Not-So-Mith'd Opportunity: Random Banter # 222

[Honest Tiefling]

Yeah, but it's only named after bloody country.

Go speak to the Spaniards. I'm pretty sure they must loooooooooove all of the dialects they created. If you didn't want people to muck about with your language then you shouldn't have tried to conquer bits of the world all over the place or shipped your criminals to different continents. Maybe you should have shipped less ornery people than your criminals if you didn't want us to get so uppity later on.

Personally, I think all of us in the Anglosphere should get together and form some sort of standard for this English business before it gets too fragmented and is stopped being used as an international language.

Honour can have an extra 'u' to seem old fashioned. Colour just looks off balance to me.

[enderlord99]

Oh, and on response to that incredibly sarcastic post

It wasn't sarcasm; it was resignation. Well, maybe a bit of both.

EDIT: That said, I deleted it, because I realized it was a bit of a strawman. Also for other reasons.

[Peelee]

Go speak to the Spaniards. I'm pretty sure they must loooooooooove all of the dialects they created. If you didn't want people to muck about with your language then you shouldn't have tried to conquer bits of the world all over the place or shipped your criminals to different continents. Maybe you should have shipped less ornery people than your criminals if you didn't want us to get so uppity later on.

Personally, I think all of us in the Anglosphere should get together and form some sort of standard for this English business before it gets too fragmented and is stopped being used as an international language.

You knew it was coming. You had to.

[SZbNAhL]

In all honesty England, France, and Germany should just form an official triad and let everybody get on with their lives.

You mean some sort of ... union? Of Europeans? It'll never catch on.

[Comrade]

You mean some sort of ... union? Of Europeans? It'll never catch on.

I can't imagine the Brits sticking around for something like that.

[Durkoala]

I can't imagine the Brits sticking around for something like that.

It's a coin toss, really.

[2D8HP]

So, where should I start with Pratchett? What 5 books first?

I haven't read all of the books (I most recently tried to read Snuff but I just couldn't get into it), and while I do think that The Colour of Magic, and The Light Fantastic are worth reading eventually, the lead characters of Rincewind and Two Flower are irritating (though the promise of the series shines through), so I would recommend this order:

• Equal Rites
• Mort
• Guards! Guards!
• Wyrd Sisters
• Witches Abroad
• Lords & Ladies

(Yes, that's six not five, but if you don't read Witches Abroad you'll wonder what happened between Wyrd Sisters and Lords & Ladies and that book is a highlight).

I like traffic lights.

But not when they are red.

You typed that at an intersection?

...we'd all have to start speaking Indian English if we start counting people who speak it as a third or second language.

If that will help me remember which items on the menu are which I give my support!

[Tvtyrant]

Personally I would read all of the Guard books first, they establish the world's tone and rules but are less zany than the Witches, Death and Wizard books. Men at Arms is my favorite book in the series, and with Guards! Guards! really creates the narrativium of the world as well as the rather cynical world view of the author.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

the lead characters of Rincewind and Two Flower are irritating

Agreed. Unfortunately, I extend that criticism to Equal Rites and Mort as well - it is not until Reaper Man that we get the first set of main characters I don't want to strangle for every decision or action they take, and thus why I can't recommend them as starting points.

Grey Wolf

[2D8HP]

Reaper Man

Reaper Man is very good, but I fear it's too melancholy of a start., and I suppose I just found Esk and Mort easier to take (I really hope @Caerulea reads something from the series and shares their impressions, I feel invested in this now NO PRESSURE!!!).

[Honest Tiefling]

I personally skipped Equal Rites, still haven't read it. Mort or Guards! Guards! are both very good places to start, and you can pick based on what you can grab first.

Strata is I believe a stand alone novel and quite good, so if you want to get a taste before trying to figure out our recommendations for this very lengthy series.

[Qwertystop]

Wait, hang on. I said above that I started with Mort and Guards, Guards, but strictly speaking I guess my first Discworld book was actually The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. I read that in... must have been elementary school, I don't actually remember how long ago I got it... didn't read another Discworld book for quite a few years and didn't realize Maurice was Diskworld (or even Pratchett) until several years farther on past that.

Even knowing that, it's really not very connected at all. About two or three shared place-names and that's it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. I read that in... must have been elementary school

That book came out in 2001. Now I feel ancient.

The first book I read was Colour of Magic, and I found it so indescribably boring and arcane (it's parodying books I've never read) that it put me off discworld for a decade. I have my best friend to thank for giving the series a second chance, since they're the ones that kept quoting Reaper Man, Guards! Guards! and Moving Pictures at me until I did.

Peelee might recognize the technique, since I adopted it once I was converted.
One of us! One of us!
Grey Wolf

[Bartmanhomer]

Etika passed away.

[Peelee]

Peelee might recognize the technique, since I adopted it once I was converted.

Grey Wolf

And here I just thought you were being witty. And also humble.

Etika passed away.

Friend of yours?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Friend of yours?

Youtube Nintendo Lets Player, from the news articles.

Grey Wolf

[Caerulea]

Honour can have an extra 'u' to seem old fashioned. Colour just looks off balance to me.

Really? I find that 'color' seems too short, and has the end chopped off. 'Colour' is much more visibly pleasing (not to mention that it is a better colour.)

Reaper Man is very good, but I fear it's too melancholy of a start., and I suppose I just found Esk and Mort easier to take (I really hope @Caerulea reads something from the series and shares their impressions, I feel invested in this now NO PRESSURE!!!).

The following are the Discworld books I have on hold (in the order I plan to read them, unless my siblings steal them halfway through):

• Guards guards!
• Men at Arms
• Feet of Clay
• Jingo
• The Fifth Elephant
• Night Watch
• Death Trilogy (Mort, Reaper Man, and Soul Music)
• Equal Rites
• Wyrd Sisters

I'll read them when we go up to New Hampshire for the 4th of July, and I'll give my reactions after. I don't have electricity nor running water up there, so it may be a little while.

[Bartmanhomer]

And here I just thought you were being witty. And also humble.


Friend of yours?

No not a friend but he was a former Youtube star.

[enderlord99]

I find that 'color' seems to short

"to" seems too short for me...

[Caerulea]

"to" seems too short for me...

Yes.

—Caerulea

[2D8HP]

...I'll read them when we go up to New Hampshire for the 4th of July, and I'll give my reactions after. I don't have electricity nor running water up there, so it may be a little while.

Oh!

I still remember reading Gustav Schaub's Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece, and Robert Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle by firelight during a family camping vacation near "Castle Lake" in northern California, and me and my brother trying to sleep in the car and how loud the rain was...

[Teddy]

When I work from home (say, when something crashes over the weekend), I use my personal laptop (mac) to vpn into a secure windows machine to bridge into the office network, so I can remote into my actual work desktop (where all my specialised software is installed), from which I ssh into the unix box with the servers. At which point, depending on the issue, I might have to remote to the DB servers.

Surprisingly, the speed at the far end of that chain is quite good. The response time of commands is just a tiny bit sluggish, but not even that bad.

Grey Wolf

Oh, that's impressive! Sadly, my job doesn't allow me to work remotely, so I couldn't repeat the feat. For some reason, national states don't like having their defence contractors make sensitive information accessible from unsecured computers.

Really? I find that 'color' seems too short, and has the end chopped off. 'Colour' is much more visibly pleasing (not to mention that it is a better colour.)

Oh, you're a synaesthete?

[Insane Jeenyus]

I like traffic lights.

But not when they are red.

I am stealling this and pu6ttingg it on fb.

.. .. .. .. ..
Now those people in Australia? They know how to speak English, even if they have a strange fascination with the word 'stroppy'.

you would be just as Stroppy as Cthulhu, if you had been wrestled to death by Steve Irwin.

It happened, really! somewhere here I will give the actual link when i get off work.

[Anonymouswizard]

you would be just as Stroppy as Cthulhu, if you had been wrestled to death by Steve Irwin.

But not as cranky as Death of Being Wrestled to Death by Steve was when he was wrestled to death by Steve.

[Bartmanhomer]

People are very rude these days. I was outside and the woman with a stroller with her kids yell at me say excuse me in a very rude tone. I wasn't even blocking her way or anything like that. She definitely need a chill pill like twenty pills of it.

[FinnLassie]

You typed that at an intersection?

I am stealling this and pu6ttingg it on fb.

I have a suspsicion that neither of you know why I like traffic lights, no matter where they've been.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Oh, that's impressive! Sadly, my job doesn't allow me to work remotely, so I couldn't repeat the feat. For some reason, national states don't like having their defence contractors make sensitive information accessible from unsecured computers.

I once worked at a bank where the servers were in "the Bunker". When I first heard of it, I thought it was just a grandiose name for a very secure area of the building where I worked.

But no, it was called that because the bank had purchased an actual WWII bunker to place all their servers in. Unfortunately, I was never allowed to visit (in fact, I wasn't even told where it was). The very secure area of the building I thought was "the bunker"? To this day I've no idea what was in there, but it was considered insufficiently secure to store the data, even though it was far and away the most secured access place I've encountered in my professional career.

They weren't kidding around with security, is my point. Which meant that when things broke on weekends or at night, I had to debug through the phone. Or drive to the office. No remote access for me or anyone.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

I am stealling this and putting it on fb.

I don't get it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I don't get it.

Oh, that reminds me:

And here I just thought you were being witty. And also humble.

I'm not sure I quite get why me quoting Pratchett was supposed to be (in itself) witty or humble? I mean, there is a certain humbleness involved in accepting that an author famous for their wittiness and turn of phrase has a wittier response to a topic than I do, but not sure how that connects to admitting I only picked up the habit from a friend?

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

Oh, that reminds me:

I'm not sure I quite get why me quoting Pratchett was supposed to be (in itself) witty or humble?

Grey Wolf

Pure facetiousness. Witty in coming up with the lines, humble in attributing them to someone else.

They can't all be winners.