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tribute: Men at Arms

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The breakfast+coffee+doughnut one is by the far the longest we've had,
but I decided not to try trimming any of it out.  It was at the start
of a 10 page stretch that has six good passages, but I've only included
three of them.

I've got passages for two more books queued up, but transcribing and
proofreading is a chore....
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2015-07-07 02:23:27 -07:00
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@@ -591,12 +591,251 @@ kingdom.
#
#
#
%title Men at Arms (1)
%title Men at Arms (14)
%passage 1
The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 6-7 (Harper Torch edition)
%passage 2
Ankh-Morpork had a king again.
And this was /right/. And it was /fate/ that let Edward recognize this
/just/ when he'd got his Plan. And it was /right/ that it was /Fate/,
and the city would be /Saved/ from its ignoble present by its /glorius/
past. He had the /Means/, and he had the /end/. And so on ...
Edward's thoughts often ran like this.
He could think in /italics/. Such people need watching.
Preferably from a safe distance.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 76-77
%passage 3
There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally
religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without
warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the
need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat.
Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice
to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded
kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their
other armpit and shout, "Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-
continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!"
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 119 (perhaps a bit subtle; it would be clearer if 'they' was italicized)
%passage 4
"It's an ancient tradition," said Carrot.
"I thought dwarfs didn't believe in devils and demons and stuff like
that."
"That's true, but ... we're not sure if they know."
"Oh."
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 168-169 (treacle == molasses)
%passage 5
"I'd like a couple of eggs," said Vimes, "with the yolks real hard but
the whites so runny that they drip like treacle. And I want bacon, that
special bacon all covered with bony nodules and dangling bits of fat.
And a slice of fried bread. The kind that makes your arteries go clang
just by looking at it."
"Tough order," said Harga.
"You managed it yesterday. And give me some more coffee. Black as
midnight on a moonless night."
Harga looked surprised. That wasn't like Vimes.
"How black's that, then?" he said.
"Oh pretty damn black, I should think."
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up
more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night."
Vimes sighed.
"An /overcast/ moonless night?" he said.
Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.
"Cumulous or cirro-nimbus?"
"I'm sorry. What did you say?"
"You gets city lights reflected off cumulous, because it's low lying, see.
Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in--"
"A moonless night," said Vimes, in a hollow voice, "that is as black as
that coffee."
"Right!"
"And a doughnut." Vimes grabbed Harga's stained vest and pulled him
until they were nose to nose. "A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut
made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon
to taste and a jam, jelly, or rat filling depending on national or
species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way
metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut."
"A doughnut."
"Yes."
"You only had to say."
Harge brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into
the kitchen.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 174 (clumsy wording; 'they' in 2nd sentence != 'they' in 1st sentence)
%passage 6
Why had they chased someone halfway across the city? Because they'd
run away. /No one/ ran away from the Watch. Thieves just flashed their
licenses. Unlicensed thieves had nothing to fear from the Watch, since
they'd saved up all their fear for the Thieves' Guild. Assassins always
obeyed the letter of the law. And honest men didn't run away from the
Watch.(1) Running away from the Watch was downright suspicious.
(1) The axiom "Honest men have nothing to fear from the police" is
currently under review by the Axioms Appeal Board.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 176-177 ("this [sic; no 'is'] the pork futures warehouse")
%passage 7
"Oh, my," said Detritus. "I think this the pork futures warehouse in
Morpork Road."
"What?"
"Used to work here," said the troll. "Used to work everywhere. Go away,
you stupid troll, you too thick," he added, gloomily.
"Is there any way out?"
"The main door is in Morpork Street. But no one comes in here for months.
Till pork exists."(1)
Cuddy shivered.
(1) Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things
which only exist /in potentia/, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-
Morpork is a product of the Patrician's rules about baseless metaphors,
the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must
exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality
around Ankh, which is so thin that it's as thin as a very thin thing.
The net result is that trading in pork futures--in pork /that doesn't
exist yet/--led to the building of the warehouse to store it until it
does. The extremely low temperatures are caused by the imbalance in
the temporal energy flow. At least, that's what the wizards in the
High Energy Magic building say. And they've got proper pointy hats and
letters after their name, so they know what they're talking about.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 212
%passage 8
Black mud, more or less dry, made a path at the bottom of the tunnel.
There was slime on the walls, too, indicating that at some point in the
recent past the tunnel had been full of water. Here and there huge
patches of fungi, luminous with decay, cast a faint glow over the
ancient stonework.(1)
(1) It didn't need to. Cuddy, belonging to a race that worked underground
for preference, and Detritus, a member of a race notoriously nocturnal,
had excellent vision in the dark. But mysterious caves and tunnels
always have luminous fungi, strangely bright crystals or at a pinch
merely an eldritch glow in the air, just in case a human hero comes in
and needs to see in the dark. Strange but true.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 218
%passage 9
"He's bound to have done /something/," Noddy repeated.
In this he was echoing the Patrician's view of crime and punishment. If
there was a crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal
should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy
accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was
undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, /in general
terms/, justice was done.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 226
%passage 10
The librarian considered matters for a while. So ... a dwarf and a troll.
He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were
great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of
reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There
was something, well, /sacrilegious/ about the way they kept taking books
off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked
people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in
the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature
intended them to be.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 253
%passage 11
Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 265 (fyi, they're decorated chicken eggs)
%passage 12
"All those little heads ... "
They stretched away in the candlelight, shelf on shelf of them, tiny
little clown faces--as if a tribe of headhunters had suddenly developed
a sophisicated sense of humor and a desire to make the world a better
place.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 300-301
%passage 13
"You know what I mean!"
"Can't say I do. Can't say I do. Clothing has never been what you might
call a thingy of dog wossname." Gaspode scratched his ear. "Two meta-
syntactic variables there. Sorry."
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 320
%passage 14
"Hahaha, a nice day for it!" leered the Bursar.
"Oh dear," said Ridcully, "he's off again. Can't understand the man.
Anyone got the dried frog pills?"
It was a complete mystery to Mustrum Ridcully, a man designed by nature to
live outdoors and happily slaughter anything that coughed in the bushes,
why the Bursar (a man designed by Nature to sit in a small room somewhere,
adding up figures) was so nervous. He'd tried all sorts of things to, as
he put it, buck him up. These included practical jokes, surprise early
morning runs, and leaping out at him from behind doors while wearing
Willie the Vampire masks in order, he said, to take him out of himself.
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
@@ -1345,12 +1584,16 @@ If you take enough precautions, you never need to take precautions.
# Used for interaction with Death.
#
%section Death
%title Death Quotes (2)
%title Death Quotes (3)
%passage 1
WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.
%e passage
%passage 2
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. *I* TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
%e passage
# Men at Arms, p. 27 (Harper Torch edition)
%passage 3
THINK OF IT MORE AS BEING ... DIMESIONALLY DISADVANTAGED.
%e passage
%e title
%e section