The Wisdom of Terry Pratchett (Part I)

Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. Here is the wisdom he imparts upon us from his novel “The Last Continent.” Oh, and if you are confused, intrigued, entertained, or annoyed by these, then feel free to read his entire work. They are wonderfully funny and also very poignant, while being very trippy. So, here comes the first of the many entries that I’ve decided shall fill up certain days in this diary.

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When gods get together they tell the story of one particular planet whose inhabitants watched, with mild interest, huge continent-wrecking slabs of ice slap into another world which was, in astronomical terms, right next door — and then did nothing about it because that sort of thing only happens in Outer Space. An intelligent species would at least have found someone to complain to. Anyway, no one seriously believes in that story, because a race that stupid would never even have discovered slood. –which is much easier to discover than fire, and only slightly harder to discover than water.

When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be imposssible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case — In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual.

Wizards are certain of the existence of the temporal gland, although not even the most invasive alchemist has ever found where it is located and current theory is that it has a non-corporeal existence, like a sort of ethereal appendix. It keeps track of how old your body is, and is so susceptible to the influence of a high magical field that it might even work in reverse, absorbing the body’s normal supplies of chrononine. The alchemists say it is the key to immortality, but they say that about orange juice, crusty bread and drinking your own urine. An alchemist would cut his own head off if he thought it’d make him live longer.

The Lecturer in Creative Uncertainty, for example, held rather smugly that he was in a state of both in-ness asnd out-ness until such time as anyone knocked on his door and collapsed the field, and that it was impossible to be categorical before that event. Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn’t always beat actual thought.

People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they’ve always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals, and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Caper). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way round.

Wizards lack the HW chromosome in their genes. Feminist researchers have isolated this as the one which allows people to see the washing-up in the sinks before the life forms growing there have actually invented the wheel. Or discovered slood.

There’s a certain type of manager who is known by his call of “My door is always open” and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him.

Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing that they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten.

Any seasoned traveler soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a “regional specialty,” because all the term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: “Go on, have the dog’s head stuffed with macerated cabbage and prok noses — it’s a regional specialty.”

In fact it is the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr. Spock’s ears falling off.

There is such a thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato sauce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish n’ chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can’t use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings whihc have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don’t apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It’s just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort, and seek it out. It’s as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book. Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza.

And finally:

The ability to ask the questions like “Where am I and who is the ‘I’ that is asking?” is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish. Although of course it’s not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations.