Old Beginnings 18

COMEDY

All of them published. Sources posted below.

1. The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words 'fire insurance').

The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .It buzzed through the fetid air of the Alchemists' quarter, where they had been trying to do the same thing for centuries without success but were certain that they'd manage it by tomorrow, or next Tuesday at least, or the end of the month for definite.


2. Charles was rather short for a midget. Even for a circus midget. Raising a tiny fist, he punched his kneeling comrade in the shoulder blade. “Why can’t you be more accommodating?” he shouted up at the back of Milovan’s shirt collar.

Milovan twisted his head around and looked behind him at Charles standing two feet below. “You’re asking me for too much, you little pervert. That’s why.”


3. If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.

This is the all-new Remington SL3, the machine that answers the question, "Which is harder, trying to read The Brothers Karamazov while listening to Stevie Wonder records or hunting for Easter eggs on a typewriter keyboard?" This is the cherry on top of the cowgirl. The burger served by the genius waitress. The Empress card.

I sense that the novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3--although it writes much faster than I can spell. And no matter that my typing finger was pinched last week by a giant land crab. This baby speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard.


4. THERE were four of us--George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were--bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.


5. That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.

It started to rain, which was particularly normal.

A spacecraft landed, which was not.

There was nobody around to see it except for some spectacularly stupid quadrupeds who hadn't the faintest idea what to make of it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it, or what. So they did what they did to everything, which was to run away from it and try to hide under each other, which never worked.



Old Beginnings 18


1. The Truth.....Terry Pratchett
2. "The Circus Hand's Desertion".....Daniel Pearlman
3. Still Life with Woodpecker.....Tom Robbins
4. Three Men in a Boat.....Jerome K. Jerome
5. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.....Douglas Adams