THUD! & BOOM!

THUD!

It's the noise a troll club makes when crushing in a dwarf skull, or when a dwarfish axe cleaves a trollish cranium...

I'm a Terry Pratchett fan, oh yes, I am. Have been now for...umm, gulp, more than HALF my life now. I read The Colour of Magic (thanks Karin!) my freshman year of high school and didn't understand a bloody thing. I read The Light Fantastic soon afterward and was really confused. So I shelved them and continued enjoying Douglas Adams' hitchhiker "trilogy." During "fat man" break that year (my endearing term for Xmas), my best friend from elementary school asked about reading material as she was bored. I gave her all of my copies of Adams and found Pratchett sitting there very dusty. So I reread him. What a difference a few months of school make, I laughed, A WHOLE LOT. My older brother probably thought I'd finally gone off the deep end.

Pratchett loves taking the goings on in the sad universe we live in, and twisting it so that we might get a laugh or 10 out of them. Set on a disc-shaped world riding on the backs of four elephants who in turn are riding on the back of a huge turtle, Pratchett has created a universe we can all enjoy, with witches, trolls, gods that will answer, loudly, a DEATH THAT TALKS LIKE THIS, wizards, daemons of all sorts, and of course, a city watch that's less than perfect but seems to get the job done.

So, many years after The Colour of Magic, Thud! being #30* in the series, has me all a twitter. I'd say go out and read it! But only if you're familiar with at least the "Watch" books. Otherwise, even with as many footnotes as included, you'll not have as much fun as I did with this book. Though the reference to "secrets" being hidden in a painting and such lovely terms as "eminent domain" being defined for us the discworld way, would still bring a grin to your face.


BOOM!**

The sound I make when I slip on the frozen driveway in the MIDDLE OF THE DAY between shifts at my libraries.

Hi, remember me a few days ago? Expounding on the agility and grace I must have exercised to get myself to and from work WALKING down streets slippery enough to entertain playing ice hockey on? Well, thank goodness that was an anomaly, my ol' Damage Girl self was shining brightly, as only it could, walking from the car to the front door! And so biting it big time.

Can you see? The car's at the very top of the pic. Such a short distance to the safety of a warm house, lunch, a bit of a rest, then the rest of the day, HA!

The moral of the story, don't drive! You get lulled into a false sense of security! It's WARM and SOFT and COMFORTABLE in your little cocoon while right outside your thin little shell, lurks the evil of COLD HARD ICE.

Can you sense it just LAUGHING at all of us from this picture? The ground is so frozen you can't even see where I landed, but, that really black bit, centimeters from the cement quasi-porch on this house, yeah, that's where my sorry left hip, knee, and ELBOW (OUCH!!!!) met the asphalt. The right side of my body, so Andy says (but he was using his "tech support voice" so I take it with a grain of salt) "hyperextended" itself to react to the fall, so my right side is sore sore sore too.

Snow is fun, it falls and is pretty and soft and stuff, not that I have much experience with it, but ice? Ice bad. I no likey. Ice needs to go away, now!

*Actually, if we count Once More* *with footnotes, it's more like his 31st or 32nd discworld book; though there is debate whether to count Once More as it's a collection of his work (discworld-esque and otherwise) that I'd LOVE to own...but the price and scarcity of it conspire against me constantly.

**On a completely off topic side note...When I first thought of the title of today's post I remembered when my little brother and I would drive around LA (he was about four). (I'm 18 years his senior, eep!) My parents live on this cul-de-sac which would be easy to turn around in if it weren't for the fact that it's LA so there are like 10,000 cars are vying for parking space there. Well, when I owned a sleek 89 Toyota Camry (whom I named Edgar) and would take my brother places when visiting home, we had a little ritual at the top of the sac. I'd make my turn adding in "sound effects." You know, eurrrrrnnnn, squeeeek(of the brakes), BOOM! Ha ha ha! Pretending we'd crashed into one of the many cars parked up there. My little brother used to join in on the "BOOM! HA ha ha ha" part. Yes, this would be AFTER the state of California had already issued me my teaching credential. Safe around kids, honest :).

Oh, and just in case you're reading, HAPPY BIRTHDAY THANE!