"It's a very funny thing," said the Dean, "but a freak accident appears to have happened to every single copy of the Year Book for that year."
Ridcully noted his wooden expression. "Would it be an accident like a particular page being torn out leaving only a lingering bananary aroma?"
"Lucky guess, Archchancellor."
"Says Ook on the cover," said the Senior Wrangler...
"Does it say who it's by?" said the Dean.
"Bad taste, that man."
"I meant that maybe it'd be his real name."
"Can we look inside?" said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "There may be an index."
"Any volunteers to look inside the Librarian?" said Ridcully. "Don't all shout."
Death watched the sleeping figure of Rincewind...
HMM.
Death felt something crawling up the back of his robe, pause for a a minute on his shoulder, and leap. A small rodent skeleton in a black robe landing in the middle of the image and started flailing madly at it with his tiny scythe, squeaking excitedly.
Death picked up the Death of Rats by his cowl and held him up for inspection.
NO, WE DON'T DO IT THAT WAY.
The Death of Rats does it, his way.
The Librarian opened his mouth again, and then sneezed.
A very large red seashell lay on the sand...
"That's interesting," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "He's turned into quite a good specimen of the giant conch. You can get a marvellous sound out of one of them if you blow in the pointy end..."
"Volunteers?" said the Dean, almost under his breathe.
Fun and magic by the seaside.
Once a moderately jolly wizard camped by a dried-up waterhole under the shade of a tree he was completely unable to identify. And he swore as he hacked and hacked at a can of beer, saying, "What kind of idiots put beer in tins?".
A new tilt on an old classic.
"Can you hear that thunder?" said Ridcully, as a rumble rolled across the city. "We'd better take cover..."
PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'.
Rincewind's hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who'd had the hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it contained -- and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate -- he should have died long ago. But strange curves and bends and extrusions of glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing backwards, or diagonally. Clearly Rincewind had been hit by so much magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that he'd nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of really sticky transparent tape.
This stuff was thin and sparkly and looked as though someone had already drunk it.
Rincewind discovers Fourecksian beer.
"Um.... I know this may seem a somewhat esoteric question, but what's in the meat pies?"
"Meat."
"And what kind of meat?"
"Ah, you want one of the gourmet meat pies, then?"
The Antipodean branch of the Dibbler clan -- Fair Go Dibbler.
"We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?"
"Why?"
"It saves time."
A principle that could well be universally adopted.
"I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference."
"Did he? What did he say?"
"He said if I could get you to do any work for me I'd be lucky," said Bill.
"I shall endeavour to make a study of any primitive grass-skirted peoples hereabouts," added the Dean, with a lawnmower look in his eyes.
He'd obviously been studying old copies of the 'National Discographic' magazine.
It had been going so well. They almost seemed up to speed. This may have been what caused Ponder to act like the man who, having fallen a hundred feet without any harm, believes that the last few inches to the ground will be a mere formality.
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. In Ridcully's case, however, he meant, 'My door is always open because then, when I'm bored, I can fire my crossbow right across the hall and into the target just above the Bursar's desk.'
"All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards."
"I think there may be one or two steps in your logic that I have failed to grasp, Mister Stibbons," said the Archchancellor coldly. "I suppose you're not intending to shoot your own grandfather, by any chance?"
"Of course not!" snapped Ponder, "I don't even know what he looked like. He died before I was born."
"Ah-hah!"
The UU faculty discuss time travel.
"There's a mention of EcksEcksEcksEcks in Wrencher's 'Snakes of All Nations'," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "It says the continent has very few poisonous snakes...... Oh, there's a footnote." His finger went down the page. "It says, 'Most of them have been killed by the spiders.'"
"Pineapples?"
"Deadly," said the Senior Wrangler firmly. "One of them got my aunt. We couldn't get it off her. I told her that's not the way you're supposed to eat them, but would she listen?"
The mind boggles...
He'd watched the merchants loading the ship. It was pretty low in the water, because there would be so many Ecksian things the rest of the world wanted. Of course it'd come back light, because it was hard to think of any bloody thing it could bloody import that was better than any bloody thing in EcksEcksEcksEcks.
Too bloody right!