Friday, November 30, 2007

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Monday, November 26, 2007

Going Postal :: Table d'hote or nothing

"All right, all right, I really didn't want to go into this, but it's against my religion," said Moist, who'd had time to think. "We're forbidden to have any image made of us. It removes part of our soul, you know."
"And you believe that?" said Sacharissa. "Really?"
"Er, no. No. Of course not. Not as such. But you can't treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can't say yes please, Ill have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. It's table d'hote or nothing, otherwise... well, it would be silly."
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (p.166)

Going Postal :: Cut cubes out of the air

"The hub or nerve centre of the coach business was a big shed next the stable. It smelled - no, it stank - no, it fugged of horses, leather, veterinary medicine, bad coal, brandy and cheap cigars. That's what a fug was. You could have cut cubes out of the air and sold it for cheap building material."
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (p.206)

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Zero and One

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A Feegle Glossary :: Ships

"Ships:Woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind."
Terry Pratchett, A Feegle Glossary

Going Postal :: On Freedom and the need of filing boxes which are not so flimsy

"In his Thoughts, which I have always considered fare badly in translation, Bouffant says that intervening in order to prevent a murder is curtail the freedom of the murderer and yet that freedom, by definition, is natural and universal, without condition." said Vetinari. "You may recall his famous dictum:'If any man is not free, then I too am a small pie made of chicken', which has led to a considerable amount of debate. Thus we might consider, for example, that taking a bottle from a man killing himself with drink is a charitable, nay, praiseworthy act, and yet freedom is curtailed once more. Mr. Gilt has studied his Bouffant but, I fear, failed to understand it. Freedom may be mankind's natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling. On the other hand, Freidegger, in Modal Contextities, claims that all freedom is limited, artificial and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes. It overwhelms the soul, very much like the state he elsewhere describes as Vonallesvollkommenunverstandlichdasdaskeit. What position would you take here, Drumknott?'
"I've always thought, my lord, that what the world really needs are filing boxes which are not so flimsy," said Drumknott, after a moment's pause.
"Hmm," said Lord Vetinari. "A point to think about, certainly."
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (p.78)

Going Postal :: Being an Absolute Ruler

"Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault."
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (p.68)

Going Postal :: Either the government or a hero

"There was a stir when they climbed up into the chilly morning air, followed by a few boos and even some applause. People were strange like that. Steal a five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either the government or a hero"
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (p.15)

Wintersmith :: You, the white kitten, as in "You! Stop that!"

"The white kitten watched the snowflakes. That's all it did. It didn't bat them with a paw, it just watched, very intently, each flake spiral down until it landed. Then the kitten would watch it some more, until it was sure the entertainment was over, before it looked up and selected another flake.
It was called You, as in "You! Stop that!" and "You! Get off there!". When it came to names, Granny Weatherwax didn't do fancy."
Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith (p.113),