Men at Arms: A Discworld Novel:15

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Page 288 - "There were already a couple of ushers in place, ready to ask guests whose side they were on. The 1986 Stephen King creation of Pennywise the clown in It led to the 1990 TV mini series of the same name as well as later movies, Since then the number of evil and malevolent clowns is too extensive to list here. Page 67 - Bjorn Hammerhock's description of the Gonne resonate with the standard Smith and Weston or Colt revolvers. It premiered at the Globe Theatre, London, on 1 March 1966, directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne.

It is therefore not surprising that opening a Fish Bar on the site of temple to a fish god is a bad move. There is a statue to the supposed original Molly Malone (no evidence supports the existence of a specific person apart from the fact that there were female fishmongers who, due to poverty, likely doubled as prostitutes and both Molly and Malone are common Irish names). Note for UK types: this place was the White Horse Café at Cherhill on the A4 near where Eddie Cochran, the man behind “Summertime Blues” and “C’mon Everybody,” was killed on April 17, 1960 when the taxi carrying him from a show in Bristol, England, crashed en route to the airport in London, where he was to catch a flight back home to the United States. Both the White Fang and Silver Fang series deal with dogs that have gone wild and joined a wild dog and wolf pack respectively, much like Big Fido envisages, Pratchett has also hidden a more subtle play on words in the first syllable of each word which when combined spell "Quicksilver" the colloquial name for Mercury.Acting like a bumbling fool, making as if to leave, then smacking his head, 'remembering' something in the doorway, and unleashing an absolute killer question is exactly how TV Detective Columbo always catches the criminal. The oath of allegiance to the Watch with all the punctuation as it is written on the form is a common Pratchett device.

Page 217 - "Skully Muldoon" is a reference to Dana Scully and Fox Mulder from the television series The X Files. Only later on did they diverge into two groups; clowns or court jesters on the one hand and circus or sideshow freaks on the other.

Page 2 - Edward d'Eath's name is an obvious play on the word 'Death" but it is in fact an old English name. Another popular reference to this expression is "I'm too old for this shit", a catchphrase for Danny Glover's character in the Lethal Weapon series of movies. Page 115 - Sendivoge the Alchemist Guild secretary takes his name from a Polish alchemist named Michael Sendivogius. As an aside, in previous times barbers were also surgeons so would be skilled in ear removal if they had a sideline as a torturer. Leonard of Quirm is famous for writing backwards but of course turning the paper around would not reverse the letters.

But increasingly this line is reflecting the views of many ordinary and even poor people in supposedly advanced societies who think that the world was a better place in the 'good old days'. Page 104 - "interesting examples of dwarf bread" Dwarf bread is characterised by being as hard as rock (in fact it often has bits of gravel forged - not baked - into it. The rhyme is said to be about the mob of Dutchmen that William of Orange brought over with him to England in 1688, with the "one in a velvet gown" being the Prince himself.This is the Discworld Troll version of an old military yell to get the soldier or sailor up in the morning: "Hands off cocks, on with socks! A cohort is not an item of clothing or armour but a division of the old Roman Army: the tenth part of a legion, 300 to 600 men. Pratchett is playing with the name of the Swedish pop group Abba, one of whose members was Bjorn Ulvaeus. This, like the whitewash bucket over the door is another in the standard repetoire of clowns everywhere. Presenter: By a combination of violence and sarcasm the Piranha brothers, by February 1966, controlled London and the South East.

The more likely source is that in earlier times the bell on the church tower or the hand bell of the town crier was used to summon attention. Pratchett said: "It may be that there is a whole generation now to whom The Third Man is just a man after the second man. When a string of seemingly random murders occur among the Guilds of the city, Lord Vetinari forbids Vimes to investigate in a successful ploy to ensure Vimes does investigate. The morning star is any of several medieval club-like weapons consisting of a shaft with an attached ball adorned with one or more spikes.Page 129 - "They keep extracting the urine" is a fancy way for Fred, who has been reading to improve his vocabulary for the new recruits, to say "They keep taking the piss. Every number, no matter how large can be represented in binary (29, for instance, is 11101; sixteen + eight + four + one). It was known as the King's Evil and until about the 18th century people in England and France believed that it could be cured by the 'Royal touch' - the laying on of hands by the King or, in England, also by the Queen regnant. Meanwhile, Captain Samuel Vimes, captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, prepares for his imminent wedding to Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork.