Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! And a Hard Boiled Egg!

[tealin]

Appropriately, I got my copy of Night Watch in the mail today. It came from England and it's about 4cm smaller all around than my rommate's Canadian copy, which makes me feel like I've suddenly had a growth spurt when I hold it. All the more portable, though, and better for making a protective slipcover from a piece of 11x17 paper as I am wont to do.

According to the book, you're not supposed to wear the lilac if you weren't there. So are any of us qualified to do so? I mean, it's physically impossible to actually be in a fictional place at a fictional time, but by seeing it all through Vimes' eyes, that's as close as anyone can get, right? We're there in his head... and according to some philosophers/quantum physicists/wizards, being there in your mind is as real as any memory of being somewhere, because once something has happened and is past, it doesn't exist anymore* except in your mind, and possibly the minds of other people who were there.**

*Depending which theory of time flow you subscribe to.
**Except, of course, they might not have been there¨ because they obviously knew who they were at the time, and you can't know what a thing is and where it is at the same time, as we all know thanks to Herr "Loopy" Heisenberg.
¨AND, as soon as the event had passed, everyone would have different memories of it, so because it would only exist in their minds, and it exists differently in each mind, it then becomes as many different places as there were witnesses. Therefore, since no one has the same memory, no one was in the same place. AHAA!

4:13 pm
I am now offially caught up on my great big pile of unanswered email... so if you've written to me and haven't gotten a response, it was because a)your subject line looked way too much like spam for me to even open it, b)you only wrote one line that didn't involve enough effort to warrant a reply, or c)when I sent the reply your address didn't work.
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Today's icon is shamelessly stolen and modified from this site ... I'm only using it for a day, so that's okay, right?

Comments

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

You bibliophiles! I was in the car with Marcus the other day and he cried out when I nearly put a wrinkle in the spine of his... paperback. His paperback, for sloth's sake. What is this strange almost puritanical obsession with perfection and cleanliness?1

I, on the other hand, carried my O'Brian tome with me out into the wind and the storm last night - it got beaten and whipped around but still I held it close and finished the chapter, eager for more. I assure you, that book knows it is loved. (I beat the loving into my books).

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1 Hee-hee.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Well, when a paperback's spine is broken, it's liable to completely split there with repeated readings. Also, it's annoying to hold pages back when you're a couple pages away from the break and they want to flip open there...

... Which is why I don't like paperbacks. I put the cover on hardbacks so that I can leave the dust jacket at home (because dust jackets are annoying and frail) and so the cover won't get hopelessly beaten up the way everything does in my backpack. Also, I can make notes on it, as my cover on Going Postal will testify.

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

You. Are. Nuts! As your sound logic testifies...

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

And lilacs. Apparently, you're lilacs, too.

[inkblot-fiend.livejournal.com]

Did your brain explode whilst writing that? Mine did when I read it. Now look at the all the mess. It'll take weeks to get that off the walls...

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Anything quantum tends to have that effect...

[(Anonymous)]

The whole idea of Terry Pratchett is that there are alternate universes; Trouser Legs of Time, whatever. So, in some alternate universe, we WERE there, so we can wear the lilac.

Happiness!

[romani-lily.livejournal.com]

I sent you a package a few days ago. I hope you get it soon! I got yours today. *joy* thankies!

[dried-frog-pill.livejournal.com]

If I could find lilac to wear, then I would wear it. I figure, if you can say what happened in such detail (as recounting it through Vimes' eyes would give you) then you could say you were there. It's just no one paid any attention to you so they didn't see you there XD :D

lilac

[(Anonymous)]

That is one of the things I really like about Terry Pratchet, how he will suddenly start explaining the Trousers of Time in the middle of, well anything really, I enjoy thinking about the ideas he puts forward, his explanation of how Death cam about for example. Somehow it makes so much more sense then anything I have heard else where.

Re: lilac

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

That, I think, is why I like Terry Pratchett more than any other fantasy author: because no matter how fantastical the idea may be, he thinks it through quite logically. He considers the implications of ... well, anything, really.Too many people just throw in a bunch of things they think are cool and don't bother to think about how they would affect reality in the long run. Take the swamp dragons, for example: What do they eat? What would people use them for? How do they abuse them? And a million different strings of logic from there. So many people just throw in a bunch of dragons because they're cool and that's as far as they get.

Re: lilac

[thorn-of-blood.livejournal.com]

That was me, I hadn't validated my account yet.

The swamp dragon is a very good example, in The Last Hero he even gave a nod to evolution and gave a reason for their shape and other such intricacys. Have you read Last Hero? It was the big, illustrated hardback, detailing The Silver Hordes latest escapade. Beautiful art in it, really extroridary, Paul Kirby is a genius.

That is the weird thing about the Discworld, everything runs on common sense and you need a brilliant author behind that idea, did that make any sense?

Re: lilac

[(Anonymous)]

I love his ability to reason something out in a completely crazy way that kind of makes sense! Like: if books are knowledge, and knowledge is power, and power is energy, and energy can be converted to mass, then...
The L-Space!