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Book:Night Watch/Annotations

2024-05-09T12:16:57Z

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{{NW}} annotation: When Vimes fights Findthee Swing in the Cable Street torture cell, Swing says, "History needs its butchers as well as its shepherds, Sergeant." (HarperCollins edition, hardback, pp. 238); this echoes a statement Vimes thinks of in {{TFE}}, after Vimes interrogates [[Inigo Skimmer]], "Didn't some philosophical bastard once say that a government needed butchers as well as shepherds?" (Doubleday edition, hardback, pp. 121). And Vimes' younger self has followed him into the torture chambers, perhaps over-hearing this discourse between Swing and "John Keel".

:The "philosophical bastard" was Voltaire. It was a favorite quote of Robespierre.[[User:Solicitr|Solicitr]] 22:10, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

There are superficial similarities between Swing and Skimmer; both have quirks of speech, both are clerkish in appearance but lethal Assassins, and both are given rather broad ''laissez faire'' by their Patrician to conduct their duties (for wildly different reasons, of course).

The name of the [[Cable Street Particulars]], who appear in both [[Book:Night Watch|Night Watch]] and [[Book:Maskerade|Maskerade]], is a reference to the {{wp|Baker_Street_Irregulars|Baker Street Irregulars}} from the Sherlock Holmes stories. However they may also be a reference to 'The Untouchables' from the film of the same name, as they also get referred to as The Unmentionables.
The "Unmentionables", in genteel British English, is a euphemism for the male genitalia. So what were people ''really'' calling Swing and his Particulars?

[[Cable Street Particulars|More Here]] about Cable Street and its significance on Roundworld.

[[Carcer]] (the name) may be related to Carter in the movie 'Get Carter'- a lovable rogue, who goes to a far less sophisticated city (Newcastle) from a bustling metropolis (London), although he is there to get revenge. It is possible therefore, that Nightwatch could be subtitled 'Get Carcer' (although see the [[Carcer]] page for other possibilities).

[[John Lawn|Dr. J. "Mossy" Lawn]] is probably a reference to {{wp|Bartholomew_Mosse|Bartholomew Mosse}} founder of Britain's first purpose-built maternity hospital.

{{NW}} The title is a clear reference to Rembrandt's ''{{wp|Night_Watch_%28painting%29|Night Watch}}'', and the art work on the cover illustrates this connection, parodying the famous painting.

''"The Revolution will not be civilised"'' - Vimes is quoting the famous (and equally darkly cynical) song of almost the same name, ''"The Revolution will not be televised"''.

"Rip the door off my locker and hammer a lot of nails right through it, will you?" (p66)
Commander Vimes/Keel's trap with nailed planks may derive from Paul Kersy's (Charles Bronson's) similar trap in Death Wish 3. ([https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GNUTMKPNBU0 Bronson's burglar buster]).)

'''''Doubleday hardback p267:-'''''

Ref. the conversation between Captain [[Tom Wrangle]] and Major [[Clive Mountjoy-Standish]] concerning how the situation in the city is gradually slipping away from the ability of the Army to do anything about it. Clive opines that well-trained heavily armed soldiers should be able to fight their way out of anything: Tom, who is more realistic, believes that all the expensive military kit, at the end of those narrow, winding, twisty-turny Ankh-Morpork alleys, is nothing more than rather expensive loot.

''"But I thought the City Watch took care of the gangs-"''

''Tom looked over the top of his paperwork.''

''"Are you suggesting that we ask for police protection?"''

This parallels the way the British Army, called into Northern Ireland in 1969 to "provide Military Aid to the Civil Power" , was for a regrettably long time vulnerable to being lured into dark alleys, twisty-turny back streets, etc., for ambush purposes, organised by an enemy who intimately knew the local area, in a way the British Army didn't.

It took a surprisingly long time for military and civil authority to grasp the point that the Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (police force) should work together - co-ordinating actions to play to each other's strengths, so that the RUC's local knowledge and the British Army's greater firepower should work together best. Effectively, this was the British Army asking for police protection... so everything became somewhat recursive. The Army had been called into Northern Ireland to "support the civil power" - ie, as the last resort when normal law and order were crumbling, in order to support the police force. Then the Army discovered it needed the police force to support it...as an aside, in the years following 1969, and ''especially'' after Bloody Sunday in 1972, recruitment in Ireland fell to an all-time low. There were also a significant number of desertions from men recruited from Northern Ireland prior to 1969, who couldn't face fighting a war on their own hometown streets.

It has also been suggested that when the Miners' Strike was at its bitterest in the middle 1980's, and causing a great amount of strife and division, a big consideration for the government in deciding whether or not to use the Army to support the police was the willingness of soldiers to obey orders to go in and beat up British civilians. A question mark was placed against the willingness of soldiers recruited in mining and steelworking areas to obey such orders, were they ever given. Especially in the case of Welsh and Scottish troops, the risk of refusal to obey orders, even mutiny, was held to be unacceptably high. This was held to be exponentially so in the case of Territorials (part-time reservists) whose day jobs were actually ''in'' coal, steel, and heavy industry.

Even further back in time, Winston Churchill sent armed militia in to shoot at striking miners in Tonypandy, South Wales, in 1912. (He very carefully chose to use an upscale cavalry militia containing Ronnie Rusts, with no love for the Bolshevist trade unionists). In 1942, ships' companies of the Royal Navy, drawn from South Wales, refused to go on parade for the wartime prime minister, despite all sanctions applied by their officers, citing "Tonypandy" as the reason. Churchill was either heckled off the parade stand by a barrage of jeers, or faced the sight of hundreds of sailors symbolically turning their backs to him. "Tonypandy" was still a rallying cry in the strike of 1984-5. Welsh people have very long memories, and just putting somebody in uniform does not mean they become an automaton who is incapable of questioning bad orders, nor remembering deeper loyalties from outside the Army.

The original Captain Swing was the fictional leader of the Swing Riots, a period of rural unrest that occurred in southern England in 1830, they lead to the events surrounding the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the formation of the TUC. Although Findthee Swing is on the opposing side, being part of the establishment rather than the revolutionaries, the fact that many of the riots occurred near Salisbury and the Swing rioters were tried at Salisbury Assizes, gives a pretty big clue as to where Pterry found the name.

'''''Doubleday hardback p299:-'''''
''Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city''. Even though Vimes states that the city thirty years before the present had perhaps half the human population, forty thousand eggs still seems like too small a number for half a million people. Hmm. Where might Terry have plucked this idea from? Songwriter Donald Roeser said he wanted a metaphor for the ongoing process of life and death to use in a certain song, and said he plucked the figure of forty thousand out of the air to illustrate his point, whilst accepting it was far too small;

''40,000 men and women every day;''
''(Like Romeo and Juliet)''
''40,000 men and women go every day;''
''(Redefine happiness)''
''Another 40,000 coming in every day;''
''(We can be like they are'')

Sam Vimes/John Keel redefines ''his'' happiness as a hard-boiled egg with a slightly runny yolk. And hell's bells, the text a few lines down even ''mentions'' [[Blue Öyster Cult| oysters]]... and every egg laid is potentially a new life but becomes a little Death, once consumed.

'''''Doubleday hardback p312 -315:-'''''

Given the original trigger point for the Glorious Revolution (as in the French Revolution) was the price of bread, it is amusing that as with Marie Antoinette, Winder's downfall is cake-related. As Death points out, "let them eat cake" is not applicable, as no time remains in which cake may be consumed.

'''''Doubleday hardback p322:-'''''

"Are we to be hostage to every whim of a mere sergeant?"

''Coups d'Etat'' in the old days used to be carried out by generals. (Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile). Then a sort of inflationary effect set in: Greece was taken over by a military regime composed of colonels.
In Sierra Leone, a mere air force Flight Lieutenant took over. This effect reached its apogee in Liberia, where a ''sergeant'' managed it. It is also worth bearing in mind that Ugandan dictator Idi Amin had been a sergeant when in the Army, although he was long since demobbed when he went on to a unique career in politics. And Adolf Hitler rose no higher than Corporal, although this probably doesn't count as he was long out of uniform in 1933 and in any case was legitimately elected. Military juntas ain't what they used to be...

'''''Doubleday hardback p323:-'''''

*''Avé! Duci novo, similis duci seneci!''

*''Avé! Bossa nova! Similis bossa seneca!'' - both are variants on a theme of ''Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss!'' cited by Mr. [[Slant]] in {{NW}}, as the awful realisation slips in that they've only changed the Patrician - not the underlying corrupt, cynical and paranoic mind-set that goes with the office. Of course, on Roundworld, the ''bossa nova'' is also a vigorous Latin American dance style (ie, from a continent where despotic rulers and corrupt dictators are often forcibly changed and nothing seems to get better)... so Slant might also be saying that while the dancers have changed, the orchestra is still playing the same theme as before... Roundworld rock group ''The Who''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who] wrote a very cynical hit song called ''We Won't Get Fooled Again''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSu_8ifaurM]]which explores these themes[http://www.lyricsdomain.com/20/the_who/wont_get_fooled_again.html]. It tends to get played a lot during British general elections.

'''''Doubleday hardback p324:-'''''

Snapcase is trying out the office chair and asks if it swivels. His secretary assures him a skilled swiveller can be here within the hour.

This echoes the first meeting between British civil service Machiavelli Sir Humphrey Appleby and newly-minted government minister James Hacker. Hacker asks for a chair that swivels, and Appleby assures him, with perfect and misleading honesty, that the minister has absolute control over his office furniture and we, the Civil Service, will be ''happy'' to ensure his every comfort... (see TV satire ''Yes Minister'')

And in some parts of the world, ''sit on it and swivel!'' is a lethal insult. (Even though generally, the "it" refers to the insulter's extended middle finger, upon which the insultee is incited to sit and swivel)

''[[Reverse Annotations|See here]]'' for other associations.

'''''Harper Collins paperback p420:-'''''

"You can take our lives but you'll never take our freedom!"

According to the popular movie Braveheart, & included in all the movie trailers for it, this is a thing said by William Wallace. I spent more time than I should have trying to confirm whether he said it or not. I strongly suspect he did not but I don't care enough to verify.

The death of Reg Shoe bears more than a slight resemblance to the death of another revolutionary leader of a failed city-state within a major world capital that coincidentally also happened on the 25th of May, Louis Charles Delescluze of the Paris Commune who depressed at the failure of his revolution, 'put on his ceremonial sash as the chief executive of the Commune, and walked to the nearest defended Commune barricade, on Place Chateau-d'Eau. Unarmed, he climbed up to the top of the barricade, in clear view of the army soldiers, and was promptly shot dead.'

[[Category:Annotations|Night Watch/Annotations]]

Bad Schüschein

2024-05-09T12:09:14Z

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'''Bad Schüschein''' is the area in [[Überwald]] where the first [[Glass Clock]] was made.
Bad Schüschein is currently known because [[We-R-Igors]] is headquartered there in the old Rathaus.

==Annotation==
A phonetic pun on shoeshine; however, while an Igor would gladly lick a master's boots for them, they would never leave an unsatisfactory shine.

In German the prefix 'Bad' to a place indicates a spa town such as Bad Godesburg or Bad Neuenahr. 'Bad' literally means bath but perhaps here translates more properly as bathing place. The biblical book of Esther takes place in the city of Shushan but completely fails to mention anything about Igors.

{{Stub}}
[[Category:Discworld geography]]
[[de:Bad Schüschein]]

Burleigh and Spoke

2024-03-12T11:24:05Z

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[[File:B&S advert in the Times.jpg|right|300px]]
This company is based at Sew Close* (C5), just off [[Prouts]]. They manufacture "discreet and strong personal upholstery and control underpinnings", ie, ladies' underwear. These are made to measure and guarantee an upright and sculpted figure of perfect proportion.

A fully illustrated catalogue is available, depicting hundreds of GIRLS in corsets, which will be delivered under plain wrapper so as to allow for leisured browsing in the privacy of your own home.

Given the sort of rigidly armoured female undergarments that were ''de rigeur'' in previous ages on Roundworld, and the perceived fact that Ankh-Morpork clothing resembles that worn on Roundworld in the early and middle Victorian period, the thoughtful person might wonder if Burleigh and Spokes are a spin-off firm capitalising on the many technological advances made in armour technology.

==Annotations==
People defending the vast billions of dollars spent on the military-industrial complex are fond of quoting all the examples of peaceful uses for the technology, which we would not have if it wasn't for the kind military corporations deigning to share their breakthrough discoveries with the rest of us. Is this one of the Discworld spin-offs, a peace dividend?

Also to Rigby and Peller, the London firm who have the royal warrant to purvey underwear and intimate support to the Queen and other members of the Royal Family who express a need for such clothing. One wonders if B&S have the [[Assassins' Guild]] seal of approval and supply the known formidable array of underpinnings required to keep Lady [[T'malia]] in the fine shape she displays to the world.

B&S also evokes Marks And Spencers (M&S), the company that allegedly sells underwear to over half of all British women.

Bespoke (pronounced B.Spoke) refers to goods (especially clothing) that are made to the customers individual requirements.

[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses]]

Cranberry

2024-03-12T11:11:02Z

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{{Character Data
|title= Cranberry
|photo=Blank.jpg|
|name= Cranberry
|age=
|race= Human

|occupation= Professional killer in the pay of Cosmo Lavish
|appearance= Bald

|residence=

|death= Most unusual and alarming
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{MM}}
|cameos=
}}

"Professor" Cranberry is the Assassin hired by [[Cosmo Lavish]], who mops up all the possible threads that could lead to Cosmo's involvement in certain things, such as rings made of [[Stygium]] or swordsticks.

Despite the honorific, Cranberry is not a Professor of the [[Assassins' Guild]], though he had been a scholarship boy there once upon a time. He had been awarded the title, by the simple fact that when not out on business he spends his time reading.

Disturbingly, Cranberry is in no way an illiterate thug but a well-read, highly intelligent man who looks after business very well indeed - to the delight of Cosmo and the horror of [[Heretofore]], Lavish's servant. Heretofore has a few deaths on his hands, because his schemes seem always to end with Cranberry being sent in to inhume whomsoever helped him out.

He came to a violent end at the hands of a most unlikely person in [[Mavolio Bent]], who killed him in a most unusual way. For details, see {{MM}}.

==Annotation==

In the French film ''Nikita'' by Jean-Luc Besson, there is a character called ''Victor le Nettoyeur'' (Victor the Cleaner), played by Jean Reno. This insalubrious character has the same traits. He is sent in by the French Government to erase any mistakes they may have made, killing anyone who may have seen anything untoward. Harvey Keitel reprises this role in the American remake and then goes on to play Winstone "the Wolf" Wolfe in ''Pulp Fiction'' who does a similar role cleaning up "problems".

In ''le Tour de France'', doesn't the "cleaning wagon" carry out a similar tidying-up function, picking up riders too exhausted to complete the stage or otherwise dropping out of the race, and ensuring there are no "corpses" left in the wake of the tour?

The Hitman franchise, a Cranberry source?
The inspiration for Cranberry might also be taken from the computer game franchise "Hitman". Cranberry is described by Heretofore as " The man apparently had no body hair, too, and the gleam from his head could blind you in sunlight." (page 78). Hitman 47 is also bald with no body hair (([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hitman_4_artwork.jpg Hitman artwork]).). Indeed Moist refers to Cranberry as, unusually, a hitman rather than an assassin (page 128).

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Making Money]]
[[de:Kronsbeere]]

Talk:Ten Gallons

2024-01-12T14:12:24Z

Tag: Created page with "Not sure if this is worthy of a full annotation, but in Ben Aaronovitch's book 'Whispers Underground' there is a character call Matthew Ten-tons (who is in charge of a pigsty)."

Not sure if this is worthy of a full annotation, but in Ben Aaronovitch's book 'Whispers Underground' there is a character call Matthew Ten-tons (who is in charge of a pigsty).

Goat and Bush

2024-01-12T14:00:12Z

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The Goat and Bush is the [[Pubs|pub]] in [[Lancre Town]] frequented by the [[Lancre Morris Men]], [[Nanny Ogg]] and most of the loafers (eg. men) of [[Lancre]].

It was also the scene of the intended romancing of Nanny by [[Casanunda|Count Giamo Casanunda]], which was rudely interrupted when [[elves]] came through and wrecked the place.

The Bull and Bush is a public house in north London. It was made famous by the music hall song "Down at the Old Bull and Bush", being sung at the end of the BBC television programme 'The Good Old Days' (which ran from 1953 to 1983).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Bull_and_Bush The Bull and Bush]

{{stub}}

[[Category:Locations]]
[[de:Ziege und Busch]]

User talk:Tag

2024-01-12T11:12:24Z

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Hello

While I enjoy adding some annotations (usually after checking the lspace website), my experience of the Discworld is through audio-books and therefore I don't have any page numbers. I hope this is not too inconvenient.

And while I have your attention - Has anyone considered adding 'Annotations' to the main menu? They are difficult to find if you don't know that they are there.

Book:The Truth/Annotations

2024-01-12T11:07:47Z

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The title of the book might be a nod towards the official Communist party news-paper named "Pravda" (In Russian -"The Truth"). There is an old Soviet-era joke about Russia's two state newspapers: ''There's never any truth in Izveztiya (The News) and you'll never find any news in Pravda (The Truth)''. This may echo the later rivalry between the staid and slightly pompous [[Ankh-Morpork Times]], and its downmarket rival the [[Ankh-Morpork Inquirer]], which emphasises rumours and trivial non-stories at the expense of strict accuracy.

Miss Cripslock in The Truth: Just going through the APF shows that her father was mentioned in as an engraver in ''Maskerade'' (see annotation for p.11 there), although this may be her grandfather, on whose behalf she gives William a ringing slap, whilst her well-crafted bosom heaves at him. Which was he concentrating on, we wonder...

William de Worde's career path appears to mirror that of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Carolus Johann Carolus], who made a living handwriting newsletters for his clients before purchasing a printing press and starting what is recognised ([http://archive.is/8zV3 ref]) as the world's first newspaper.

Thre incident where William first encounters the Dwarfs and their printing press and gets the letter "R" branded in the middle of his forehead, albeit temporarily. in 17th - 18th century England and possibly elsewhere, a common punishment was to brand an offender with a letter denoting what their crime was. One who disseminated slander (verbally) or libel (in print), one deemed to be a habitual liar and ''rumour-monger'', could have the letter "R" burnt into their face - a humiliting punishment they would carry for life. Apparently this happened to publishers of broadsheets who printed things that annoyed influential people who could command such a sanction...

'''''(Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 2)'''''
''"Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and... sunnink"''

Empedocles identified the four "classical" Greek elements of Earth, Water, Air, & Fire. Aristotle added the fifth element aether for the heavens. The name was later used for the unrelated concept of the luminiferous aether, a workaround for a medium through which waves of light propagated until they worked out how such waves would work without a medium.

Metal type was kept in shallow drawers (called type cases). ''Capital letters all in the top, small letters all in the bottom.'' Hence upper case and lower case. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLetter_case Letter case]

Doubleday hardback p39)
:''"Why's there a bigger box for the 'e''s?''
:''"'cos that's the letter we use most of."''

This figures: the "mnemonic" in English usage, for letter frequency, is apparently ETAOINSHRDLU, where "e" is by far and away the most commonly occurring letter, with the rest ranked afterwards in order of frequency. Apparently the remaining 14 letters are all of such low relative frequency that it isn't worthwhile committing their order to memory: if you can crack these first 12, they occur often and frequently enough in any English discourse for the cryptographer to be able to make an intelligent stab at the structure of the rest.

--AgProv 16:48, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

-Etaoin Shrdlu was the name of a bookworm (larger than .303 cal.) in Walt Kelly's ''Pogo'' (the greatest comic strip in history). Wikipedia agrees with Mr. Kelly on the relative frequency of t and a. --Old Dickens 19:15, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

(Doubleday hardback p43)

''"...I wish to avoid any low-level difficulties at this time..." '' In the middle of a discourse about Dwarfs being a very hard-working and valuable ethnic grouping in the city, is it possible that Vetinari has just slipped in a sizeist joke, possibly to see how well Goodmountain and Bodony, faced with a business opportunity, can hold their tempers?

"wishing to avoid low-level difficulties" could well mean "at a time of great potential difficulty with the Dwarfs, it will do no harm to be seen actively sponsoring a Dwarf-owned business, and giving my personal blessing to their prospering in this city."

* Or possibly he was being culture-savvy, as dwarfs consider "low level" to be ''superior'' to high. This aspect of dwarf thinking is examined more deeply in ''Unseen Academicals'', and might explain why the Campaign for Equal Heights is mostly made up of humans: dwarfs who haven't absorbed human concepts of high-equals-good wouldn't realize that many sizeist jokes are intended to be insulting.

at this point there was speculation that this book might be placed differently in the chronology because of Vetinari's reference to "troubles in Uberwald". (which hinted that this was prior to the resolution of said troubles in {{TFE}}. However, there are ''always'' going to be troubles of one sort or another in Uberwald, as {{T!}} and {{RS}} demonstrated. so speculation concerning chronology removed as having been proven irrelevant.

If nothing else, it supports the contention that in the latter Discworld novels, events are happening faster and faster and frequently overlap between books - look at the fit of {{TOT}} and {{NW}}, for instance.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p46)''''' Even in newsletter days, William could rely on Watchmen providing inside information in return for favours. Fred Colon's stated perk is "a drink". By comparision, when members of the Metropolitan police furnish Britain's national press with inside information or services over and beyond the call of duty, the small financial incentive that went the other way was referred to as a "drinkie".

''The Truth Shall Make You Free'' (or fret)... a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which was taken up as a line in the ''Battle Hymn of the Republic''--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 23:54, 12 July 2007 (CEST) - although Abe was himself quoting - John 8:31-2: "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "

'See this sign on my desk, captain? See it, sergeant? It says "Commander Vimes". That means the buck starts here...' "The buck" is essentially responsibility for a problem. "Passing the buck" means passing responsibility for a problem onto someone else. President Truman (it is alleged) had a notice on his desk saying "The buck stops here" meaning he had no one to pass responsibility on to. Commander Vimes seems to think that he is the one who creates problems for people to pass on.

''William de Worde'' Wynkyn de Worde (originally Jan van Wynkyn) was pivotal, along with the more-widely-known Caxton, in introducing printing to Britain. All the national newspaper were (until very recently) printed at Fleet Street in London. Mr. Tuttle Scrope, put up as the replacement Patrician for Vetinari, runs a shop that sells Leatherwork, "... and rubber work... and feathers... and whips... and... little jiggly things" and was, presumably, the supplier for Sir Joshua Lavish in Making Money, who had a cabinet full of such supplies.

"But news is mainly what someone somewhere doesn't want you to put in the paper--" A saying by Lord Northcliffe, a late 19th-early 20th century news magnate in the UK (who, at one point, owned the London newspaper ''The Times''): "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising."

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp 203-205)''''':- There is a possible contradiction and continuity error across books. In {{CJ}}, Vlad de Magpyr asserts:- ''"Everyone knows that cutting off a vampire's head is internationally acceptable"''. In argument with Agnes Nitt, he states that decapitating a vampire is, on its own, a surefire way of slaying a vampire regardless of its georgraphical or ethnic origin. This certainly suffices for the Count de Magpyr at the end of the book. Yet, here we have the contradiction that Otto Chriek is decapitated by Mr Pin. Otto's head and body remain separately alive and sentient, and Otto is able to calmly issue directions to place his head where his body can reach it so that he can re-attach it. This he does, by an effort of will and his own vampiric physiognomy. He then remarks, after saying it "stings a bit*", that decapitation alone is not sufficient - it requires a stake through the heart, as well. The Count de Magpyr does not seem to know this trick. Perhaps for the de Magpyrs, decapitation alone is sufficient, and Vlad is erroneously arguing from his family back to all vampires? Otherwise, a small error in continuity arises.

( * - a reference to a Monty Python sketch? Where Eric Idle plays a stiff-upper-lip British officer whose leg has just been bitten off and eaten by a tiger, asserting cheerfully that "it stings a bit, sir, but nothing to get bothered about!")

** Possibly the Count was unable to heal his neck injury because of having "been Weatherwaxed". Certainly the vampires who succumbed to that effect in {{CJ}} found their ability to fly was impaired, so it may have hindered some of their other powers as well. - Sharlee

'''''(Doubleday hardback p254)''''' Another of those obscure song references. Sacharissa and Rocky realise they aren't alone in the deWorde mansion. They can hear raucous singing and glass clattering. It is coming from behind a ''Green Door''. What's behind the Green Door? - a question asked, in song, by Jime lowe, Frankie Vaughan, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Goons (or at least Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan) and Shakin' Stevens. The "Green Door" is also used in slang to denote levels of access to information - if you are on the wrong side of a green door, there is a higher level to which you have not been given security clearance.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p258)''''' "Spit or swallow, thought William, the eternal conundrum." Terry Pratchett has a habit of throwing in random punchlines from silly or sometimes eyebrow-raising jokes, perhaps just to see who notices. "Spit or swallow" refers to... ermmm... an ''intimate practice'' and the social etiquette that goes along with it, at least for the active partner. Those who know what it means will grin quietly to themselves and read on; for those who don't, it will go right over their heads and remain un-noticed. Therefore Terry wins whichever way. Although how a well-brought up young lad like William knows this... Sacharissa might perhaps require some explanation of the phrase, ideally with diagrams and/or an understanding member of the Seamstresses' Guild to assist. (Ah. Even as these words are written I begin to see how William, a journalist interested in words whose profession involves talking to everybody, knows the phrase. As no doubt Sacharissa will if she remains a journalist).

'''''(Doubleday hardback p269)''''' Interestingly enough, in the mood of hysteria following the fire that destroyed the press , William and Sacharissa are discussing ideas to maximise revenue from the printing presses during down-time, and come up with ideas for glossy magazines. Sacharissa muses...
:"Ring, yes. Now that's another thing. There are all the dwarfs in the city. We could produce a magazine for them. I mean... what's the modern dwarf wearing this season?" ({{TT}}, page 269)

Is this foreshadowing either [[Bu-Bubble]] or Shatta in{{UA}}? And in {{MM}}, Gladys the feminised golem is also a devoted reader of a new ladies' magazine... here, Sacharissa also proposes a magazine tentatively called [[The Lady's Home Companion]]. Both produced by the Times?

'''''(Doubleday hardback p280)''''' "Klatchian Practices" - -not so long ago, the printworkers' unions were the strongest in Britain, and if any unions justified what was otherwise a myth, and deserved to be called greedy gits who were holding the country to ransom, it was the ones who printed the papers in Fleet Street. They knew exactly how strong they were and their employers were resigned to handing out all sorts of sweeteners to ensure they just did their job and got a paper out for the next day. The consequences and lost revenue were unthinkable otherwise. Once, there was even a strike after management discovered an employee dead for three years was still on the payroll and still drawing a salary. The not unreasonable suggestion that his pay stopped now - let alone any reasonable suggestion of repaying the overpayment - was met with a wildcat strike, on the grounds that his family depended on the money, and would suffer if the pay of the deceased were to be stopped. Fleet Street and provincial printworkers also enjoyed the best sick pay in Britain - Goodmountain alludes to this when he says any man on the Inquirer's presses who goes home early with a headache gets a hundred dollars. They were finally brought to heel by stateless media mogul Rupert Murdoch (think Reacher Gilt with an Australian accent) during a protracted strike in the 1980's, aided by Thatcher's anti-union legislation and the reluctance of any other right-thinking trade unionist to go out and support a union made up, basically, of greedy selfish gits who were giving trade unionism a largely undeserved bad name. (The one set of circumstances where the printworkers' union never went on strike was if a newspaper such as the Sun or the Daily Mail was printing front-page lies about a fellow union on strike: they were implored to come out in support of the Miners' Strike but refused, and carried on print-setting anti-miner lies. So when they were in trouble, the prevalent mood of the rest of the union movement was that the printworkers could go to Hell in a handcart.) Nobody would disagree the newspapers needed reform: but today printworkers are un-unionised and powerless to resist the worst excesses of wage-cutting, arguably the state Thatcher intended for all British workers.

The old excesses of Fleet Street days were known as "Spanish Practices"...

'''''(Doubleday hardback p285)''''' "Privilege" just means "private law". That's ''exactly'' what it means. He just doesn't believe the ordinary laws apply to him..."

Compare this to a similar dialogue on the origins and nature of privilege in Book Two of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' (see [[Reading suggestions]]).

At this stage in the book, the Times' offices on Gleam Street have been effectively bombed and burned out, meaning that while the paper can still report and investigate, it has nowhere to print its findings. Compare this to one of the myriad sub-plots of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''', where the radical magazine and thorn in the flesh of the Establishment, "Confrontation", is suddenly bombed, apparently to prevent it publishing further inconvenient truths. In fact, this bombing draws in the hard-bitten cynical street coppers Goodman and Muldoon as investigators, just as in Discworld Vimes and Carrot are among the first to the wreckage of the Times printworks. Another link: ''Confrontation'''s Arab-American editor Joseph Malik kept rare Egyptian tropical fish in the office to remind him of home. These died in the bombing. The Times' Überwaldean photographer Otto Chriek kept Überwaldean land-eels, another rare fish species from Home, which were lost in the bombing...
And earlier on the book, Saharissa is asked, on a scale of one to ten, exactly how much trouble she estimates they're in. William thinks eight. Sacharissa reflects and says ''two thousand, three hundred and seventeen out of ten''. 23 and 17 are the all-important continually repeating arc numbers of the '''''Illuminatus!''''' trilogy, and have a mystic significance.

Also, the star of Evelyn Waugh's novel "Scoop" is a young journalist called William Boot, with strong similarities to William de Worde.

"''Kings and Lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert''" (HarperCollins 30).
This is a reference to [[wikipedia:Percy_Bysshe_Shelley|Percy Bysshe Shelley's]] poem ''[[Wikipedia:Ozymandias|Ozymandias]]'' which tells of a statue built by 'the king of kings' yet no one remembers who this king is. It is not the kings' legacy that survive but the art they create.

[[Category:Annotations|Truth,The]]

Book:The Truth/Annotations

2024-01-08T09:15:39Z

Tag:

The title of the book might be a nod towards the official Communist party news-paper named "Pravda" (In Russian -"The Truth"). There is an old Soviet-era joke about Russia's two state newspapers: ''There's never any truth in Izveztiya (The News) and you'll never find any news in Pravda (The Truth)''. This may echo the later rivalry between the staid and slightly pompous [[Ankh-Morpork Times]], and its downmarket rival the [[Ankh-Morpork Inquirer]], which emphasises rumours and trivial non-stories at the expense of strict accuracy.

Miss Cripslock in The Truth: Just going through the APF shows that her father was mentioned in as an engraver in ''Maskerade'' (see annotation for p.11 there), although this may be her grandfather, on whose behalf she gives William a ringing slap, whilst her well-crafted bosom heaves at him. Which was he concentrating on, we wonder...

William de Worde's career path appears to mirror that of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Carolus Johann Carolus], who made a living handwriting newsletters for his clients before purchasing a printing press and starting what is recognised ([http://archive.is/8zV3 ref]) as the world's first newspaper.

Thre incident where William first encounters the Dwarfs and their printing press and gets the letter "R" branded in the middle of his forehead, albeit temporarily. in 17th - 18th century England and possibly elsewhere, a common punishment was to brand an offender with a letter denoting what their crime was. One who disseminated slander (verbally) or libel (in print), one deemed to be a habitual liar and ''rumour-monger'', could have the letter "R" burnt into their face - a humiliting punishment they would carry for life. Apparently this happened to publishers of broadsheets who printed things that annoyed influential people who could command such a sanction...

'''''(Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 2)'''''
''"Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and... sunnink"''

Empedocles identified the four "classical" Greek elements of Earth, Water, Air, & Fire. Aristotle added the fifth element aether for the heavens. The name was later used for the unrelated concept of the luminiferous aether, a workaround for a medium through which waves of light propagated until they worked out how such waves would work without a medium.

Metal type was kept in shallow drawers (called type cases). ''Capital letters all in the top, small letters all in the bottom.'' Hence upper case and lower case. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLetter_case Letter case]

Doubleday hardback p39)
:''"Why's there a bigger box for the 'e''s?''
:''"'cos that's the letter we use most of."''

This figures: the "mnemonic" in English usage, for letter frequency, is apparently ETAOINSHRDLU, where "e" is by far and away the most commonly occurring letter, with the rest ranked afterwards in order of frequency. Apparently the remaining 14 letters are all of such low relative frequency that it isn't worthwhile committing their order to memory: if you can crack these first 12, they occur often and frequently enough in any English discourse for the cryptographer to be able to make an intelligent stab at the structure of the rest.

--AgProv 16:48, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

-Etaoin Shrdlu was the name of a bookworm (larger than .303 cal.) in Walt Kelly's ''Pogo'' (the greatest comic strip in history). Wikipedia agrees with Mr. Kelly on the relative frequency of t and a. --Old Dickens 19:15, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

(Doubleday hardback p43)

''"...I wish to avoid any low-level difficulties at this time..." '' In the middle of a discourse about Dwarfs being a very hard-working and valuable ethnic grouping in the city, is it possible that Vetinari has just slipped in a sizeist joke, possibly to see how well Goodmountain and Bodony, faced with a business opportunity, can hold their tempers?

"wishing to avoid low-level difficulties" could well mean "at a time of great potential difficulty with the Dwarfs, it will do no harm to be seen actively sponsoring a Dwarf-owned business, and giving my personal blessing to their prospering in this city."

* Or possibly he was being culture-savvy, as dwarfs consider "low level" to be ''superior'' to high. This aspect of dwarf thinking is examined more deeply in ''Unseen Academicals'', and might explain why the Campaign for Equal Heights is mostly made up of humans: dwarfs who haven't absorbed human concepts of high-equals-good wouldn't realize that many sizeist jokes are intended to be insulting.

at this point there was speculation that this book might be placed differently in the chronology because of Vetinari's reference to "troubles in Uberwald". (which hinted that this was prior to the resolution of said troubles in {{TFE}}. However, there are ''always'' going to be troubles of one sort or another in Uberwald, as {{T!}} and {{RS}} demonstrated. so speculation concerning chronology removed as having been proven irrelevant.

If nothing else, it supports the contention that in the latter Discworld novels, events are happening faster and faster and frequently overlap between books - look at the fit of {{TOT}} and {{NW}}, for instance.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p46)''''' Even in newsletter days, William could rely on Watchmen providing inside information in return for favours. Fred Colon's stated perk is "a drink". By comparision, when members of the Metropolitan police furnish Britain's national press with inside information or services over and beyond the call of duty, the small financial incentive that went the other way was referred to as a "drinkie".

''The Truth Shall Make You Free'' (or fret)... a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which was taken up as a line in the ''Battle Hymn of the Republic''--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 23:54, 12 July 2007 (CEST) - although Abe was himself quoting - John 8:31-2: "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "

''William de Worde'' Wynkyn de Worde (originally Jan van Wynkyn) was pivotal, along with the more-widely-known Caxton, in introducing printing to Britain. All the national newspaper were (until very recently) printed at Fleet Street in London. Mr. Tuttle Scrope, put up as the replacement Patrician for Vetinari, runs a shop that sells Leatherwork, "... and rubber work... and feathers... and whips... and... little jiggly things" and was, presumably, the supplier for Sir Joshua Lavish in Making Money, who had a cabinet full of such supplies.

"But news is mainly what someone somewhere doesn't want you to put in the paper--" A saying by Lord Northcliffe, a late 19th-early 20th century news magnate in the UK (who, at one point, owned the London newspaper ''The Times''): "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising."

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp 203-205)''''':- There is a possible contradiction and continuity error across books. In {{CJ}}, Vlad de Magpyr asserts:- ''"Everyone knows that cutting off a vampire's head is internationally acceptable"''. In argument with Agnes Nitt, he states that decapitating a vampire is, on its own, a surefire way of slaying a vampire regardless of its georgraphical or ethnic origin. This certainly suffices for the Count de Magpyr at the end of the book. Yet, here we have the contradiction that Otto Chriek is decapitated by Mr Pin. Otto's head and body remain separately alive and sentient, and Otto is able to calmly issue directions to place his head where his body can reach it so that he can re-attach it. This he does, by an effort of will and his own vampiric physiognomy. He then remarks, after saying it "stings a bit*", that decapitation alone is not sufficient - it requires a stake through the heart, as well. The Count de Magpyr does not seem to know this trick. Perhaps for the de Magpyrs, decapitation alone is sufficient, and Vlad is erroneously arguing from his family back to all vampires? Otherwise, a small error in continuity arises.

( * - a reference to a Monty Python sketch? Where Eric Idle plays a stiff-upper-lip British officer whose leg has just been bitten off and eaten by a tiger, asserting cheerfully that "it stings a bit, sir, but nothing to get bothered about!")

** Possibly the Count was unable to heal his neck injury because of having "been Weatherwaxed". Certainly the vampires who succumbed to that effect in {{CJ}} found their ability to fly was impaired, so it may have hindered some of their other powers as well. - Sharlee

'''''(Doubleday hardback p254)''''' Another of those obscure song references. Sacharissa and Rocky realise they aren't alone in the deWorde mansion. They can hear raucous singing and glass clattering. It is coming from behind a ''Green Door''. What's behind the Green Door? - a question asked, in song, by Jime lowe, Frankie Vaughan, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Goons (or at least Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan) and Shakin' Stevens. The "Green Door" is also used in slang to denote levels of access to information - if you are on the wrong side of a green door, there is a higher level to which you have not been given security clearance.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p258)''''' "Spit or swallow, thought William, the eternal conundrum." Terry Pratchett has a habit of throwing in random punchlines from silly or sometimes eyebrow-raising jokes, perhaps just to see who notices. "Spit or swallow" refers to... ermmm... an ''intimate practice'' and the social etiquette that goes along with it, at least for the active partner. Those who know what it means will grin quietly to themselves and read on; for those who don't, it will go right over their heads and remain un-noticed. Therefore Terry wins whichever way. Although how a well-brought up young lad like William knows this... Sacharissa might perhaps require some explanation of the phrase, ideally with diagrams and/or an understanding member of the Seamstresses' Guild to assist. (Ah. Even as these words are written I begin to see how William, a journalist interested in words whose profession involves talking to everybody, knows the phrase. As no doubt Sacharissa will if she remains a journalist).

'''''(Doubleday hardback p269)''''' Interestingly enough, in the mood of hysteria following the fire that destroyed the press , William and Sacharissa are discussing ideas to maximise revenue from the printing presses during down-time, and come up with ideas for glossy magazines. Sacharissa muses...
:"Ring, yes. Now that's another thing. There are all the dwarfs in the city. We could produce a magazine for them. I mean... what's the modern dwarf wearing this season?" ({{TT}}, page 269)

Is this foreshadowing either [[Bu-Bubble]] or Shatta in{{UA}}? And in {{MM}}, Gladys the feminised golem is also a devoted reader of a new ladies' magazine... here, Sacharissa also proposes a magazine tentatively called [[The Lady's Home Companion]]. Both produced by the Times?

'''''(Doubleday hardback p280)''''' "Klatchian Practices" - -not so long ago, the printworkers' unions were the strongest in Britain, and if any unions justified what was otherwise a myth, and deserved to be called greedy gits who were holding the country to ransom, it was the ones who printed the papers in Fleet Street. They knew exactly how strong they were and their employers were resigned to handing out all sorts of sweeteners to ensure they just did their job and got a paper out for the next day. The consequences and lost revenue were unthinkable otherwise. Once, there was even a strike after management discovered an employee dead for three years was still on the payroll and still drawing a salary. The not unreasonable suggestion that his pay stopped now - let alone any reasonable suggestion of repaying the overpayment - was met with a wildcat strike, on the grounds that his family depended on the money, and would suffer if the pay of the deceased were to be stopped. Fleet Street and provincial printworkers also enjoyed the best sick pay in Britain - Goodmountain alludes to this when he says any man on the Inquirer's presses who goes home early with a headache gets a hundred dollars. They were finally brought to heel by stateless media mogul Rupert Murdoch (think Reacher Gilt with an Australian accent) during a protracted strike in the 1980's, aided by Thatcher's anti-union legislation and the reluctance of any other right-thinking trade unionist to go out and support a union made up, basically, of greedy selfish gits who were giving trade unionism a largely undeserved bad name. (The one set of circumstances where the printworkers' union never went on strike was if a newspaper such as the Sun or the Daily Mail was printing front-page lies about a fellow union on strike: they were implored to come out in support of the Miners' Strike but refused, and carried on print-setting anti-miner lies. So when they were in trouble, the prevalent mood of the rest of the union movement was that the printworkers could go to Hell in a handcart.) Nobody would disagree the newspapers needed reform: but today printworkers are un-unionised and powerless to resist the worst excesses of wage-cutting, arguably the state Thatcher intended for all British workers.

The old excesses of Fleet Street days were known as "Spanish Practices"...

'''''(Doubleday hardback p285)''''' "Privilege" just means "private law". That's ''exactly'' what it means. He just doesn't believe the ordinary laws apply to him..."

Compare this to a similar dialogue on the origins and nature of privilege in Book Two of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' (see [[Reading suggestions]]).

At this stage in the book, the Times' offices on Gleam Street have been effectively bombed and burned out, meaning that while the paper can still report and investigate, it has nowhere to print its findings. Compare this to one of the myriad sub-plots of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''', where the radical magazine and thorn in the flesh of the Establishment, "Confrontation", is suddenly bombed, apparently to prevent it publishing further inconvenient truths. In fact, this bombing draws in the hard-bitten cynical street coppers Goodman and Muldoon as investigators, just as in Discworld Vimes and Carrot are among the first to the wreckage of the Times printworks. Another link: ''Confrontation'''s Arab-American editor Joseph Malik kept rare Egyptian tropical fish in the office to remind him of home. These died in the bombing. The Times' Überwaldean photographer Otto Chriek kept Überwaldean land-eels, another rare fish species from Home, which were lost in the bombing...
And earlier on the book, Saharissa is asked, on a scale of one to ten, exactly how much trouble she estimates they're in. William thinks eight. Sacharissa reflects and says ''two thousand, three hundred and seventeen out of ten''. 23 and 17 are the all-important continually repeating arc numbers of the '''''Illuminatus!''''' trilogy, and have a mystic significance.

Also, the star of Evelyn Waugh's novel "Scoop" is a young journalist called William Boot, with strong similarities to William de Worde.

"''Kings and Lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert''" (HarperCollins 30).
This is a reference to [[wikipedia:Percy_Bysshe_Shelley|Percy Bysshe Shelley's]] poem ''[[Wikipedia:Ozymandias|Ozymandias]]'' which tells of a statue built by 'the king of kings' yet no one remembers who this king is. It is not the kings' legacy that survive but the art they create.

[[Category:Annotations|Truth,The]]

Book:The Truth/Annotations

2024-01-08T09:15:14Z

Tag:

The title of the book might be a nod towards the official Communist party news-paper named "Pravda" (In Russian -"The Truth"). There is an old Soviet-era joke about Russia's two state newspapers: ''There's never any truth in Izveztiya (The News) and you'll never find any news in Pravda (The Truth)''. This may echo the later rivalry between the staid and slightly pompous [[Ankh-Morpork Times]], and its downmarket rival the [[Ankh-Morpork Inquirer]], which emphasises rumours and trivial non-stories at the expense of strict accuracy.

Miss Cripslock in The Truth: Just going through the APF shows that her father was mentioned in as an engraver in ''Maskerade'' (see annotation for p.11 there), although this may be her grandfather, on whose behalf she gives William a ringing slap, whilst her well-crafted bosom heaves at him. Which was he concentrating on, we wonder...

William de Worde's career path appears to mirror that of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Carolus Johann Carolus], who made a living handwriting newsletters for his clients before purchasing a printing press and starting what is recognised ([http://archive.is/8zV3 ref]) as the world's first newspaper.

Thre incident where William first encounters the Dwarfs and their printing press and gets the letter "R" branded in the middle of his forehead, albeit temporarily. in 17th - 18th century England and possibly elsewhere, a common punishment was to brand an offender with a letter denoting what their crime was. One who disseminated slander (verbally) or libel (in print), one deemed to be a habitual liar and ''rumour-monger'', could have the letter "R" burnt into their face - a humiliting punishment they would carry for life. Apparently this happened to publishers of broadsheets who printed things that annoyed influential people who could command such a sanction...

'''''(Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 2)'''''
''"Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and... sunnink"''

Empedocles identified the four "classical" Greek elements of Earth, Water, Air, & Fire. Aristotle added the fifth element aether for the heavens. The name was later used for the unrelated concept of the luminiferous aether, a workaround for a medium through which waves of light propagated until they worked out how such waves would work without a medium.

Metal type was kept shallow drawers (called type cases). ''Capital letters all in the top, small letters all in the bottom.'' Hence upper case and lower case. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLetter_case Letter case]

Doubleday hardback p39)
:''"Why's there a bigger box for the 'e''s?''
:''"'cos that's the letter we use most of."''

This figures: the "mnemonic" in English usage, for letter frequency, is apparently ETAOINSHRDLU, where "e" is by far and away the most commonly occurring letter, with the rest ranked afterwards in order of frequency. Apparently the remaining 14 letters are all of such low relative frequency that it isn't worthwhile committing their order to memory: if you can crack these first 12, they occur often and frequently enough in any English discourse for the cryptographer to be able to make an intelligent stab at the structure of the rest.

--AgProv 16:48, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

-Etaoin Shrdlu was the name of a bookworm (larger than .303 cal.) in Walt Kelly's ''Pogo'' (the greatest comic strip in history). Wikipedia agrees with Mr. Kelly on the relative frequency of t and a. --Old Dickens 19:15, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

(Doubleday hardback p43)

''"...I wish to avoid any low-level difficulties at this time..." '' In the middle of a discourse about Dwarfs being a very hard-working and valuable ethnic grouping in the city, is it possible that Vetinari has just slipped in a sizeist joke, possibly to see how well Goodmountain and Bodony, faced with a business opportunity, can hold their tempers?

"wishing to avoid low-level difficulties" could well mean "at a time of great potential difficulty with the Dwarfs, it will do no harm to be seen actively sponsoring a Dwarf-owned business, and giving my personal blessing to their prospering in this city."

* Or possibly he was being culture-savvy, as dwarfs consider "low level" to be ''superior'' to high. This aspect of dwarf thinking is examined more deeply in ''Unseen Academicals'', and might explain why the Campaign for Equal Heights is mostly made up of humans: dwarfs who haven't absorbed human concepts of high-equals-good wouldn't realize that many sizeist jokes are intended to be insulting.

at this point there was speculation that this book might be placed differently in the chronology because of Vetinari's reference to "troubles in Uberwald". (which hinted that this was prior to the resolution of said troubles in {{TFE}}. However, there are ''always'' going to be troubles of one sort or another in Uberwald, as {{T!}} and {{RS}} demonstrated. so speculation concerning chronology removed as having been proven irrelevant.

If nothing else, it supports the contention that in the latter Discworld novels, events are happening faster and faster and frequently overlap between books - look at the fit of {{TOT}} and {{NW}}, for instance.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p46)''''' Even in newsletter days, William could rely on Watchmen providing inside information in return for favours. Fred Colon's stated perk is "a drink". By comparision, when members of the Metropolitan police furnish Britain's national press with inside information or services over and beyond the call of duty, the small financial incentive that went the other way was referred to as a "drinkie".

''The Truth Shall Make You Free'' (or fret)... a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which was taken up as a line in the ''Battle Hymn of the Republic''--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 23:54, 12 July 2007 (CEST) - although Abe was himself quoting - John 8:31-2: "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "

''William de Worde'' Wynkyn de Worde (originally Jan van Wynkyn) was pivotal, along with the more-widely-known Caxton, in introducing printing to Britain. All the national newspaper were (until very recently) printed at Fleet Street in London. Mr. Tuttle Scrope, put up as the replacement Patrician for Vetinari, runs a shop that sells Leatherwork, "... and rubber work... and feathers... and whips... and... little jiggly things" and was, presumably, the supplier for Sir Joshua Lavish in Making Money, who had a cabinet full of such supplies.

"But news is mainly what someone somewhere doesn't want you to put in the paper--" A saying by Lord Northcliffe, a late 19th-early 20th century news magnate in the UK (who, at one point, owned the London newspaper ''The Times''): "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising."

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp 203-205)''''':- There is a possible contradiction and continuity error across books. In {{CJ}}, Vlad de Magpyr asserts:- ''"Everyone knows that cutting off a vampire's head is internationally acceptable"''. In argument with Agnes Nitt, he states that decapitating a vampire is, on its own, a surefire way of slaying a vampire regardless of its georgraphical or ethnic origin. This certainly suffices for the Count de Magpyr at the end of the book. Yet, here we have the contradiction that Otto Chriek is decapitated by Mr Pin. Otto's head and body remain separately alive and sentient, and Otto is able to calmly issue directions to place his head where his body can reach it so that he can re-attach it. This he does, by an effort of will and his own vampiric physiognomy. He then remarks, after saying it "stings a bit*", that decapitation alone is not sufficient - it requires a stake through the heart, as well. The Count de Magpyr does not seem to know this trick. Perhaps for the de Magpyrs, decapitation alone is sufficient, and Vlad is erroneously arguing from his family back to all vampires? Otherwise, a small error in continuity arises.

( * - a reference to a Monty Python sketch? Where Eric Idle plays a stiff-upper-lip British officer whose leg has just been bitten off and eaten by a tiger, asserting cheerfully that "it stings a bit, sir, but nothing to get bothered about!")

** Possibly the Count was unable to heal his neck injury because of having "been Weatherwaxed". Certainly the vampires who succumbed to that effect in {{CJ}} found their ability to fly was impaired, so it may have hindered some of their other powers as well. - Sharlee

'''''(Doubleday hardback p254)''''' Another of those obscure song references. Sacharissa and Rocky realise they aren't alone in the deWorde mansion. They can hear raucous singing and glass clattering. It is coming from behind a ''Green Door''. What's behind the Green Door? - a question asked, in song, by Jime lowe, Frankie Vaughan, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Goons (or at least Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan) and Shakin' Stevens. The "Green Door" is also used in slang to denote levels of access to information - if you are on the wrong side of a green door, there is a higher level to which you have not been given security clearance.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p258)''''' "Spit or swallow, thought William, the eternal conundrum." Terry Pratchett has a habit of throwing in random punchlines from silly or sometimes eyebrow-raising jokes, perhaps just to see who notices. "Spit or swallow" refers to... ermmm... an ''intimate practice'' and the social etiquette that goes along with it, at least for the active partner. Those who know what it means will grin quietly to themselves and read on; for those who don't, it will go right over their heads and remain un-noticed. Therefore Terry wins whichever way. Although how a well-brought up young lad like William knows this... Sacharissa might perhaps require some explanation of the phrase, ideally with diagrams and/or an understanding member of the Seamstresses' Guild to assist. (Ah. Even as these words are written I begin to see how William, a journalist interested in words whose profession involves talking to everybody, knows the phrase. As no doubt Sacharissa will if she remains a journalist).

'''''(Doubleday hardback p269)''''' Interestingly enough, in the mood of hysteria following the fire that destroyed the press , William and Sacharissa are discussing ideas to maximise revenue from the printing presses during down-time, and come up with ideas for glossy magazines. Sacharissa muses...
:"Ring, yes. Now that's another thing. There are all the dwarfs in the city. We could produce a magazine for them. I mean... what's the modern dwarf wearing this season?" ({{TT}}, page 269)

Is this foreshadowing either [[Bu-Bubble]] or Shatta in{{UA}}? And in {{MM}}, Gladys the feminised golem is also a devoted reader of a new ladies' magazine... here, Sacharissa also proposes a magazine tentatively called [[The Lady's Home Companion]]. Both produced by the Times?

'''''(Doubleday hardback p280)''''' "Klatchian Practices" - -not so long ago, the printworkers' unions were the strongest in Britain, and if any unions justified what was otherwise a myth, and deserved to be called greedy gits who were holding the country to ransom, it was the ones who printed the papers in Fleet Street. They knew exactly how strong they were and their employers were resigned to handing out all sorts of sweeteners to ensure they just did their job and got a paper out for the next day. The consequences and lost revenue were unthinkable otherwise. Once, there was even a strike after management discovered an employee dead for three years was still on the payroll and still drawing a salary. The not unreasonable suggestion that his pay stopped now - let alone any reasonable suggestion of repaying the overpayment - was met with a wildcat strike, on the grounds that his family depended on the money, and would suffer if the pay of the deceased were to be stopped. Fleet Street and provincial printworkers also enjoyed the best sick pay in Britain - Goodmountain alludes to this when he says any man on the Inquirer's presses who goes home early with a headache gets a hundred dollars. They were finally brought to heel by stateless media mogul Rupert Murdoch (think Reacher Gilt with an Australian accent) during a protracted strike in the 1980's, aided by Thatcher's anti-union legislation and the reluctance of any other right-thinking trade unionist to go out and support a union made up, basically, of greedy selfish gits who were giving trade unionism a largely undeserved bad name. (The one set of circumstances where the printworkers' union never went on strike was if a newspaper such as the Sun or the Daily Mail was printing front-page lies about a fellow union on strike: they were implored to come out in support of the Miners' Strike but refused, and carried on print-setting anti-miner lies. So when they were in trouble, the prevalent mood of the rest of the union movement was that the printworkers could go to Hell in a handcart.) Nobody would disagree the newspapers needed reform: but today printworkers are un-unionised and powerless to resist the worst excesses of wage-cutting, arguably the state Thatcher intended for all British workers.

The old excesses of Fleet Street days were known as "Spanish Practices"...

'''''(Doubleday hardback p285)''''' "Privilege" just means "private law". That's ''exactly'' what it means. He just doesn't believe the ordinary laws apply to him..."

Compare this to a similar dialogue on the origins and nature of privilege in Book Two of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' (see [[Reading suggestions]]).

At this stage in the book, the Times' offices on Gleam Street have been effectively bombed and burned out, meaning that while the paper can still report and investigate, it has nowhere to print its findings. Compare this to one of the myriad sub-plots of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''', where the radical magazine and thorn in the flesh of the Establishment, "Confrontation", is suddenly bombed, apparently to prevent it publishing further inconvenient truths. In fact, this bombing draws in the hard-bitten cynical street coppers Goodman and Muldoon as investigators, just as in Discworld Vimes and Carrot are among the first to the wreckage of the Times printworks. Another link: ''Confrontation'''s Arab-American editor Joseph Malik kept rare Egyptian tropical fish in the office to remind him of home. These died in the bombing. The Times' Überwaldean photographer Otto Chriek kept Überwaldean land-eels, another rare fish species from Home, which were lost in the bombing...
And earlier on the book, Saharissa is asked, on a scale of one to ten, exactly how much trouble she estimates they're in. William thinks eight. Sacharissa reflects and says ''two thousand, three hundred and seventeen out of ten''. 23 and 17 are the all-important continually repeating arc numbers of the '''''Illuminatus!''''' trilogy, and have a mystic significance.

Also, the star of Evelyn Waugh's novel "Scoop" is a young journalist called William Boot, with strong similarities to William de Worde.

"''Kings and Lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert''" (HarperCollins 30).
This is a reference to [[wikipedia:Percy_Bysshe_Shelley|Percy Bysshe Shelley's]] poem ''[[Wikipedia:Ozymandias|Ozymandias]]'' which tells of a statue built by 'the king of kings' yet no one remembers who this king is. It is not the kings' legacy that survive but the art they create.

[[Category:Annotations|Truth,The]]

TV and Film:Good Omens

2023-09-28T11:35:14Z

Tag:

{{TV Data
|title=Good Omens
|cover=[[File:GO TV DVD.jpg|thumb|240px|DVD Cover]]
|asin=
|imdb=1869454
|date=31st May 2019
|channel=Amazon Prime, BBC Two
|writer= Neil Gaiman
|director=Douglas Mackinnon
|producer=[[Neil Gaiman]], Caroline Skinner, Chris Sussman, [[Rob Wilkins]], Rod Brown
|cast=Michael Sheen, David Tennant, Sam Taylor Buck
|duration=360 minutes
|episodes=12
|series=Good Omens
|annotations=
|notes=
|prev=[[TV and Film:Troll Bridge|Troll Bridge]]
|next=[[TV and Film:The Watch|The Watch]]
}}
'''Good Omens''' is a [[TV and film adaptations|tv series adaptation]] of the novel {{GO}} by [[Terry Pratchett]] and [[Neil Gaiman]], created from a joint venture between Amazon.com, the BBC, [[Narrativia]] and The Blank Corporation. There were some other previous attempts to adapt Good Omens including a film that was to be directed by Terry Gilliam and [[Book:A Screenplay|a screenplay]] written by Neil Gaiman; however the series finally came about as a request from Terry to Neil soon before his passing, as it was a project that the two had wanted to see for a long time. The series also includes extra material added to the story from ideas that the authors had that did not make it into the book, as well as ideas they had plotted for a sequel, but never written.

On 29th June 2021 [[Neil Gaiman]] and Amazon Prime announced that a second season of ''Good Omens'' was in production, with Gaiman mentioning in his blog the unwritten sequel plans and telling the story of how it was plotted during the 1989 World Science Fiction Convention. In the lead up to the second season’t release, Gaiman clarified in interviews that season two is not based on the sequel. He felt he couldn’t jump straight into that story, and so came up with a new one to connect the first season to where the sequel plot begins, which would be the third season, if one is made. The second season is co-written by Gaiman and John Finnemore, best known for the BBC radio sitcom ''Cabin Pressure'' starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

On 10 May 2023, it was announced via an elaborate parody video by ''The Hillywood Show'' (featuring Neil Gaiman and cast from the show itself) that the second season of six episodes would be released on 28 July 2023. This was followed by new promotional artwork for the new season, featuring the tagline “Everyday its a-getting closer”.

== Blurb ==
=== Season One ===
The End of the World is coming, which means a fussy Angel and a loose-living Demon who've become overly fond of life on Earth are forced to form an unlikely alliance to stop Armageddon. But they have lost the Antichrist, an 11-year-old boy unaware he's meant to bring upon the end of days, forcing them to embark on an adventure to find him and save the world before it's too late.

=== Season Two ===
A naked archangel turns up at the door to renegade angel Aziraphale's bookshop, with no memory of who he is or how he got there, and Aziraphale and retired demon Crowley's lives become extremely complicated. Heaven and Hell are both desperate to find the runaway. As Crowley and Aziraphale attempt to fix a human romance, things become increasingly unsafe for them, in the past and the present.

== Cast ==
=== Main ===
* [[Aziraphale]]: Michael Sheen
* [[Crowley]]: [[David Tennant]]

=== Supporting ===
* Archangel Gabriel: Jon Hamm
* Archangel Uriel: Gloria Obianyo
* Archangel Michael: Doon Mackichan
* God: Frances McDormand

==== Season One ====
* [[Anathema Device]]: Adria Arjona
* [[Adam Young]]: Sam Taylor Buck
* [[Brian ("Good Omens")|Brian]]: Ian Galkoff
* [[Wensleydale]]: Alfie Taylor
* [[Pepper]]: Amma Ris
* [[Dog]]: Ollie
* [[Mary Loquacious|Sister Mary Loquacious]]: Nina Sosanya
* [[Ligur]]: [[Ariyon Bakare]]
* [[Hastur]]: Ned Dennehy
* [[Newton Pulsifer]]: Jack Whitehall
* [[Shadwell]]: Michael McKean
* [[Madame Tracy]]: Miranda Richardson
* [[Agnes Nutter]]: Josie Lawrence
* [[Death (Good Omens)|Death]]: Brian Cox (Voice), Jamie Hill (Body)
* [[War (Good Omens)|War]]: Mireille Enos
* [[Pollution]]: Lourdes Faberes
* [[Famine (Good Omens)|Famine]]: Yusuf Gatewood
* Sandalphon: Paul Chahidi
* Metatron: Derek Jacobi
* [[Beelzebub]]: Anna Maxwell Martin
* Dagon: Elizabeth Berrington
* Thaddeus J. Dowling-U.S. Ambassador: Nick Offerman
* Harriet Dowling: Jill Winternitz
* [[Warlock Dowling]]: Samson Marraccino
* [[Deirdre Young]]: Sian Brooke
* [[Mr. Young|Arthur Young]]: Daniel Mays
* [[The International Express Man]]: Simon Merrells
* R. P. Tyler/Tadfield Neighbourhood Watch: Bill Paterson
* Anathema's Mother: Gabriella Cirillo
* William Shakespeare: Reece Shearsmith
* Mr. Harmony: Mark Gatiss
* Mr Glozier: Steve Pemberton
* Rose Montgomery: Niamh Walsh
* Satan: Benedict Cumberbatch
* Sleeping Movie Theater Patron: [[Neil Gaiman]] (uncredited)

==== Season Two ====
* Maggie: Maggie Service
* Nina: Nina Sosanya
* Shax: Miranda Richardson
* [[Beelzebub]]: Shelley Conn
* Saraqael: Liz Carr
* Muriel: Quelin Sepulveda
* Job: Peter Davison
* Sitis: Andi Osho
* Keziah: Sienna Arif-Knights
* Jemimah: Cherry Mitra
* Ennon: Ty Tennant

==Supplementary Books==
Two additional companion books were produced alongside the series:
*[[Book:The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion|''The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion'']]
*[[Book:The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book|''The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book'']]

Also [[Book:The Definitive Good Omens|''The Definitive Good Omens'']] contains some artwork inspired by the series.

==[[Chattering Order of St. Beryl|The Chattering Order of St. Beryl]]==
As a part of an advertising campaign for the series, The Chattering Order of St. Beryl launched a website and several social media accounts in order to count down to the Apocalypse.
*[http://chatteringorderofstberyl.com/ The Chattering Order Website]
*[https://twitter.com/chattering_nuns Twitter],[https://www.instagram.com/chatteringnuns/ Instagram],[https://www.facebook.com/chatteringnuns Facebook], [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvl0b5TI20zrXx-6RQBdukA Youtube]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boz7rHYLj6s Brand New Baby Smell-Music Video]
*[https://amazonstudios.lnk.to/UnholyNightIN The Chattering Order of St. Beryl: Unholy Night-Album]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20190212040153/http://stberyls.com/index.html The Chattering Order Former Website-Archived Link]

==Differences Between The Book And Series==
'''''Spoiler Warning'''''

Some of the differences between the series and its source material include:
* The episodes have narration provided by God.
* [[Greasy Johnson]] and the Johnsonites are not mentioned.
* The [[Four Other Riders Of The Apocalypse]] have been omitted.*
* [[Anathema Device]] is American and from a wealthy family (thanks to her ancestors prophecies).
* [[Aziraphale]] and [[Crowley]] appear to the Dowlings as a nanny and gardener but not as tutors in later years.
* [[Warlock Dowling]]'s birthday scene was shortened without the jelly/gun incident.
* [[The Them]] do not use a dunking stool when pretending to be inquisitors, a tyre swing is used instead and [[Wensleydale]] replaces [[Pepper]]'s sister.
* The third episode contains a segment that gives greater detail to Aziraphale and Crowley's past, showing them meeting at various points of history and in different areas of the world. (More of this backstory is revealed in season two.)
* The rain of fish is absent.
* Additional characters that were not present in the book such as the angels and historical figures have been added.
* Crowley's Holy Water was given to him by Aziraphale.
* [[Hastur]] personally meets Warlock Dowling on the {{wp|Tel Megiddo|Megiddo Plains}} where he discovers that he is not the Antichrist.
* Some of [[Agnes Nutter]]s prophecies have been updated to fit with the time period and some additional prophecies have been added.
* In the final episode there is an additional sequence which shows how Aziraphale and Crowley deal with their respective sides after averting the Apocalypse.
* Inside Aziraphale's restored bookshop he finds several new {{wp|Just William (book series)|Just William}} books, a nod to the inspiration for [[The Them|The]] [[Talk:The Them|Them]].

<nowiki>*</nowiki>However a 'Regrettably Deleted Sequence' concerning these characters is present in the [[Book:The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book|script book]].

=== Season Two ===
As mentioned above, the second season is a new story, but it does change some elements established in the book and the first season.

* Aziraphale first meets Crowley before the Garden of Eden, during the Creation of the Universe, when Crowley was still an angel. (We don’t learn Crowley’s angel name.)

== Easter Eggs ==
The production team include various Pratchett references throughout; these are mostly to Pratchett himself during season one, with some Discworld references in season two. Thanks to the experience of members of the cast and crew, there are also references to ''Doctor Who'' and ''Sherlock'', but we’ll concentrate on the Pratchett ones.

=== Season One ===
* Terry’s hat and scarf are frequently glimpsed on the hat stand inside Aziraphale’s shop.
* There’s also a stack of Terry Pratchett books in some shots.
* Actor Paul Kaye, who played Pratchett in ''Back in Black'', does his Pratchett voice as the part of a nuclear power station representative heard on the radio in episode four. This is a nod to Pratchett’s time working at the Central Electricity Generating Board.

=== Season Two ===
* Gabriel reads from what appears to be a first edition copy of {{GO}} during his reorganisation of the book shop in episode two.
* The book Gabriel uses as a "Neato fan" is the Colour of Magic.
* The Laudanum was supplied CMOT Dibbler.
* Azirophale shouting "Avaunt" echoes Eric.
* Muriel decides to just look at her tea, maybe she is familiar with dwarf bread.
''More to be added''

== Minisodes ==
=== Good Omens: Lockdown ===
On May 1st 2020 a short voice-over vignette, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quSXoj8Kob0 'Good Omens: Lockdown'] was released on Terry Pratchett's Youtube Channel to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Good Omens, with David Tennant and Michael Sheen reprising their roles from the TV series. The short comprises of a phone-call between [[Aziraphale]] and [[Crowley]] who are isolating at home in accordance with government guidelines due to the {{wp|2019–20 coronavirus pandemic|coronavirus pandemic}}. It was written by Gaiman and directed by series director Douglas Mackinnon.

=== Season Two ===
In 2022, it was announced that season two would include three “minisodes” which take place “within episodes” of the second season, all directed by Douglas Mackinnon and showing Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship over time. These were “A Companion to Owls” by John Finnemore, set in Biblical times; “The Resurrectionists” by Cat Clarke, set in the Victorian era; and “Nazi Zombie Flesheaters” by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, set during World War Two. These were not released separately, but instead incorporated into the episodes as extended flashbacks, up to 25 minutes long.

==Gallery==
{|
|-
| valign="top" | [[File:GO TV.jpg|thumb|220px|Series Thumbnail]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO TV DVD.jpg|thumb|120px|DVD Cover]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO TV DVD 2.jpg|thumb|200px|Steelbook DVD]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO TV Soundtrack.jpg|thumb|150px|Soundtrack Cover]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO TV Vinyl.jpg|thumb|150px|Soundtrack Vinyl]]
|}
{|
|-
| valign="top" | [[File:Unholy Night.jpg|thumb|150px|Unholy Night Cover]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO TEIN.jpg|thumb|120px|Promotional Image]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO S2 Promo.jpg|thumb|140px|Early promotional image for season 2]]
| valign="top" | [[File:GO S2 Date Promo.jpg|thumb|140px|Date announcement promotional image for season 2]]
|}

==External Links==
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FMDLC2L?pf_rd_p=71cb17e9-f468-4d3f-94d5-a0de44c50a7e&pf_rd_r=398AAFWJMB5RW47CXYHC Good Omens on Amazon]
* [https://www.facebook.com/goodomensprime/ Facebook Page]
* [https://twitter.com/GoodOmensPrime Twitter Feed]
* [https://www.instagram.com/goodomensprime/ Instagram Account]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20191118055238/https://www.narrativia.com/good-omens.html Good Omens on Narrativia]
* [https://blankcorporation.com/projects/good-omens/ Good Omens on the Blank Corporation website]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quSXoj8Kob0 Good Omens: Lockdown]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChMtlFB3_vc Good Omens Parody] by ''The Hillywood Show''

[[Category:TV and Film|Good Omens]]

Jeremy Clockson

2023-09-28T09:57:56Z

Tag:

'''Born''' to the personification of [[Time]] and [[Wen the Eternally Surprised]], Jeremy was left on the doorstep of the [[Clockmakers' Guild]]. He grew up healthy, and with an unusual skill for his craft. After a little problem with an assistant who kept his watch five minutes fast ''deliberately'', the Guild spent much more time monitoring him in his shop, just to make sure that he hadn't killed anyone else.

His timekeeping truly was meticulous in the extreme (he could wake up at 6.59 to check that an alarm clock set for 7.00 worked) and it was probably for this reason that he was approached by Lady [[Myria LeJean]], an [[Auditors of Reality|Auditor]] in disguise, to build a glass clock which, if correctly built, would stop Time. Luckily the [[History Monks]] [[Lobsang Ludd]] and [[Lu-Tze]] came to repair the damage caused by the stopping of time and the Auditor invasion.

When Jeremy and Lobsang touched, they immediately became one; they were ''both'' the son of Time and Wen, not twins so much as the same child born twice. In a way this was the end of Jeremy Clockson, as the reintegrated person said that even Jeremy hadn't liked being Jeremy, and so he heavily favored the Lobsang persona.

==Annotation==
Another Jerry with an interesting relationship with Time is Michael Moorcock's time-travelling adventurer Jerry Cornelius[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cornelius_Quartet] - also a J.C. He stars in "The Final Programme" (in which he colludes in building the ultimate supercomputer that brings an end to human history), and three or four other books in the Moorcock portfolio. He is described as ''seeking sanctuary in different universes of Time in separate private mythologies'' and as possessing ''chrono-zones''. (as opposed to Chromosomes). At the end of ''The Final Programme'', Jerry also ends up as one half of a gestalt being...

Jeremy Clockson also appears to be a pun on the name of TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, another man known for his obsession with machines (although Clarkson is less single-minded, a lot less organised and favours cars over clocks). See Discussion page.

In the 18th century the undercroft of Lincolns Inn (one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong) became a place for people to leave their unwanted babies. The records of the Inn show payments to people to care for the abandoned children, who would usually be given the surname ‘Lincoln’. ([https://livinglondonhistory.com/discovering-the-hidden-secrets-of-lincolns-inn/#:~:text=In%20the%2018th%20century%20the,given%20the%20surname%20'Lincoln'. Undercroft])

[[category:Discworld characters|Clockson, Jeremy]]
[[de:Jeremy Uhrsohn]]

Kvetch

2023-08-01T20:26:21Z

Tag:

The '''Kvetch''' are a species mentioned by [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] in {{NW}} that is native to [[Mouldavia]].

Kvetch are described as hairy and living deep within the forest. [[Samuel Vimes|Captain Vimes]] states that they would learn more about them when asked by [[Havelock Vetinari|Vetinari]] (forced then) to employ one in the [[City Watch]].

In [[Book:The Compleat Discworld Atlas|''The Compleat Discworld Atlas'']] it is noted that Kvetch migrants to [[Ankh-Morpork]] mainly establish beauty salons for work, and frequently write to the [[Ankh-Morpork Times]] to complain about various matters.

A kvetch (verb: to kvetch), is an English word of Yiddish origin meaning 'to gripe', 'someone who complains habitually'

[[Category:Discworld humanoid species]]

Book:Maskerade/Annotations

2023-04-20T09:54:29Z

Tag:

p291, Corgi PB (British) ''The bowl of caviare flew out of his nervous fingers and caused a Fortean experience somewhere in the stalls.''

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort|Charles Fort] was an American journalist who made a lifetime's study of weird and strange events, searching newspaper archives in both the USA and Great Britain for anomalous stories that could not easily be fitted into any known category. He started out merely suspecting, but later came to believe, that contrary to what we are all continually told, science cannot explain ''everything'' that happens, and quite often, the scientific explanation for a strange event, when analysed, will be as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. One of the earliest newspaper clippings that confirmed his belief that weird, random, and seemingly impossible things happen, and the explanations advanced to explain them can often be less than convincing, is the one described as the ''Phantom Fishmonger of Cromer''.

One day in 1897, the good folk of Cromer, Norfolk, were awoken by the steady patter and rattle of what felt like hail. To their consternation, a steady fall of whelks, mussels, prawns, crabs and some lobsters was apparently coming out of the sky, as the out-of-plaice seafood was rattling on roofs and falling from the roofs into the street.

As Cromer is a fishing port with a speciality in shellfish, the first explanation advanced by Authority was that a fishmonger had taken leave of his senses, and in a temporary madness had been running the streets of Cromer throwing his stock up onto peoples' roofs, with such intensity that many slates were broken and caused to fall. But nobody had seen this mad fishmonger, and in any case, the sheer volume of shellfish was too much for one man to carry. and as Fort pointed out, all the fishmongers of Cromer were hard-headed and very sane small businessmen, who would not have dreamt of disposing of valuable stock like this. When an alternative was proposed, that a freak tornado might have begun out in the North Sea and passed inland, disgorging the sea life it had picked up as its intensity faded, this was laughed at as being utterly incredible... despite the fact East Anglia is England's answer to Tornado Alley in the USA. (British tornados are smaller, slighter, and more genteel)

The term "Fortean Experience" has, since Cromer, passed into the vocabulary largely to describe mysterious rains of fish from the heavens... mysterious rains of fish also occur in {{J}} and {{GO}}.

== Walter Plinge ==
The story is an obvious parody of ''[[Wikipedia:The Phantom of the Opera (1986 music)|The Phantom of the Opera]]'', which was [[Wikipedia:The Phantom of the Opera|originally a novel]] but better known for the 1986 musical version created by [[Wikipedia:Andrew Lloyd Webber|Andrew Lloyd Webber]].

The character of Walter Plinge (especially the berets he wears) is a reference to Frank Spencer, a character in the 1970s British sitcom ''[[Wikipedia:Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em|Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em]]''. The actor who played Frank was [[Wikipedia:Michael Crawford|Michael Crawford]], who went on to play the Phantom in the original version of Webber's musical.

== Swan Song ==
When Death is trying to persuade the reluctant swan to sing just once - everyone knows the [[Well-Known Facts|well-known fact]] that a swan will sing only ''once'' in its life, just before it dies (hence ''swan-song'', a last defiant flourish of life just before The End. Not just a shout-out to the ballet ''Swan Lake'', but take a closer look at what the swan actually ''sings'' translated out of Überwaldean.

''Schneide meinen eigenen Hals''

Or: ''I'm cutting my own throat''.....

Also of interest: the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about the swansong with these lines:-

''Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing ''
''Should certain persons die before they sing.''

Does this subtly presage Christine? Or the whole general area of death at the Opera?

The character of Christine - an appalling opera singer who can get nothing right and who is convinced of her own talent, despite sounding appalling - may be based on American socialite Florence Foster Jenkins, a rich but untalented amateur who used her money and connections to rent the Carnegie Hall to prove her ability to a sceptical world. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins|Wikipedia]] describes her as ''an American amateur operatic soprano who was known, and ridiculed, for her lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, aberrant pronunciation of libretti, and overall poor singing ability''. (Since made into a movie starring Meryl Streep in the title role, Hugh Grant, and Simon Helberg).

The Opera, as was, ends with Agnes Nitt's last defiant song of rage that effectively discharges the accumulated almost-magic and sets the stage for a new era of light operetta and musicals.

''It ain't over until the fat lady sings''....

Just a thought here on a visual gag. Nanny Ogg as ballerina. On the ''Muppet Show'', wasn't there a running gag where Miss Piggy would insist on the prima ballerina spot, and as "Ballerina Pig" would act as much the same sort of highly visible sack of bricks in a tutu?

It has also been suggested that the often-tense relationship between Roundworld chanteuses Mama Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips is reflected in the Discworld, when Agnes Nitt, by far the better voice which carries the act, but with the homely look, has to stand back and let the less vocally talented but more visually attractive Christine take centre-stage... the Mamas and the Papas were built around the voice of the homely Mama Cass and the visible beauty of Michelle Phillips. Mama Cass had a very high IQ and could have gone into the family professions of medicine or academia. Michelle, by all accounts, was a "typical blonde". ''AND'' there's a [[Creek Alley]] in Ankh-Morpork. So somebody made the connection....

==Salzella's Death==
The description on p. 213 of Death's outfit when he comes to claim Salzella is a dead-on description of the Phantom's outfit in the Masquerade scene of ''Phantom of the Opera.'' Though the Phantom generally wears a mask covering half his face and black evening dress, in this scene, he wears all-red and a full-on skull mask - just as Death does here.

==Some other annotations==
Granny Weatherwax: "''...turned back to the stage. There was a tingling in her thumbs. She looked at the chandelier.''"

The Scottish play, Second witch: "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes" - Apparently it's a witch thing.

Peccadillo and Iodine:
A peccadillo (cf Mozart's Papageno) is a "small sin", frequently having sexual connotations. Iodine is a chemical most commonly used as a topical antiseptic (perhaps needed after your peccadillo?).

Dame Violetta Gigli: Although Sir Terry delights us by making up amusing names, there actually was a tenor by the name of Gigli ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beniamino_Gigli Beniamino Gigli]).

[[Category:Annotations|Maskerade/Annotations]]

User talk:Tag

2023-04-20T09:42:17Z

Tag:

Hello

My wife has suggested that a Pratchett novel is like a reverse crossword - he gives you the answer and you have to work out the clue.

User talk:Tag

2023-04-14T08:08:10Z

Tag:

Hello

I have been trying to add a picture to the annotations page for Thud and can't seem to get it right. Would you be able to help? The picture is in the public domain from WikiCommons. TY!
:You called it a jpg and left out the article. (Not sure it's necessary, of course.) --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:55, 13 April 2023
:Thank you [[User:Tag|Tag]] ([[User talk:Tag|talk]]) 08:08, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

User talk:Tag

2023-04-14T08:07:56Z

Tag:

Book:Going Postal/Annotations

2023-04-13T08:38:02Z

Tag:

[[Annotations]] for the book {{GP}}
==By page number==
Page numbers refer to the U.S. edition

Cover - The cover design was inspired by the original ''Star Wars'' film poster, because there are other Star Wars references in the book.

Title- Around 1986 several mentally stressed U.S. Postal Service employees went on a shooting rampage at post offices, killing employees and bystanders. This resulted in the U.S. Postal Service (and many other organizations) re-evaluating employee work conditions and decreasing stress in the work place. The term has remained in U.S. slang for when an employee or ex-employee goes on a murder rampage at his workplace, though it is more used to predict that someone is getting upset with job conditions enough to go postal. In the book this emotional condition is perfectly represented by Stanley.

Character Annotation on Tolliver Groat:-

The name, the character description, and the Gormenghast-like Post office building, are straight out of Mervyn Peake: Tolliver Groat's personal take on the grotesque means that he could walk in to Peake's fantasy virtually as is. Indeed, Groat's dogged adherence to rule and ritual, his having practically memorised the Post Office rulebook long after the system has effectively collapsed and his insistence the rules still be followed because, well, they are the Rules, is reminiscent of Gormenghast's Master of Ceremonies, the ageing, repellent, and soap-innocent Barquentine. Moist von Lipwig has arrived in the Post Office system in time to be a less malevolent Steerpike - i.e., the character who shakes the system up and reinvigorates it. (Hmmm, Moist as Steerpike in a Gormenghast-like system - the manipulative outsider who causes a stir and gets things done.) Steerpike also, metaphorically and literally, climbs from the lowest Hell-like depths of the kitchens where is otherwise imprisoned for life as a lowly scullion, to the higher floors of the castle - via the ''outside'' of the building - where nobody questions his right to be there and he can re-integrate himself at a higher social level with a series of plausible cover stories. Compare this to Moist's resurrection from the dead and rebirth into a higher social position. The climbing metaphor becomes more explicit in {{MM}}, where, as with Steerpike's desperation climb, Moist is found edificeering on the exterior of his own building and just about to be exposed as a thief and a crook - for all the wrong reasons...

Prologue -
"The flotillas of the dead sailed around the world on underwater rivers."
Although this idea may seem fanciful, it has a basis in reality. The ocean does have layers of different density (based on temperature and salt concentration). A submarine can adjust its buoyancy so that "it stops sinking and ends up floating on an underwater surface, beyond the reach of the storms but far above the ocean floor." (Sir Terry makes a minor error that the effect is due to density, not viscosity).

A quotation from a former submarine sonar Chief Petty Officer ([https://www.quora.com/Can-submarines-stay-still-underwater-without-moving-at-a-given-depth]):

"If the SVP (Sound Velocity Profile) shows a strong thermocline change, we would have negative buoyancy above the layer, and positive buoyancy below the layer. Slow down, using the planes to dive towards layer depth, and just sit on the layer! It’s just as stable as sitting on the bottom, and you can sit there, motionless, forever!"

(p8) US hardcover- – reference to “the clacks”
– this is a Discworld version of a telegraph or fax machine and is based on “A semaphore telegraph, optical telegraph, shutter telegraph chain, Chappe telegraph, or Napoleonic semaphore is a system of conveying information by means of visual signals, using towers with pivoting shutters, also known as blades or paddles. Information is encoded by the position of the mechanical elements; it is read when the shutter is in a fixed position. These systems were popular in the late 18th - early 19th century.”(Wikipedia)

(p11) US hardcover - "They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully”
– This is a paraphrase of a quote by Samuel Johnson: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

(p11) " 'Er... it's not as bad a thing I do now...er'"
– Perhaps this is a spoof of the famous speech Sidney Carton says before he is executed in Dickens' ''Tale of Two Cities''. ("It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."[http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-3-chapter-15]) There is some ironic similarity here. Carton stepped in nobly to die for another man whom he physically resembled. Here, Moist is being executed under the alias of Albert Spangler. In both cases, Carton and von Lipwig are dying under someone else's name.

(p12) "What you had to do in this life was get past the pineapple, Moist told himself. It was big and sharp and knobbly, but there might be peaches underneath. It was a myth to live by and so, right now, totally useless."
– This philosophy is mentioned many times in the book and sounds like a somewhat ironic send-up of Forrest Gump's philosophy about life and a box of chocolates.

(p13)US hardcover: Mr. Wilkinson “I told him, sir, that fruit baskets is like life: until you’ve got the pineapple off’t the top you never know what’s underneath.”
– Reminiscent of the Forrest Gump quote: “My momma always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.’”

A dialogue in {{TLC}} presages the whole ''getting past the pineapple'' bit. Corgi PB pp64-67, where amongst other things the Senior Wrangler discloses his aunt was a victim of one, a woman who literally could not get past the pineapple.

(p20) "They'd clamped it. They'd bloody clamped it...."
– The bright yellow tire lock (wheel boots) is sometimes used by law enforcement in our world for the same purpose.

(p22) "'Mr. [[Pump]] does not sleep. Mr. Pump does not eat. And Mr. Pump, Postmaster General, does not stop.'"
* Possibly a paraphrase from the 1984 film ''The Terminator'': "That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!"
* It's close to a quote from the 1999 film ''The Mummy'': "He will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop."

(p23) "'Wait! Wait! There's a rule! A [[golems|golem]] mustn't harm a human being or allow a human being to come to harm!'"
– This is the first of Isaac Asimov's {{wp|Three_Laws_of_Robotics|Three Laws of Robotics}} (Golems are the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]] equivalent of robots). Asimov, of course, didn't add the conditional "unless ordered to do so by duly constituted authority" that Vetinari did.

(p26) "'"NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLO M OF NI T CAN STAY THESE MES ENGERS ABO T THEIR DUTY."'"
– The inscription on the General Post Office in New York City reads: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service_creed] This was also referenced in {{MAA}}.

(p26) "'Who's [[Mrs. Cake]]?... They seem pretty frightened of her."
– [[Mrs. Cake]], first introduced in ''[[Book:Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', is a psychic medium who, more importantly, runs a boarding house for the undead of Ankh-Morpork.

(p33)US hardcover(footnote) “Dimwell Arrhythmic Rhyming Slang” is a variation on Cockney rhyming slang. The example, “Apples and Pears” is from Cockney slang. Rhyming Slang phrases are derived from taking an expression which rhymes with a word and then using that expression instead of the word. For example the word "look" rhymes with "butcher's hook". In many cases the rhyming word is omitted - so you won't find too many Londoners having a "butcher's hook" at this site, but you might find a few having a "butcher's". The rhyming word is not always omitted so Cockney expressions can vary in their construction, and it is simply a matter of convention which version is used. (from http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk)

(p47) "'[Wings] on his hat and his ankles,' said Stanley. "So he could fly the messages at the speed of ... messages.'"
– Mercury (Hermes to the Greeks) was the messenger to the gods in general and Jupiter (Zeus) in particular. He's commonly depicted with a winged cap and ankles. As well as making a neat stand-alone joke, the concept of the modesty-saving fig-leaf also having wings neatly pokes fun at the reason ''why'' fig-leaves went on public statuary in the first place. These were a Victorian invention devised to spare unmarried ladies under thirty from the sight even of sculpted male genitalia, carved by their ''unthinking'' forebears in earlier centuries. statues up to and including Michelangelo's ''David'', which for several hundred years had flaunted all, were issued the standard fig-leaf. (The fig was chosen ostensibly because the Bible identifies it as the leaf used by Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness, when ''they saw they were naked, and they were ashamed''.) This contributor has been to the National Museum in Berlin, where a rotunda houses old statues on which, without exception, the penises of the males on display have been excised and drilled through, so as to house the mounting for the fig-leaf... ouch... Of course, a ''second'' referent for fig leaves with wings comes from wall frescoes discovered intact at the Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. On these imaginatively bawdy paintings, you may see that which the Victorians thought necessary to cover with a fig leaf, but flying round independently of any attached body, propelled by their very own sets of wings. In one mural, young women are trying to catch them as they buzz around in a flotilla... indeed, a popular lucky charm/religious amulet worn by Romans, frequently discovered in archaeological digs, was a pendant of an erect penis and testicles, with wings. This apparently symbolised fertility and good health as well as assuring a healthy sex life. It was worn around the neck in the same way other religions might wear a cross, or indeed a turtle. (Why do you get the feeling the wrong religion won in ancient Rome?) I also can't help thinking of the Special Air Service's winged dagger cap badge in a new and Freudian light here... Conflating these two concepts - Victorian prudery and healthy bawdiness - in the form of a confused-looking fig leaf with wings on, would suggest Ankh-Morpork is a place confused about what its attitude to sexuality should be... just like modern Britain, in fact!

Also note Om-as-Tortoise's desperate curse on Brother Nhumrod in {{SG}} (Corgi pb p 40) - ''"Your sexual organs to sprout wings and fly away!"

(p56) "'Be with you in jus't one moment, s'ir, I'm ju'st—'"
– Greengrocers throughout the English-speaking world (but in England in particular) are known for their persistent abuse of the apostrophe-ess combination on their handwritten signs.

(p63) "'The free golems work 24-8...."
– It's rarely mentioned anymore that the number [[7a|eight]] is magically significant on the Disc and tends to occur wherever our world would use a seven. In particular, the Discworld week is 8 days long. But at this point, go to your copy of {{GP}}, which is the first Discworld book to be separated into formal chapters. (Each has a heading where the chapter contents are summarised at the start, in the manner of a Victorian morality fable). Now look at the chapter heading for the one that comes in between Chapter Seven and Chapter Nine. Look ''closely'' at it.

(p72) "'However, I note that since you acquired the [[Grand Trunk Semaphore Company|Grand Trunk]] at a fraction of its value, breakdowns are increasing, the speed of messages has slowed down, and the cost to customers has risen.'"
– While there are some parallels to the Grand Trunk and America's now-broken AT&T telecommunications monopoly, there are far more parallels to the UK's British Telecom, which is still a monopoly there and has very few friends among its consumers. Interestingly, the history of BT is that it was originally part of the British Post Office and was still known as "Post Office Telecommunications" until 1980, shortly before it became privatized.

(p74) "'This, my lord'," said Gilt, gesturing to the little side table..."'Is this not an original [[hnaflbaflsniflwhifltafl]] slab?'"
–The Vikings were known to have played a game called hnefatafl (king's board). It consisted of a marked board and peg-like pieces and seems to have some similarities to backgammon. "Hnefatafl" seems to be the origin of the word used for the Discworld game.

Of course we learn much more about this game in {{T!}}

(p83)US hardcover: Stanley: “See a pin pick it up and all day long you’ll have a pin.”
– A variation on the Roundworld rhyme “See a pin pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck.” Often 'penny' is substituted for pin.

(p83) "'They were hand-drawn and had his trademark silver head with a microscopic engraving of a cockerel.'"
– Perhaps this is a reference to the fancy microscopic engravings computer chip designers use when endorsing their work.

(p96) "'Do you understand anything I'm saying?' shouted Moist. 'You can't just go around killing people!' 'Why Not?'"
– Paraphrasing from ''Terminator 2'' this time. John Connor: "You can't just go around killing people!" Terminator: "Why?" "What do you mean, why? Because you can't!" "Why?"

(p99(''British edition'')). Grandad's speech on "We keep that name moving in the Overhead", referring to the mysterious death of [[John Dearheart]] and the great unhappiness this has provoked among long-time Linesmen. The following text quotes almost verbatim from Glen Campbell's country and western hit ''Wichita Lineman'', about the life and death of an electrical lineman in the heart of the USA....

(p104(''Corgi edition'')) "It overwhelms the soul, very much like the state he elsewhere describes as ''Vonallesvolkommenunverstandlichdasdaskeit''. " – This German is a bit mangled. With proper spaces it is "Von Alles Vol'''l'''kommen unverständlich das das -keit" which translates as "from everything completely non-understandable (=incomprehensible) theneuter theneuter" and a suffix changing a word into a noun (this might refer to "unverständlich": Unverständlichkeit would be incomprehensibility). This also appears to foreshadow the extensive employment of cod-German philosophy which defines Mr Nutt's character in {{UA}}

Freidegger is a clever pun on the famous German philosopher Heidegger[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger]] who wrote about time. (And he is difficult to understand either in his native German or in a translation).
The German word "Frei" means "free", therefore suited to the recurring topic of freedom in the book. In German and posssibly also in Überwaldean, ''Freitag'' is a day of the week: ''Friday'', when most people are ''freed'' of the burden of having to work for a living and get the weekend to themselves. An advertising campaign for chocolate cleverly used the slogan ''That Friday Feeling'', and we have the acronym TGIF, for ''Thank God It's Friday!"'' to denote that expansive Friday-night feeling at the start of the weekend. (Although I should point out, in the name of accuracy, that the current name "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday#Etymology Freitag]" is not derived from "Free - day" but from the old Norse Goddess [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freyja Freya])

(p105) "The Marthter ith having one of hith little thoireeth, thur"
– In the Rocky Horror (Picture) Show, the hunchbacked servant tells the innocents "You've come on a rather special night. The Master is having one of his affairs..."

(p106) "[[Reacher Gilt]] certainly looked like a pirate, with his long, curly black hair, pointed beard, and eyepatch. He was even said to have a parrot."
– The name "Reacher Gilt" is itself a pun on "Long John Silver", the pirate captain from Treasure Island. Gilt's name, appearance and libertarian-capitalist ideology has stronger resonances with Ayn Rand's charismatic capitalist hero John Galt and pirate Ragnar Danneskjold, from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_shrugged Atlas Shrugged]. There may also be suggestions of English billionaire playboy-investor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_branson Richard Branson].

''There may also be links and distant echoes to the plot and characters of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' trilogy, also in this context a work of satire which parodies Ayn Rand's right-wing libertarian and extreme free-market philosophy. In this book, a "book within a book" is a parody of Ayn Rand's polemic, called ''Telemachus Sneezed''.''



(p106) "Twelve and a half percent! Twelve and a half percent!"
– As Moist almost explains later in the book, this is a financial joke. Long John Silver's parrot always repeated "Pieces of eight!" Pieces of eight were one-eighth pieces of a gold dollar coin. A dollar is one hundred cents, and one hundred percent make a whole. Twelve and a half percent, then, is exactly one-eighth of a dollar--a piece of eight.


(p129) "les buggeures risible"
– Pig French for "Silly Buggers", a common English slang term for deliberately obstructive activity. ("Someone's playing silly buggers, here...")

(p131) "This was going to be...ironic. They'd actually got hold of Lipwigzers!"
– The author possibly seems to be punning on Weimaraners ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimaraner]), which are a German breed of dog that take their name from the Grand Duke of Weimar, Karl August. The cover of the UK edition depicts two dogs similar in appearance to Rottweilers. Rottweilers are a kind of black dog with orange eyebrows, as mentioned on the same list that mentions [[Mrs. Cake]]. (And there is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rottweil Rottweil])

(p131) US hardcover: Worshipful Master: “Yes, well, you know what we used to say: you do have to be mad to work here!”
– a spin on the Roundworld saying: “You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps”
This is reinforced on (page 165) when Moist looks at the unfortunate selection of mugs Stanley has used for preparing tea for him and Sacharissa Cripslock. The cup Moist receives has a jokey message which has faded from ''You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps'' to '''''Be mad - it helps!'''''

(As in American slang "mad" tends to mean "angry" rather than "crazy", I wonder if this is also an echo of Susan's maxim from Hogfather - don't get scared, get angry?)
:(The American expression uses "crazy": “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps”. "Mad" in colloquial usage is almost always "angry" this (West) side the Water.)

(p137) "'Look, I'm not the One you're looking for!'"
– Possibly, but not clearly, a reference to Neo's role as the One in the ''Matrix'' films. Or, more likely, a reference to Graham Chapman's increasingly perplexed and angry Brian in Monty Python's ''The Life of Brian''. This is also the title of a song by American goth-rockers the [[Blue Öyster Cult]], about having to settle not for what you ''want'', but for the best deal you can actually ''get''. Another possible reference is to the film ''{{wp|Star Wars_Episode_IV:_A New Hope|Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope}}'' in which Obi-Wan Kenobi uses the force to deceive soldiers saying: "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

(p137) "Deliver Us!"
– A pun on the Israelites' cry from the Biblical book of Exodus.

(p146) "'Three and a bit, that's the ticket. Only [[Bergholt Stuttley Johnson|Bloody Stupid Johnson]] said that was untidy, so he designed a wheel where the pie was exactly three.'"
– There's an old mathematical limerick about this very
:It's a favorite hobby of mine
:A new value for pi to assign.
:I would set it to three
:'Cause it's simpler, you see,
:Than three point one four one five nine.

It also reminds me of the story of the legislature of an US state setting a definitive value for Pi.

Quote: ''It happened in Indiana. Although the attempt to legislate pi was ultimately unsuccessful, it did come pretty close. In 1897 Representative T.I. Record of Posen county introduced House Bill #246 in the Indiana House of Representatives. The bill, based on the work of a physician and amateur mathematician named Edward J. Goodwin (Edwin in some accounts), suggests not one but three numbers for pi, among them 3.2, as we shall see. The punishment for unbelievers I have not been able to learn, but I place no credence in the rumor that you had to spend the rest of your natural life in Indiana.'' Full story here [[http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.html]].

The urban legend spoofing the creationism struggle here [[http://www.snopes.com/religion/pi.asp]]

(p153) "My gods, it's you! I thought for a second sun had appeared in the sky!" (Spike reacts from seeing Lipwig in his golden suit for the first time.) On first reading, it may appear that something is wrong with this sentence. However, if punctuated thus: "I thought, for a second, sun had appeared in the sky!", the interpretation is clearer.

(p156) "'Coo, you're a good draw-er, Mr. Lipwig. That looks just like Lord [[Vetinari]]!' 'That's the penny stamp,' said Moist.'"
– In our world, British Postmaster-General Sir Rowland Hill designed and introduced the first penny stamp, with a profile of Queen Victoria, in 1840 after much political debate. As on the Discworld, stamp collectors began to appear almost immediately afterward.

It's interesting that Moist writes "Post Office" on his stamps. In our world, this happened once as a mistake when the stamps for Mauritius were designed. There's a nice story how the engraver forgot the correct wording (Postage Paid), took a walk to the Post Office to ask, but when he saw the sign "Post Office" turned back without asking and wrote that on the stamp. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Penny]]

(p156)US hardcover: When Moist shows her his stamp designs, Adora says “What’s this? You carry your etchings with you to save time?”
– Adora’s referring to the phrase "Want to come up and see my etchings," a romantic cliché in which a man entices a woman to come back to his place with an offer to look at something artistic.

(p167) "Gently, the paper tore down the line of holes."
– Perforated stamp sheets didn't appear until 1857 in the U.S., seventeen years after the penny stamp was introduced.

(p175) "'I won't be long. I'm off to see the wizard.'"
– The author has probably been waiting years to use this line from L. Frank Baum's ''The Wizard of Oz''.

(p176) "Just below the dome, staring down from their niches, were statues of the Virtues: Patience, Chastity, Silence, Charity, Hope, [[Tubso]], [[Bissonomy]], and Fortitude."
– The seven Virtues in our world (the Discworld has eight) are Hope, Charity, Faith, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence. Their frescoed images adorn the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.

(p176) "These [books] are not on the public shelves lest untrained handling cause the collapse of everything that is possible to imagine.* (footnote: Again.)
– There's a popular quote from Douglas Adams' ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'': "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory, which states that this has already happened."

Less likely is that it is a reference to the alleged destruction of the universe that happened when the B.S. Johnson's Sorting Engine was shut down, as described on page 149 (US hardcover).

(p.179) "... and in those caves are entombed more than a hundred thousand old books, mostly religious, each one in a white linen shroud....intelligent people have always known that some words at least should be disposed of with care and respect."
– In Jerusalem old or damaged Bibles and Torahs are buried in special tombs rather than destroyed. The tradition is that words are sacred and have power. The Hebrew name for such depository is "geniza", not exactly the wizards' "gevaisa", but enough to make you wonder...

(p181) "'Where do they go [when they die]?' 'No one's sure, exactly, but you can hear the sounds of cutlery,' said Pelc...."
– The Viking concept of the afterlife for warriors, Valhalla, was basically an enormous and never-ending feasting hall. University wizards are likewise known for their love of a good large meal.

(p197) "But, in truth, Boris- once you got past the pineapple- wasn't too bad a ride. He'd hit his rhythm, a natural, single-footed gait..." – Single-footing is a smooth, four beat "running walk" that some horse breeds (example: Icelandic, North American Single-footer, Rocky Mountain Saddle Horse) do naturally, sometimes as fast as other horses canter. At its fastest (racing single-foot), only one foot hits the ground at a time- hence the name. The single-foot gait is very smooth and easy on a rider if he uses a special saddle and sits further back on the horse. Moist is riding bareback, carrying a heavy load over his shoulder and leaning forward so he does not get the full effect. However, he seems quite amazed Boris is smoother than expected.

(p200) "'Er... Joe Camels, sir,' he said nervously. 'I'm the mayor here...'"
– Joe Camel was the (un)official name of the now-defunct mascot of Camel Cigarettes. The resemblance to the mayor ends with the name, however.

(p204) "And her hair was plaited and coiled up on either side of her head in those discs that back home in Uberwald had been called 'snails,' but in Anhk-Morpork put people in mind of a woman with a curly iced bun clamped to each ear."
– Think of old German beer waitresses, not Princess Leia from ''Star Wars''.

(p224) "'Tell me,' said Moist, 'have you ever heard of something called the Smoking Gnu?'"
– A pun on "The Smoking Gun", a newsletter published by the Lone Gunmen, a trio of computer hackers (or crackers) from the television series The X-Files, on whom the members of the Smoking Gnu are based. The ''gun'' → ''gnu'' joke has also been used in Mr. Pratchett's book for children, ''[[Book:Truckers|Truckers]]'', Chapter 9, in which a young [[Nomes|Nome]] named Vinto Pimmie persistently misreads "gun" as "gnu". The real meaning of the word "gnu" refers to a species of large antelope. "Gnu" also evokes the [http://www.gnu.org/ Free Software Foundation], which promotes the development and distribution of free software.

(p230) "'What is sticking in your foot is a Mitzy "Pretty Lucretia" four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Considered as pounds per square inch, it's like being trodden by a very pointy elephant. Now, I know what you're thinking: you're thinking, "Could she press it all the way through to the floor?" And, you know, I'm not sure about that myself....'"
– Adapted from Clint Eastwood's famous challenge in ''Dirty Harry'': "I know what you're thinkin', punk. You're thinkin', did he fire six shots or only five? And to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But bein' this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it'll blow your head clean off, you could ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

(p235) "But now it was time to put away childish pins."
– "When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." – 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NIV) (the King James version has "but when I became a man, I put away childish things")

(p237) British hardback: The sequence from "As Moist peered..." until Moist turns around is pretty much taken straight from Brett's experience with Jones the cat in Ridley Scott's "Alien".

(p249) "'There's the Lady Sybil Free Hospital,' said Miss Dearheart. 'Is it any good?' 'Some people don't die.' 'That good, eh?'"
– [[Lady Sybil Ramkin|Lady Sybil Vimes]] nee Ramkin, of course, is the wife of [[Commander Vimes]] of the Watch, the Duchess of Ankh-Morpork, and in terms of assets, the wealthiest woman in the city. Up until now she's devoted herself to caring for swamp dragons, and horse doctors in Ankh-Morpork were considered more reliable for people than people doctors. This hospital is developed and now led by Dr. Lawn, on the plot of land on Attic Bee Street, near Goose Gate, that Vimes signed over to him as payment for helping Sam Jr. into the world (an event at the end of ''[[Book:Night Watch|Night Watch]]''). ''The accuracy of this annotation is currently under discussion, mainly regarding whether Lady Sybil actually runs the hospital or only lends her name and money. See Talk page.''

Another possible reason for the name is that Dr Lawn chose to name his hospital after, basically, the main person who got him the land in the first place.

(p259)US hardcover: Moist’s idea of what a master criminal could buy: “seaside properties with real lava flows near a reliable source of piranhas” sounds like the hideout of typical James Bond villains.

(p.260(Doubleday hardcover)) "Even Miss Extremelia Mume ... was doing good business among those prepared to back an outside chance. She'd hung a banner over the door. It read: 'It Could Be YOU'". 
This, along with the following paragraph's musings on hope, clearly refers to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_%28United_Kingdom%29 UK National Lottery] (also known as the Tax For Innumerates). The Discworld people are making small donations/prayers to the temples hoping for a monetary windfall like Moist just got. It's obvious when you remember that a 90s TV campaign for the lottery featured a giant sparkly hand coming out of the clouds to point at winners... and their slogan at the time was "It Could Be YOU" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FlHbqnU0o].

(p263) "The nave of the temple was deserted, except for a little old man in a grubby robe, dreamily sweeping the floor."
This detail is out of place, unless it's a reference to Lu-Tze. Possibly the History Monks have taken an interest in the Post Office, or kicking Reacher Gilt out before he can become Patrician. For the History Monks to have somebody keeping an eye on an institution where a machine (the Sorting Engine) is capable of bending time and space is only logical, as well as the evidential detail that it was installed perhaps thirty years before the "present" - ie, roughly the same time that Samuel Vimes re-enters time in {{NW}}. So if the destruction of one time-bending machine (the Glass Clock) is responsible for taking Vimes ''out'' of time, then the switching-on of a second time-bending machine (the Sorting Engine) might have been the trigger event dictating when Vimes and Carcer were ''returned'' to normal space-time? (Or ''delivered'', so to speak) Alternately, it ''could'' just be a guy sweeping up after services, as the Men In Saffron don't have a monopoly on wearing robes, particularly in a temple.

(p276) Lipwig's musing about Gilt not needing "a tower with ten thousand trolls camped outside" brings to mind Saruman from ''The Lord of the Rings''.

(p279) US hardcover: Moist says "your big words tell them it’s going to be jam tomorrow and they hope."
– a reference to ''Alice in Wonderland'', in which the Queen offers Alice jam every other day: "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day."

(p287) US hardcover:‘Tump Tower’ refers to the Trump Tower, built by Donald Trump in New York City

(p293) "Deliver them, of course. You've got to. You are the messenger of the gods."
– Another reference to Mercury.

(p300) US Hardcover: The ‘crackers’ who disrupt the Clacks line are remarkably like Roundworld computer hackers

(p304) "'There's cabbage soup, cabbage beer, cabbage fudge, cabbage cake, cream of cabbage—'"
– Stanley's stream of cabbage recipes parallels Bubba's list of shrimp dishes in the movie Forrest Gump, and Monty Python's Spam sketch.
* Also used in ''The Science Of Discworld II'', when Rincewind obsessively recites all the potato recipes he can think of to prevent the elf Queen from reading his thoughts.

(p308) "'Did you spot how the swage armature can be made to jump off the elliptical bearing if you hit the letter K and then send it to a tower with an address higher than yours but only if you hit the letter Q first and the drum spring is fully wound?'"
– Certain early (and some current) computer systems could be made to fail in similar ways. Unlikely character strings can sometimes, in binary, be interpreted as system codes and cause security breaches or outright system failures. Likewise, early mechanical typewriters could lock up if the wrong series of letters were pressed in quick succession, a phenomenon which the QWERTY keyboard was designed to make less likely.

(p326) Harper paperback: Miss Dearheart says, "You know how to pray, don't you? You just put your hands together -- and hope." A play on Lauren Bacall's famous line in the 1944 film "To Have and Have Not," "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

(p319) "'All right, but why "Smoking GNU"?' said Moist. 'That's cracker slang for a very fast message-send throughout the system,' said Sane Alex pointedly."
– In our world, GNU is also a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix", and the GNU Project is an ongoing effort to develop a free operating system compatible with commercial Unix.

(p326) "'I call it baize-space,' said [[Ponder Stibbons]] proudly."
– 'Baize' is the name given to the felt-like cloth used to cover billiards tables. As Stibbons points out later, it's also a pun on "phase space".

(p339) "'But it's a book!' said Mr. Pony. 'It'll take all night to code! And there's diagrams!'"
– It was established in ''[[Book:Monstrous Regiment|Monstrous Regiment]]'' that the clacks towers could send images slowly by transmitting codes for pixel data, exactly the way computers do.

(p352) "'It's still not working, Mr. Stibbons!' he bellowed. "Here's that damn enormous fiery eye again!'"
– In J.R.R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings'', Sauron appeared as a great fiery cat's eye in visions and metaphoric descriptions. In Peter Jackson's movie adaptations, the Eye appears (aside from a literal interpretation on top of Sauron's fortress) in the palantíri (seeing-stones), which have a very similar function to the University's [[omniscope]].

(p360) "'Gilt can kiss my—' Grandad began, then remembered the present company and finished: '–donkey.'"
– A reference to American use of ''ass'', an old word for donkey, in place of ''arse''.

(p361) "'... I'm close to translating the mating call of the giant clam...'"
– TP likes to drop hints of corny old jokes. Place your forearms in front of your face one laid on top of the other. Very slowly open them so that only your eyes are visible between them and swivel your eyes from side to side. That's the mating call of the giant clam.

(p341) Right at the end of {{GP}} when the game is up and the financial corruption of the Trunk board is revealed, Stowley fakes amnesia and loss of his short-term memory as a desperate ploy to avoid prosecution. This hopefully didn't fool Vetinari for one moment, but the Roundworld referent is more depressing:

Charged with a range of financial misdemeanours in the late 1980's, including false accounting, fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion, Ernest Saunders, a senior member of the Guinness brewing and finance family, provided medical testimonials that he was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and had no recollection of the sequence of events that had led him to court. As genuine sufferers of Alzheimer's know, one of the first symptoms of the disease is the loss of short-term memory. The judge took his plea of being unable to face charges on medical grounds seriously, and released him with a short suspended sentence where otherwise he might have been looking at several years inside.

Incredibly, he made a full and complete recovery from Alzheimer's shortly after his court appearance, perhaps the only man in medical history to ever have reversed the progress of this disease. TP of all people would have an absolute right to hold somebody faking Alzheimer's as a "get-out-of-jail-free" card up to scorn, satire and ridicule.

Refer to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness_share-trading_fraud|ref._Guinness share-trading fraud] for the full story, including Saunders' miracle recovery from Alzheimer's.

==Odds and ends==
Apologies if this is in the wrong place or noted elsewhere but the reference to the Matron will be to the Harridan played by (almost exclusively) Hattie Jacques in the various Carry On films concerning the UK NHS.-- SJC 2 June 2010 (BST)

'''Moist von Lipwig'''
:While I haven't found a good source for Germanic interpretations / history of the name, a 'lip-wig' is a slang term for a moustache. Hence 'von Lipwig' = 'of the (fake) moustache' - very fitting for a conman who relies on the addition of distinguishing features to disguise his undistinguished face. --[[User:SiD|SiD]] 22:18, 13 November 2006 (CET)

- '''[p. 17-18 (UK Corgi PB)]''' "'Er... would you mind signing the rope beforehand, sir? ... Worth more signed, of course.'" - Daniel "One Drop" Trooper
:Gotta love the irony that Moist von Lipwig / Albert Spangler, the consummate con-man, is helping his ''executioner'' to get 'money for old rope'! --[[User:SiD|SiD]] 22:18, 13 November 2006 (CET)

- '''[p. 47 (UK Corgi PB)]''' "A large black and white cat had walked into the room"
:Does the colour remind anyone else of Postman Pat's cat, Jess?

- '''[p. 187 (UK Corgi PB)]''' "'Actually it is the Sorting Engine,' said Groat. 'It's the curse of the Post Office, sir. It had imps in it for the actual reading of the envelopes, but they all evaporated years ago.'"
:While imps are of course used as the basis for a lot of Discworld technology, I doubt many people outside the Royal Mail know that the huge sorting machines in every mail centre are called '''I'''ntegrated '''M'''ail '''P'''rocessors - known as IMPs for short! --[[User:SiD|SiD]] 22:18, 13 November 2006 (CET)

- '''[p. 352(UK Corgi PB)p.330 (Doubleday hardcover)]'''

"I'm sure we have the right-" Ponder began.

This echoes Aragorn in ''Lord of the Rings/Two Towers'', when he wrests control of the Palantir from Sauron, and the next morning is seen looking drawn and exhausted from the mental and psychic strain of doing direct battle with the dark lord.

"I had the right, but barely" he explained to Gandalf.

While I agree that the the "fiery eye" is intended to be reminiscent of Sauron it is clearly not actually Sauron but merely the eye of Dr Collabone; red from allergies and enormous from peering too closely at his end of the omniscope.
--[[User:Neilxt|Neilxt]] 05:03, 21 August 2007 (CEST)

(p137) "'Look, I'm not the One you're looking for!'" - For some, this resonates with Obi-Wan's use of the Jedi mind trick to escape storm troopers -- "These aren't the droids you're looking for." This is annotated elsewhere on the Wiki as – Possibly, but not clearly, a reference to Neo's role as the One in the ''Matrix films''. Or, perhaps the most likely, a reference to Graham Chapman's increasingly perplexed and angry Brian in Monty Python's ''The Life of Brian'' when chased by hordes of adoring wannabe disciples. Or even [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOpxt3CpZBk|this_song]this song...

(p313) "'You know how to pray, don't you? You just put your hands together -- and hope.'" - obviously based on Lauren Bacall's famous line from "To Have and Have Not", to Humphrey Bogart: "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." Bacall's character's nickname is "Slim", and this is echoed in the affectionate nicknames of Moist and Dearheart, "Slick" and "Spike". --[[User:Eitheladar|Eitheladar]] 07:47, 31 December 2007 (CET)

(p??) The entire episode of a mail coach vs. the clacks system transporting the contents of a book evokes a saying that is well-known among us computer science types: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes". It's also known in other forms, e.g. "It's faster to send a petabyte of data to Hong Kong by sailboat than over the internet". Pratchett doesn't explicitly reference this saying, but he has created an instructive example of the difference between latency and bandwidth: while it takes less time for the start of a message to arrive via the clacks towers, the mail coach has an advantage when the size of the message is large (e.g. in case of sending the contents of a book, or even a large number of letters).

(p??) The crackers' blocking of the light and substitution of their own portable clacks tower is an example of what computer scientists and security researchers refer to as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack man-in-the-middle attack].

(p??) "'Ha, even the damn soup there is fifteen dollars!' said Moist" - Very likely a reference to The Blues Brothers, also referenced sporadically throughout Soul Music. When the Brothers visit a former band member - now Maître d' in a posh Chicago restaurant - at his place of work, he encourages them to leave on the basis that they can't afford to eat there, remarking "Come on guys..let me buy you a cup of coffee. The soup here is f*cking ten dollars."

[[Category:Annotations|Going Postal/Annotations]]

Brindisi

2023-04-13T08:02:01Z

Tag:

{{Nation Data
|title= Brindisi
|picture=Blank.jpg|
|established=
|motto=

|neighbours= [[Genua]], [[The Neverlands]]

|features= Gulf of Brindisi

|capital=Limbardi

|population=
|size= medium
|government=The Subumbra Family

|notablecitizens= [[Enrico Basilica]]

|imports=
|exports= Pasta, singers and performers

|anthem=

|books= {{M!!!}}
}}

'''Brindisi''' is the Discworld equivalent of Italy on [[Roundworld]]. Evaree-ona speaka lika dis iffa dey comea from dere! And if your name is [[Enrico Basilica|Henry Slugg]] and you want to sing opera you're liable to get laughed at, but if you are named Signore [[Enrico Basilica]] - from Brindisi, remember - then you can be a Disc-wide star! The Flying Pastrami Brothers are another example. Their real names were Sidney and Frank Cartwright. Who wants to see acrobats called that? No-one. So they called themselves Marco and Falco Pastrami, and got a job on Monty Bladder's Three-Ring Circus.

The country is near-tropical, rimward and turnwise of [[Genua]] and includes a peninsula into the Gulf of Brindisi. Brindisi is three thousand miles across the continent from [[Ankh-Morpork]], but its language is obviously derived from [[Latatian]], so it was likely an outpost of the [[Morporkian Empire]].

Brindisian immigrants contribute much to the Artistic and Food Service Industries in [[Ankh-Morpork]]. The Brindisian language is not widely spoken there, but it is common in restaurants and at the [[Opera House|opera]]. According to [[Book:The Compleat Ankh-Morpork|The Compleat Ankh-Morpork]] the cuisine can be sampled at 'La Triviata', a Brindisian restaurant on [[Holofernes Street]] in the [[Isle of Gods]].

==Annotation==

There might be two reasons for Pratchett's choice of ''Brindisi'' as the name for the Italian counterpart of [[Discworld]].
*First, there really is a [[Roundworld]] city called ''Brindisi''. It is located in the Eastern part of the Italian "heel" peninsula, a fact that matches Pratchett's description. In addition, Brindisi itself stands on a small peninsula whose shape resembles a deer head (i.e.: 'Brentesion' in Greek).
*Second, "''brindisi''" is the Italian term for "toast", commonly preceded by the sentence "let's have a...". Choosing "''Brindisi''" as a name for an Italian-like country, Pratchett wisely emphasizes Italian taste for wine - a drink that comes with the typical Brindisian food [[Enrico Basilica]] hates.
* Thirdly, "Brindisi" is the title of a very well know operatic aria from "La Traviata" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu7zWrIMV_g Pavarotti Verdi La Traviata - Brindisi]).

[[Category:Discworld geography]]
[[de:Brindisi]]

User talk:Tag

2023-04-13T07:52:16Z

Tag:

Hello

I have been trying to add a picture to the annotations page for Thud and can't seem to get it right. Would you be able to help? The picture is in the public domain from WikiCommons. TY!

Book:Thud!/Annotations

2023-04-13T07:48:51Z

Tag:

Annotations for {{T!}}. Unless otherwise specified, page numbers refer to the UK Doubleday hardback edition.

== General Annotations ==
Annotations about general ideas and concepts in the book, rather than specific passages.
* The 'long dance' of the trolls is likely a reference to the unexpectedly accurate and culturally complex 'long count' of the Mayan calendar. See also the "long chant" of [[Trolls (The Long Earth)|the other trolls]] in [[The Long Earth]] and sequels.
* Right at the end of the book, Colon and Nobbs are on guard duty in the Cave of the Kings. After discussing the state of play between Nobby and his pole-dancer girlfriend Tawneee, Colon, perhaps by association of ideas, reins in an over-enthusiastic Dwarf with the rebuke "No touching, sir, or I'm afraid I shall have to cut your fingers orf". Almost as if he were acting as bouncer in a pole-dancing club, where there is usually a strict rule about touching...

== Specific Annotations ==
;Unnumbered pages:[[Tak]]'s cave, and Dwarven beliefs about the dark in general, very nicely stand Plato's {{wp|Allegory of the cave|Allegory of the cave}} completely on its head.
:A curious coincidence is that Tak, the name of the creator in dwarfish mythology, is also the name of an ancient evil spirit featured in two of Stephen King's novels, ''Desperation'' and ''The Regulators'' (written as Richard Bachman). Like the Summoning Dark, King's Tak comes out of a deep mine and inhabits a human host - in ''Desperation'' it is a police officer who becomes a sort of berserker. The similarities go no nearer than that, but it is slightly unsettling.
;Page 14:“[[Fizz]]” - the editorial cartoonist in the Times is a reference to Hablot Knight Browne, 19th Century English artist, famous as [[wikipedia:Phiz|Phiz]], the illustrator of the best-known books by Charles Dickens, and sometime cartoonist for ''Punch'' magazine.
;Page 17:[[Otto Chriek]] – “Little, fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak...his carefully cut widow’s peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent.... He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire.” Otto resembles the campy vampire, made famous by Bela Lugosi.
;Page 19:the “Ankh-Morpork Mission of the Uberwald League of Temperance" and black ribbons - A reference to the various temperance organizations in active in the 19th Century in Britain and other countries, such as the [[wikipedia:Woman's Christian Temperance Union|Woman's Christian Temperance Movement]] (which used a white ribbon.) These organizations required members to take a pledge of abstinence from all forms of alcohol. The black ribbons are reminiscent of the scarlet sash worn by members of the Junior Anti-Sex League in George Orwell’s 1984. Similar red ribbons were worn by the {{wp|Komsomol|Komsomolyet}} (Коммунисти́ческий сою́з молодёжи) movement - the Soviet Communist Party's youth wing.
:Nineteenth century slang for someone involved in a temperance movement - or more generally a tee-totaler - was a 'Blue Ribboner'.
:Although, naturally, red is the ''last'' colour a group of reformed B-word addicts would choose for their ribbons!
;Page 30:''Colon: “Have you heard of Mr Shine?”
:Vimes: “Do you clean stubborn surfaces with it?”''
:A reference to Mr. Clean cleanser, a product made by Proctor and Gamble. Or possibly, given that Pterry is British, to Mr Sheen brand of cleaners and polishes made by Reckitt Benckiser.

;Page 31:''"...[[Koom Valley]]. Gods damn the wretched place..."''
:Foreshadowing.

;Page 32:“Koom Valley Day” - Koom Valley Day and the ongoing theme of the dwarves and trolls reliving an ancient battle again and again is reminiscent of the parades held in Northern Ireland by Unionist and Republican groups. The largest of these are usually held by Protestant organizations on the twelfth of July in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne. The Republican parades celebrating the Easter Rising can be large, but are not nearly so provocative, as they are not deliberately routed through Loyalist areas.

;Page 34 (US page 25):"That pea-brained idiot at the [[Post Office]] has only gone and issued a Koom Valley stamp!"
:A slightly obscure cross-book joke: in {{GP}}, [[Moist von Lipwig]] handed over handling of the issuing of new stamps to [[Stanley]], who is said on (US p. 33) of said book to have been "raised '''by''' peas", a "[v]ery unusual case. A good lad [...], but he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning." Thus, "pea-brained" is here not so much an insult as a descriptor.

;Page 37:"And just when the day couldn't get any worse, I've got to interview a damned [[Vampires|vampire]]."
:So what we have here is an {{wp|Interview With A Vampire|Interview With A Vampire}}.

;Page 42:Sir Reynold Stitched, curator of the Ankh-Morpork Royal Art Museum, is a reference to 18th century British painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
:It has also been suggested that there is a strong resemblance, in voice and manner and aesthetic, to Roundworld art critic Brian Sewell (of the London Evening Standard, of the hernia-inducing Sunday heavy papers, and a frequently used pundit on those late night TV arts shows like "Newsnight Review" and "The South Bank Show"). Read his surname as "Sew-Well" in the (non)-seamstress [[Sandra Battye]] sense, and it can be seen how he mutates into "Reynold Stitched".
:For a sample of the real-life Reynold Stitched in action as art critic, try this: [http://iiiiiiandy.vodpod.com/video/37749-last-of-the-medici-brian-sewell]

;Page 42:The Battle of Koom Valley painting – a cyclorama is a panoramic painting on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to provide a viewer standing in the middle of the cylinder with a 360° view of the painting. The intended effect is to make a viewer, surrounded by the panoramic image, feel as if they were standing in the midst of a historic event or famous place. Panoramas were invented by Irishman Robert Barker, who wanted to find a way to capture the panoramic view from Calton Hill in central Edinburgh, Scotland. He subsequently opened his first cyclorama in Edinburgh in 1787. Cycloramas were very popular in the late 19th century. (from Wikipedia)

;Page 48:painting of "The Goddess [[Anoia]] Arising from the Cutlery" - A reference to The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Unfortunately for Nobby, it does not have an urn or plinth in it, but there are two cherubs.

;Page 48 (Corgi page 57):"The title was ''The [[Koom Valley Codex]]''."
:The whole craze about people buying this book claiming secret messages in a painting is an obvious reference to ''The DaVinci Code'', which claims that there are secrets hidden in the Mona Lisa. ''The DaVinci Code'' is a work of fiction, though, whereas ''The Koom Valley Codex'' seems to be a nonfiction book. However, the reader's attention is drawn to the ''{{wp|The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail|The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail}}'' by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, which in the 1980s enjoyed a certain vogue and later on served to inspire ''The DaVinci Code''. (Dan Brown's character Leigh Teabing is a direct homage to HBHG's authors.) In these books, the authors link together a set of historical puzzles and anomalies, including the claim that occult secrets are encoded in a series of well-known paintings, to support the hypothesis that Jesus Christ did not actually die on the cross. (In fact, he was resuscitated from near-death, and smuggled to the South of France by Joseph of Arimathea to live out a quiet life in retirement. He married Mary Magdalene, and their bloodline not only became that of the Kings of France, it persists today in exceptionally able or gifted people around the world.) If true, this claim would have the effect of wholly discrediting Christianity, and they claim that the truth has thus been suppressed by generations of Popes. It's worth noting that one of the authors has since acknowledged that the content of the book was a hoax.
:More obscurely, the obsessives who searched Rascal's painting for clues are reminiscent of the real-life searchers (Masqueraders) who'd tromped all over England looking for a jeweled-hare pendant from 1979 to 1982, guided by clues they'd found (or imagined finding) in Kit Williams' picture book ''Masquerade''. As in ''Thud!'', the hare was initially found by searchers who'd resorted to unscrupulous methods (murder by the deep-downers, milking Williams' ex-girlfriend for hints by the hare's "finders"), but their fraud was exposed and the treasure retrieved/protected from them.

;Page 57 (Corgi page 68):"War, [[Nobby]]. What is it good for?" he said.
:"Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
:"Absol- Well, okay."
:A reference to the popular song by Edwin Starr, whose refrain goes, "War: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing." It has been covered by countless bands since then.
:Nobby's suggestions that war might be good for freeing slaves or for defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor appear to refer to the American Civil War and World War II, often considered just or worthwhile wars for those reasons.
:Also - to my mind at least - a clear reference to the famous scene in Monty Python's ''The Life of Brian'', when Reg (the leader of one of the innumerable rebellious groups that infest Judea) asks "What have the Romans ever done for us?" and is then more than exasperated when his (equally anti-Roman) collaborators proceed to enumerate about fifteen immensely impressive achievements of the Romans that have made life far better for the peoples they have subjugated.

;Page 59:“Do not . . . what do they call it. . . go spare?” - “Spare - adj. British. Out of control, furious. The word usually in the form ‘go spare’ has been in use since before World War II. It derives from the notion of excess.” From “The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang” by Tony Thorne (Pantheon Books, New York, 1990). (from http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/9/messages/572.html)

;Page 62:"I am the [[Dis-Organiser]] Mark Five, "The Gooseberry™"..."
:The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device. A "gooseberry" is an unwelcome intruder on a romantic assignation; a fifth wheel.

;Page 63:"Then would you like to engage the handy-to-use Bluenose™ Integrated Messenger Service?"
:Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. A "bluenose" is a Whitehousian crusader against pornographic ("blue") material, particularly one that is suspiciously good at locating said material in order to be offended by it. These two jokes are evidently Pterry having a little dig at the irony that "social" media devices are often (mainly?) used for the twin purposes of ruining human interaction and solo sex.

;Page 63:"How about a game of Splong!™, specially devised for the Mark Five?" pleaded the imp. "I have the bats right here."
:Probably a reference to Pong, possibly the very first graphical video game, which was similar to ping-pong/table tennis.

;Page 63:"My iHUM™ function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all time—"
:{{wp|iTunes|iTunes}} is a digital media player application developed by Apple Computers, for playing and organizing digital music and video files, and for transferring them to its iPod portable MP3 players (and, later, iPhones). iPhones now access music etc independently, and on macOS iTunes has been replaced by seperate apps for Music, Podcasts, Books and TV, but its still available for Windows. There's also a reference to LucasArt's iMUSE™ technology, which changed the music throughout some of its most popular third-person adventures, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and predated the iPod by a significant amount. Also note that the word itself is "iHUM"; we can assume that the imp simply hums the tune in question rather than replicating it exactly. It also suggests, if one is prepared to mentally squint, the polite euphemism used to describe their trade by Assassins: they ''inhume'' rather than ''murder''. Does this suggest that the imp is perfectly capable of ''murdering'' a tune, rather like those ever-so-subtly not-quite-right MIDI files which digitize otherwise quite nice tunes and turn them into a sort of lift muzak? (Shades of the robotic Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Company Choir in Douglas Adams' ''Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy'' singing ''Share and Enjoy'' a flattened semi-fifth out of tune.)

;Page 69]:"[...] he noticed the symbol chalked on the wall over the door: a circle, with a horizontal line through it."
:The "Long Dark" rune, the symbol for a mine, is the same shape as the sign for the London Underground. This may be foreshadowing to the Patricians plans for the Devices, such as mining carts loaded with people (wink wink).

;Pages 74, 93:The “Following Dark” symbol which Helmclever makes with his spilled coffee (explained by Carrot later) is a circle with two diagonal lines through it. This is similar to British roadsigns meaning “No Parking.”

;Page 83:"There were twists and turns, in dim tunnels that all seemed alike."
:Referring to the text-based computer game ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', which contains the memorable line "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

;Page 110:The [[Breccia]] - Ankh-Morpork`s version of the Mafia - is named after a type of rock, specifically "rock composed of sharp fragments embedded in a fine-grained matrix (as sand or clay)" (thanks Merriam-Webster).

;Page 112:Chrysoprase says “Kew Eee Dee” - a phonetic version of QED (''quod erat demonstrandum''), Latin meaning “Thus it is proven.”

;Page 114:Chrysoprase – “And dey cuts Slab wi ‘ bad sulphides an’ cooks it up wi’ ferric chloride and crap like dat. You thought that Slab was bad? You wait till you see Slide.”
:This could be a reference to the introduction of crack cocaine. It's also no wonder ferric chloride has a nasty effect on trolls' silicon brains - it's used to cut circuit boards.

;Page 132: Angua comments on the Black Ribboners: 'Lips that touch Ichor shall never touch Mine'
[[File:Kansas Saloon Smashers.jpg|thumb|A warning of the awful consequences of intemperance.]]
This quotation comes from the song, The Kiss of Prohibition by Harriet Ann Glazebrook, popular with the Temperance movement, having the refrain 'The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_A._Glazebrook Wikipedia])

;Page 151: “the clacks company” – The Clacks is the Discworld version of a telegraph or fax machine, and is based on the optical telegraphs popular in the late 18th - early 19th century, especially in France. They were introduced in {{TFE}}, but feature most significantly in {{GP}}; see [[Book:Going Postal/Annotations|the annotations for the latter book]] for more.

— "That’s a feast for vurms." — ''A Feast for Wormes'' was a 1620 book of poems by English poet Francis Quarles. The titular poem related to human mortality, and the title itself has entered the language as a sort of ''memento mori'' akin to "ashes to ashes". Quarles' title is most probably a reference itself to Henry IV, Part One where the line started by Hotspur and finished by Hal is -"no, Percy, thou art dust
And food for--"
"...for worms, brave Percy..."

— “And, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable,” Sybil added. — In 1981, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration attempted to reclassify tomato ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables rather than condiments for school lunch programs. The goal was to relax nutritional requirements and cut costs. The measure met with resounding disapproval and was eventually rejected.

;Page 157 (Corgi page 189):"They're [[Agatean Empire|Agatean]] ''[[Numknuts|numknuts]]'', sir."
:Though the book describes [[Andy Hancock|Special Constable Hancock]]'s "new Truncheon" as something very similar to Japanese Nunchukus (usually pronounced "Nunchucks"), the word "numb-nuts" is an insult as well.

;Pages 169-170 (Harper Torch paperback edition):The footnote describing Empirical Crescent, built by [[Bergholt Stuttley Johnson|Bloody Stupid Johnson]]: "On the outside it was a normal terraced crescent of the period, built of honey-colored stone with the occasional pillar or cherub nailed on. Inside, the front door of No. 1 opened into the back bedroom of No. 15, the ground-floor front window of No. 3 showed the view appropriate to the second floor of No. 9, and smoke from the dining-room fireplace of No. 2 cane out of the chimney of No. 19."
:Reminiscent of the tesseract house in Robert Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House" where the stairs that should lead to the roof deliver you to the ground floor, going out the front door puts you on the second floor and various windows show views of other rooms in the house, a view straight down the side of the Empire State Building (even though the house is in California),an upside down seascape, absolute nothingness and a strange desert landscape.

;Page 178:Sally says “Well here’s another fine mess.” - a variation of the catch phrase from Laurel and Hardy: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

;Page 181:''“‘Tawnee’s actually only her pole name,’ Nobby said. ‘She says no one would be interested in an exotic dancer with a name like Betty. She says it sounds like she’d be better with a bowl of cake mixture.’”''
:A reference to both Betty Crocker, a fictional character invented for a brand of cake mixes, and also famous 1940s and '50s burlesque perfomer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzNW7IBXL_A Betty Page], a woman still rated as an icon today who has inspired the acts of modern burlesque strippers such as Dita von Teese. Less likely, but still possible, is Betty Howard, another stripper famous in the 1940s.

;Page 192:''“Brick thought [...] the future was looking so bright that he had to walk along with his eyes almost shut...”''
:A reference to the 1986 hit by Timbuk 3 “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”.

;Page 193:Pseudopolis Yard – a reference to Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England.

;Page 199:Vimes is reflecting on the military axiom "couldn't tell if it were arseholes or breakfast time". Vimes considers that however confused he got through lack of sleep, he'd still be able to tell the difference, as "only one involves coffee". Vimes has so far not heard of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema coffee enema], then. Maybe his ignorance should be cherished.

;Page 215:"Gabbro is so good at playing from the [[Dwarfs|dwarf]] viewpoint that his [[Trolls|troll]] game is suffering, and he wants to go to Copperhead to learn from some of the dwarf thudmeisters there."
:Gabbro is a kind of igneous rock.

;Page 214:the game [[Thud]] was developed by Trevor Truran, Bernard the stout, Cunning Artificer to the Gentry, and Terry Pratchett. The game is based on games of the Tafl family, which are distinguished by the unequal size of the opposing forces. The objective is usually for the force of fewer numbers to take all the members of the larger forces whose aim is generally to stop them doing so. A fragment of a gaming board of 18 x 18 squares, found in Wimose, Fyn, Denmark dated prior to AD400 is the first evidence of a game called Tafl, which also regularly appears in the early Icelandic sagas. (from http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Tafl.html)

;Page 215:"Water dripping on a stone, dissolving and removing. Changing the shape of the world, one drop at a time. Water dripping on a stone, Commander."
:This entire exchange with Vimes is a nice bit of foreshadowing.
:"Who knows what old evil exists in the deep darkness under the mountains?"
:There is a hint of ''Lord of the Rings'' here: "There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." And: "They delved [...] too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled: Durins Bane."

;Page 238:"'But it's pretty much a 24/8 job for us,' said Angua."
:24/7 is the usual phrase (24 hours a day, 7 days a week), but it can be easy to forget that the [[Discworld calendar|Discworld week]] contains 8 days. The Welsh word for week is "wythnos" meaning eight nights.

;Page 243:In the immediate aftermath of the attempt to kill not just Vimes but also Sybil and Young Sam, a nervous deputation of dwarfish civil dignitaries visits Pseudopolis Yard at least partially to assure Vimes they had no part in it. Vimes, under the influence of the vengeful and vindictive Summoning Dark, is in no mood to be diplomatic and his first instinct is to humiliate these dwarfs. His inner dialogue at this point is a stream of hateful invective: "You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters!" (etc., for half a page of internalised diatribe)
:It is interesting that American TV cop Sledge Hammer not only ''thinks'' like this, he ''speaks'' and ''acts'' like this - ''all the time''. In fact, one of Sledge's favourite pieces of invective to a suspect is a variation on a theme of "scum-sucker".(Or even ''yoghurt-eater.'') Sledge Hammer is a parody on Dirty Harry, with all the knobs turned up to way past eleven... but this cop-with-issues, played for laughs admittedly, must have at some point contracted the Summoning Dark! Now I'm still looking for any instance of Vimes saying ''Trust me, I know what I'm doing''...
:Sledge is generally prevented (by restraint or persuasion) from causing extreme mayhem, by his totally-opposite-to-the-point-of-cliché partner. Sergeant Dori Doreau is a thoughtful, gentle, liberally inclined policewoman who acts as the brains of the outfit, while Sledge provides the muscle. Later in the book, Angua and Cheery assume the Doreau role to Vimes' Sledge, and bring him back to rational normality from a beserker-like frenzy.

;Page 249/US paperback page 258:"Turd races in the gutter [...] with the name [[Poohsticks|Poosticks]]".
:A reference to the game of Pooh-sticks from the Winnie the Pooh stories, where the characters have races with sticks floating under a bridge. Also mentioned at this point is 'Tiddley-rats', the Ankh-Morpork gutter version of Tiddlywinks.

;Page 253:"There's throwin' up and yellin' and unladylike behavior and takin' their vests off and I don't know what. 'S called...' he scratched his head '... [[Roistering|minge drinking]]."
:Close, Fred. It's ''Binge'' Drinking. "Minge" is also (UK?) slang for [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=minge female pubic hair].

;Page 274:Constable [[Visit-the-Ungodly-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets]], with his door-to-door evangelical zeal, is a reference to Roundworld Jehovah’s Witnesses, who distribute their religious pamphlets in a similar manner. His god, [[Om]], is named for the mystical or sacred syllable in many Indian religions, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

;Page 290:Detritus’ crossbow, “The [[Piecemaker]]” - a pun on the famous handgun, the [[wikipedia:Colt_Single_Action_Army|Colt "Peacemaker" .45 revolver]], as supposedly used by Wyatt Earp.

;Page 290/Corgi page 352:"Something happens at thirteen miles an hour. I don't know what."
:The speed limit and flaming cabbages is probably a nod to the ''Back to the Future'' films, where the DeLorean traveled through time when it reached 88 mph, leaving flaming trails behind it. Pratchett was known to be a fan of the films; as recounted in {{ALWF}} he once almost bought a DeLorean.

;Page 294/UK paperback page 356:"He pulled out a battered volume entitled ''Walking in the Koom Valley'', by [[Eric Wheelbrace]]..."
:Punning on the walker, author, and illustrator Alfred Wainwright.

;Page 298:"The roads up there are pretty bad, you know,' said Vimes. 'So I believe, sir. However, that will not, in fact, matter."
:Another possible reference to ''Back to the Future'', in particular Doc Brown's line: "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads".

;Audible part 2, 2:55:18:"... Brick, who had not picked a good day to go cold turkey, it was turning out to be frozen Roc."
:Aside from the rock (stone) / roc (giant mythical bird) pun in the punchline, the setup is also funny as a reference to the "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue!" running gag by the air-traffic control tower supervisor in 1980 comedy film ''[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Airplane!#Steve_McCroskey Airplane!]'' (known as ''Flying High!'' in some countries). This may not have been intended, but the scene does involve a rough landing of a flying vehicle (into cabbages).

;Page 301:Sybil’s friends from the Quirm College for Young Ladies “all seemed to have names like Bunny or Bubbles” – a reference to stereotypical British public-school girls' nicknames.

;Page 305/Corgi p. 368:"The other thing he noticed was that the landscape ahead was strangely bluish, while behind them it had a relatively red tint."
:This is a reference to the blue and red shift, a physical phenomenon caused by the Doppler effect. When you move toward a source of waves, the wave frequency gets higher; when you move away from the wave source, you observe a lower frequency. Blue has a higher frequency than red, so things you're moving toward look bluer, and things you're moving away from look redder. This effect is only noticeable when you're moving at a significant fraction of light speed - like, for galaxies moving away from the Milky Way. But on Discworld, the speed of light is only a few hundred miles per hour (rather than nearly a billion miles per hour in our world). So the coach at 60 mph or so according to Willikins' calculation is going fast enough to see blue and red shift. This is also the only time vehicles carrying officers of the Watch have red and blue lights, just as police cars do in many places on Roundworld.

;Page 328:“''Quis custodiet ipsos custodes''” - a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves?”, and is variously translated in colloquial English as “Who watches the watchmen?”, “Who watches the watchers?”, “Who will guard the guards?”, “Who shall watch the watchers?”, “Who polices the police?” etc. Made famous in the graphic novel ''[[wikipedia:Watchmen|Watchmen]]'' by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The slogan is seen and heard throughout the novel, on the basis that the ''Watchmen'' are vigilantes (i.e. costumed superheroes) that operate outside of the law where protective checks and balances exist, so there is no oversight to what they might do. This is taken to extremes: several of the "heroes" kill criminals they encounter.

;Page 329:''... until they reached a stalagmite. It was about eight feet high. It was a troll. It wasn't a rock shaped like a troll, it was a troll.'''
:Although items left in limestone caves can become coated (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Shipton%27s_Cave Mother Shipton's cave]), I can find no known example of an actual human being petrified in this way. However in Rider Haggard's story, King Solomons Mines (1885, p160), the Kukuana people preserve their deceased monarchs in this way.

:... presently we observed that from the roof of the chamber the water fell steadily, drip! drop! drip! on to the neck of the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed what the film was — Twala's body was being transformed into a stalactite.

;Page 344:''"This is just the story of the Things Tak Wrote", Cheery whispered to Vimes'''
:This must have been a loud whisper, as a couple of pages previously, Vimes had sent Cheery back to the town.

;Page 348:''"Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand. 'It is like using an axe,' he said, to no one in particular, 'but without the axe...'"''
:It seems [[Bashfull Bashfullsson|Bashfullsson]] has been practising something similar to [[Roundworld|Roundworld's]] ''Karate'' (which is Japanese for 'Empty Hand').

[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/thud.html''Thud!'' Annotations - The Annotated Pratchett File]

[[Category:Annotations|Thud!]]

Book:Thud!/Annotations

2023-04-13T07:45:51Z

Tag:

Annotations for {{T!}}. Unless otherwise specified, page numbers refer to the UK Doubleday hardback edition.

== General Annotations ==
Annotations about general ideas and concepts in the book, rather than specific passages.
* The 'long dance' of the trolls is likely a reference to the unexpectedly accurate and culturally complex 'long count' of the Mayan calendar. See also the "long chant" of [[Trolls (The Long Earth)|the other trolls]] in [[The Long Earth]] and sequels.
* Right at the end of the book, Colon and Nobbs are on guard duty in the Cave of the Kings. After discussing the state of play between Nobby and his pole-dancer girlfriend Tawneee, Colon, perhaps by association of ideas, reins in an over-enthusiastic Dwarf with the rebuke "No touching, sir, or I'm afraid I shall have to cut your fingers orf". Almost as if he were acting as bouncer in a pole-dancing club, where there is usually a strict rule about touching...

== Specific Annotations ==
;Unnumbered pages:[[Tak]]'s cave, and Dwarven beliefs about the dark in general, very nicely stand Plato's {{wp|Allegory of the cave|Allegory of the cave}} completely on its head.
:A curious coincidence is that Tak, the name of the creator in dwarfish mythology, is also the name of an ancient evil spirit featured in two of Stephen King's novels, ''Desperation'' and ''The Regulators'' (written as Richard Bachman). Like the Summoning Dark, King's Tak comes out of a deep mine and inhabits a human host - in ''Desperation'' it is a police officer who becomes a sort of berserker. The similarities go no nearer than that, but it is slightly unsettling.
;Page 14:“[[Fizz]]” - the editorial cartoonist in the Times is a reference to Hablot Knight Browne, 19th Century English artist, famous as [[wikipedia:Phiz|Phiz]], the illustrator of the best-known books by Charles Dickens, and sometime cartoonist for ''Punch'' magazine.
;Page 17:[[Otto Chriek]] – “Little, fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak...his carefully cut widow’s peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent.... He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire.” Otto resembles the campy vampire, made famous by Bela Lugosi.
;Page 19:the “Ankh-Morpork Mission of the Uberwald League of Temperance" and black ribbons - A reference to the various temperance organizations in active in the 19th Century in Britain and other countries, such as the [[wikipedia:Woman's Christian Temperance Union|Woman's Christian Temperance Movement]] (which used a white ribbon.) These organizations required members to take a pledge of abstinence from all forms of alcohol. The black ribbons are reminiscent of the scarlet sash worn by members of the Junior Anti-Sex League in George Orwell’s 1984. Similar red ribbons were worn by the {{wp|Komsomol|Komsomolyet}} (Коммунисти́ческий сою́з молодёжи) movement - the Soviet Communist Party's youth wing.
:Nineteenth century slang for someone involved in a temperance movement - or more generally a tee-totaler - was a 'Blue Ribboner'.
:Although, naturally, red is the ''last'' colour a group of reformed B-word addicts would choose for their ribbons!
;Page 30:''Colon: “Have you heard of Mr Shine?”
:Vimes: “Do you clean stubborn surfaces with it?”''
:A reference to Mr. Clean cleanser, a product made by Proctor and Gamble. Or possibly, given that Pterry is British, to Mr Sheen brand of cleaners and polishes made by Reckitt Benckiser.

;Page 31:''"...[[Koom Valley]]. Gods damn the wretched place..."''
:Foreshadowing.

;Page 32:“Koom Valley Day” - Koom Valley Day and the ongoing theme of the dwarves and trolls reliving an ancient battle again and again is reminiscent of the parades held in Northern Ireland by Unionist and Republican groups. The largest of these are usually held by Protestant organizations on the twelfth of July in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne. The Republican parades celebrating the Easter Rising can be large, but are not nearly so provocative, as they are not deliberately routed through Loyalist areas.

;Page 34 (US page 25):"That pea-brained idiot at the [[Post Office]] has only gone and issued a Koom Valley stamp!"
:A slightly obscure cross-book joke: in {{GP}}, [[Moist von Lipwig]] handed over handling of the issuing of new stamps to [[Stanley]], who is said on (US p. 33) of said book to have been "raised '''by''' peas", a "[v]ery unusual case. A good lad [...], but he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning." Thus, "pea-brained" is here not so much an insult as a descriptor.

;Page 37:"And just when the day couldn't get any worse, I've got to interview a damned [[Vampires|vampire]]."
:So what we have here is an {{wp|Interview With A Vampire|Interview With A Vampire}}.

;Page 42:Sir Reynold Stitched, curator of the Ankh-Morpork Royal Art Museum, is a reference to 18th century British painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
:It has also been suggested that there is a strong resemblance, in voice and manner and aesthetic, to Roundworld art critic Brian Sewell (of the London Evening Standard, of the hernia-inducing Sunday heavy papers, and a frequently used pundit on those late night TV arts shows like "Newsnight Review" and "The South Bank Show"). Read his surname as "Sew-Well" in the (non)-seamstress [[Sandra Battye]] sense, and it can be seen how he mutates into "Reynold Stitched".
:For a sample of the real-life Reynold Stitched in action as art critic, try this: [http://iiiiiiandy.vodpod.com/video/37749-last-of-the-medici-brian-sewell]

;Page 42:The Battle of Koom Valley painting – a cyclorama is a panoramic painting on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to provide a viewer standing in the middle of the cylinder with a 360° view of the painting. The intended effect is to make a viewer, surrounded by the panoramic image, feel as if they were standing in the midst of a historic event or famous place. Panoramas were invented by Irishman Robert Barker, who wanted to find a way to capture the panoramic view from Calton Hill in central Edinburgh, Scotland. He subsequently opened his first cyclorama in Edinburgh in 1787. Cycloramas were very popular in the late 19th century. (from Wikipedia)

;Page 48:painting of "The Goddess [[Anoia]] Arising from the Cutlery" - A reference to The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Unfortunately for Nobby, it does not have an urn or plinth in it, but there are two cherubs.

;Page 48 (Corgi page 57):"The title was ''The [[Koom Valley Codex]]''."
:The whole craze about people buying this book claiming secret messages in a painting is an obvious reference to ''The DaVinci Code'', which claims that there are secrets hidden in the Mona Lisa. ''The DaVinci Code'' is a work of fiction, though, whereas ''The Koom Valley Codex'' seems to be a nonfiction book. However, the reader's attention is drawn to the ''{{wp|The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail|The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail}}'' by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, which in the 1980s enjoyed a certain vogue and later on served to inspire ''The DaVinci Code''. (Dan Brown's character Leigh Teabing is a direct homage to HBHG's authors.) In these books, the authors link together a set of historical puzzles and anomalies, including the claim that occult secrets are encoded in a series of well-known paintings, to support the hypothesis that Jesus Christ did not actually die on the cross. (In fact, he was resuscitated from near-death, and smuggled to the South of France by Joseph of Arimathea to live out a quiet life in retirement. He married Mary Magdalene, and their bloodline not only became that of the Kings of France, it persists today in exceptionally able or gifted people around the world.) If true, this claim would have the effect of wholly discrediting Christianity, and they claim that the truth has thus been suppressed by generations of Popes. It's worth noting that one of the authors has since acknowledged that the content of the book was a hoax.
:More obscurely, the obsessives who searched Rascal's painting for clues are reminiscent of the real-life searchers (Masqueraders) who'd tromped all over England looking for a jeweled-hare pendant from 1979 to 1982, guided by clues they'd found (or imagined finding) in Kit Williams' picture book ''Masquerade''. As in ''Thud!'', the hare was initially found by searchers who'd resorted to unscrupulous methods (murder by the deep-downers, milking Williams' ex-girlfriend for hints by the hare's "finders"), but their fraud was exposed and the treasure retrieved/protected from them.

;Page 57 (Corgi page 68):"War, [[Nobby]]. What is it good for?" he said.
:"Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
:"Absol- Well, okay."
:A reference to the popular song by Edwin Starr, whose refrain goes, "War: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing." It has been covered by countless bands since then.
:Nobby's suggestions that war might be good for freeing slaves or for defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor appear to refer to the American Civil War and World War II, often considered just or worthwhile wars for those reasons.
:Also - to my mind at least - a clear reference to the famous scene in Monty Python's ''The Life of Brian'', when Reg (the leader of one of the innumerable rebellious groups that infest Judea) asks "What have the Romans ever done for us?" and is then more than exasperated when his (equally anti-Roman) collaborators proceed to enumerate about fifteen immensely impressive achievements of the Romans that have made life far better for the peoples they have subjugated.

;Page 59:“Do not . . . what do they call it. . . go spare?” - “Spare - adj. British. Out of control, furious. The word usually in the form ‘go spare’ has been in use since before World War II. It derives from the notion of excess.” From “The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang” by Tony Thorne (Pantheon Books, New York, 1990). (from http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/9/messages/572.html)

;Page 62:"I am the [[Dis-Organiser]] Mark Five, "The Gooseberry™"..."
:The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device. A "gooseberry" is an unwelcome intruder on a romantic assignation; a fifth wheel.

;Page 63:"Then would you like to engage the handy-to-use Bluenose™ Integrated Messenger Service?"
:Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. A "bluenose" is a Whitehousian crusader against pornographic ("blue") material, particularly one that is suspiciously good at locating said material in order to be offended by it. These two jokes are evidently Pterry having a little dig at the irony that "social" media devices are often (mainly?) used for the twin purposes of ruining human interaction and solo sex.

;Page 63:"How about a game of Splong!™, specially devised for the Mark Five?" pleaded the imp. "I have the bats right here."
:Probably a reference to Pong, possibly the very first graphical video game, which was similar to ping-pong/table tennis.

;Page 63:"My iHUM™ function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all time—"
:{{wp|iTunes|iTunes}} is a digital media player application developed by Apple Computers, for playing and organizing digital music and video files, and for transferring them to its iPod portable MP3 players (and, later, iPhones). iPhones now access music etc independently, and on macOS iTunes has been replaced by seperate apps for Music, Podcasts, Books and TV, but its still available for Windows. There's also a reference to LucasArt's iMUSE™ technology, which changed the music throughout some of its most popular third-person adventures, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and predated the iPod by a significant amount. Also note that the word itself is "iHUM"; we can assume that the imp simply hums the tune in question rather than replicating it exactly. It also suggests, if one is prepared to mentally squint, the polite euphemism used to describe their trade by Assassins: they ''inhume'' rather than ''murder''. Does this suggest that the imp is perfectly capable of ''murdering'' a tune, rather like those ever-so-subtly not-quite-right MIDI files which digitize otherwise quite nice tunes and turn them into a sort of lift muzak? (Shades of the robotic Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Company Choir in Douglas Adams' ''Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy'' singing ''Share and Enjoy'' a flattened semi-fifth out of tune.)

;Page 69]:"[...] he noticed the symbol chalked on the wall over the door: a circle, with a horizontal line through it."
:The "Long Dark" rune, the symbol for a mine, is the same shape as the sign for the London Underground. This may be foreshadowing to the Patricians plans for the Devices, such as mining carts loaded with people (wink wink).

;Pages 74, 93:The “Following Dark” symbol which Helmclever makes with his spilled coffee (explained by Carrot later) is a circle with two diagonal lines through it. This is similar to British roadsigns meaning “No Parking.”

;Page 83:"There were twists and turns, in dim tunnels that all seemed alike."
:Referring to the text-based computer game ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', which contains the memorable line "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

;Page 110:The [[Breccia]] - Ankh-Morpork`s version of the Mafia - is named after a type of rock, specifically "rock composed of sharp fragments embedded in a fine-grained matrix (as sand or clay)" (thanks Merriam-Webster).

;Page 112:Chrysoprase says “Kew Eee Dee” - a phonetic version of QED (''quod erat demonstrandum''), Latin meaning “Thus it is proven.”

;Page 114:Chrysoprase – “And dey cuts Slab wi ‘ bad sulphides an’ cooks it up wi’ ferric chloride and crap like dat. You thought that Slab was bad? You wait till you see Slide.”
:This could be a reference to the introduction of crack cocaine. It's also no wonder ferric chloride has a nasty effect on trolls' silicon brains - it's used to cut circuit boards.

;Page 132: Angua comments on the Black Ribboners: 'Lips that touch Ichor shall never touch Mine'

This quotation comes from the song, The Kiss of Prohibition by Harriet Ann Glazebrook, popular with the Temperance movement, having the refrain 'The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_A._Glazebrook Wikipedia])

;Page 151: “the clacks company” – The Clacks is the Discworld version of a telegraph or fax machine, and is based on the optical telegraphs popular in the late 18th - early 19th century, especially in France. They were introduced in {{TFE}}, but feature most significantly in {{GP}}; see [[Book:Going Postal/Annotations|the annotations for the latter book]] for more.

— "That’s a feast for vurms." — ''A Feast for Wormes'' was a 1620 book of poems by English poet Francis Quarles. The titular poem related to human mortality, and the title itself has entered the language as a sort of ''memento mori'' akin to "ashes to ashes". Quarles' title is most probably a reference itself to Henry IV, Part One where the line started by Hotspur and finished by Hal is -"no, Percy, thou art dust
And food for--"
"...for worms, brave Percy..."

— “And, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable,” Sybil added. — In 1981, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration attempted to reclassify tomato ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables rather than condiments for school lunch programs. The goal was to relax nutritional requirements and cut costs. The measure met with resounding disapproval and was eventually rejected.

;Page 157 (Corgi page 189):"They're [[Agatean Empire|Agatean]] ''[[Numknuts|numknuts]]'', sir."
:Though the book describes [[Andy Hancock|Special Constable Hancock]]'s "new Truncheon" as something very similar to Japanese Nunchukus (usually pronounced "Nunchucks"), the word "numb-nuts" is an insult as well.

;Pages 169-170 (Harper Torch paperback edition):The footnote describing Empirical Crescent, built by [[Bergholt Stuttley Johnson|Bloody Stupid Johnson]]: "On the outside it was a normal terraced crescent of the period, built of honey-colored stone with the occasional pillar or cherub nailed on. Inside, the front door of No. 1 opened into the back bedroom of No. 15, the ground-floor front window of No. 3 showed the view appropriate to the second floor of No. 9, and smoke from the dining-room fireplace of No. 2 cane out of the chimney of No. 19."
:Reminiscent of the tesseract house in Robert Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House" where the stairs that should lead to the roof deliver you to the ground floor, going out the front door puts you on the second floor and various windows show views of other rooms in the house, a view straight down the side of the Empire State Building (even though the house is in California),an upside down seascape, absolute nothingness and a strange desert landscape.

;Page 178:Sally says “Well here’s another fine mess.” - a variation of the catch phrase from Laurel and Hardy: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

;Page 181:''“‘Tawnee’s actually only her pole name,’ Nobby said. ‘She says no one would be interested in an exotic dancer with a name like Betty. She says it sounds like she’d be better with a bowl of cake mixture.’”''
:A reference to both Betty Crocker, a fictional character invented for a brand of cake mixes, and also famous 1940s and '50s burlesque perfomer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzNW7IBXL_A Betty Page], a woman still rated as an icon today who has inspired the acts of modern burlesque strippers such as Dita von Teese. Less likely, but still possible, is Betty Howard, another stripper famous in the 1940s.

;Page 192:''“Brick thought [...] the future was looking so bright that he had to walk along with his eyes almost shut...”''
:A reference to the 1986 hit by Timbuk 3 “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”.

;Page 193:Pseudopolis Yard – a reference to Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England.

;Page 199:Vimes is reflecting on the military axiom "couldn't tell if it were arseholes or breakfast time". Vimes considers that however confused he got through lack of sleep, he'd still be able to tell the difference, as "only one involves coffee". Vimes has so far not heard of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema coffee enema], then. Maybe his ignorance should be cherished.

;Page 215:"Gabbro is so good at playing from the [[Dwarfs|dwarf]] viewpoint that his [[Trolls|troll]] game is suffering, and he wants to go to Copperhead to learn from some of the dwarf thudmeisters there."
:Gabbro is a kind of igneous rock.

;Page 214:the game [[Thud]] was developed by Trevor Truran, Bernard the stout, Cunning Artificer to the Gentry, and Terry Pratchett. The game is based on games of the Tafl family, which are distinguished by the unequal size of the opposing forces. The objective is usually for the force of fewer numbers to take all the members of the larger forces whose aim is generally to stop them doing so. A fragment of a gaming board of 18 x 18 squares, found in Wimose, Fyn, Denmark dated prior to AD400 is the first evidence of a game called Tafl, which also regularly appears in the early Icelandic sagas. (from http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Tafl.html)

;Page 215:"Water dripping on a stone, dissolving and removing. Changing the shape of the world, one drop at a time. Water dripping on a stone, Commander."
:This entire exchange with Vimes is a nice bit of foreshadowing.
:"Who knows what old evil exists in the deep darkness under the mountains?"
:There is a hint of ''Lord of the Rings'' here: "There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." And: "They delved [...] too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled: Durins Bane."

;Page 238:"'But it's pretty much a 24/8 job for us,' said Angua."
:24/7 is the usual phrase (24 hours a day, 7 days a week), but it can be easy to forget that the [[Discworld calendar|Discworld week]] contains 8 days. The Welsh word for week is "wythnos" meaning eight nights.

;Page 243:In the immediate aftermath of the attempt to kill not just Vimes but also Sybil and Young Sam, a nervous deputation of dwarfish civil dignitaries visits Pseudopolis Yard at least partially to assure Vimes they had no part in it. Vimes, under the influence of the vengeful and vindictive Summoning Dark, is in no mood to be diplomatic and his first instinct is to humiliate these dwarfs. His inner dialogue at this point is a stream of hateful invective: "You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters!" (etc., for half a page of internalised diatribe)
:It is interesting that American TV cop Sledge Hammer not only ''thinks'' like this, he ''speaks'' and ''acts'' like this - ''all the time''. In fact, one of Sledge's favourite pieces of invective to a suspect is a variation on a theme of "scum-sucker".(Or even ''yoghurt-eater.'') Sledge Hammer is a parody on Dirty Harry, with all the knobs turned up to way past eleven... but this cop-with-issues, played for laughs admittedly, must have at some point contracted the Summoning Dark! Now I'm still looking for any instance of Vimes saying ''Trust me, I know what I'm doing''...
:Sledge is generally prevented (by restraint or persuasion) from causing extreme mayhem, by his totally-opposite-to-the-point-of-cliché partner. Sergeant Dori Doreau is a thoughtful, gentle, liberally inclined policewoman who acts as the brains of the outfit, while Sledge provides the muscle. Later in the book, Angua and Cheery assume the Doreau role to Vimes' Sledge, and bring him back to rational normality from a beserker-like frenzy.

;Page 249/US paperback page 258:"Turd races in the gutter [...] with the name [[Poohsticks|Poosticks]]".
:A reference to the game of Pooh-sticks from the Winnie the Pooh stories, where the characters have races with sticks floating under a bridge. Also mentioned at this point is 'Tiddley-rats', the Ankh-Morpork gutter version of Tiddlywinks.

;Page 253:"There's throwin' up and yellin' and unladylike behavior and takin' their vests off and I don't know what. 'S called...' he scratched his head '... [[Roistering|minge drinking]]."
:Close, Fred. It's ''Binge'' Drinking. "Minge" is also (UK?) slang for [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=minge female pubic hair].

;Page 274:Constable [[Visit-the-Ungodly-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets]], with his door-to-door evangelical zeal, is a reference to Roundworld Jehovah’s Witnesses, who distribute their religious pamphlets in a similar manner. His god, [[Om]], is named for the mystical or sacred syllable in many Indian religions, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

;Page 290:Detritus’ crossbow, “The [[Piecemaker]]” - a pun on the famous handgun, the [[wikipedia:Colt_Single_Action_Army|Colt "Peacemaker" .45 revolver]], as supposedly used by Wyatt Earp.

;Page 290/Corgi page 352:"Something happens at thirteen miles an hour. I don't know what."
:The speed limit and flaming cabbages is probably a nod to the ''Back to the Future'' films, where the DeLorean traveled through time when it reached 88 mph, leaving flaming trails behind it. Pratchett was known to be a fan of the films; as recounted in {{ALWF}} he once almost bought a DeLorean.

;Page 294/UK paperback page 356:"He pulled out a battered volume entitled ''Walking in the Koom Valley'', by [[Eric Wheelbrace]]..."
:Punning on the walker, author, and illustrator Alfred Wainwright.

;Page 298:"The roads up there are pretty bad, you know,' said Vimes. 'So I believe, sir. However, that will not, in fact, matter."
:Another possible reference to ''Back to the Future'', in particular Doc Brown's line: "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads".

;Audible part 2, 2:55:18:"... Brick, who had not picked a good day to go cold turkey, it was turning out to be frozen Roc."
:Aside from the rock (stone) / roc (giant mythical bird) pun in the punchline, the setup is also funny as a reference to the "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue!" running gag by the air-traffic control tower supervisor in 1980 comedy film ''[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Airplane!#Steve_McCroskey Airplane!]'' (known as ''Flying High!'' in some countries). This may not have been intended, but the scene does involve a rough landing of a flying vehicle (into cabbages).

;Page 301:Sybil’s friends from the Quirm College for Young Ladies “all seemed to have names like Bunny or Bubbles” – a reference to stereotypical British public-school girls' nicknames.

;Page 305/Corgi p. 368:"The other thing he noticed was that the landscape ahead was strangely bluish, while behind them it had a relatively red tint."
:This is a reference to the blue and red shift, a physical phenomenon caused by the Doppler effect. When you move toward a source of waves, the wave frequency gets higher; when you move away from the wave source, you observe a lower frequency. Blue has a higher frequency than red, so things you're moving toward look bluer, and things you're moving away from look redder. This effect is only noticeable when you're moving at a significant fraction of light speed - like, for galaxies moving away from the Milky Way. But on Discworld, the speed of light is only a few hundred miles per hour (rather than nearly a billion miles per hour in our world). So the coach at 60 mph or so according to Willikins' calculation is going fast enough to see blue and red shift. This is also the only time vehicles carrying officers of the Watch have red and blue lights, just as police cars do in many places on Roundworld.

;Page 328:“''Quis custodiet ipsos custodes''” - a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves?”, and is variously translated in colloquial English as “Who watches the watchmen?”, “Who watches the watchers?”, “Who will guard the guards?”, “Who shall watch the watchers?”, “Who polices the police?” etc. Made famous in the graphic novel ''[[wikipedia:Watchmen|Watchmen]]'' by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The slogan is seen and heard throughout the novel, on the basis that the ''Watchmen'' are vigilantes (i.e. costumed superheroes) that operate outside of the law where protective checks and balances exist, so there is no oversight to what they might do. This is taken to extremes: several of the "heroes" kill criminals they encounter.

;Page 329:''... until they reached a stalagmite. It was about eight feet high. It was a troll. It wasn't a rock shaped like a troll, it was a troll.'''
:Although items left in limestone caves can become coated (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Shipton%27s_Cave Mother Shipton's cave]), I can find no known example of an actual human being petrified in this way. However in Rider Haggard's story, King Solomons Mines (1885, p160), the Kukuana people preserve their deceased monarchs in this way.

:... presently we observed that from the roof of the chamber the water fell steadily, drip! drop! drip! on to the neck of the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed what the film was — Twala's body was being transformed into a stalactite.

;Page 344:''"This is just the story of the Things Tak Wrote", Cheery whispered to Vimes'''
:This must have been a loud whisper, as a couple of pages previously, Vimes had sent Cheery back to the town.

;Page 348:''"Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand. 'It is like using an axe,' he said, to no one in particular, 'but without the axe...'"''
:It seems [[Bashfull Bashfullsson|Bashfullsson]] has been practising something similar to [[Roundworld|Roundworld's]] ''Karate'' (which is Japanese for 'Empty Hand').

[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/thud.html''Thud!'' Annotations - The Annotated Pratchett File]

[[Category:Annotations|Thud!]]

File:The Kansas Saloon Smashers.png

2023-04-12T17:13:45Z

Tag:

An awful warning from the ladies

Talk:Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2023-03-27T10:26:16Z

Tag:

==Golden balls of chocolate==
I don't have a page number for this comment - if you could add one for me that would be helpful. Commander Vimes is paying his compliments to the werewolfs.
:Corgi pb p. 252 --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:41, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you [[User:Tag|Tag]] ([[User talk:Tag|talk]]) 10:26, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2023-03-27T10:25:34Z

Tag:

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 3 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 14)'''''

The character [[All Jolson]] is a play on the name of Al Jolson, a vaudeville, radio, and film entertainer of the 20th century, perhaps best known for being the star of the first sound movie, [http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0018037/ ''The Jazz Singer''].

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 13 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 26)'''''

"...the deep fat mines at Shmaltzberg..." Shmaltz is Yiddish for chicken fat, as well as Polish for just fat.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 29'''''

Vetinari describes Überwald: ''a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.'' This was - word for word - Winston Churchill's description of Soviet Russia in the 1940's.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 29 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 46)'''''

"Send a [[clacks]] to our agent..."

"Clacks" is obviously a play on "fax." The [[Roundworld]] counterpart of the Clacks was known as the optical telegraph or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line Semaphore Line]. Invented in the late 18th century and operated into the early 19th century before being made obsolete by electrical telegraphy, semaphore lines were used by the governments of France, Britain, and other European countries to convey vital information more rapidly than horseback riders could. Semaphore lines could only send about two words a minute, and were thus much less efficient than those of Discworld.

For some interesting background reading on these real-life semaphore lines, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo The Count of Monte Cristo] by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas Alexandre Dumas] has an incident where the protagonist deliberately interferes with the semaphore traffic in order to misdirect and corrupt messages. It is inconceivable to think that Pratchett was unaware of this scene.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 58 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 81)'''''

[[Leonard of Quirm]] says of his mechanical cipher device, "I think of it as the '''E'''ngine for the '''N'''eutralizing of '''I'''nformation for the '''G'''eneration of '''M'''iasmic '''A'''lphabets...."

The acronym is ENIGMA, which was the name of the mechanical cipher device used by the Germans in World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine Enigma Machine] entry at Wikipedia.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 99'''''

"There were a few rivers, their courses mostly guesswork, and the occasional town or at least the name of a town, probably put in to save the cartographer the embarrassment of filling his chart with, as they say in the trade, ''MMBU''."

The Discworld version of MMFD ("Miles and Miles of F---ing Desert"). Allegedly used by RAF pilots flying in gulf regions, and popularised by ''Frederick Forsyth'''s novel ''The Fist Of God''.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p.223'''''

The Dwarfish idea of the ''Jar'akh'haga''' or ''ideas taster''. Here it is Dee, later seen to be unhappily gender-confused. Interestingly, the great British comedian and nation's favourite intellectual Stephen Fry recounts being given such a job commission for upper-crust society magazine, the ''Tatler'', by its flamboyant editor Marc Boxer. In typically flowery language, Boxer explained he wanted Fry to look after the otherwise disregarded small details and see they were as right and quirky as they could be before going to print. Fry became Boxer's ''ideas-smeller'' with a roving brief to look at all aspects of the magazine as a reader would, and adjust accordingly. ('''''the fry chronicles - an autobiography''''', pp 307-310)

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 161 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 207)'''''

"It's colder up here, Vimes thought. He's quicker on the uptake." [Referring to [[Detritus]].]

Anachronism. In earlier books (''[[Feet of Clay]]'' and ''[[Jingo]]'') Detritus' greater intellectual ability when cold is indicated by a marked improvement in his language. For instance, in ''[[Jingo]]'' (Harper Torch US, p. 295), on a cold night in the Klatchian desert, he has lines like, "What do you want me to do with him, Mr. Vimes?" "All present and correct, sir!" and "With rather more efficiency, sir." No "deses" and "dems," etc. Yet throughout the trip to Uberwald, which is presumably colder than the desert of Klatch at night, Detritus' language never improves.

But Detritus does say that he is undercover as he does not want the dwarves to know about his intelligence! NW - a neatly self-referential idea, since, as demonstrated in Maskerade, *thick* Detritus is useless at undercover work.

'''''Corgi pb p. 252'''''

'Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anything,' said Vimes. 'And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I'm your man.'

This is a reference to a commercial by Ferrero Roche, who produce small balls of chocolate and nuts wrapped in gold foil ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMlP_Moo0bE Ferrero Rocher ambassador's reception UK TV commercial advert 1990s]).

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 222 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 281)'''''

"...the Koboldean Cycle..." This epic opera of the dwarfs bears certain resemblances to Wagner's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_cycle Ring Cycle], a series of four operas, often performed over four nights, with a total running time of about 15 hours. Not quite as long as the five-week Koboldean Cycle. The eponymous Ring in Wagner's operas was forged by a dwarf named Alberich (reminiscent of [[Low King]] runner-up [[Albrecht Albrechtson]]). Kobold is a German word usually translated as "goblin." It also gives the English language the metal name ''Cobalt''. Interestingly enough, another mine-dwelling supernatural entity is called a ''nickel''.

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, pp 238 - 239'''''

Vimes, un-used to Igors, asks "I'm sorry? Is all your family called Igor?" to which the resident Igor serving Lady [[Margolotta]] replies "Oh yeth, thur. It avoidth confuthion".

Compare this with the Monty Python "Bruces" sketch, where the newly-arrived Professor of Hobbes, Locke, Richards and Beneau is asked "That's going to cause a bit of confusion. Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?"

There is also a "Fish License" sketch that features the line, "Are all your pets called Eric?"

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 320, & p 410'''''

"What profiteth it a kingdom if the oxen be deflated? Riddles II, v3" & "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly"

An unusual number of Bible quotations in this book. Visit's sandwichboard is an adaptation of Mark 8:36, "For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?" (NRSV) & appears also as Luke 9:25 & Matthew 16:26.

The saying about a dog returning to his vomit is word-for-word the King James translation of Proverbs 26:11.

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p370'''''

Vimes gives an order to Detritus to fire the [[Piecemaker]]:-

"Blow the bloody doors off!" Which Detritus does, not only taking out the werewolves' castle doors but also a goodly part of the frontage of the castle, which is explicitly described as being "in ruins" following a second shot of the mighty crossbow.

This evokes the 1965 film, ''The Italian Job'', where bankrobbing mastermind Michael Caine upbraids his hapless gelignite man (who has just vaporised an entire security van) with the line which has passed into movie history:-

'''''"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"'''''
Note that Vimes, who is aware of the destructive capacity of the Piecemaker and normally forbids Detritus from using it, very deliberately omits the ''"you're only supposed to..."'' part of the line....

Shortly after this, Angua greets her family for the first time in years. Two of her female relatives in the Clan, members of the ''"Freuden durch Kraft!"'' movement and faithful followers of her brother Wolfgang, are called '''Unity''' and '''Nancy'''. On Roundworld in the 1930's, there were a famous group of sisters from the English upper classes, who were notorious for effectively being groupies to assorted European dictators and despots. Unity Valkyrie Mitford was devotedly in love with Adolf Hitler and his philosophy, to the effect that she tried to blow her own brains out (such as they were) in bitter disillusionment at the onset of war. She was all prepared to live out the war as an exile in Germany, but delicate diplomatic arrangements were made to prevent something that would have been an embarrassment to all sides, (this threatened to bring the war into disrepute and make it a laughing stock, a prospect that for the one and only time brought the wartime British and German governments into full agreement) and she was returned to Great Britain via neutral intermediaries. Nancy Mitford, in common with a surprisingly large number of members of the British upper-class intelligentsia, had her own flirtation with Joseph Stalin and Soviet communism. (which must have led to some lively dinner-table conversations round at the Mitfords). Stalin was wiser and more fore-sighted than Hitler: he made sure he was out when Nancy called.(More here[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Mitford])--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 21:52, 13 January 2008 (CET)

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p376'''''
"Well, things couldn't get any worse" he said.
"Oh, they could if there were snakes on here with us" said Lady Sybil.

See annotation for page 279 of [[Book:Carpe Jugulum/Annotations|Carpe Jugulum]]. Sybil has changed the setting for the "rural myth" from a coach to a sleigh.

Additional comment: This is also very likely a reference to the Indiana Jones movies, where the title character throws himself into dangerous situations with aplomb, and is afraid of nothing--except snakes. But not {{wp|Snakes on a Plane|Snakes on a Plane}}, which was released some 7 years after {{TFE}}.

When [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]] returns to the Watch House and passes judgement upon [[Fred Colon]]'s time as Acting-Captain, it is interesting to note in passing that the form of judgement follows the time-honoured Royal Navy ritual of "Requestmen and Defaulters". This is where the ship's captain, or in his absence the First Lieutenant, hears petitions from sailors and passes judgement on misdemeanours and disciplinary offences. The Captain's ceremonial sword is laid on the table, forming a physical barrier between judge and accused. It is there to remind the errant sailor that on board Her Majesty's Ship, all justice ultimately originates with the Monarch, who has delegated it to the Captain, via his commission, to use well and wisely. Should the case be found proven, the Captain turns the sword so that the point is directly facing the guilty party - symbolic of the Royal Justice. (We see here that both Colon and Nobbs twist and turn to "escape the accusatory point"). This piece of vivid theatre is something no sailor who has witnessed it will ever forget, and was quite possibly more salutary than the actual punishment. Carrot's eventual judgement wasn't even a reprimand, (Carrot realises that Colon was promoted way past his level of competence, which would not have happened if he, Carrot, had not put personal interests ahead of the good of the Watch, and followed the orders he was given - he was at fault too. So the whole sorry incident needed to be forgiven and forgotten as quickly as possible, and ''certainly'' before Vimes arrived home) but something Colon will in all probability take to the grave with him...

[[Category:Annotations|Fifth Elephant,The]]

Talk:Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2023-03-26T19:23:38Z

Tag:

==Golden balls of chocolate==
I don't have a page number for this comment - if you could add one for me that would be helpful. Commander Vimes is paying his compliments to the werewolfs.

Talk:Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2023-03-26T19:23:24Z

Tag: Created page with "==Golden balls of chocolate== I don't page number for this comment - if you could add one for me that would be helpful. Commander Vimes is paying his compliments to the werewolfs."

==Golden balls of chocolate==
I don't page number for this comment - if you could add one for me that would be helpful. Commander Vimes is paying his compliments to the werewolfs.

Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2023-03-26T19:19:13Z

Tag:

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 3 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 14)'''''

The character [[All Jolson]] is a play on the name of Al Jolson, a vaudeville, radio, and film entertainer of the 20th century, perhaps best known for being the star of the first sound movie, [http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0018037/ ''The Jazz Singer''].

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 13 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 26)'''''

"...the deep fat mines at Shmaltzberg..." Shmaltz is Yiddish for chicken fat, as well as Polish for just fat.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 29'''''

Vetinari describes Überwald: ''a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.'' This was - word for word - Winston Churchill's description of Soviet Russia in the 1940's.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 29 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 46)'''''

"Send a [[clacks]] to our agent..."

"Clacks" is obviously a play on "fax." The [[Roundworld]] counterpart of the Clacks was known as the optical telegraph or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line Semaphore Line]. Invented in the late 18th century and operated into the early 19th century before being made obsolete by electrical telegraphy, semaphore lines were used by the governments of France, Britain, and other European countries to convey vital information more rapidly than horseback riders could. Semaphore lines could only send about two words a minute, and were thus much less efficient than those of Discworld.

For some interesting background reading on these real-life semaphore lines, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo The Count of Monte Cristo] by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas Alexandre Dumas] has an incident where the protagonist deliberately interferes with the semaphore traffic in order to misdirect and corrupt messages. It is inconceivable to think that Pratchett was unaware of this scene.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 58 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 81)'''''

[[Leonard of Quirm]] says of his mechanical cipher device, "I think of it as the '''E'''ngine for the '''N'''eutralizing of '''I'''nformation for the '''G'''eneration of '''M'''iasmic '''A'''lphabets...."

The acronym is ENIGMA, which was the name of the mechanical cipher device used by the Germans in World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine Enigma Machine] entry at Wikipedia.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 99'''''

"There were a few rivers, their courses mostly guesswork, and the occasional town or at least the name of a town, probably put in to save the cartographer the embarrassment of filling his chart with, as they say in the trade, ''MMBU''."

The Discworld version of MMFD ("Miles and Miles of F---ing Desert"). Allegedly used by RAF pilots flying in gulf regions, and popularised by ''Frederick Forsyth'''s novel ''The Fist Of God''.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p.223'''''

The Dwarfish idea of the ''Jar'akh'haga''' or ''ideas taster''. Here it is Dee, later seen to be unhappily gender-confused. Interestingly, the great British comedian and nation's favourite intellectual Stephen Fry recounts being given such a job commission for upper-crust society magazine, the ''Tatler'', by its flamboyant editor Marc Boxer. In typically flowery language, Boxer explained he wanted Fry to look after the otherwise disregarded small details and see they were as right and quirky as they could be before going to print. Fry became Boxer's ''ideas-smeller'' with a roving brief to look at all aspects of the magazine as a reader would, and adjust accordingly. ('''''the fry chronicles - an autobiography''''', pp 307-310)

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 161 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 207)'''''

"It's colder up here, Vimes thought. He's quicker on the uptake." [Referring to [[Detritus]].]

Anachronism. In earlier books (''[[Feet of Clay]]'' and ''[[Jingo]]'') Detritus' greater intellectual ability when cold is indicated by a marked improvement in his language. For instance, in ''[[Jingo]]'' (Harper Torch US, p. 295), on a cold night in the Klatchian desert, he has lines like, "What do you want me to do with him, Mr. Vimes?" "All present and correct, sir!" and "With rather more efficiency, sir." No "deses" and "dems," etc. Yet throughout the trip to Uberwald, which is presumably colder than the desert of Klatch at night, Detritus' language never improves.

But Detritus does say that he is undercover as he does not want the dwarves to know about his intelligence! NW - a neatly self-referential idea, since, as demonstrated in Maskerade, *thick* Detritus is useless at undercover work.

'''''Golden balls of chocolate'''''

'Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anything,' said Vimes. 'And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I'm your man.'

This is a reference to a commercial by Ferrero Roche, who produce small balls of chocolate and nuts wrapped in gold foil ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMlP_Moo0bE Ferrero Rocher ambassador's reception UK TV commercial advert 1990s]).

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 222 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 281)'''''

"...the Koboldean Cycle..." This epic opera of the dwarfs bears certain resemblances to Wagner's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_cycle Ring Cycle], a series of four operas, often performed over four nights, with a total running time of about 15 hours. Not quite as long as the five-week Koboldean Cycle. The eponymous Ring in Wagner's operas was forged by a dwarf named Alberich (reminiscent of [[Low King]] runner-up [[Albrecht Albrechtson]]). Kobold is a German word usually translated as "goblin." It also gives the English language the metal name ''Cobalt''. Interestingly enough, another mine-dwelling supernatural entity is called a ''nickel''.

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, pp 238 - 239'''''

Vimes, un-used to Igors, asks "I'm sorry? Is all your family called Igor?" to which the resident Igor serving Lady [[Margolotta]] replies "Oh yeth, thur. It avoidth confuthion".

Compare this with the Monty Python "Bruces" sketch, where the newly-arrived Professor of Hobbes, Locke, Richards and Beneau is asked "That's going to cause a bit of confusion. Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?"

There is also a "Fish License" sketch that features the line, "Are all your pets called Eric?"

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 320, & p 410'''''

"What profiteth it a kingdom if the oxen be deflated? Riddles II, v3" & "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly"

An unusual number of Bible quotations in this book. Visit's sandwichboard is an adaptation of Mark 8:36, "For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?" (NRSV) & appears also as Luke 9:25 & Matthew 16:26.

The saying about a dog returning to his vomit is word-for-word the King James translation of Proverbs 26:11.

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p370'''''

Vimes gives an order to Detritus to fire the [[Piecemaker]]:-

"Blow the bloody doors off!" Which Detritus does, not only taking out the werewolves' castle doors but also a goodly part of the frontage of the castle, which is explicitly described as being "in ruins" following a second shot of the mighty crossbow.

This evokes the 1965 film, ''The Italian Job'', where bankrobbing mastermind Michael Caine upbraids his hapless gelignite man (who has just vaporised an entire security van) with the line which has passed into movie history:-

'''''"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"'''''
Note that Vimes, who is aware of the destructive capacity of the Piecemaker and normally forbids Detritus from using it, very deliberately omits the ''"you're only supposed to..."'' part of the line....

Shortly after this, Angua greets her family for the first time in years. Two of her female relatives in the Clan, members of the ''"Freuden durch Kraft!"'' movement and faithful followers of her brother Wolfgang, are called '''Unity''' and '''Nancy'''. On Roundworld in the 1930's, there were a famous group of sisters from the English upper classes, who were notorious for effectively being groupies to assorted European dictators and despots. Unity Valkyrie Mitford was devotedly in love with Adolf Hitler and his philosophy, to the effect that she tried to blow her own brains out (such as they were) in bitter disillusionment at the onset of war. She was all prepared to live out the war as an exile in Germany, but delicate diplomatic arrangements were made to prevent something that would have been an embarrassment to all sides, (this threatened to bring the war into disrepute and make it a laughing stock, a prospect that for the one and only time brought the wartime British and German governments into full agreement) and she was returned to Great Britain via neutral intermediaries. Nancy Mitford, in common with a surprisingly large number of members of the British upper-class intelligentsia, had her own flirtation with Joseph Stalin and Soviet communism. (which must have led to some lively dinner-table conversations round at the Mitfords). Stalin was wiser and more fore-sighted than Hitler: he made sure he was out when Nancy called.(More here[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Mitford])--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 21:52, 13 January 2008 (CET)

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p376'''''
"Well, things couldn't get any worse" he said.
"Oh, they could if there were snakes on here with us" said Lady Sybil.

See annotation for page 279 of [[Book:Carpe Jugulum/Annotations|Carpe Jugulum]]. Sybil has changed the setting for the "rural myth" from a coach to a sleigh.

Additional comment: This is also very likely a reference to the Indiana Jones movies, where the title character throws himself into dangerous situations with aplomb, and is afraid of nothing--except snakes. But not {{wp|Snakes on a Plane|Snakes on a Plane}}, which was released some 7 years after {{TFE}}.

When [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]] returns to the Watch House and passes judgement upon [[Fred Colon]]'s time as Acting-Captain, it is interesting to note in passing that the form of judgement follows the time-honoured Royal Navy ritual of "Requestmen and Defaulters". This is where the ship's captain, or in his absence the First Lieutenant, hears petitions from sailors and passes judgement on misdemeanours and disciplinary offences. The Captain's ceremonial sword is laid on the table, forming a physical barrier between judge and accused. It is there to remind the errant sailor that on board Her Majesty's Ship, all justice ultimately originates with the Monarch, who has delegated it to the Captain, via his commission, to use well and wisely. Should the case be found proven, the Captain turns the sword so that the point is directly facing the guilty party - symbolic of the Royal Justice. (We see here that both Colon and Nobbs twist and turn to "escape the accusatory point"). This piece of vivid theatre is something no sailor who has witnessed it will ever forget, and was quite possibly more salutary than the actual punishment. Carrot's eventual judgement wasn't even a reprimand, (Carrot realises that Colon was promoted way past his level of competence, which would not have happened if he, Carrot, had not put personal interests ahead of the good of the Watch, and followed the orders he was given - he was at fault too. So the whole sorry incident needed to be forgiven and forgotten as quickly as possible, and ''certainly'' before Vimes arrived home) but something Colon will in all probability take to the grave with him...

[[Category:Annotations|Fifth Elephant,The]]

Book:Jingo/Annotations

2023-03-26T17:02:53Z

Tag:

'''''The Title'''''

The title of the book comes from the term "Jingoism" (defined as: extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy) which in turn comes from Macdermott's War Song.
The chorus of the song goes:
We don't want to fight but by jingo if we do...
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too!

Hence Vetinari's comment 'We have no ships. We have no men. We have no money, too,'

'''''Corgi PB p28'''''

The Mary-Jane: refers to Henry VIII's flagship, the ''{{wp|Mary Rose|Mary-Rose}}'', that famously sank in home waters during a skirmish with the French, due to being top-heavy, dangerously overloaded, and with lower gunports opening a mere foot or so above the waterline.

''Mary-Jane'' is also a universal euphemism for cannabis. A consolation to the crew, a reference to the hemp rope that rigged her (which sailors the world over dried, shredded, and smoked), or the reason for her sinking?

'''''STUFT'''''

During the Falklands War of 1982, (a major war over possession of a hitherto unregarded group of remote islands) the Royal Navy, like the Ankh-Morporkian, set to sea with an interestingly ramshackle fleet. Successive defence cuts had denuded the Navy of many of its specialist auxiliary and support vessels: modern defence thinking held that suitable ships might be impressed or borrowed or chartered from the merchant marine, in time of emergency, to make up the shortfall.

Therefore, the luxury liner QE2 rubbed gunwales with things like cross-Channel ferries of the "roll-on, roll-off" type. These latter were so appallingly badly designed that a year or two later, one such, the ''Herald of Free Enterprise'', sank in the Channel with considerable loss of life. The acronym STUFT - Ships Taken Up From Trade - wholly applied here.

Prior to April 1982, the Falklands were such a significant place that the BBC left them completely off the map of the world that was the background to news bulletins. Anyone looking on the BBC map of the world for a group of islands so important a major war had erupted over them.... well, they'd be out of luck.

== On the island of Leshp ==

Leshp may be based in part on the [[Roundworld]] island of [[wikipedia:Ferdinandea|Ferdinandea]], an island near Sicily that rises above sea level after periodic volcanic eruptions, only to disappear again after it is sufficiently eroded. When it made its most recent appearance in 1831, it was claimed as territory by four nations (The United Kingdom, France, pre-Italian-unification Naples, and Spain).

Well, that explains the territorial feuding part, yes. However a city of squid-creatures that has lots of squiddy art about the place and occasionally rises to bedevil humanity also echoes R'lyeh, home of Great Cthulhu.

To add a third level of annotation, a theme of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' trilogy concerns the world being brought to the brink of World War Three, over ownership of the hitherto disregarded island of Fernando Poo. Manipulated by the evil Illuminati, the Russians, the Chinese and the Americans each claim that their legitimate sphere of interest is being interfered with, and one of the others must have destabilised a friendly sovereign nation by starting that ''coup d'état''. (Meanwhile, the British don't want another bloody damn war, not when we've only just paid for the last one, North Sea Oil's coming on stream, and the balance of payments is straightening itself out). It falls to the intrepid crew of the free submarine ''Leif Eriksson'' to sort things out... a submarine, whose crew are on a mission to prevent war breaking out over ownership of a previously unknown and disregarded island. Hmmm...

"Fernando Poo" really exists, in the Bight of Africa on the Atlantic coast. Initially named after its Portuguese discoverer - a man with something in common with [[Ponce da Quirm]] - independence saw it retitled Sao Principe. Shea and Wilson use it as a gateway to a Lovecraftian world of squid-creatures, Unmentionables, and makers of eldrich and evil artistic artefacts.

== Assassination attempts on statesmen whose names begin with "K" ==

The interesting parallels between the assassination attempt on Prince Khufurah, and that on J.F.Kennedy on Roundworld:- see '''[[Ossie Brunt|here]], [[Grassy Gnoll|here]]'''' and '''[[Woddeley's Occult Primer|here]]'''. Hell, TP even writes in the idle-minded bystander with a camera, who captures every detail of the shooting on film... (the Agatean tourist with the iconograph, which is promptly impounded by Vimes and Carrot).

'''''Corgi PB p68'''''

Vimes' butler [[Willikins]], and later on [[Forthwright]] the boy, have left Ramkin Manor to join the Army.
They chose their unit because of its very natty uniform of a sturdy red frock-coat, picked out with gold frogging, with crossing facing straps in white.

When asked by [[Samuel Vimes]] if he saw anything wrong with the picture of men dressed in red and white going to war in a sand-coloured desert and sand-coloured ''you'' up against a sand-coloured army whose archers were reputed to be so quick of reflex as to be able to shoot a man lighting a cigarette at night from two hundred yards away, Willikins went blank and was unable to reply.

Vimes has summed up exactly why the British Army was the first in Europe to relegate its scarlet uniform tunics and white cross-banding to ceremonial use only, and why as early as 1870 it adopted khaki for use in desert or semi-desert fighting. Afghans in particular have always had a reputation for being crack shots, and presenting what amounted to a big white cross on a red background was thought - eventually - as making it a little too easy for them.

Other Europeans were slow to grasp the idea that modern rifles and machine-guns made colourful uniforms a thing of the past. Even in 1914, French soldiers still lined up in bright red trousers and glorious blue tunics against grey-clad Germans. Who had good rifles and lots of machine-guns. Even then the French didn't quite get it: the eventual compromise uniform, introduced against protest from generals of a [[Rust]] inclination who insisted losing the traditional dark blue would sap the men's fighting spirit, became a sort of bright cheerful sky-blue, designed to enable the French soldier to blend in with the horizon and the skyline...

'''''Corgi PB p160'''''

Carrot is holding forth on the Klatchian script and its implications for ambiguous interpretation.

:''"(the war) is over a word in their holy book, sir. The Elharibians say it translates as "God" and the Smalies say it's "man"." ''
:''How can you mix them up?"''
:''"Well, there's only one tiny dot difference... and some people reckon it's only a speck of fly dirt in any case."''
:''"Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?"''
:''"It could have been worse, sir...if it had been slightly to the left the word would have been "liquorice" "''.

This refers to the necessarily approximate nature of the Semitic scripts (Arabic and Hebrew), which have no written notations for vowel sounds and which use a bewildering system of super- and subscript- dots as letter modifiers.

It also parodies the essence of Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, ''The Satanic Verses'', in which the Devil is allowed very limited access to Mohammed during the writing of the Koran to corrupt just one verse of his choice. In Middle Eastern culture, one manifestation of Satan is the fly - or rather, Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. It would not have been impossible for a Lord of the Flies to give one of his creation an unfortunate bowel movement at just the right spot on the page...

:It parodies much more exactly the centuries-old schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, where the word in question is either Homoiousis - of similar substance or Homoousis - of the same substance (as man)
I.e. God is similar to a Man or is the same (not just "made in God's image" but pretty much "made like God").
:The difference is the letter iota, the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and yes, there is some evidence that a speck of fly crap may have been responsible for a mistake in copying at some point...

'''''Corgi PB p162'''''

''"You'll have to be quick as I got some cabbage boilin'" '' and ''A smell of cabbage drifted across the room''. [[Nobby Nobbs]] is buying tenpence worth of the future from noted precognitist [[Mrs Cake]].

It might have been commentator George Orwell who noted, musing on the early 20th century craze for visiting "spiritualists" and holding seances in order to communicate with the souls of the dead, that the reassuring thing about English occultism is that there is always, wherever you go, the smell of cabbage being cooked in a kitchen not very far away. The same inexplicable phenomenon, that in communications with the next world, the smell of cabbage is always present, also occurs as a background detail to [[Madame Tracy]]'s seances in {{GO}}.

There is also the possibly apocryphal story of a man, sometimes named as Winston Churchill, who while under anaesthetic at his dentist (or in other stories self-administering ether or nitrous oxide), who while under the influence believes he is having a profound vision of the nature of the Universe, experiences one-ness with God, or is otherwise granted The Answer.
Hurrying to write it down before he forgets, he later looks at his notes when in a sober frame of mind, to see all he has written is

''A smell of boiled cabbage pervades all.'' (Although some versions have it as "turpentine", and not cabbage).

'''''Corgi PB p175'''''

Another of those interesting typos that slip through from time to time. Apparently Klatchians are ''involed'' by politics. As there is no sign of the nation being invaded or over-run by small shy and retiring riparian rodents during a time of great political stress, this must be a misprint for ''involved''. Later on in the book, a character called Vetinaro is introduced for one brief appearance. (pb p376).

'''''Corgi PB p300'''''

'' ''You'' can persuade armed D'regs not to charge and ''you'' have a commander'
''this man can make water run uphill and ''he'' has a commander''

This is a reference to the classic scene in Watership Down where Bigwig faces off to General Woundwort and totally deflates him by making a similar comment in relation to Hazel.

'''''Corgi PB p334'''''
*''Ab Hoc Possum Videre Domum Tuum'' (I Can See Your House From Up Here) - meant, in the opinion of [[71-hour Ahmed]], to be both a boast and a threat, but now just a line of ornamental masonry in what was once Ankh-Morpork's Klatchian city-colony of Tacticum.

The line is carved on an ornamental plinth, on which only the two feet of what was clearly once an important statue remain.

Shelley's ''{{wp|Ozymandias|Ozymandias}}'', anyone?

:''My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.''
:''Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!''

It's also the punchline of a rather tasteless religious joke. Christ on the cross on the hill of Golgotha is trying to attract the attention of St Peter, who is playing cards with the Roman soldiers guarding the crucifix. When Peter finally explodes and asks what's so important, Jesus meekly replies

"You know what? I can see your house from up here!"

'''''Corgi PB p358'''''

''such a contemptible little army''

Cadram and General Ashal are echoing a remark first attributed variably to Kaiser Wilhelm or to one of his senior generals, such as von Moltke, on hearing exactly how small the British army was that was proposing to take on the Prussian juggernaut as it jackbooted its way through Belgium and France. Yet those few tens of thousands of British soldiers slowed and then stopped the advance of nearly a million Germans... as we will soon see, an even smaller number of Ankh-Morporkians stops ''everything'' in its tracks, including a vastly superior Klatchian army.

''A week is a long time in politics'' Attributed to British Prime Minister, professional ducker and diver, and notorious fixer/dealer/plotter, Harold Wilson. Incidentally, and possibly germane here, is the idea that Wilson's greatest achievement as PM (1964-70, 1974-76) was to withstand American pressure and repeatedly say "no" to President Johnson, an achievement no British PM seems to have managed since in their dealings with Washington. Wilson's achievement was to prevent any deployment of British forces in Vietnam, despite significant American pressure to force a British presence and give legitimacy to the idea of an international peace-keeping force. Thus we were spared, at least in the 1960's, the aftermath of humiliating defeat and the after-shock of thousands of war-scarred veterans returning home.

The idea of a major battle being averted, and indeed brought to a stumbling halt, by the actions of a relative handful of policeman arresting both armies for unlawful assembly and conspiracy to cause a breach of the peace, was first used as a plot device to bring about a (cheap) end to the film ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' in 1973, the production money having run out. Here we see King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Bedevere, Sir Galahad and the rest being handcuffed and loaded, protesting, into the back of a police van. (Lancelot's earlier hacking and slaying of a narrating Historian having been taken into account)

[[Category:Annotations|Jingo/Annotations]]

Talk:Willikins

2023-03-26T16:06:42Z

Tag:

Isn't there a reference in {{NW}} to Willikins being just the mere under-boy's assistant gofer, or something equally minimalist, in the Ramkin householD? It's the scene where Vimes has been pitched back in time 30 years but, not being fully aware of this, sprints back "home" to a house that isn't his home any more, bursts in, demands to speak to Willikins. The then butler (who really isn't paid for this sort of thing, and certainly does not have Willikins' street-fighting acumen) gets haughty, tells Vimes that if he's family he should know better than to come to the front door... Vimes then punches him out, and is only forced to leave by a younger Sybil ("She'd been so young! She looked sixteen!" [[User:Wonderful Fanny|Wonderful Fanny]]) going for him with a two-handed broadsword in defense of old Forsythe. (At this point he realises he really HAS fallen thirty years into the past: it also enables the ungallant to put an age to Sybil). So maybe worth mentioning: Willikins has spent a lifetime in the Ramkin family service, punctuated briefly by military service. I don't have {{NW}} to hand right now, though, so I can't remember Willikin's exact lowly position in the below-stairs heirarchy at this time.--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 11:18, 3 December 2007 (CET)

Another thought that occurs here..... as annotation, doesn't one Bruce Wayne have a butler who is perfect in all the standard butlering skills, including the optional extras of helping to actively deter assassins, martial arts, streetfighting and so forth? As Bruce Wayne is also a crimefighter who has to wear a silly uniform involving tights, this may be pertinent--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 11:24, 3 December 2007 (CET)...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Willikins has an (unnamed) appearance as the anonymous family butler of the Rankin household near the end of {{G!G!}}? He opens the door for Vimes to tell him that Sybil's around back with the dragons. [[User:Doctor Whiteface|Doctor Whiteface]] 04:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
: He'd be very old, now, in that case. The butler at the time was named "Forsythe"; Willikins was mentioned but did not appear as [[the Boy]]. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 15:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
:Yes, I would agree that it was not Willikins who opened the door to Vimes at the end of {{G!G!}} I think that must have been old Forsythe, based on the description: "To his amazement the door was opened by a butler, so elderly that he might have been resurrected by the knocking." [[User:Wonderful Fanny|Wonderful Fanny]]

Regarding the connection to Jeeves, I'm not sure that Willikins could be considered as more intelligent than Sam, and also appears to set great store by Sam's opinions (from memory he seeks reassurance about joining the regiments in Jingo), something that PG Wodehose's character would not do. He reminds me more of Parker from the Thunderbirds. --[[User:Megahurts|Megahurts]] 08:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
:But they all proceed from Jeeves (and The Admirable Crichton before him). --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 15:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

==Rob Wilkins==
It surprises me that no one has mentioned that Rob Wilkins worked with Sir Terry for more than twenty years, first as his personal assistant and later as his business manager, and indeed has now produced a memoir of this time. Surely the origin of the name Willikins?

==His conflicted youth==
Now, Willikins seems to have been [[The Boy]] at the Ramkin mansion at the time of the [[Glorious Revolution]]. This would have had him living in the house in [[Ankh (city)|Ankh]] and deterred from participation in the activities of the [[Shamlegger Street]] Rude Boys. It would also suggest that he was several years younger than [[Sam Vimes]] (ca. 18 years) since a lad of his talent must have advanced to Footman or such by then. How would Sam ever have encountered him in a rumble in the Shades? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 19:51, 26 December 2012 (PST)
:Yes, old Forsythe refers to Willikins as the scullery boy in {{NW}}. And I agree that Willikins' involvement in Shamlegger gang doesn't quite fit with growing up in Ramkin service. [[User:Wonderful Fanny|Wonderful Fanny]]
== Guild of domestic servants ==

Is there a reference somewhere to Willikins having rank in a Guild of Butlers, Senior Domestic Servants and Gentlemen's Gentlemen? I'm really not sure if this is in canon or fanfic... (mind rotted by fan writing) and I don't want to add it till I'm sure it's canon...[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 01:46, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
:Someone added a Butlers' Guild to the [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork]] page, without support. I don't remember it. Fanfic is a mixed blessing. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:22, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Found it! The [[Guild of Butlers, Valets and Gentlemen's Gentlemen]]. It's described in {{CAM}}[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 21:59, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
:Yes, indeed. In {{SN}}, when Sam offers Willikins a drink at the Ramkin estate, he declines, saying, "It's just not done, sir. I would be a laughingstock in the League of Gentlemen's Gentlemen if I was so impertinent as to have a drink with my employer. It would be getting ideas above my station, sir."[[User:Wonderful Fanny|Wonderful Fanny]]

Book:Hogfather/Annotations

2023-03-26T15:46:15Z

Tag:

== Annotations for {{H}}==

* Although this is primarily a Death book, TP makes a heroic effort to get as many different characters into this "holiday special" book as possible: eg, the wizards and the Canting Crew (no witches though), as well as mentions of lands from several books (Omnia, Klatch, the Agatean Empire, etc).

* "'...yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.'". References the 21 September 1897 New York Sun editorial, {{wp|Yes_Virginia_There_Is_A_Santa_Claus|Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus}}

* The idea of a skeleton dressing in red, and giving presents during a winter holiday is also the main plot of Tim Burton's stop motion film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, in which the main character, Jack Skellington, the skeleton king of Halloween, becomes enthralled with Christmas, and decides to dress up as Santa Claus, or "Sandy Claws" as he is mistakenly called. Jack flies around the world, giving children his idea of Christmas presents, which being from the land of Halloween, are terrifying and dangerous.

* [[Visit]]'s attitude to Hogswatch, as expressed to an uncomprehending [[Nobby Nobbs]], places the [[Omnia|Omnian]] faith very firmly in the same camp as Roundworld's Jehovah's Witnesses. The Witnesses are a Christian sect who very firmly believe that Christmas is irrelevant to Christianity and is, in fact, a pagan festival which has been slipped in by Satan to mislead and taint the Faithful and which no true believer should even ''think'' of celebrating. Similarly, the Omnians ignore Hogswatch from a similar position of supposed theological superiority.

* "I spent hours with my nose pressed up against the window... until they heard me callin', and unfroze me.", possible reference to a similar scene in {{wp|A_Christmas_Story|A Christmas Story}}, where the main character gets his tongue frozen to a flagpole.

* "Assault and battery included." - parodies the Roundworld phrases "assault and battery" and "batteries not included". Given the state of electrical technology on the disk, do they really have batteries? Given that the oldest ever battery thus far discovered on Roundworld is dated in the first few centuries AD (the discovery was apparently poorly documented at the time and dating has been done on the style of pottery involved, so is a little vague), it's entirely possible that crude electrochemical cells may well exist on the Discworld. Whether they'd refer to them as "batteries" is another matter. Then again, in an '''assault''' you might find a '''battery''' of crossbows.

* "Come along, Mr Wizard." - possible reference to Don Herbert, popularly known as {{wp|Mr_wizard|"Mr. Wizard"}}. He was an American television personality and hosted two television shows about science aimed at children.

* "+++ Why Do You Think You Are A Tickler? +++" - Hex's answers are reminiscent of {{wp|ELIZA|ELIZA}}, a 1966 computer program designed to parody a psychiatrist.

* "Hex's 'Anthill Inside' sticker" - parody of {{wp|Intel_Corporation|Intel}}'s "Intel Inside" advertising campaign.

* "'It's, er, beehives.' [...] It's actually amazing how much information you can store on one honeycomb." - assuming [[Granny Weatherwax]]'s theory is correct (that all bees are part of a larger [[Swarm]]), Hex may've tapped into a very large and powerful source of information.

* "Mousse de la Boue dans une Panier de la Pate de Chaussures [...] It's not our fault if even Quirmians don't understand restaurant Quirmian [...] Brodequin roti Facon Ombres [...] Languette braisse [...] Sole d'une Bonne Femme [...] Servis dans un Coulis de Terre en I'Eau [...] Cafe de Terre" - Quirmian appears to be the Discworld equivalent of {{wp|French|French}}.

* "Reverse thaumaturgy, yes, certainly." - a reference to {{wp|Reverse_engineering|Reverse engineering}}

* "'There are magic wardrobes,' said Violet nervously. 'If you go into them, you come out in a magic land.'" - a reference to C.S. Lewis' {{wp|The_Lion%2C_The_Witch%2C_And_The_Wardrobe|The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe}}

* The events of this book take place between {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, meaning that [[Rincewind]] is just starting his survival course on [[XXXX]]. Oddly, the Librarian doesn't ask Death/the Hogfather for Rincewind's safe return (it's less surprising that no one else remembers Rincewind -- in {{TLC}}, Ridcully repeatedly has to be reminded that Rincewind is a person, not a type of cheese).

* The square root of 27.4 is very nearly 5.2345

* "EQUALS 17,857 TONS." - one of the frequent [[57]] references in TP's work

* ''Non Timetus Messor'' - the family motto of the extended Death clan. On p375, (Corgi paperback edition), Susan and Jonathan Teatime have an intense discussion as to the ''good taste'' or otherwise of such a family motto. According to Wikipedia, 'Non Timetus Messor' is dog Latin (doggerel). The correct version, 'Noli Timere Messorem', appears on Sir Terry's coat of arms [http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett].

* "This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..." " -- This is a send-up of {{wp|Pascal's Wager|Pascal's wager}}, named after the Quirmian, I mean French, mathematician and philosopher {{wp|Blaise Pascal|Blaise Pascal}}.

* ''Wistful Lying'' seems to be a play on words. Normally wouldn't be worth noting but the usual phrase is "Wishful thinking," where "wishful" is saying something about the future, while "wist" is properly the past participle of "wit," & fits well with the theme of understanding the past to bring it into the present.

== [[Roundworld]] References ==

Direct references to [[Roundworld]]:

* {{wp|Old_Faithful|Old Faithful}}, a geyser
* The {{wp|Copacabana_%28nightclub%29|Copacabana}}, a New York nightclub, also mentioned in the Barry Manilow song of the same name
* {{wp|Valium|Valium}}, brand name for diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety
* The {{wp|Anthropic_principle|anthropic principle}}
* ''Non Timetus Messor'' - the family motto of the extended Death clan. This is, of course, the titler of the best-known song by Gothic rockers and thinking man's heavy rock band the [[Blue Öyster Cult]], '''''Don't Fear The Reaper'''''. An extended scene between Susan and an (unseen) Death on page 19 appears to act out the last verse of the song, albeit with a twist at the end - she is ''not'' especially inclined to run to Him, nor to take His hand and fly away...

(Page references are to the Corgi paperback edition, pp14-19)

''The door burst open and a wind appeared;''

"The candle flame was streaming out horizontally, as though in a howling wind" (p15)

''The candle blew and then disappeared;''

"She looked up. The curtains billowed away from the window, which-

-flung itself open with a clatter.
But there was no wind. At least, no wind in this world."

''The curtains flew, and then He appeared.... saying "Don't be afraid"''

But Susan is bloody annoyed rather than afraid, and she certainly doesn't run to him, nor take his hand...

"Oh no, not AGAIN. not after all this time, Everything had been going so well-"

What deters Death from manifesting and completing the verse is the inopportune appearance of Susan's charge [[Twyla]], who wants her to get rid of a monster. It is clear from the context of the above that Death is in the vicinity and wants to see his grand-daughter. Perhaps this is a professional call to collect the soul, or nearest equivalent, from the spider-like monster which Susan then despatches with a poker, just to prove a point to Twyla... Death must then have thought better of manifesting to an angry grand-daughter with attitude and a poker. But the above is almost exactly as per the song...

Susan returns to bed, bitterly thinking "So they were coming back", and tries to ignore the long thread of wax that suggested the candle had, for just a few seconds, streamed in an otherwise non-existent wind, as mandated by [[Narrative Causality]]...

Tacticus is clearly Tactics+Tacitus, but I can't get rid of the idea it's also an oblique reference to the military leader Caratacus, famously called Caractacus in the Major-General's Song.

p.99 The wren song sounds a lot like "[https://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?songid=4719 Please to See the King]" a carol in which carolers dress a wren in finery & carry it from house to house asking for alms for the king (the wren).

[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/hogfather.html ''Hogfather'' Annotations - The Annotated Pratchett File]

[[Category:Annotations|Hogfather/Annotations]]

Book:Thud!/Annotations

2023-03-20T15:07:58Z

Tag:

Annotations for {{T!}}. Unless otherwise specified, page numbers refer to the UK Doubleday hardback edition.

== General Annotations ==
Annotations about general ideas and concepts in the book, rather than specific passages.
* The 'long dance' of the trolls is likely a reference to the unexpectedly accurate and culturally complex 'long count' of the Mayan calendar. See also the "long chant" of [[Trolls (The Long Earth)|the other trolls]] in [[The Long Earth]] and sequels.
* Right at the end of the book, Colon and Nobbs are on guard duty in the Cave of the Kings. After discussing the state of play between Nobby and his pole-dancer girlfriend Tawneee, Colon, perhaps by association of ideas, reins in an over-enthusiastic Dwarf with the rebuke "No touching, sir, or I'm afraid I shall have to cut your fingers orf". Almost as if he were acting as bouncer in a pole-dancing club, where there is usually a strict rule about touching...

== Specific Annotations ==
;Unnumbered pages:[[Tak]]'s cave, and Dwarven beliefs about the dark in general, very nicely stand Plato's {{wp|Allegory of the cave|Allegory of the cave}} completely on its head.
:A curious coincidence is that Tak, the name of the creator in dwarfish mythology, is also the name of an ancient evil spirit featured in two of Stephen King's novels, ''Desperation'' and ''The Regulators'' (written as Richard Bachman). Like the Summoning Dark, King's Tak comes out of a deep mine and inhabits a human host - in ''Desperation'' it is a police officer who becomes a sort of berserker. The similarities go no nearer than that, but it is slightly unsettling.
;Page 14:“[[Fizz]]” - the editorial cartoonist in the Times is a reference to Hablot Knight Browne, 19th Century English artist, famous as [[wikipedia:Phiz|Phiz]], the illustrator of the best-known books by Charles Dickens, and sometime cartoonist for ''Punch'' magazine.
;Page 17:[[Otto Chriek]] – “Little, fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak...his carefully cut widow’s peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent.... He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire.” Otto resembles the campy vampire, made famous by Bela Lugosi.
;Page 19:the “Ankh-Morpork Mission of the Uberwald League of Temperance" and black ribbons - A reference to the various temperance organizations in active in the 19th Century in Britain and other countries, such as the [[wikipedia:Woman's Christian Temperance Union|Woman's Christian Temperance Movement]] (which used a white ribbon.) These organizations required members to take a pledge of abstinence from all forms of alcohol. The black ribbons are reminiscent of the scarlet sash worn by members of the Junior Anti-Sex League in George Orwell’s 1984. Similar red ribbons were worn by the {{wp|Komsomol|Komsomolyet}} (Коммунисти́ческий сою́з молодёжи) movement - the Soviet Communist Party's youth wing.
:Nineteenth century slang for someone involved in a temperance movement - or more generally a tee-totaler - was a 'Blue Ribboner'.
:Although, naturally, red is the ''last'' colour a group of reformed B-word addicts would choose for their ribbons!
;Page 30:''Colon: “Have you heard of Mr Shine?”
:Vimes: “Do you clean stubborn surfaces with it?”''
:A reference to Mr. Clean cleanser, a product made by Proctor and Gamble. Or possibly, given that Pterry is British, to Mr Sheen brand of cleaners and polishes made by Reckitt Benckiser.

;Page 31:''"...[[Koom Valley]]. Gods damn the wretched place..."''
:Foreshadowing.

;Page 32:“Koom Valley Day” - Koom Valley Day and the ongoing theme of the dwarves and trolls reliving an ancient battle again and again is reminiscent of the parades held in Northern Ireland by Unionist and Republican groups. The largest of these are usually held by Protestant organizations on the twelfth of July in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne. The Republican parades celebrating the Easter Rising can be large, but are not nearly so provocative, as they are not deliberately routed through Loyalist areas.

;Page 34 (US page 25):"That pea-brained idiot at the [[Post Office]] has only gone and issued a Koom Valley stamp!"
:A slightly obscure cross-book joke: in {{GP}}, [[Moist von Lipwig]] handed over handling of the issuing of new stamps to [[Stanley]], who is said on (US p. 33) of said book to have been "raised '''by''' peas", a "[v]ery unusual case. A good lad [...], but he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning." Thus, "pea-brained" is here not so much an insult as a descriptor.

;Page 37:"And just when the day couldn't get any worse, I've got to interview a damned [[Vampires|vampire]]."
:So what we have here is an {{wp|Interview With A Vampire|Interview With A Vampire}}.

;Page 42:Sir Reynold Stitched, curator of the Ankh-Morpork Royal Art Museum, is a reference to 18th century British painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
:It has also been suggested that there is a strong resemblance, in voice and manner and aesthetic, to Roundworld art critic Brian Sewell (of the London Evening Standard, of the hernia-inducing Sunday heavy papers, and a frequently used pundit on those late night TV arts shows like "Newsnight Review" and "The South Bank Show"). Read his surname as "Sew-Well" in the (non)-seamstress [[Sandra Battye]] sense, and it can be seen how he mutates into "Reynold Stitched".
:For a sample of the real-life Reynold Stitched in action as art critic, try this: [http://iiiiiiandy.vodpod.com/video/37749-last-of-the-medici-brian-sewell]

;Page 42:The Battle of Koom Valley painting – a cyclorama is a panoramic painting on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to provide a viewer standing in the middle of the cylinder with a 360° view of the painting. The intended effect is to make a viewer, surrounded by the panoramic image, feel as if they were standing in the midst of a historic event or famous place. Panoramas were invented by Irishman Robert Barker, who wanted to find a way to capture the panoramic view from Calton Hill in central Edinburgh, Scotland. He subsequently opened his first cyclorama in Edinburgh in 1787. Cycloramas were very popular in the late 19th century. (from Wikipedia)

;Page 48:painting of "The Goddess [[Anoia]] Arising from the Cutlery" - A reference to The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Unfortunately for Nobby, it does not have an urn or plinth in it, but there are two cherubs.

;Page 48 (Corgi page 57):"The title was ''The [[Koom Valley Codex]]''."
:The whole craze about people buying this book claiming secret messages in a painting is an obvious reference to ''The DaVinci Code'', which claims that there are secrets hidden in the Mona Lisa. ''The DaVinci Code'' is a work of fiction, though, whereas ''The Koom Valley Codex'' seems to be a nonfiction book. However, the reader's attention is drawn to the ''{{wp|The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail|The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail}}'' by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, which in the 1980s enjoyed a certain vogue and later on served to inspire ''The DaVinci Code''. (Dan Brown's character Leigh Teabing is a direct homage to HBHG's authors.) In these books, the authors link together a set of historical puzzles and anomalies, including the claim that occult secrets are encoded in a series of well-known paintings, to support the hypothesis that Jesus Christ did not actually die on the cross. (In fact, he was resuscitated from near-death, and smuggled to the South of France by Joseph of Arimathea to live out a quiet life in retirement. He married Mary Magdalene, and their bloodline not only became that of the Kings of France, it persists today in exceptionally able or gifted people around the world.) If true, this claim would have the effect of wholly discrediting Christianity, and they claim that the truth has thus been suppressed by generations of Popes. It's worth noting that one of the authors has since acknowledged that the content of the book was a hoax.
:More obscurely, the obsessives who searched Rascal's painting for clues are reminiscent of the real-life searchers (Masqueraders) who'd tromped all over England looking for a jeweled-hare pendant from 1979 to 1982, guided by clues they'd found (or imagined finding) in Kit Williams' picture book ''Masquerade''. As in ''Thud!'', the hare was initially found by searchers who'd resorted to unscrupulous methods (murder by the deep-downers, milking Williams' ex-girlfriend for hints by the hare's "finders"), but their fraud was exposed and the treasure retrieved/protected from them.

;Page 57 (Corgi page 68):"War, [[Nobby]]. What is it good for?" he said.
:"Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
:"Absol- Well, okay."
:A reference to the popular song by Edwin Starr, whose refrain goes, "War: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing." It has been covered by countless bands since then.
:Nobby's suggestions that war might be good for freeing slaves or for defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor appear to refer to the American Civil War and World War II, often considered just or worthwhile wars for those reasons.
:Also - to my mind at least - a clear reference to the famous scene in Monty Python's ''The Life of Brian'', when Reg (the leader of one of the innumerable rebellious groups that infest Judea) asks "What have the Romans ever done for us?" and is then more than exasperated when his (equally anti-Roman) collaborators proceed to enumerate about fifteen immensely impressive achievements of the Romans that have made life far better for the peoples they have subjugated.

;Page 59:“Do not . . . what do they call it. . . go spare?” - “Spare - adj. British. Out of control, furious. The word usually in the form ‘go spare’ has been in use since before World War II. It derives from the notion of excess.” From “The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang” by Tony Thorne (Pantheon Books, New York, 1990). (from http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/9/messages/572.html)

;Page 62:"I am the [[Dis-Organiser]] Mark Five, "The Gooseberry™"..."
:The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device. A "gooseberry" is an unwelcome intruder on a romantic assignation; a fifth wheel.

;Page 63:"Then would you like to engage the handy-to-use Bluenose™ Integrated Messenger Service?"
:Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. A "bluenose" is a Whitehousian crusader against pornographic ("blue") material, particularly one that is suspiciously good at locating said material in order to be offended by it. These two jokes are evidently Pterry having a little dig at the irony that "social" media devices are often (mainly?) used for the twin purposes of ruining human interaction and solo sex.

;Page 63:"How about a game of Splong!™, specially devised for the Mark Five?" pleaded the imp. "I have the bats right here."
:Probably a reference to Pong, possibly the very first graphical video game, which was similar to ping-pong/table tennis.

;Page 63:"My iHUM™ function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all time—"
:{{wp|iTunes|iTunes}} is a digital media player application developed by Apple Computers, for playing and organizing digital music and video files, and for transferring them to its iPod portable MP3 players (and, later, iPhones). iPhones now access music etc independently, and on macOS iTunes has been replaced by seperate apps for Music, Podcasts, Books and TV, but its still available for Windows. There's also a reference to LucasArt's iMUSE™ technology, which changed the music throughout some of its most popular third-person adventures, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and predated the iPod by a significant amount. Also note that the word itself is "iHUM"; we can assume that the imp simply hums the tune in question rather than replicating it exactly. It also suggests, if one is prepared to mentally squint, the polite euphemism used to describe their trade by Assassins: they ''inhume'' rather than ''murder''. Does this suggest that the imp is perfectly capable of ''murdering'' a tune, rather like those ever-so-subtly not-quite-right MIDI files which digitize otherwise quite nice tunes and turn them into a sort of lift muzak? (Shades of the robotic Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Company Choir in Douglas Adams' ''Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy'' singing ''Share and Enjoy'' a flattened semi-fifth out of tune.)

;Page 69]:"[...] he noticed the symbol chalked on the wall over the door: a circle, with a horizontal line through it."
:The "Long Dark" rune, the symbol for a mine, is the same shape as the sign for the London Underground. This may be foreshadowing to the Patricians plans for the Devices, such as mining carts loaded with people (wink wink).

;Pages 74, 93:The “Following Dark” symbol which Helmclever makes with his spilled coffee (explained by Carrot later) is a circle with two diagonal lines through it. This is similar to British roadsigns meaning “No Parking.”

;Page 83:"There were twists and turns, in dim tunnels that all seemed alike."
:Referring to the text-based computer game ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', which contains the memorable line "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

;Page 110:The [[Breccia]] - Ankh-Morpork`s version of the Mafia - is named after a type of rock, specifically "rock composed of sharp fragments embedded in a fine-grained matrix (as sand or clay)" (thanks Merriam-Webster).

;Page 112:Chrysoprase says “Kew Eee Dee” - a phonetic version of QED (''quod erat demonstrandum''), Latin meaning “Thus it is proven.”

;Page 114:Chrysoprase – “And dey cuts Slab wi ‘ bad sulphides an’ cooks it up wi’ ferric chloride and crap like dat. You thought that Slab was bad? You wait till you see Slide.”
:This could be a reference to the introduction of crack cocaine. It's also no wonder ferric chloride has a nasty effect on trolls' silicon brains - it's used to cut circuit boards.

;Page 151: “the clacks company” – The Clacks is the Discworld version of a telegraph or fax machine, and is based on the optical telegraphs popular in the late 18th - early 19th century, especially in France. They were introduced in {{TFE}}, but feature most significantly in {{GP}}; see [[Book:Going Postal/Annotations|the annotations for the latter book]] for more.

— "That’s a feast for vurms." — ''A Feast for Wormes'' was a 1620 book of poems by English poet Francis Quarles. The titular poem related to human mortality, and the title itself has entered the language as a sort of ''memento mori'' akin to "ashes to ashes". Quarles' title is most probably a reference itself to Henry IV, Part One where the line started by Hotspur and finished by Hal is -"no, Percy, thou art dust
And food for--"
"...for worms, brave Percy..."

— “And, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable,” Sybil added. — In 1981, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration attempted to reclassify tomato ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables rather than condiments for school lunch programs. The goal was to relax nutritional requirements and cut costs. The measure met with resounding disapproval and was eventually rejected.

;Page 157 (Corgi page 189):"They're [[Agatean Empire|Agatean]] ''[[Numknuts|numknuts]]'', sir."
:Though the book describes [[Andy Hancock|Special Constable Hancock]]'s "new Truncheon" as something very similar to Japanese Nunchukus (usually pronounced "Nunchucks"), the word "numb-nuts" is an insult as well.

;Pages 169-170 (Harper Torch paperback edition):The footnote describing Empirical Crescent, built by [[Bergholt Stuttley Johnson|Bloody Stupid Johnson]]: "On the outside it was a normal terraced crescent of the period, built of honey-colored stone with the occasional pillar or cherub nailed on. Inside, the front door of No. 1 opened into the back bedroom of No. 15, the ground-floor front window of No. 3 showed the view appropriate to the second floor of No. 9, and smoke from the dining-room fireplace of No. 2 cane out of the chimney of No. 19."
:Reminiscent of the tesseract house in Robert Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House" where the stairs that should lead to the roof deliver you to the ground floor, going out the front door puts you on the second floor and various windows show views of other rooms in the house, a view straight down the side of the Empire State Building (even though the house is in California),an upside down seascape, absolute nothingness and a strange desert landscape.

;Page 178:Sally says “Well here’s another fine mess.” - a variation of the catch phrase from Laurel and Hardy: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

;Page 181:''“‘Tawnee’s actually only her pole name,’ Nobby said. ‘She says no one would be interested in an exotic dancer with a name like Betty. She says it sounds like she’d be better with a bowl of cake mixture.’”''
:A reference to both Betty Crocker, a fictional character invented for a brand of cake mixes, and also famous 1940s and '50s burlesque perfomer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzNW7IBXL_A Betty Page], a woman still rated as an icon today who has inspired the acts of modern burlesque strippers such as Dita von Teese. Less likely, but still possible, is Betty Howard, another stripper famous in the 1940s.

;Page 192:''“Brick thought [...] the future was looking so bright that he had to walk along with his eyes almost shut...”''
:A reference to the 1986 hit by Timbuk 3 “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”.

;Page 193:Pseudopolis Yard – a reference to Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England.

;Page 199:Vimes is reflecting on the military axiom "couldn't tell if it were arseholes or breakfast time". Vimes considers that however confused he got through lack of sleep, he'd still be able to tell the difference, as "only one involves coffee". Vimes has so far not heard of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema coffee enema], then. Maybe his ignorance should be cherished.

;Page 215:"Gabbro is so good at playing from the [[Dwarfs|dwarf]] viewpoint that his [[Trolls|troll]] game is suffering, and he wants to go to Copperhead to learn from some of the dwarf thudmeisters there."
:Gabbro is a kind of igneous rock.

;Page 214:the game [[Thud]] was developed by Trevor Truran, Bernard the stout, Cunning Artificer to the Gentry, and Terry Pratchett. The game is based on games of the Tafl family, which are distinguished by the unequal size of the opposing forces. The objective is usually for the force of fewer numbers to take all the members of the larger forces whose aim is generally to stop them doing so. A fragment of a gaming board of 18 x 18 squares, found in Wimose, Fyn, Denmark dated prior to AD400 is the first evidence of a game called Tafl, which also regularly appears in the early Icelandic sagas. (from http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Tafl.html)

;Page 215:"Water dripping on a stone, dissolving and removing. Changing the shape of the world, one drop at a time. Water dripping on a stone, Commander."
:This entire exchange with Vimes is a nice bit of foreshadowing.
:"Who knows what old evil exists in the deep darkness under the mountains?"
:There is a hint of ''Lord of the Rings'' here: "There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." And: "They delved [...] too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled: Durins Bane."

;Page 238:"'But it's pretty much a 24/8 job for us,' said Angua."
:24/7 is the usual phrase (24 hours a day, 7 days a week), but it can be easy to forget that the [[Discworld calendar|Discworld week]] contains 8 days. The Welsh word for week is "wythnos" meaning eight nights.

;Page 243:In the immediate aftermath of the attempt to kill not just Vimes but also Sybil and Young Sam, a nervous deputation of dwarfish civil dignitaries visits Pseudopolis Yard at least partially to assure Vimes they had no part in it. Vimes, under the influence of the vengeful and vindictive Summoning Dark, is in no mood to be diplomatic and his first instinct is to humiliate these dwarfs. His inner dialogue at this point is a stream of hateful invective: "You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters!" (etc., for half a page of internalised diatribe)
:It is interesting that American TV cop Sledge Hammer not only ''thinks'' like this, he ''speaks'' and ''acts'' like this - ''all the time''. In fact, one of Sledge's favourite pieces of invective to a suspect is a variation on a theme of "scum-sucker".(Or even ''yoghurt-eater.'') Sledge Hammer is a parody on Dirty Harry, with all the knobs turned up to way past eleven... but this cop-with-issues, played for laughs admittedly, must have at some point contracted the Summoning Dark! Now I'm still looking for any instance of Vimes saying ''Trust me, I know what I'm doing''...
:Sledge is generally prevented (by restraint or persuasion) from causing extreme mayhem, by his totally-opposite-to-the-point-of-cliché partner. Sergeant Dori Doreau is a thoughtful, gentle, liberally inclined policewoman who acts as the brains of the outfit, while Sledge provides the muscle. Later in the book, Angua and Cheery assume the Doreau role to Vimes' Sledge, and bring him back to rational normality from a beserker-like frenzy.

;Page 249/US paperback page 258:"Turd races in the gutter [...] with the name [[Poohsticks|Poosticks]]".
:A reference to the game of Pooh-sticks from the Winnie the Pooh stories, where the characters have races with sticks floating under a bridge. Also mentioned at this point is 'Tiddley-rats', the Ankh-Morpork gutter version of Tiddlywinks.

;Page 253:"There's throwin' up and yellin' and unladylike behavior and takin' their vests off and I don't know what. 'S called...' he scratched his head '... [[Roistering|minge drinking]]."
:Close, Fred. It's ''Binge'' Drinking. "Minge" is also (UK?) slang for [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=minge female pubic hair].

;Page 274:Constable [[Visit-the-Ungodly-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets]], with his door-to-door evangelical zeal, is a reference to Roundworld Jehovah’s Witnesses, who distribute their religious pamphlets in a similar manner. His god, [[Om]], is named for the mystical or sacred syllable in many Indian religions, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

;Page 290:Detritus’ crossbow, “The [[Piecemaker]]” - a pun on the famous handgun, the [[wikipedia:Colt_Single_Action_Army|Colt "Peacemaker" .45 revolver]], as supposedly used by Wyatt Earp.

;Page 290/Corgi page 352:"Something happens at thirteen miles an hour. I don't know what."
:The speed limit and flaming cabbages is probably a nod to the ''Back to the Future'' films, where the DeLorean traveled through time when it reached 88 mph, leaving flaming trails behind it. Pratchett was known to be a fan of the films; as recounted in {{ALWF}} he once almost bought a DeLorean.

;Page 294/UK paperback page 356:"He pulled out a battered volume entitled ''Walking in the Koom Valley'', by [[Eric Wheelbrace]]..."
:Punning on the walker, author, and illustrator Alfred Wainwright.

;Page 298:"The roads up there are pretty bad, you know,' said Vimes. 'So I believe, sir. However, that will not, in fact, matter."
:Another possible reference to ''Back to the Future'', in particular Doc Brown's line: "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads".

;Audible part 2, 2:55:18:"... Brick, who had not picked a good day to go cold turkey, it was turning out to be frozen Roc."
:Aside from the rock (stone) / roc (giant mythical bird) pun in the punchline, the setup is also funny as a reference to the "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue!" running gag by the air-traffic control tower supervisor in 1980 comedy film ''[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Airplane!#Steve_McCroskey Airplane!]'' (known as ''Flying High!'' in some countries). This may not have been intended, but the scene does involve a rough landing of a flying vehicle (into cabbages).

;Page 301:Sybil’s friends from the Quirm College for Young Ladies “all seemed to have names like Bunny or Bubbles” – a reference to stereotypical British public-school girls' nicknames.

;Page 305/Corgi p. 368:"The other thing he noticed was that the landscape ahead was strangely bluish, while behind them it had a relatively red tint."
:This is a reference to the blue and red shift, a physical phenomenon caused by the Doppler effect. When you move toward a source of waves, the wave frequency gets higher; when you move away from the wave source, you observe a lower frequency. Blue has a higher frequency than red, so things you're moving toward look bluer, and things you're moving away from look redder. This effect is only noticeable when you're moving at a significant fraction of light speed - like, for galaxies moving away from the Milky Way. But on Discworld, the speed of light is only a few hundred miles per hour (rather than nearly a billion miles per hour in our world). So the coach at 60 mph or so according to Willikins' calculation is going fast enough to see blue and red shift. This is also the only time vehicles carrying officers of the Watch have red and blue lights, just as police cars do in many places on Roundworld.

;Page 328:“''Quis custodiet ipsos custodes''” - a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves?”, and is variously translated in colloquial English as “Who watches the watchmen?”, “Who watches the watchers?”, “Who will guard the guards?”, “Who shall watch the watchers?”, “Who polices the police?” etc. Made famous in the graphic novel ''[[wikipedia:Watchmen|Watchmen]]'' by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The slogan is seen and heard throughout the novel, on the basis that the ''Watchmen'' are vigilantes (i.e. costumed superheroes) that operate outside of the law where protective checks and balances exist, so there is no oversight to what they might do. This is taken to extremes: several of the "heroes" kill criminals they encounter.

;Page 329:''... until they reached a stalagmite. It was about eight feet high. It was a troll. It wasn't a rock shaped like a troll, it was a troll.'''
:Although items left in limestone caves can become coated (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Shipton%27s_Cave Mother Shipton's cave]), I can find no known example of an actual human being petrified in this way. However in Rider Haggard's story, King Solomons Mines (1885, p160), the Kukuana people preserve their deceased monarchs in this way.

:... presently we observed that from the roof of the chamber the water fell steadily, drip! drop! drip! on to the neck of the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed what the film was — Twala's body was being transformed into a stalactite.

;Page 344:''"This is just the story of the Things Tak Wrote", Cheery whispered to Vimes'''
:This must have been a loud whisper, as a couple of pages previously, Vimes had sent Cheery back to the town.

;Page 348:''"Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand. 'It is like using an axe,' he said, to no one in particular, 'but without the axe...'"''
:It seems [[Bashfull Bashfullsson|Bashfullsson]] has been practising something similar to [[Roundworld|Roundworld's]] ''Karate'' (which is Japanese for 'Empty Hand').

[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/thud.html''Thud!'' Annotations - The Annotated Pratchett File]

[[Category:Annotations|Thud!]]

Talk:Gaspode

2023-03-10T10:38:39Z

Tag:

==Licky end==

I don't know if it is worth pointing out that Lickey End is a village in the Bromsgrove district of Worcestershire. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lickey_End Lickey End] [[User:Tag|Tag]] ([[User talk:Tag|talk]]) 10:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

==Gaspode's legs==
I'm kinda new to this whole Wiki thing, so I don't want to go messing with the article until I'm more confident of my ability.
First, I don't beleive Gaspode was missing a leg in Moving Pictures. One leg is badly injured near the end of the book, but he manages to walk on it. Can someone confirm this? It's possible I just missed the part where it said he had three legs.
Also, At the end of Moving Pictures the Holy Wood magic that initialy allowed him to speak begins to fade and he loses the ability, though he is aware of this and still appears to be able to think in human terms. Perhaps eating the refuse around Unseen University resparked the ability?
Though he is not identified by name, there is mention of Foul Ole Ron's dog in Soul music. Is this Gaspode as well? If so, should that novel be listed as one he appears in? --[[User:Darthbeandip|Darthbeandip]] 14:24, 16 February 2007 (CET)

No, I don't think he's missing any legs. Yes, he's been hanging out with Foul Ole Ron for years.--[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 16:19, 16 February 2007 (CET)

I added Soul Music under Cameos.--[[User:Darthbeandip|Darthbeandip]] 16:47, 18 April 2007 (CEST)

==Speaking Ability==

The end of {{MP}} is fairly psychedelic. Gaspode seems to lose his human voice, among other phenomena, but he could speak when he first appeared, never having been to Holy Wood. He talks wherever we meet him again; perhaps he just needed to get back for some leftovers at UU. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 00:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

== humans hearing Gaspode ==
Sam Vimes heard him - though without knowing who was speaking - in "Feet Of Clay"... in the midst of Ron's muttering, a clear sentence ("Queen Molly says to watch your back...") emerges, obviously spoken by Gaspode. (unsigned comment by [[User:MikePhoenix|MikePhoenix]], 5 February 2017‎)

Burleigh & Stronginthearm

2023-03-07T12:27:01Z

Tag:

– '''Crossbow makers to the nobility''', and manufacturers of a full catalog of personal arms and military weapons systems, including:
*The "Meteor" automated throwing-star hurler. It was backed up with an unusual guarantee: money back if not completely decapitated;
*Mark IV "Dervish" Razor Bolas;
*"Viper" Mk 3 crossbows, which kill people but leave buildings standing, costing over AM$ 100 each;
*"Shureshotte Five", a bow for the expert (with muscles; it has a hundred-pound draw);
*The "Streetsweeper" axe ("Win By A Neck!");
*The [["Great Leveller" Cart-Mounted Ten-Bank 500-Pound Crossbow]];

The high-tech, collapsible [[Piecemaker|"Piecemaker" Mark IX]] crossbow was banned as uncomfortably filling a place between the "[[spring-gonne|one-shot]]" and the [[gonne]]. One of three remaining samples was buried in the cellar of [[Ramkin Residence|One Scoone Avenue]], however, and one of its special bolts turns up mysteriously in {{SN}}.

Their products, sold in order to help peace-loving friendly states perform minor police actions in unruly outlying parts of their nations (naturally) are renowned Disc-wide, a fact [[Samuel Vimes]] acknowledged when he personally equipped the Watch in [[Bonk]] with "everything in their current catalogue, and send the bill to me". The firm would be a great military asset to the city but for the fact that they sell arms all over the continent, and to [[Klatch]].

Mr. [[Burleigh]] runs the business and financial side; he is also the President of the [[Guild of Armourers]].
Rarely seen [[Pors Stronginthearm]], who makes a brief appearance as a Dwarf civic dignitary in {{T!}}, seems to be the technical genius behind the product. Their partnership has entered the language signifying serious, expensive armament, as some say "This house protected by Smith and Wesson", elsewhere in the multiverse.

It has also come to mean a top-notch job, which speaks volumes for their craftsmanship.

The firm has been in existence for about 25 years before the latest books, as [[Sam Vimes]] had a rather embarrassing moment in {{NW}} after being blown back about 30 years in time:
<blockquote>'Yeah? On whose authority?' 
Vimes swung his crossbow up. 'Mr Burleigh and Mr Stronginthearm,' he said, and grinned. 
The two guards exchanged glances. 'Who the hell are they?' said one. 
There was a moment of silence followed by Vimes saying, out of the corner of his mouth: 'Lance-Constable Vimes?' 
'Yessir?' 
'What make are these crossbows?' 
'Er... Hines Brothers, sir. They're Mark Threes.' 
'Not Burleigh and Stronginthearm?' 
'Never heard of them, sir.' 
Damn. Five years too early, thought Vimes. And it was such a good line, too.</blockquote>

Mr Burleigh, or perhaps members of the Burleigh family, have since diversified into other interesting related businesses which no doubt capitalise on marketing interesting spin-offs from arms and armour technology. These include:-

* [[Burleigh and Spoke]]
* [[James and Burleigh]], in Coney Catcher Road* (H5 - I5), who specialise in making birdcages.

==Annotation==

For the non-British folks, the renowned English armaments genius of the XIX century {{wp|William_George_Armstrong,_1st_Baron_Armstrong|William George Armstrong}} certainly rings a bell about the origin of the name.

The name Burleigh & Stronginthearm appears to echo the [[Roundworld]] tradition of dynamic weapons manufacturing duos such as Smith & Wesson and Heckler & Koch.

It is worth also noting that '''Burleigh''' is a homonym for "burly", a word meaning well-built and physically powerful. Hence "burly and strong in the arm", which can be considered a case of {{wp|Nominative determinism|nominative determinism}}.

From Dirty Harry IV [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSAyz5c3JmM]
<blockquote>DH: "Well we're not going to just let you walk out of here" 
Robber: "Who's "We" sucker?" 
DH: "Smith, Wesson and me!" 

[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses]]
[[de:Burlich und Starkimarm]]

Burleigh & Stronginthearm

2023-03-07T12:26:36Z

Tag:

– '''Crossbow makers to the nobility''', and manufacturers of a full catalog of personal arms and military weapons systems, including:
*The "Meteor" automated throwing-star hurler. It was backed up with an unusual guarantee: money back if not completely decapitated;
*Mark IV "Dervish" Razor Bolas;
*"Viper" Mk 3 crossbows, which kill people but leave buildings standing, costing over AM$ 100 each;
*"Shureshotte Five", a bow for the expert (with muscles; it has a hundred-pound draw);
*The "Streetsweeper" axe ("Win By A Neck!");
*The [["Great Leveller" Cart-Mounted Ten-Bank 500-Pound Crossbow]];

The high-tech, collapsible [[Piecemaker|"Piecemaker" Mark IX]] crossbow was banned as uncomfortably filling a place between the "[[spring-gonne|one-shot]]" and the [[gonne]]. One of three remaining samples was buried in the cellar of [[Ramkin Residence|One Scoone Avenue]], however, and one of its special bolts turns up mysteriously in {{SN}}.

Their products, sold in order to help peace-loving friendly states perform minor police actions in unruly outlying parts of their nations (naturally) are renowned Disc-wide, a fact [[Samuel Vimes]] acknowledged when he personally equipped the Watch in [[Bonk]] with "everything in their current catalogue, and send the bill to me". The firm would be a great military asset to the city but for the fact that they sell arms all over the continent, and to [[Klatch]].

Mr. [[Burleigh]] runs the business and financial side; he is also the President of the [[Guild of Armourers]].
Rarely seen [[Pors Stronginthearm]], who makes a brief appearance as a Dwarf civic dignitary in {{T!}}, seems to be the technical genius behind the product. Their partnership has entered the language signifying serious, expensive armament, as some say "This house protected by Smith and Wesson", elsewhere in the multiverse.

It has also come to mean a top-notch job, which speaks volumes for their craftsmanship.

The firm has been in existence for about 25 years before the latest books, as [[Sam Vimes]] had a rather embarrassing moment in {{NW}} after being blown back about 30 years in time:
<blockquote>'Yeah? On whose authority?' 
Vimes swung his crossbow up. 'Mr Burleigh and Mr Stronginthearm,' he said, and grinned. 
The two guards exchanged glances. 'Who the hell are they?' said one. 
There was a moment of silence followed by Vimes saying, out of the corner of his mouth: 'Lance-Constable Vimes?' 
'Yessir?' 
'What make are these crossbows?' 
'Er... Hines Brothers, sir. They're Mark Threes.' 
'Not Burleigh and Stronginthearm?' 
'Never heard of them, sir.' 
Damn. Five years too early, thought Vimes. And it was such a good line, too.</blockquote>

Mr Burleigh, or perhaps members of the Burleigh family, have since diversified into other interesting related businesses which no doubt capitalise on marketing interesting spin-offs from arms and armour technology. These include:-

* [[Burleigh and Spoke]]
* [[James and Burleigh]], in Coney Catcher Road* (H5 - I5), who specialise in making birdcages.

==Annotation==

For the non-British folks, the renowned English armaments genius of the XIX century {{wp|William_George_Armstrong,_1st_Baron_Armstrong|William George Armstrong}} certainly rings a bell about the origin of the name.

The name Burleigh & Stronginthearm appears to echo the [[Roundworld]] tradition of dynamic weapons manufacturing duos such as Smith & Wesson and Heckler & Koch.

It is worth also noting that '''Burleigh''' is a homonym for "burly", a word meaning well-built and physically powerful. Hence "burly and strong in the arm", which can be considered a case of {{wp|Nominative determinism|nominative determinism}}.

From Dirty Harry IV [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSAyz5c3JmM Dirty Harry IV]
<blockquote>DH: "Well we're not going to just let you walk out of here" 
Robber: "Who's "We" sucker?" 
DH: "Smith, Wesson and me!" 

[[Category:Ankh-Morpork Businesses]]
[[de:Burlich und Starkimarm]]

Spelter

2023-03-07T12:11:41Z

Tag:

A former [[bursar]] of [[Unseen University]], appeared in [[Sourcery]]. He was a Fifth level wizard, and a member of the order the [[Venerable Council of Seers]].

In appearance, long, thin, venal, amoral and somewhat pompous, he was sucked into the excitement during the time of the [[Sourcerer]], and in marked contrast to most wizards at this time, unsuccessfully attempted to do something about it. He tried to talk to the Librarian, but the ape would not open the doors. Unfortunately, the soul of [[Ipslore the Red]] that animated the staff had other ideas, the staff hunted Spelter through the empty corridors of the university and reduced Spelter to ash and memory. But the main thing is: he tried...which is more than most of the wizards did.

Spelter's demise also paved the way for the accession of a new Bursar, who may well have been the Dr Dinwiddie we have come to love as the butt of [[Ridcully]]'s attentions, and as a man who single-handedly keeps the Disc's pharmaceutical industry in business (or at least that part of it which is on constant overtime producing [[dried frog pills]]).

==Notes==
Spelter, and his fellow wizard Carding, may be based on two characters from Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Spelter (tall and thin) and Carding (short and fat) have a distinct similarity to Swelter (short and fat) and Flay (tall and thin). Although the names are swapped, the similarity between Swelter and Spelter is obvious, less obvious is that Carding is an other word meaning to flay [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combing_(torture) (Wikipedia)] .

[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Spelzdinkel]]

Spelter

2023-03-07T11:56:16Z

Tag:

A former [[bursar]] of [[Unseen University]], appeared in [[Sourcery]]. He was a Fifth level wizard, and a member of the order the [[Venerable Council of Seers]].

In appearance, long, thin, venal, amoral and somewhat pompous, he was sucked into the excitement during the time of the [[Sourcerer]], and in marked contrast to most wizards at this time, unsuccessfully attempted to do something about it. He tried to talk to the Librarian, but the ape would not open the doors. Unfortunately, the soul of [[Ipslore the Red]] that animated the staff had other ideas, the staff hunted Spelter through the empty corridors of the university and reduced Spelter to ash and memory. But the main thing is: he tried...which is more than most of the wizards did.

Spelter's demise also paved the way for the accession of a new Bursar, who may well have been the Dr Dinwiddie we have come to love as the butt of [[Ridcully]]'s attentions, and as a man who single-handedly keeps the Disc's pharmaceutical industry in business (or at least that part of it which is on constant overtime producing [[dried frog pills]]).

Spelter, and his fellow wizard Carding, may be based on two characters from Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Spelter (tall and thin) and Carding (short and fat) have a distinct similarity to Swelter (short and fat) and Flay (tall and thin). Although the names are swapped, the similarity between Swelter and Spelter is obvious, less obvious is that Carding is an other word meaning to flay [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combing_(torture) (Wikipedia)] .

[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Spelzdinkel]]

Talk:Dwarfs

2023-02-20T17:54:06Z

Tag:

==Hoofs, Rooves and Elfs==
Does Pratchett dwarfs or dwarves?--[[User:Teletran|Teletran]] 09:45, 27 January 2007 (CET)
:There are a number of examples of dwarfs. I don't know about dwarves. --Confusion 02:56, 1 December 2011 (CET)

Has anyone heard a reason why The Author switched from Dwarves to Dwarfs sometime after {{ER}}? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 19:04, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify an issue here. Dwarfs are small people with a certain medical condition (lacking growth hormone). Dwarves are a race (popularised by Tolkien, similarly elfs is the plural of elf, elves are another race popularised by JRRT). Perhaps Sir Terry changed the name because in the Discworld they are dwarves. [[User:Tag|Tag]] ([[User talk:Tag|talk]]) 17:54, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

== Many words for 'gold' or 'rock'? ==

"the word 'gold' in dwarfish is actually many different words" - Are we sure this isn't 'rock'? {{WA}} tells us "It's also said that dwarfs have two hundred words for rock. They don't. They have no words for rock, in the same way that fish have no words for water. They do have words for igneous rock, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, rock underfoot, rock dropping on your helmet from above, and rock which looked interesting and which they could have sworn they left here yesterday. But what they don't have is a word meaning 'rock'. Show a dwarf a rock and he sees, for example, an inferior piece of crystalline sulphite of barytes." [[User:Kellyterryjones|Kellyterryjones]] 21:38, 27 September 2007 (CEST)

It is also gold. Page 192 {{SM}} "Many dwarf songs* are on the lines of "Gold, gold, gold" but it's all in the inflection; dwarfs have thousands of words for "gold" but will use any in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn't belong to them"
*All right-''all'' dwarf songs. Except the one about Hiho.
--Confusion 02:56, 1 December 2011 (CET)

== Same sex marriages ==

I've always wondered how many same-sex marriages there are by accident. [[User:Iron Hippo|Iron Hippo]] 08:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Notes on the subject are [[Talk:Sharn|here]]. --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 09:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

== Dwarf Songs ==
For dwarf musicians, the popular drinking song "Gold! Gold! Gold!" is presented below, in abc notation.
 
<tt id="v8h97">X:70 % number
 
T:Gold! Gold! Gold! % title
 
C:Eodric Shortensweet (aka Myscha Aiken) % composer
 
O:Songs from The Gold Mind % origin.
 
N:Rests may be punctuated by clinksloshing tankards
 
N:Of authentic Dwarf ale, thumping on tables, banging
 
N:Of tankards on tables, or throwing things.
 
N:With acknowledgements to Terry Pratchett's Discworld
 
N:Sagas, without which this would never have happened.
 
M:4/4 % meter
 
L:1/4 % length of shortest note
 
Q: % tempo
 
K:F % key
 
V:1 % voice 1
 
"F"FCFC | "F"AGF z | "Bb"BG "F"AF | "C7"GFE z |
 
w:Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
 
"F"FCFC | "F"AGF z | "Bb"BG "F"AF | "C7"GC "F"F2 |]
 
w: Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!</tt> 

:The link to an abc translator that was provided is dead. You may be able to Google another.

Talk:Carrot Ironfoundersson

2023-02-20T17:52:47Z

Tag:

"Captain Carrot" was also the name of a DC Comics character, an anthropomorphic rabbit who has superpowers derived from eating radioactive carrots. [[wikipedia:Captain_Carrot|Captain_Carrot]] --[[User:RLent|RLent]] 17:34, 15 June 2006 (CEST)

In {{T!}}, Vimes says (to himself, so he's not trying to fool anybody) that Carrot is six feet three inches. Previously he's been six feet six or two meters. He's not old enough to be settling yet; how did that happen? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 01:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

(note: above picture should be edited)-- 68.39.68.46 15:35 3 May 2009

:The assertion about the full head of hair needs some evidence. It conflicts with Kidby's drawings and any description I can remember. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 15:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Just a thought re: discworld reasons for naming Carrot - while rereading a section of Night watch (specifically to do with the use of the Lilac flower and the Glorious Revolution) It's mentioned that in history there was once a battle where there was a rag tag of different squads covered in mud who found themselves in a carrot field and adopted the carrot as a badge to identify one another (as well as being a nourishing snack). Perhaps the carrot took on special symbology/significance relating to uniting people under a common symbol, being nourishing/doing good in general and possibly linking into leadership. Just a thought.
Also, might it be worth mentioning on the main page his link to being Prince of Llamedos?
--[[User:GallifreyanWitch|Verity]] ([[User talk:GallifreyanWitch|talk]]) 03:23, 27 November 2013 (GMT)

I am sure that it is completely coincidental that the Welsh word for carrot is moron. (Noting that the dwarves from Llamados seem to have a very welsh culture). [[User:Tag|Tag]] ([[User talk:Tag|talk]]) 17:52, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Dwarfs

2023-02-20T17:46:26Z

Tag:

==Hoofs, Rooves and Elfs==
Does Pratchett dwarfs or dwarves?--[[User:Teletran|Teletran]] 09:45, 27 January 2007 (CET)
:There are a number of examples of dwarfs. I don't know about dwarves. --Confusion 02:56, 1 December 2011 (CET)

Has anyone heard a reason why The Author switched from Dwarves to Dwarfs sometime after {{ER}}? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 19:04, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify an issue here. Dwarfs are small people with a certain medical condition (lacking growth hormone). Dwarves are a race (popularised by Tolkien, similarly elfs is the plural of elf, elves are another race popularised by JRRT). Perhaps Sir Terry changed the name because in the Discworld they are dwarves.

== Many words for 'gold' or 'rock'? ==

"the word 'gold' in dwarfish is actually many different words" - Are we sure this isn't 'rock'? {{WA}} tells us "It's also said that dwarfs have two hundred words for rock. They don't. They have no words for rock, in the same way that fish have no words for water. They do have words for igneous rock, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, rock underfoot, rock dropping on your helmet from above, and rock which looked interesting and which they could have sworn they left here yesterday. But what they don't have is a word meaning 'rock'. Show a dwarf a rock and he sees, for example, an inferior piece of crystalline sulphite of barytes." [[User:Kellyterryjones|Kellyterryjones]] 21:38, 27 September 2007 (CEST)

It is also gold. Page 192 {{SM}} "Many dwarf songs* are on the lines of "Gold, gold, gold" but it's all in the inflection; dwarfs have thousands of words for "gold" but will use any in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn't belong to them"
*All right-''all'' dwarf songs. Except the one about Hiho.
--Confusion 02:56, 1 December 2011 (CET)

== Same sex marriages ==

I've always wondered how many same-sex marriages there are by accident. [[User:Iron Hippo|Iron Hippo]] 08:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Notes on the subject are [[Talk:Sharn|here]]. --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 09:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

== Dwarf Songs ==
For dwarf musicians, the popular drinking song "Gold! Gold! Gold!" is presented below, in abc notation.
 
<tt id="v8h97">X:70 % number
 
T:Gold! Gold! Gold! % title
 
C:Eodric Shortensweet (aka Myscha Aiken) % composer
 
O:Songs from The Gold Mind % origin.
 
N:Rests may be punctuated by clinksloshing tankards
 
N:Of authentic Dwarf ale, thumping on tables, banging
 
N:Of tankards on tables, or throwing things.
 
N:With acknowledgements to Terry Pratchett's Discworld
 
N:Sagas, without which this would never have happened.
 
M:4/4 % meter
 
L:1/4 % length of shortest note
 
Q: % tempo
 
K:F % key
 
V:1 % voice 1
 
"F"FCFC | "F"AGF z | "Bb"BG "F"AF | "C7"GFE z |
 
w:Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
 
"F"FCFC | "F"AGF z | "Bb"BG "F"AF | "C7"GC "F"F2 |]
 
w: Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!</tt> 

:The link to an abc translator that was provided is dead. You may be able to Google another.

Ronald Saveloy

2022-11-23T10:34:37Z

Tag:

[[Image:Saveloy.JPG|thumb|right|240px|Ronald "Teach" Saveloy, as drawn by [[User:Knmatt|Matt Smith]] (with apologies to P. Kidby)]]
Ronald Saveloy is a [[teacher]]-cum-[[Barbarian heroes|barbarian]] featured in {{IT}}. He teaches the [[Silver Horde]] about civilization so that they can peacefully conquer the [[Agatean Empire]]. Though his plan fails and he dies, the Silver Horde has great respect for him. To his surprise, he is taken to the barbarian afterlife (known to some as [[Valhalla]]) by a [[Valkyrie]] when he dies, and is given the title "Ronald the Apologetic."

Possesses a surprisingly incandescent barbarian rage; apparently, he had a lot of repressed rage built up against boys who chew gum and other miscreants from his time as a teacher.

Cohen always refers to Mr Saveloy as "Teach". Edward Teach was the real name of the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Saveloy,Ronald]]
[[Category:Human characters|Saveloy,Ronald]]
[[de:Ronald Zervelatwurst]]

Yonk

2020-05-25T11:22:42Z

Tag:

A word used by [[History Monks]] such as [[Lu-Tze]] to denote quite a long length of time (although Lu-Tze maintains it's one of the [[Abbot]]'s). It is possible this imprecise measurement is used for the educative bamboozlement of [[Lobsang Ludd|young novices]], in order to get them really thinking about things.

==Annotation==
A yonk is a round world expression as in "Ain't seen 'im in yonks".

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]

Aix-En-Pains

2020-05-20T11:35:21Z

Tag:

A vinicultural settlement in [[Quirm]] the country, some way Rimwards and Widdershins of [[Quirm]] the city. It is owned by M.Le [[Marquis]] des Aix-En-Pains, who also advises [[Moist von Lipwig]] concerning the dangers of the [[Maquis]]. The town is now a stop on the [[Fierté de Quirm Line]] and the next stop before Quirm city itself is [[Dunrobinville]].

==Annotation==
Aix-en-Provence is a city in Southern France, perhaps most famous as the birthplace of painter Paul Cézanne.

{{stub}}

[[Category:Streets and Landmarks of Quirm‎]]

Henry Fanshaw

2020-05-20T11:20:49Z

Tag:

Henry Fanshaw is the father of [[Ermintrude Fanshaw|Ermintrude "Daphne" Fanshaw]] and 138th in succession to the British throne. After losing his wife during childbirth he accepts the position of governor at [[Port Mercia]] to get away from the bleak ancestral hall. He is later crowned as Henry IX.

==Annotation==
Fanshaw is the correct pronunciation of the name Fetherstonhaugh. Sir Henry Fetherstonhaugh, (22 December 1754 – 24 October 1846), was member of parliament for Portsmouth from 1782 to 1796.

{{stub}}
[[Category:Nation|Fanshaw,Henry]]

User talk:Tag

2020-05-18T17:50:19Z

Tag: Created page with "Hello Please be nice to me."

Hello

Please be nice to me.

Daniel Trooper

2020-05-18T15:43:37Z

Tag:

Mr. '''Daniel "One Drop" Trooper''' is the official public executioner for [[Ankh-Morpork]]. Or, at least, one of them. In {{NW}} we learn that there are two ways to hang a man - the long way (in which they are hoisted up and slowly asphyxiate) and the short way (in which they are dropped through a trapdoor and the jerk breaks the neck) and there was ''not a hangman in the city'' that would allow [[Carcer]] the easy way.

A cheerful and jovial man who is genuinely happy in his work, he is capable of hanging the condemned man to within a very inch of his life, as [[Albert Spangler]] discovered shortly after he died and met his [[Vetinari|Guardian Angel]].

Mr Trooper seeks to make the experience of being hanged a short and comfortable one, and usually announces himself to clients in the condemned cells at the [[Tanty]] with "Good morning, Mr Spangler. (..) It’s me, sir, Daniel “One Drop” Trooper. I am your executioner for today, sir. Don’t you worry, sir. I’ve hanged dozens of people. We’ll soon have you out of here".

He's also a bit of a thinker. 'Do you really think all this deters crime, Mr Trooper?' [[Albert Spangler]] asks him.
 'Well, in the generality of things I'd say it's hard to tell, given that it's hard to find evidence of crimes not committed,' said the hangman, giving the trapdoor a final rattle. 'But in the specificality, sir, I'd say it's very efficacious.'
 'Meaning what?' said Albert.
 'Meaning I've never seen someone up here more'n once, sir. Shall we go?'

He has a profitable pension plan in the form of holding the concession to sell memorabilia of public hangings, and owns a special pen capable of writing on rope. The condemned person is usually politely invited to sign the noose at two-inch intervals as a contribution towards Mr Trooper's pension plan. [[Vetinari]] no doubt nods at the expense of a new rope for each hanging, as Mr. Trooper's expertise, which is second to no man's, has proven of great and valuable worth to him on at least three occasions that readers of the books know about.

Mr. Trooper is an avid reader of ''[[What Gallows]] ''and the ''[[Tanty Bugle]]'', partly for professional reasons and mainly for the financial information in the "used rope" pages. Apparently, the [[Sto Plains Dealer]] and the [[Pseudopolis Herald]] are also good for trade-related financial information.

Mr. Trooper appreciates the showmanship aspects of his trade, and is always appreciative of light banter with the condemned person, ideally culminating in a memorable ''bon mot'' just before he pulls the lever.

A previous post-holder of the job of Civic Hangman and Public Executioner was [[Hepzibah Whitlow]], who also had a reflective and thoughtful approach to the job. At some point before Mr Whitlow, the father of the witch [[Mrs Proust]] held the office of Civic Hangman. It is not known what her maiden name was. Although an alternative approach is that if she adheres to the witch custom where family names are passed down through the female line (refer to the [[Nanny Ogg|Oggs]]), then her father might well have been Mr Proust too.

==Annotation==
Mr Trooper's inspiration for his pension plan probably came from the English saying "Money for old rope".

[[Category:Discworld characters|Trooper, Daniel]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[de:Daniel Truper]]

Talk:Albert Spangler

2020-05-18T15:35:40Z

Tag:

I have not added this to the main page because even I think it is rather speculative - but maybe an interesting coincidence:
Origin of the name Albert Spangler: There was a famous English hangman Albert Pierrepoint, also

In the film 'The Hangman' (1959), the star Robert Taylor was born Spangler Arlington Brugh.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe I'm wrong, but afaik A.S. was just one of Moist's "stage names". The one who has been hanged ''as'' A.S. was a nameless prisoner.

:He was, but I think the page is meant in a somewhat humorus vein. And Vetinari insist the Spangler is dead and who is to argue with the Patrician? As he says "Tryant remember."

:: Ok, I see. This multiple-identity-busyness can be extremely confusing. Especially since most of Moist's alter egos had (have?) a life of their own. And in this way the life of A.S. was "really" ended by the gallow. So I would add at least a footnote to make clear that A.S. is a virtual person.

Re:Alfred Spangler. See [[Talk:Moist von Lipwig]]. This wiki refers to the original English publication consistently. American editors occasionally change spellings and even names, but there needs to be a standard and the original has always been preferred. Also, this sort of comment belongs in the discussion section. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 01:24, 4 November 2007 (CET) 
(There ''was'' discussion of the name change in 'Talk:Moist von Lipwig' but it has disappeared, mysteriously. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 20:46, 21 October 2017 (UTC))

:Interestingly, the audio book release refers to Mr. Spangler in the same way as the American release of the book: usually as Alfred Spangler, except for once, in chapter 10, where he is Albert Spangler. This may indicate that the American release was printed from the same manuscript revision that the audio book was recorded from and that the original error was spotted and corrected in time for the first UK edition, but nobody ever took the time to send the corrected manuscript over to the US prínters. -- (unsigned comment by [[User:‎Emeraldreactor|‎Emeraldreactor]], 24 Jan 2015)

Albert Spangler

2020-05-18T15:30:53Z

Tag:

{{Character Data
|title= Albert Spangler
|photo=Blank.jpg|
|name= Albert Spangler
|age= 26
|race= [[Humans|Human]]

|occupation= Swindler, thief, conman
|appearance= Identical to famous businessman [[Moist von Lipwig]].

|residence= Travelling con artist
|death= Hanged by [[Daniel Trooper]]
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status= unknown.

|books= {{GP}}, {{MM}}

|cameos=
}}
A now deceased conman and criminal who was hanged to death. He was coincidentally about the same height and build as [[Moist von Lipwig]], who in fellow feeling, was disgusted to see the execution only merited a couple of inside paragraphs in the [[Tanty Bugle]]. As Moist remarked to [[Vetinari]], he ''knows'' Spangler is dead: he was there to witness it, and saw every moment as if he was experiencing it himself, even if Cribbins knows Spangler is still alive in {{MM}}. He was known to have accumulated a large sum of ill-gotten gains though these have never officially been recovered, which altogether adds up to the sum of a hundred and fifty thousand [[Ankh-Morpork]] dollars.

==Annotation==
While on the subject of Mr von Lipwig's pseudonyms, he tells Mr Pump to '... ask the publican for “Mr Robinson’s box”, please?'
Mr Robinson was a pseudonym used by [https://www.historytoday.com/archive/execution-dr-crippen Hawley Harvey Crippen].
==Publishing Note==

For reasons known only to some employees of [[HarperCollins]], Spangler has another alias in [[Roundworld]]'s United States of America, where he is often known as ''Alfred'' Spangler. Given Moist's vast number of aliases, this is not surprising.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Spangler,Albert]]
[[de:Albert Spangler]]

Magic circle

2020-05-17T12:41:38Z

Tag:

A device that makes a '''very''' clear and theoretically uncrossable demarcation between Inside and Outside. Done with much ornate ceremony by [[wizards]], chanting and occultism by young and impressionable wannabe-witches such as [[Diamanda|Diamanda Tockley]], and by scuffing her boot around in the dust to make a rough circle by [[Nanny Ogg]]. However it's done, it needs to be pretty good to keep all the serious magic inside and have none of the effects get to the outside. Anyone inside the circle is fair game for whatever turns up.

Used by practitioners of [[magic]] and by demonology [[hackers]] such as [[Eric]] to provide a space in which [[humans]] may safely interact with [[Supernatural Entities]].

A Magic Circle has also been used creatively, ie to allow [[Rincewind]] and [[Eric]] to remain in exactly the same place while aeons, or maybe even Ians, of time and evolution pass by on the other side of a very thin chalk line. This also allows them to evade the personal attentions of a very irritated King of the [[Demons]] called [[Astfgl]].

Magic Circles are generally drawn as circles, although for Wizardly purposes, such as for the [[Death]]-summoning [[Rite of AshkEnte]], they are drawn as a regular [[Octagram|octagram]].

==Annotation==
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Circle_(organisation) The Magic Circle] is a British organisation dedicated to promoting and advancing the art of magic. The motto of the society is the Latin indocilis privata loqui, which the club claims to mean "not apt to disclose secrets"

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
{{stub}}

Peach Pie Street

2020-05-17T12:30:25Z

Tag:

A very small slice of the city separates the [[Patrician's Palace]] from the center of magical power at the [[Unseen University|University]](1). There are three roads between the University and the river, and only the length of [[The Maul]] to the palace. Magic and political power, however, both leak, and [[The Backs]] and '''Peach Pie Street''' need to be prepared for things that go odd in the night. Peach Pie Street is the middle of these three streets, below The Backs and hubward of the more conventional [[Street of Alchemists]].

The name? It probably used to be something that sounded a little like "Peach Pie", once. In Ankh-Morpork, no one remembers twenty years ago, let alone two thousand.

[https://goo.gl/maps/A5kAcFKjs883q2kJA Peach Pie Street] (and Treacle Mine Road) now exist in Roundworld - a case of life imitates art.

(1) Usually the dining table in the [[Great Hall]].

[[Category:Streets of Ankh-Morpork]]
[[de:Pfirsichblütenstraße]]