kind of
cigars I smoke." Another Holmes reference. Holmes was an expert in cigar
ash and had written several papers on the subject.
p26 "Slab: Jus' say 'AarrghaarrghpleassennononoUGH'." A reference to the
"Drugs: Just say no" campaign which ran in Merka a few years ago. IIRC it
was supported by the first lady at the time (Nancy Reagan?).
p30 Shield design: See the cover of the Streets of Ankh Morpork. It is the
AM coat of arms, one of the few not shown at the start of FoC.
p34 Dragon King of Arms. Dracula can be translated as Dragon's son.
p38 The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker. An old children's
poem went
Rub-a-dub-dub
Three men in a tub
And who do you think they were?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker
??????????????????????
I have no idea what the last line was.
p46 footnote. See Small Gods. Brutha appears to have taken a religion
dedicated to taking over the world, through violence if necessary; and
turned it into the Jehovah's witnesses. I may need to revise my opinion of
him being a good guy.
An aside: Have you ever wondered what happens when a Jehovah's Witness
knocks on the door of a Mormon?
p63 "[to poison someone you could] dribble some in their ear while they
slept." Shakespeare reference. Hamlet's father was poisoned this way.
p85 "But sometimes it's good to go where everybody knows your shape." From
the opening theme of Cheers, "where everybody knows your name."
p123 "Who streals my prurse streals trasph, right?" Another one from
Shakespeare. It comes from Othello , act III, scene 3. Iago says it,
somewhat more soberly, then goes on to explain that anyone who steals his
good name steals far more.
p142-143 Reciting a list of facts about someone based on the most trivial
observation was one of Holmes trademarks. Naturally, Holmes was always
right. IIRC this was actually based on a real person.
p143 "It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got to the truth,
however improbable..." Another Holmes reference. The original goes
something like "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth." In Star Trek VI Spock attributes this to
one of his ancestors.
p155 " 'I am only a weak woman,' said Mrs Palm..." This sounds like a
reference to Elizabeth I, who said:
"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart
and stomach of a king, and a king of England too; and think foul scorn
that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the
borders of my realm."
This was when the Spanish Amada was approaching England. Presumably she
was talking metaphorically about the heart and stomach.
p188: "...it paid to hitch your wagon to a star, even if said star was a
red dwarf."
If something is a red giant then it is big, reddish and hot.
If something is a white dwarf then it is smaller and not as hot.
If something is a red dwarf then it's cold outside and there's no kind of
atmosphere.
p195 "...the one about thee Klatchian who walked into a pub with a tiny piano."
Okay, the joke goes like this:
This Klatchian walked into a pub carrying a small piano. He puts in on the
bar and has a few drinks. When it comes time to pay up he says to the
publican,"I bet you double or nothing I can show you the most amazing
thing you ever saw."
"Okay, but I warn you, I've seen some weird stuff."
The Klatchian takes out a tiny stool, which he sits in front of the piano.
He then reaches into his robes and pulls out a box, about a foot long,
with tiny air-holes in it. He takes off the lid and inside is a tiny man,
fast asleep. As the lid opens he wakes up. Instantly he jumps to the piano
and plays a perfect rendition of "The Shades of Ankh-Morpork"! Then, as
everyone in the bar is clapping, he jumps back into the box and closes the
lid.
"Wow!" The publican says, and wipes the slate clean."If I give you another
drink, could you do it again?" The Klatchian agrees. This time the little
man plays the Hedgehog song, to thunderous applause.
"I gotta ask, where did you get that?"
"Well, a few months ago I was travelling across the deserts of Klatch,
when I suddenly came across a glass bottle. I picked it up and rubbed it
and lo and behold, out popped a Genie.
For some reason it was holding a curved bone to his ear and talking to it.
'Genie,' I said to him, 'I have freed you, and in return I ask only three
wishes.'
'Huh?' The genie said, looking at me for the first time. 'Oh, OK, three,
whatever.' He then started talking to the bone again.
'Genie, I would like a million bucks!' I said to him."
"Did you get it?"
"Not exactly. The genie kept talking to the bone and he waved one of his
hands. Instantly, I was surrounded by a million ducks. Then they flew
away."
"What was your second wish?"
" I said to him 'I want to be the ruler the world!' the Genie was still
talking to his bone, but he waved his free hand and a piece of wood
appeared, with inches marked on it."
"Oh, a ruler. It sounds like the genie wasn't paying much attention. Did
you get your third wish?"
"Let me put it like this, do you really think I asked for a twelve inch
pianist?"
p210 "'Just so long as I can run faster'n yez,' said Wee Mad Arthur. This
is from another joke. A shorter one. It goes like this:
Two guys were camping out in the jungle. It was night. Suddenly there was
a deafening roar.
Immediately one of them starts to put on his sneakers.
"Are you nuts?" The other one asked," There's no way you can outrun a lion
at night."
"I don't have to outrun the lion." Said the first one.
The point being that when the lion catches his 'friend' it will slow down
to eat him, giving the first guy time to escape. This one was in the first
episode of the Dr Who story "Survival", told by Hale to Pace.
p217 "My name is Sam and I'm a really suspicious bastard." People who get
up to speak at Alcoholics Anonymous meeting start with "My name's Sam and
I'm an alcoholic."
p222 The king golem reassembling calls to mind the liquid terminator in T2.
p245 Way back on p108 you see that Joshua H Catterail lives in Park Lane.
Kings Down is a short walk away along Long Wall. Presumably they are on
the same beat.
p272 "'We can rebuild him,' said Carrot hoarsely, 'We have the pottery.'"
This a reference to the Six Million Dollar Man, where the line was "We can
rebuild him, we have the technology."
Thomas Womack
another spoiler (if this is already recorded, I will retreat and bash
myself upon the head with blunt implements)
The King Golem being driven mad by the conflicting words in his head is,
I think, a direct reference to Robocop 2 (one of the worse books I've
so far had the misfortune to read), where Robocop is given such a variety
of conflicting, politically-correct instructions that he goes entirely
and inescapably insane.
OK, maybe not a direct reference, but at least the same sort of event.
Hugh Davies
In article <m9205467-210...@150.203.102.58>, m920...@student.anu.edu.au (Justin McGuire) writes:
>This posting is 99% spoilers for Feet of Clay. You have been warned.
>
I can't believe you've missed all the Jewish folklore
references to golems!
"chem", pronounced "shem" is a contraction of "hashem", the
Hebrew for "the Word of God". I assume the contraction means
"word" or "words".
One of the golems is called "Dybbuk". Dybbuk is the Hebrew
word meaning Golem.
I just *loved* the way that all the dialogue belonging
to the golems was in a font that looked like Hebrew.
Altogether, the best Pratchett for a while.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Hugh J.E. Davies, Bedfordshire, England.
"The road to Paradise is through Intercourse."
David Wald
In article <4qf5f2$7...@axalotl.demon.co.uk> hu...@axalotl.demon.co.uk
(Hugh Davies) writes:
>In article <m9205467-210...@150.203.102.58>, m920...@student.anu.edu.au (Justin McGuire) writes:
>references to golems!
I take it you missed my translation in this thread a couple of days
ago of the various Yiddish words used as golem names.
>"chem", pronounced "shem"
Is that what that was? I couldn't make sense of it, but I kept
pronouncing the initial sound as in "Chanukah", as is usual in Hebrew
transliteration.
>is a contraction of "hashem", the Hebrew for "the Word of God".
>I assume the contraction means "word" or "words".
Working from my Sunday-school Hebrew, "shem" is "name" rather than
"word". "Hashem" is "the name" (or perhaps better "The Name"), as in
the name of God. The term is frequently used as a way of referring to
God without using any of the more direct terms. It does make sense in
this context, though, since the golem legends frequently had the name
of God as the animating principle.
>One of the golems is called "Dybbuk". Dybbuk is the Hebrew word
>meaning Golem.
So far as I know, the Hebrew word meaning golem is "golem". A dybbuk
is more of an evil posessing spirit; a separate (and possibly older?)
class of legends.
As for the Golem legend, I've just been rereading a nice essay by
Gershom Scholem on its history and outline. If there's any interest I
can try summarizing it in this thread.
Daniel Pead
In article <4qek58$s...@news.ox.ac.uk>, Thomas Womack
<mailto:mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> The King Golem being driven mad by the conflicting words in his head is,
> I think, a direct reference to Robocop 2
There's a lot of Robocop in the final scenes after the Golem joins the
watch, the give-away being:
p285 - "Somewhere, A Crime is Happening," said Dorfl...
... a Robocop quote if ever there was one.
--
Daniel Pead
Hugh Davies
>I take it you missed my translation in this thread a couple of days
>ago of the various Yiddish words used as golem names.
I did. I only just resubscribed to the a.f.p groups.
>>"chem", pronounced "shem"
>
>Is that what that was? I couldn't make sense of it, but I kept
>pronouncing the initial sound as in "Chanukah", as is usual in Hebrew
>transliteration.
I asked one of the Hebrew speakers at work. I was pronouncing it
with the guttural 'ch', as I have read to, but he corrected me to
a soft 'sh'.
>>is a contraction of "hashem", the Hebrew for "the Word of God".
>>I assume the contraction means "word" or "words".
>
>Working from my Sunday-school Hebrew, "shem" is "name" rather than
>"word".
Interesting. Again, my Hebrew speaking colleague definitely said "the
*word* of God". But then, the opening lines of Genesis use 'word' and
'name' equivalently.
>"Hashem" is "the name" (or perhaps better "The Name"), as in
>the name of God. The term is frequently used as a way of referring to
>God without using any of the more direct terms.
Blimey, how many of these are there?
>>One of the golems is called "Dybbuk". Dybbuk is the Hebrew word
>>meaning Golem.
>
>So far as I know, the Hebrew word meaning golem is "golem". A dybbuk
>is more of an evil posessing spirit; a separate (and possibly older?)
>class of legends.
Now I've got to go and find out where I looked this up and look
it up again! Rats! :o)
>As for the Golem legend, I've just been rereading a nice essay by
>Gershom Scholem on its history and outline. If there's any interest I
>can try summarizing it in this thread.
Yes, please. I'd be interested.
Regards,
Hugh.
David Wald
Before I go too deeply into any of this, I invite anyone with a more
detailed knowledge of Hebrew and/or Judaism to step in. I'm not
exactly a leading expert here.
In article <4qis8d$a...@axalotl.demon.co.uk> hu...@axalotl.demon.co.uk
(Hugh Davies) writes:
>>>[shem] is a contraction of "hashem", the Hebrew for "the Word of
>>>God". I assume the contraction means "word" or "words".
>>
>>Working from my Sunday-school Hebrew, "shem" is "name" rather than
>>"word".
>
>Interesting. Again, my Hebrew speaking colleague definitely said "the
>*word* of God".
"The Word of God" as opposed to "The word for God"? My pocket Hebrew
dictionary only gives "shem" as a translation for "name", not "word",
and the prayer books I have here agree.
>>"Hashem" is "the name" (or perhaps better "The Name"), as in the
>>name of God. The term is frequently used as a way of referring to
>>God without using any of the more direct terms.
>
>Blimey, how many of these are there?
Several, some of which are context-dependent. There are a couple of
things going on here, especially if you include the literature on
golems, which gets into kabbalistic material. Staying out of
mysticism for a moment, the basic prohibition is that against taking
God's name in vain. This means that terms which are too closely
associated with God's name become reserved for liturgical use. You
thus wind up with: the tetragramaton (the four-lettered Name of God
which appears in the Torah) which is never pronouced; a two-letter
abbreviation which is frequently written in prayers (perhaps to remove
the temptation to accidentally pronounce the tetragramaton); "Adonai",
meaning "Lord" or "God", which is used as the pronunciation of the
above two where they appear; and "Hashem", which is used in place of
"Adonai" if you're not actually praying. This is leaving off other
words which can also be considered either terms or names for God, such
as "Elohim".
In Kabbalah it apparently gets stranger. Judaism in general takes
letters, spellings and words very seriously, and some of the
Kabbalistic literature carries this to extremes. According to
Nachmanides, writing in the 13th century, the tradition held "that the
entire Torah consists of the names of God and that the words we read
can be divided in a very different way so as to form names." There's
not an easy limit to the number of "names of God" you can get this
way.
-David
Hugh Davies
>Before I go too deeply into any of this, I invite anyone with a more
>detailed knowledge of Hebrew and/or Judaism to step in. I'm not
>exactly a leading expert here.
Me neither. I'm operating with a vague interest in Judaism, plus
I work in a Jewish owned organisation with a large number of Yiddish
and/or Hebrew speakers. Personally, I'm an atheist.
>"The Word of God" as opposed to "The word for God"? My pocket Hebrew
>dictionary only gives "shem" as a translation for "name", not "word",
>and the prayer books I have here agree.
OK. My friend isn't the most devout Jew in the world, he could
well be wrong. Ask him about Microsoft SQL server, though ... !
>>Blimey, how many of these are there?
>
>Several, some of which are context-dependent.
Sorry, I know. I was being rhetorical.
AS RUSSELL
Please excuse me here for going off-topic slightly, but I happen to know
a variation of the joke below..
Justin McGuire (m920...@student.anu.edu.au) wrote:
: p210 "'Just so long as I can run faster'n yez,' said Wee Mad Arthur. This
: is from another joke. A shorter one. It goes like this:
: Two guys were camping out in the jungle. It was night. Suddenly there was
: a deafening roar.
: Immediately one of them starts to put on his sneakers.
: "Are you nuts?" The other one asked," There's no way you can outrun a lion
: at night."
: "I don't have to outrun the lion." Said the first one.
: The point being that when the lion catches his 'friend' it will slow down
: to eat him, giving the first guy time to escape. This one was in the first
: episode of the Dr Who story "Survival", told by Hale to Pace.
The story in question was told by Derek Brimstone (UK folk/blues singer)
about himself and the late Luke Kelley (of the Dubliners, or at least
was whilst he was alive) getting thoroughly rat-arsed in Nairobi, then
deciding to go for a pre-dawn walk in the savannah. This, however,
brought them into the presence of a lion. A few of the less-pickled
cells in Derek`s brain recalled that a great white hunter type had told
him that, should he ever be faced with a lion, he should throw a rock at
its nose, and run off whilst the lion was still stunned. So, he got a
rock, hurled it at the lion, and against the odds, hit it smack on the
nose. "Run!" he yelled. Luke turned and looked at him (with the
legendary Kelley bloodshot eyes and said "You run! You threw the fockin'
rock!
--
Winterwolf x11...@bradford.ac.uk
"There's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em"
Granny Weatherwax on gods, divinities and non-gender specific entities
Colin Rosenthal
On 21 Jun 1996 21:50:26 GMT, Hugh Davies <hu...@axalotl.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <m9205467-210...@150.203.102.58>, m920...@student.anu.edu.au (J
> ustin McGuire) writes:
>>
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>references to golems!
>
>Hebrew for "the Word of God". I assume the contraction means
>"word" or "words".
>
>word meaning Golem.
Actually a Dybbuk is a dead spirit which takes possession of a
living a person.
I'm still trying to work out the one about the Gorgon,
Mr. Bleakley and the kosher butchers.
Finally, if my brain doesn't fail me totally, "Ha Shem" means
"the name".
--
--Colin Rosenthal | ``Don't smell the flowers -
--rose...@obs.aau.dk | They're an evil drug -
--http://www.obs.aau.dk/~rosentha | To make you lose your mind''-
--Aarhus University, Denmark | Ronnie James Dio, 1983 -
Antony Powell
In article <4qek58$s...@news.ox.ac.uk>
mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk "Thomas Womack" writes:
> another spoiler (if this is already recorded, I will retreat and bash
> myself upon the head with blunt implements)
>
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> The King Golem being driven mad by the conflicting words in his head is,
> I think, a direct reference to Robocop 2 (one of the worse books I've
> so far had the misfortune to read), where Robocop is given such a variety
> of conflicting, politically-correct instructions that he goes entirely
> and inescapably insane.
>
> OK, maybe not a direct reference, but at least the same sort of event.
>
sounds more like hal to me
--
Who knows what evil lurks in the .sigs of man...
THE SHADOW KNOWS!!!
Dick Eney
Antony Powell <ant...@flate.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> mert...@sable.ox.ac.uk "Thomas Womack" writes:
>
>> another spoiler (if this is already recorded, I will retreat and bash
>> myself upon the head with blunt implements)
>>
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>> The King Golem being driven mad by the conflicting words in his head is,
>> I think, a direct reference to Robocop 2 (one of the worse books I've
>> so far had the misfortune to read), where Robocop is given such a variety
>> of conflicting, politically-correct instructions that he goes entirely
>> and inescapably insane.
>>
>> OK, maybe not a direct reference, but at least the same sort of event.
>sounds more like hal to me
_Any_ old-fashioned sf computer. Most widely known because of the many
times it was used in st*r tr*k, but a standard of pulp fiction as soon as
word spread that a computer given instructions that don't fit its program
will stop doing anything (at best) or crash (more typical back then).
Also related to standard dog-training (that is, owner-training)
classes--if you tell the dog two conflicting things at once, it is puzzled
and confused. I think this was overlapped onto computers when people
started saying computers "had the intelligence of (any dumb animal here)"
and the writers assumed that the ability to be confused went along with
the assumed intelligence. Then the fx people got into it and made the
computers blow up physically (smoke, sparks, fire) as a result of
conflicting commands. HAL9000 at least quietly stopped rather than
blowing up--but that was known as a high-tech film with unusual accuracy
:).
OTOH, an old, much-used computer _monitor_ where I used to work _did_ blow
up with sparks etc, for no particular reason than age. And the very
computer on which I am typing this once shorted something inside it,
pulled enough power to dim the house lights, made a visible flash of light
and a loud zap noise and stopped working; and two hours later, it booted
up and has worked fine ever since. Just like the Tardis. And they
have the nerve to criticize Dr. Who!
-- Tamar (sharing account dick...@access.digex.net)
who still thinks this computer is a little weird
Justin McGuire
A correction to my previous posting.
A red giant is cooler than a white dwarf, not the other way around.
I hereby declare myself officially stupid.
Oh, and as for why I didn't pick up on the Jewish references, does McGuire
sound Jewish?
Justin McGuire
jsi...@vnet.ibm.com
Asimov's Three Laws:
Does anyone agree that the golems seem to follow the three laws of
robotics? To summarise:
1. Obey Humans
2. Protect Humans
3. Protect Itself
I'm not sure if they are in the right order, and some bits
are missing (i.e. obey rule one unless it contravenes rule
two etc).
This seems to fit, as Dorfl cannot harm any of the
watchpersons, also they must have a master, and they
are protecting themselves by creating the king golem.
Mike Gilbert
<mailto:ma...@monark.ftech.co.uk> wrote:
>
> X-No-Archive: Yes
>
> In a message posted on Fri, 21 Jun 1996 22:18:15 +1100 to the
> newsgroup alt.books.pratchett, Justin McGuire wrote:
>
> >This posting is 99% spoilers for Feet of Clay. You have been warned.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >Continued below
> > |
> > |
> > |
> >\ | /
> > \|/
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> >p142-143 Reciting a list of facts about someone based on the most trivial
> >observation was one of Holmes trademarks. Naturally, Holmes was always
> >right. IIRC this was actually based on a real person.
>
> A surgeon I believe.
He may have been a surgeon, but he definitely was Conan Doyle's
tutor/lecturer/head of faculty in medicine at Edinburgh. I've been wandering
round the house trying to find a source to quote, and to remember his name,
but can't. Professor Challenger of Lost World etc is another literary
descendant of the same fellah. Philip Jose Farmer's wonderful Tarzan biog,
_Tarzan Alive_, gives [and dismisses] most of the details.
Rutherford, was it? or Black? dammit, I dunno.
Mike
--
Mike Gilbert
All above is personal, opinionated, and may be heated. Sorry (:-).
But, as Fr Dougal says, "Ach, sure, Ted, it'll be alright"
Rich Holmes
>FOC Spoilers
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>Asimov's Three Laws:
>
>Does anyone agree that the golems seem to follow the three laws of
>robotics? To summarise:
>
>1. Obey Humans
>2. Protect Humans
>3. Protect Itself
>
>I'm not sure if they are in the right order, and some bits
>are missing (i.e. obey rule one unless it contravenes rule
>two etc).
That'd be more like
1. Protect humans
2. Obey humans
3. Protect itself
with, as you say, fine print that says rule n supersedes rule n+1,
etc. (So, for instance, it won't obey an order to injure a human --
unless the alternative involves greater injury.)
I'd try to remember how they go verbatim, but I'd probably get it
wrong. The above is the gist of it.
--
- Rich Holmes
"Not every tradition, however entrenched, is attractive. Some
should be closed down immediately." -- Miss Manners
Salt Springs Morris: <http://web.syr.edu/~rsholmes/morris/saltsp/>
Tim Gerrish
m920...@student.anu.edu.au (Justin McGuire) wrote:
>An aside: Have you ever wondered what happens when a Jehovah's Witness
>knocks on the door of a Mormon?
The resultant explosion gets put down to a gas leak.
PAK
In article <RSHOLMES.9...@hydra.syr.EDU>, Rich Holmes
<rsho...@hydra.syr.EDU> writes
>In article <4qqv4v$c...@zen.hursley.ibm.com> jsi...@vnet.ibm.com writes:
>
>>FOC Spoilers
>>
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>>Asimov's Three Laws:
>>
>>Does anyone agree that the golems seem to follow the three laws of
>>robotics? To summarise:
>>
>>1. Obey Humans
>>2. Protect Humans
>>3. Protect Itself
>>
>>I'm not sure if they are in the right order, and some bits
>>are missing (i.e. obey rule one unless it contravenes rule
>>two etc).
>
>That'd be more like
>
>1. Protect humans
>2. Obey humans
>3. Protect itself
>
>with, as you say, fine print that says rule n supersedes rule n+1,
>etc. (So, for instance, it won't obey an order to injure a human --
>unless the alternative involves greater injury.)
>
>I'd try to remember how they go verbatim, but I'd probably get it
>wrong. The above is the gist of it.
>
1 - A Robot must not injure a Human being, or, through inaction allow a
human to come to harm
2 - A robot must obey the orders given to it by a human except where the
orders would conflict with the first law
3 - A robot must protect it's own existence, as long as such protection
does not conflict with the first or second laws
I know SAD, SAD, SAD.
Paul
--
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}
{ ___ __ _ _ __ The chieftain had been turned into a pumpkin }
{ ( ,\ ( ) ( )( )( ) although, in accordance with the rules of }
{ ) _/ /__\ )()( )(__ universal humour, he still had his hat on. }
{ (_) (_)(_) \__/ (____) }
{ LORDS AND LADIES - PTerry }
{ Pa...@ingsoc.demon.co.uk }
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marc Forrester
jsi...@vnet.ibm.com wrote:
> FOC Spoilers
> Does anyone agree that the golems seem to follow the three laws of
> robotics? To summarise:
>
> 1. Obey Humans
> 2. Protect Humans
> 3. Protect Itself
>
> I'm not sure if they are in the right order, and some bits
> are missing (i.e. obey rule one unless it contravenes rule
> two etc).
Wellll, they're not out and out identical, but yes,
they're Azimov robots alright. Exactly what 'laws'
they run by depends on their chem, of course.
But in -essence-.
Irina Rempt
All right, I will:
> >FOC Spoilers
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
(references are to the Gollancz hardback, probably the only edition in
existence yet)
p.22 'Cheery, eh? Good to see the old naming traditions kept up. [...]'
'Cheery' does fit in very well with the names of the Seven Dwarfs in the
Disney Snow White film. Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, Sneezy, and
I always forget the seventh (we're supposed to have a full set of Seven
Dwarfs baby bibs, but the set came with two Tuesdays and no Saturday ;-)
p.29 'Daphne's ancestors came all the way from some islands on the other
side of the Hub'
that is, the Discworld version of Australia and/or New Zealand. The
Counterweight Continent, IIRC.
p.35 'if all else fails there are plenty of kosher butchers in Long
Hogmeat'
'Long pig' is, of course, human flesh. And kosher butchers first bleed
whatever they slaughter and don't use the blood.
p.48 'a room-temperature IQ'
I sincerely hope, for Detritus' sake, that it's in Fahrenheit, not Celsius
:-) Also, at room temperature a troll's IQ is considerably *lower* than at
temperatures near absolute zero.
71 'Twurp's Peerage'
Am I really the only person who has caught _Burke's Peerage_? And I'm not
even English :-) I like the assonance with 'twerp' too. And also:
72 'These days they seemed to be bringing out a new edition every week'
They probably are. On the other hand, the copy Vimes uses is *faded*. Dragon
King of Arms has been at this game a *long* time.
85 'You know everything that's going on, Igor'
The name 'Igor' rings a bell, but I can't place it. Any takers?
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
** Things our parents said that we swore we'd never say to our kids **
** No. 6: "If you play with your food you've obviously had enough" **
Rich Holmes
>>71 'Twurp's Peerage'
>>
>>Am I really the only person who has caught _Burke's Peerage_? And I'm not
>>even English :-) I like the assonance with 'twerp' too. And also:
>
>Nope. But Leo only puts the ones he thinks are worth noting on the APF,
>unless lots of people send in the same one.
It's in the APF already, for a previous mention in a previous book.
Dick Eney
In article <Du8nA...@rempt.xs4all.nl>,
Irina Rempt <ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>All right, I will:
>
>
>> >FOC Spoilers
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
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>> >
>> >
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>
>(references are to the Gollancz hardback, probably the only edition in
>existence yet)
>
>
>p.22 'Cheery, eh? Good to see the old naming traditions kept up. [...]'
>
>'Cheery' does fit in very well with the names of the Seven Dwarfs in the
>Disney Snow White film. Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, Sneezy, and
>I always forget the seventh (we're supposed to have a full set of Seven
>Dwarfs baby bibs, but the set came with two Tuesdays and no Saturday ;-)
Happy?
>p.29 'Daphne's ancestors came all the way from some islands on the other
>side of the Hub'
>
>that is, the Discworld version of Australia and/or New Zealand. The
>Counterweight Continent, IIRC.
Counterweight Continent is Disc version of China/Japan. Australia/NZ is
XXXX -- we assume.
>
>71 'Twurp's Peerage'
>
>Am I really the only person who has caught _Burke's Peerage_? And I'm not
>even English :-) I like the assonance with 'twerp' too. And also:
Nope. But Leo only puts the ones he thinks are worth noting on the APF,
unless lots of people send in the same one.
>85 'You know everything that's going on, Igor'
>
>The name 'Igor' rings a bell, but I can't place it. Any takers?
Traditional name for the hunchbacked assistant in a Mad Scientist movie
(I wonder, did the filmmakers get that from the Lon Chaney version of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame?).
-- Tamar
Leo Breebaart
dick...@access1.digex.net (Dick Eney) writes:
> >71 'Twurp's Peerage'
> >
> >Am I really the only person who has caught _Burke's Peerage_? And I'm not
> >even English :-) I like the assonance with 'twerp' too. And also:
>
> Nope. But Leo only puts the ones he thinks are worth noting on the APF,
> unless lots of people send in the same one.
Um, "Twurp's Peerage" already *is* in the APF, because I *did* think it's
worth noting...
--
Leo Breebaart (l...@cp.tn.tudelft.nl)
Steve Gunnell
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl (Irina Rempt) writes:
>All right, I will:
>> >FOC Spoilers
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>(references are to the Gollancz hardback, probably the only edition in
>existence yet)
>p.48 'a room-temperature IQ'
>I sincerely hope, for Detritus' sake, that it's in Fahrenheit, not Celsius
>:-) Also, at room temperature a troll's IQ is considerably *lower* than at
>temperatures near absolute zero.
You could also regard it as: Detritus has a "room temperature IQ" and an
"ultra cold IQ" without resorting to actual numbers.
>71 'Twurp's Peerage'
>Am I really the only person who has caught _Burke's Peerage_? And I'm not
>even English :-) I like the assonance with 'twerp' too. And also:
Twerp and Berk being both names that indicate a degree of stupidity.
One of the more famous Igors was Dr Frankensteins assistant.
--
Work: Ste...@adied.oz.au Home: Ste...@eldred.DIALix.oz.au
Disclaimer: I don't speak for ADI. They wouldnt want opinions this whacko.
------If it's safe enough for Mururoa it's safe enough for Paris----------
Sten Thaning
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl (Irina Rempt) wrote:
>> >FOC Spoilers
>p.48 'a room-temperature IQ'
>I sincerely hope, for Detritus' sake, that it's in Fahrenheit, not Celsius
>:-) Also, at room temperature a troll's IQ is considerably *lower* than at
>temperatures near absolute zero.
"Detritus was considered stupid by other trolls. That is rather like
being considered flat by other carpets." Or something like that.
>85 'You know everything that's going on, Igor'
>The name 'Igor' rings a bell, but I can't place it. Any takers?
Frankenstein? Or was it Dracula?
A servant to one of those people with a huge castle. Old, hunchbacked
man. The kind of man who, when he opens the massive black door, gives
you the impression that you have arrived to the wrong place, and, in
fact, the wrong country.
- Sten Thaning
Mike Gilbert
>
> All right, I will:
>
>
> > >FOC Spoilers
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
>
> 85 'You know everything that's going on, Igor'
>
> The name 'Igor' rings a bell, but I can't place it. Any takers?
It's the industry standard name for Victor Frankenstein's assistant, y'know,
the one Marty Feldman played in the Mel Brooks, hunch back, drops the brain,
etc etc.
Just as a general aside, and not a spoiler really, if Pterry happens to be
lurking, can he comment on any similarity between the A361 between East Lyng
and Burrowbridge and any road over the Sto Plains? Like, dead flat, fields
of cabbages [or other unwholesome greenery], and the church ruin on Burrow
Mump raised up in the distance. . . reminds me, every time.
Irina Rempt
Leo Breebaart (l...@cp.tn.tudelft.nl) wrote:
> dick...@access1.digex.net (Dick Eney) writes:
> > >71 'Twurp's Peerage'
> > >
> > >Am I really the only person who has caught _Burke's Peerage_? And I'm not
> > >even English :-) I like the assonance with 'twerp' too. And also:
> >
> > Nope. But Leo only puts the ones he thinks are worth noting on the APF,
> > unless lots of people send in the same one.
> Um, "Twurp's Peerage" already *is* in the APF, because I *did* think it's
> worth noting...
<oops> Thanks. I was about to be ashamed that I'd noticed such an apparently
trivial thing. I did sort of vaguely look for it in the AFP, but it didn't
occur to me to grep or anything :-(
Irina
> --
> Leo Breebaart (l...@cp.tn.tudelft.nl)
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
** Things our parents said that we swore we'd never say to our kids **
** No. 4: "I told you so" **
Helen Highwater
In article <Du8nA...@rempt.xs4all.nl>
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl "Irina Rempt" writes:
Much snipped
> The name 'Igor' rings a bell, but I can't place it. Any takers?
The name (Quasi)modo rings a bell.
The name Igor opens doors:)
--
Helen Highwater
"I think I may be able to metabolise alcohol."(RM)
Colin Rosenthal
On Mon, 8 Jul 1996 18:56:52 GMT, Irina Rempt <ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>All right, I will:
>
>
>> >FOC Spoilers
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>
>
>Hogmeat'
>
>'Long pig' is, of course, human flesh. And kosher butchers first bleed
>whatever they slaughter and don't use the blood.
With the extra joke that "hog" of any kind is not exactly kosher. It's
a bit like being the Rabbi of Christchurch.
Stephen Judd
In article <slrn4u6t48....@bigcat.obs.aau.dk>,
rose...@obs.aau.dk wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Jul 1996 18:56:52 GMT, Irina Rempt <ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>All right, I will:
>>
>>
>>> >FOC Spoilers
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>
>>
>>p.35 'if all else fails there are plenty of kosher butchers in Long
>>Hogmeat'
>>
>>'Long pig' is, of course, human flesh. And kosher butchers first bleed
>>whatever they slaughter and don't use the blood.
>
>With the extra joke that "hog" of any kind is not exactly kosher. It's
>a bit like being the Rabbi of Christchurch.
>
>--
>--Colin Rosenthal | ``Don't smell the flowers -
Errr... there is a Rabbi of Christchurch. Well, a Rabbi in Christchurch,
New Zealand, at any rate. There's a small Reform congregation there, and
he calls himself a Minister, but still...
stephen
--
"I think you've said the opposite of | Stephen Judd, School of Education,
what you mean. Assuming that is the | University of Waikato, New Zealand.
case, I must disagree, strongly." | <http://poet.soe.waikato.ac.nz/>
(Found on sci.lang) | for my PGP key.
Joann L Dominik
FOC spoilers/annotations
p 147: "If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by
words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind
you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
I haven't been reading *all* the annotations, as I've only just
finished the book and had been skipping spoilers, but if it hasn't been
said already, this has simply got to be referring to Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper." In which the narrator
seems to be driven insane by the yellow wallpaper in her room.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Very Intelligent Pig
http://www.cloudnet.com/~jldomini "Weird. Wasteful. It's a Web Page."
(Translation: "It's got some funny stuff I wrote on it.")
I am Spoggles; hear me roar. "There's a secret society? No one told me."
Matthe...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca
jldo...@cloudnet.com writes:
>FOC spoilers/annotations
>p 147: "If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by
>words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind
>you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
>
> I haven't been reading *all* the annotations, as I've only just
>finished the book and had been skipping spoilers, but if it hasn't been
>said already, this has simply got to be referring to Charlotte Perkins
>Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper." In which the narrator
>seems to be driven insane by the yellow wallpaper in her room.
Napolean died from arsenic fumes. His room at the hospital was papered
with a green wallpaper which, like much green wallpaper of the time,
was pigmented with arsenic.
However, I recently read elsewhere on the Net that this theory was no
longer considered credible. Napolean's death certificate lists death
from stomach cancer - which is what we might expect if he were poisoned
with arsenic gradually, over time, but *only if it were oral*. Unless
he was eating the wallpaper, he wouldn't be likely to get symptoms of
oral arsenic poisoning from inhaling the fumes. Also, other people who
had stayed in that room before him didn't die of arsenic poisoning.
It seems more likely to me that he was deliberately poisoned by humans
putting something in his food, and the green wallpaper is a red
herring. Makes for a good story though, and for interesting
annotations.
Roger Barnett
In article: <4s74g0$i...@orion.cloudnet.com> jldo...@cloudnet.com (Joann L Dominik)
>
> FOC spoilers/annotations
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> p 147: "If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by
> words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind
> you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
>
> I haven't been reading *all* the annotations, as I've only just
> finished the book and had been skipping spoilers, but if it hasn't been
> said already, this has simply got to be referring to Charlotte Perkins
> Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper." In which the narrator
> seems to be driven insane by the yellow wallpaper in her room.
More likely that it refers to the favourite wall colouring of
the more traditional English institutions (such as hospitals
and asylums).
(it usually matches the colour of the vegetables served
with meals - whatever kind of vegetables they are).
--
Roger Barnett
Joann L Dominik
Matthe...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
: jldo...@cloudnet.com writes:
: >FOC spoilers/annotations
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
: >p 147: "If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by
: >words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind
: >you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
: >
: > I haven't been reading *all* the annotations, as I've only just
: >finished the book and had been skipping spoilers, but if it hasn't been
: >said already, this has simply got to be referring to Charlotte Perkins
: >Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper." In which the narrator
: >seems to be driven insane by the yellow wallpaper in her room.
: I think it is more probably a reference to the widely-held belief that
: Napolean died from arsenic fumes. His room at the hospital was papered
: with a green wallpaper which, like much green wallpaper of the time,
: was pigmented with arsenic.
:
: However, I recently read elsewhere on the Net that this theory was no
: longer considered credible. Napolean's death certificate lists death
: from stomach cancer - which is what we might expect if he were poisoned
: with arsenic gradually, over time, but *only if it were oral*. Unless
: he was eating the wallpaper, he wouldn't be likely to get symptoms of
: oral arsenic poisoning from inhaling the fumes. Also, other people who
: had stayed in that room before him didn't die of arsenic poisoning.
:
: It seems more likely to me that he was deliberately poisoned by humans
: putting something in his food, and the green wallpaper is a red
: herring. Makes for a good story though, and for interesting
: annotations.
I was going to say I disagreed, but I've just found a great way of
combining the two. :) The quote says, ". . .accuse the wallpaper of driving
him mad," not poisoning him. *But what if* Terry's theory of Napoleon's
murder is that the wall-paper first drove him mad, and *then* he tried to
eat it?
(I mean, hey, if I'm going to be anal about something silly, I might as
well go all the way and be anal and silly *at the same time*.)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Very Intelligent Pig
http://www.cloudnet.com/~jldomini "Weird. Wasteful. It's a Web Page."
I am Spoggles; hear me roar. "There's a secret society? No one told me."
"My name is Sam and I'm a really suspicious bastard." _Feet of Clay_
Dick Eney
In article <654287...@natron.demon.co.uk>,
Roger Barnett <Ro...@natron.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article: <4s74g0$i...@orion.cloudnet.com> jldo...@cloudnet.com (Joann L Dominik)
>>
>> FOC spoilers/annotations
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> p 147: "If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by
>> words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind
>> you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
>>
>> I haven't been reading *all* the annotations, as I've only just
>> finished the book and had been skipping spoilers, but if it hasn't been
>> said already, this has simply got to be referring to Charlotte Perkins
>> Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper." In which the narrator
>> seems to be driven insane by the yellow wallpaper in her room.
>
>the more traditional English institutions (such as hospitals
>and asylums).
>
>(it usually matches the colour of the vegetables served
> with meals - whatever kind of vegetables they are).
Well, I thought of that story too but couldn't recall the author's name.
I think it's at least as likely a reference as institutional wall colors.
The 'traditional' color (officially moss green) of institutional walls is
directly due to the Craftsman movement in the late 19th and early 20th
century; everything was supposed to be in 'natural' colors and for
some reason that only meant moss green and mud brown -- sky blue, tulip
red, etc, weren't 'natural' enough. Thousands of children in orphanages
etc were permanently depressed by it; even its proponents claimed that the
orphanages were supposed to be 'brightened' by the faces of the children
contrasting with the depressing colors.
-- Tamar
Stephen Judd
In article <4segq7$3...@access1.digex.net>, dick...@access1.digex.net
(Dick Eney) wrote:
>In article <654287...@natron.demon.co.uk>,
>Roger Barnett <Ro...@natron.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>In article: <4s74g0$i...@orion.cloudnet.com> jldo...@cloudnet.com
(Joann L Dominik)
>>writes:
>>>
>>> FOC spoilers/annotations
<spoiler follows>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> p 147: "If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by
>>> words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad. Mind
>>> you, that horrible green colour would drive anyone insane..."
>The 'traditional' color (officially moss green) of institutional walls is
>directly due to the Craftsman movement in the late 19th and early 20th
>century; everything was supposed to be in 'natural' colors and for
>some reason that only meant moss green and mud brown -- sky blue, tulip
>red, etc, weren't 'natural' enough. Thousands of children in orphanages
>etc were permanently depressed by it; even its proponents claimed that the
>orphanages were supposed to be 'brightened' by the faces of the children
>contrasting with the depressing colors.
Is there a connection with the performing artist's "Green Room" then?
BTW, on the poisonous pigment theory, I just last night read a book on the
history of child care which referes to child deaths (four in one family!)
early last century from licking green wallpaper. I'll post the reference
if anyone's interested.
stephen
--
Stephen Judd | Install new ClueDoubler(tm) today!
User Support Consultant | Minimum Configuration: half a Clue.
School of Education | Want my PGP key?
University of Waikato, New Zealand | http://poet.soe.waikato.ac.nz/
Simon Heath
On Tue, 16 Jul 1996 18:28:44 +0100, Crowley <cro...@bombsite.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Once upon a time, Simon Heath <he...@castor.stat.washington.edu> wrote
>>
>>Since I have been studiously avoiding the FOC spoilers until I managed to
>>get hold of a copy, I realize there is a good chance that this has already
>>been mentioned but in case it hasn't: is the wallpaper thingy anything to do
>>with the story that Napoleon (I think) was poisoned by the fumes from
>>arsenic in his wallpaper (which I *think* was green).
>>
>>Many apologies if this subject has already been done to death.
>>
>Not so much done to death, more killed, buried, dug up again, burned and
>spat on....and that's just for starters :)
>--
Aah thought as much. I guess I'll crawl back under my rock...
Simon
Crowley
Once upon a time, Simon Heath <he...@castor.stat.washington.edu> wrote
>
>Since I have been studiously avoiding the FOC spoilers until I managed to
>get hold of a copy, I realize there is a good chance that this has already
>been mentioned but in case it hasn't: is the wallpaper thingy anything to do
>with the story that Napoleon (I think) was poisoned by the fumes from
>arsenic in his wallpaper (which I *think* was green).
>
>Many apologies if this subject has already been done to death.
>
Not so much done to death, more killed, buried, dug up again, burned and
spat on....and that's just for starters :)
--
@bombsite.demon.co.uk '93 Marlboro TZR, clean license :(
www.angel.co.uk/sprocket/crowley '88 Metro, dirty bodywork.
Your Name
>>
>>BTW, on the poisonous pigment theory, I just last night read a book on
the
>>history of child care which referes to child deaths (four in one
family!)
>>early last century from licking green wallpaper. I'll post the
reference
>>if anyone's interested.
>>
>
>Since I have been studiously avoiding the FOC spoilers until I managed
to
>get hold of a copy, I realize there is a good chance that this has
already
>been mentioned but in case it hasn't: is the wallpaper thingy anything
to do
>with the story that Napoleon (I think) was poisoned by the fumes from
>arsenic in his wallpaper (which I *think* was green).
>
>Many apologies if this subject has already been done to death.
>
>Simon
>
>
Sorry to butt in.
The green pigment that supposedly killed Bonapart was "Scheele's Green"
(Cupric Arsenite). It appears that mould growing behind the wallpaper
causes some form of arsenic based vapour into the atmosphere.
My apologies if this has already been pointed out, but this is my first
week as an AFP subscriber.
Regards
Tom May
n.b. Reality is for people who can't take fantasy.
Martin O'Nions
Another possible from the pages of FoC. A quantity of spoiler space
follows...
p 229 [regarding the poisoned candle ends taken home by the maid]
"Gran said they gave a lovely light sir".
There is a short verse by Edna St Vincent Millay which the Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations apparently[1] gives as:
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But oh my foes and oh my friends
It gives a lovely light.
which lends an added poignancy to Mrs Easy's words. This being
the Discworld, the metaphor and the reality co-exist, but the
end result is the same for both.
Now watch Terry accuse me of being Baconian about a simple line
of dialog...
And whilst I'm at it:
G!G!, p235 (Gollancz HC)
"Ha' a drop afore ye go" on the bottle of whisky.
This doesn't seem to have made it into the annotations file yet,
so would someone else like to confirm that 'Afore ye go' used to
decorate the necks of bottles of Bells Whisky.
Martin
[1] (Many thanks to Person X who dug this out of the ODoQ, thus
correcting both our faulty memories. For the record, following
some discussion our preferred form used 'burneth' instead of burns
and 'ah' instead of the second 'oh'. Person X has declined to be
identified in this post. Haven't you.)
--
Martin O'Nions [ENTP] Used your LART yet today? mar...@catch22.demon.co.uk
______________________________________________________________________________
I never shall forget my shame / To find my son had forged my name
If he'd had any thought for others / He might at least have forged his mother's
(Harry Graham - Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes
EOR
Right, since I upset people last time I tried this by not doing things
which weren't in the FAQ. i.e. Spoiler space. I shall follow custom,
not guidelines.
spoiler space (15 lines) follows
Not that it's really worth it. I was rereading FOC, and was very taken
with a line I that, now I come to think of it,I do remember reading
before, and being unable to explain to the Germans sitting next to me
on the plane what I was laughing about.
I think it's Detritus talking to, and probably to Igneous, or whoever
ran the place that made the statues. (p264)
"...You sedimentary coprolith!"
Sorry.
MarkS
Dick Eney
In article <31F29B...@novell3.bham.ac.uk>,
EOR <mts...@novell3.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>Right, since I upset people last time I tried this by not doing things
>which weren't in the FAQ. i.e. Spoiler space. I shall follow custom,
>not guidelines.
Ouch. Ya got me! Just a flesh wound, though as someone pointed out, _all_
wounds are flesh wounds...
>spoiler space (15 lines) follows
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Not that it's really worth it. I was rereading FOC, and was very taken
>with a line I that, now I come to think of it,I do remember reading
>before, and being unable to explain to the Germans sitting next to me
>on the plane what I was laughing about.
>I think it's Detritus talking to, and probably to Igneous, or whoever
>ran the place that made the statues. (p264)
>"...You sedimentary coprolith!"
>MarkS
But what a perfect insult for a troll. Igneous, though he works with
sedimentary clay, no doubt proudly considers himself one of the oldest
families of rocks (compare TLF, 'I remember when you were igneous or you
were nothing'). Igneous's pottery uses clay to create objects that are at
least similar to igneous rock in that they have been heated and cooled to
make them harder. It's a Creation theme in miniature, emphasized when he
repairs Dorfl.
-- Tamar
Stephen Judd
In article <838550...@drutt.demon.co.uk>, hel...@drutt.demon.co.uk wrote:
>Very minor FOC annotation, not even worth spoiler space.
>
>On p165-6 Gimlet says
>'We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe
>annual dinner,' he said. There was a general groan.
>'And it /was/ rat.' He raised his voice against the complaining.
>'You can't use anything else - /listen/ - you've got to have
>the noses poking through the pastry, all right?'
>
>This sounds similar to Stargazy pie, which has fish heads
>poking through the pastry all around the edge of the dish.
>Vegetarianism, here I come:)
No, no, no, no, no.
Monty Python _Papperbok_. Turn to rat recipes section. Ilustration depicts
smiling chef bearing rat pie, with a neat ring of rat tails poking out
through the crust and over the side of the dish.
Terry Pratchett
In article <stephen-2907...@netserv.waikato.ac.nz>
ste...@waikato.ac.nz "Stephen Judd" writes:
> In article <838550...@drutt.demon.co.uk>, hel...@drutt.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
>
> >This sounds similar to Stargazy pie, which has fish heads
> >poking through the pastry all around the edge of the dish.
> >Vegetarianism, here I come:)
>
> No, no, no, no, no.
>
> Monty Python _Papperbok_. Turn to rat recipes section. Ilustration depicts
> smiling chef bearing rat pie, with a neat ring of rat tails poking out
> through the crust and over the side of the dish.
>
No. It's Stargazy pie, an allegedly traditional Cornish dish.
Or possibly Klingon.
Terry Pratchett