5.
Potato
6.
Accents
8.
The
League of Animal Heroes
Welcome to Room
104. We don't get many visitors here. The number's fallen off the door and run
away to join the Art Conspiracy. Most
people don't realise it's here, as it's at the dead end of a long corridor in
the basement. I only found it by
accident when I was looking for somewhere quiet to hide on that day long ago
when we were due a visit from the Chief Executive. As you can see, it's completely empty except for all the things
that are in it, most prominent among them being this giant wall-mounted High
Definition Digital television. Unfortunately
it only seems to get the Origami Channel in Swahili so I'm using it as a
hatstand.
Over there in the
corner is the hyperspace warp you fell in through. I don't need to know how you found the other end of it. It's no business of mine what you were doing
in the janitor's closet. I suggest you
use the door when you leave, as if you go through the warp from this end you
end up in the methane power plant, and the exit warp has a tendency to move
around a bit so there's no guarantee you won't emerge in the hopper where they
keep the raw material.
This poor little
room has naturally felt a little neglected in the past, so in keeping with the
other one-oh rooms I'm going to ascribe a purpose to it.
This is the room to
go to when you've got nothing better to do and just want to talk a load of
nonsense.
We'll expect you
soon, Ben.
Ozgood Z'Beard as
the voice of Merlin in Dinsey's "The S-word in the Scone". Apparently, young Wart was a wee field
mouse, Merlin was a warthog and Arthur's constant companion was a bilby called
Foozil with one of those squawky voices that span 3 octaves over the course of
a five-word sentence. There was a wol
too, personified in this version as a wol. His name was Arbert.
Or it might have
been Nicole Kidman in "Excalibur".
Jon Anderson on the
live recording of Rick Wakeman's "King Arthur on Ice". It was probably "Merlin's Song" or
"The Song of Merlin" because of the first line. He lived backwards in time, you know. Merlin, not Jon Anderson. He lived sideways in time, until working
with Vangelis when he started living anti-clockwise in the Northern hemisphere
and upwards at an angle of 37 degrees from the horizontal in the Southern
hemisphere. While at home in the West his thought processes were tightly
coiled, leading to mild headaches and lyrics, but while visiting the East he
discovered they would transform into fern-like extrusions in the 11th
dimension, thus relieving the pressure.
Since then he has been a devotee and advocate of the art of Kwak Pu, an
ancient form of sleeping using three long sticks and a pebble. This appears to have no relation to his Oriental
visits, as it originates from what is thought to be a fossilised compost heap
in a site of Special Scientific Interest on the outskirts of Praze-an-Beeble.
The Rama Llama
lives in a bottle, and has an interest in campanology and impersonating sheep
for nefarious purposes. This most
British of rodents lays its eggs in a bowler hat and flies by means of a spinning
bumbershoot which rises from its head and often leads to it being mistaken for
a unicorn, which ironically makes its sheep impersonation hobby both difficult
and risible. As it is easily
embarrassed and hates being laughed at, it tends to hide in hollow trees all
its life and as a result is not commonly sighted by ordinary folk and has
gained a reputation as a mythical creature, this being further enhanced by its
mythicality.
Trivia: The Rama Llama is actually a mineral.
Many people think
potatoes are fish, but in fact they are aquatic mammals. They differ from other aquatic mammals, such
as the dophlin and rhinotamus, in that they live mainly in small cracks on
mountain tops and build their nests in upturned dustbin lids. They are much prized for their ivory, which
is used to make cheese, and for their milk, which is used to make shoes.
The most famous
potato of all time was Gurvitz O'Mandible (aka The Amazing Mr Terrifico), the
first potato to walk in space, and the only potato ever to perform the Dangling
Triple-Lock Lift Shaft Wet Paper Bag Escape. Gurvitz met an untimely end
foolishly attempting to jump a line of thirteen double-decker cheeseburgers in
a flaming steamroller. He was baked to
death before he hit the ramp.
Trivia: The Hollywood film star of
the 40's and 50's, Zabrushka Villandebardtz, noted for her smouldering eyebrows
and high squeaky voice, who starred in such star vehicles as Potato Diggers
of Boardwalk and A Spud is Born, was widely rumoured to be a potato,
but was in fact a garden fork.
First posted on Addicted to Discworld
My, that's a fine
Welsh accent you type with.
I love a nice
lilting Welsh accent, with its rolling q's and it's misplaced apostrophe's.
The English
language has assimilated many Welsh words into its lexicon, all very useful as
expletives and general throat-clearing if you've got a bit of a cold; "llychbzchwllywm",
a word used by natives to refer to English-speaking monoglots in shops selling
those little leprechaun dolls so popular with visitors to Rutland, is often
employed by catarrh sufferers as a last resort to clear their sinuses in
crowded restaurants, while the phrase "Ych ccllyaffiephx cymwy
ffggaaiikchlllllll g" has been known to destroy small tool sheds.
Its distant cousin,
Cornish, is often said to be the language of the gods, though only by
Dennis-Wayne Poltrethick, who makes this claim every fifteen minutes and has no
friends.
Venezuala is the
main base of the Sqwarx on Gimbly III. Even
now a crack team of crackers (Bimsy Sneed and her Geeky Five) are working on a
method of intergalactic travel that will get them there within at least one of
their lifetimes so they can corner the market in coconuts, based on a tip-off
from universityoftheunclear.com that the South American country is the
universe's only source of the delicacy.
Bizarrely, the
webmaster's idiosyncratic spelling has misdirected the team to the universe's
only source of a much more precious item, zpootbarn, which outwardly resembles
the coconut, but contains yigk, the elixir of life. However, if and when they arrive, the coconut seekers are
unlikely to return with any booty at all, as the Sqwarx are a happy and
gregarious people, and will surely welcome them as they welcome all visitors,
with the Ceremony of Welcoming.
This entails,
firstly, ritual massage with the fronds of the bok tree, whose secretions
stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain and induce ecstacy; secondly, a
nice drink of rathpal, whose effect is akin to a combination of alcohol,
chocolate mousse and a pair of shoes that fit perfectly; and finally, the
disintegration of the corporeal form into its component molecules which are
then scattered about the nearest civic park.
If they realise
their mistake and go to Venezuela instead, they will simply be hung by their
noses from a steeple.
In 1973, when the
world was even more pathetic than it is now, Flipper got together with Champion
the Wonder Horse, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and The Littlest Hobo to take the
world of television by storm in a new super-series, The League of Animal
Heroes of Ultimate Justice. However,
due to the combination of three land-based animals and one aquatic mammal, the
adventures were restricted to land/water interface locations such as beaches,
swimming pools and flooded kitchens. By
the time of the second series, to overcome this problem the animals recruited
into their ranks one Casey Jones, with whose help they were able to a-steam and
a-roll to a variety of new locations, such as deserts, mountains and Las Vegas
casinos, Flipper being transported in an aquarium truck from which he regularly
saved the day with several ingenious permutations of leaping-into-the-air
tricks to, for instance, press the vital buttons, shoot the essential hoop and
bite the precariously-balanced gunman on the bottom.
Champion's special
talent was running fast and rescuing people by carrying them on his back;
Skippy did all the high-jumping acts; and Hobo bit, or occasionally got
friendly with, hostile legs.
The League of
Animal Heroes of Ultimate Justice jumped its last shark when, sick of the constant wrangling needed to
keep four temperamental animal stars in order, the powers that were arranged
for a script where all five of the team were merged into a single entity by a
deranged scientist (Dr Ben O'Benben, played by Ben Nebbis), which was
henceforth played by Casey Jones (Joan Casey) in a rubber suit stitched
together from items found in the abandoned Lost in Space costume
department. The programme changed its
title to Gorraakh - Mutant Monster Avenger and never looked back, or
indeed forward, preferring to glance suspiciously from side to side in its paranoia.
Fired from their
lucrative jobs, most of the animals never recovered. Champion, after squandering all his wealth on his addiction to
sugar lumps, booked into the Mr Ed Clinic, later revealed to be a subsidiary of
Evostick. Skippy returned to his
previous life as a specialist entertainer in San Francisco, and Hobo simply
went back on the road.
Flipper, however,
recently revealed from his penthouse flat in the Flipper Hotel and Casino that
it was he who had masterminded the coup, on condition that he be given an
executive position and a seat on the board of the parent company, FBC.
The series itself
ended on a high note as Gorraakh invaded Tokyo, the final episode featuring
guest appearances from Gojira, Mecha-Gojira, Rooggjaan, Aargrah etc in a
mammoth battle which raged its way across the planet and ended in the
destruction of all civilisation, or at least as much of it as could be built in
miniature form in a small Burbank studio.
Casey Jones now
lives in a windmill in Surrey with his wife and husband.
Ha
haaaaarrarrrrrgghhh, ye don't wenna be goan thur, young blip! Fur thet way lies the steamen lair of the
hideous, curmudgeonly wearer of the paper bag wot meks t'stand on end the hair
of bald men, wot we round yer as calls the fearsome Gamhalg!
But
harked he not, for yon wizened old crone all stooped and crumpled in her barrel
was only a withered old bat wi' naught but shreddings where her brains should
be. Yet would he well have done to heed
the brains that were where her spleen should be, for as he swaggered down to
the bottom of the street and rounded the corner, he came upon an aweful sight,
bare naked in its wretchedness and steeped in gloom and leavings. For this was round the back of the
supermarket, where the wild trolleys fed and loved and decayed. And there amidst the spoor and settlings,
where there should have been only insects and grot, surrounded by her wire mesh
minions lay in her wallow the fearsum Gamhalg!
And
fully deserving of an exclamation mark she were, too.
As
stood he there in frozen horror, Gamhalg rose upon her squidlings, and
squelched towards him, her fangs gleaming like firewood. As she leant afore him, looming, he
shuddered in the fug of her foul breath, all lager, fish and smudge. The maws gaped wider as she prepared for the
fatal blow.
"HAHARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"
she roared, adding:
"How's
your granny off for spots?"