User:Old Dickens: Difference between revisions

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==Bridge==
==Bridge==
Lenny Bruce is dead. George Carlin is dead.
'''''VE Day'''''


Oscar Wilde is dead. Jonathan Swift is long dead.
'''I'''t's said there are no atheists in foxholes. This is probably not true, but in modern history the foxhole, as a microcosm of the horror of war, might bring us closest to the [[Thunderstorm Cave]].
I've had a long time to think it over and imminent death might not persuade me to pray for salvation, but consider the nineteen-year-old country boy who found himself unscathed after the shell fell beside
his foxhole and killed the rest of his squad. Dumb luck, I say, pieces of shrapnel go where they will,
but that didn't happen to me. It's easier to apply reason when pieces of your comrades aren't falling on you and you're listening for the whistle of the next shell while nearly deaf. It's easier out in the sun on a good day's hunting and gathering than in the thunderstorm cave.


Chaucer is longer dead. Aristophanes? Dust.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are retired.
What the hell are we supposed to do?


==Chorus==
==Chorus==

Revision as of 03:44, 4 May 2015

Verse

What if the stories were true? What if there really were Vampires and Werewolves and Wizards and Witches who really could turn you into a toad, or make you think they had? Suppose Nick and Nora Charles were the most powerful couple in the country...

There is a story that the world is a disc borne on the backs of four elephants which stand on the carapace of an enormous turtle. In one corner of the Multiverse (the one farthest from Reality) this, too, is true. This is where the story creates the history and a one-in-a-million chance turns up nine times out of ten and the ocean falls into space around the rim without depleting itself. On the Discworld, "what if?" must be answered, the stories lived, the myth made real.

Tales from this remote universe arrived regularly via inspiration particles intercepting the particularly receptive and talented brain of Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sort, file and illuminate the elements of these chronicles in this little corner of the vast library of L-space. Just don't forget your ball of string.


Bridge

VE Day

It's said there are no atheists in foxholes. This is probably not true, but in modern history the foxhole, as a microcosm of the horror of war, might bring us closest to the Thunderstorm Cave. I've had a long time to think it over and imminent death might not persuade me to pray for salvation, but consider the nineteen-year-old country boy who found himself unscathed after the shell fell beside his foxhole and killed the rest of his squad. Dumb luck, I say, pieces of shrapnel go where they will, but that didn't happen to me. It's easier to apply reason when pieces of your comrades aren't falling on you and you're listening for the whistle of the next shell while nearly deaf. It's easier out in the sun on a good day's hunting and gathering than in the thunderstorm cave.


Chorus

I sometimes sit and laugh giddily at the mere existence of some Pratchett characters (Carrot Ironfoundersson, say) and the reality he created out of the absurd stereotype. This is often toward the end of the bottle of wine, but still, it suggests how he's different from other writers I have followed. There are now more than a thousand Discworld characters described here, and that's not all.




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Made a sysop for the many good contributions --Sanity 01:34, 19 August 2006 (CEST)