28/04/24 • catullus 51 translated via the international code of signals
BC 1 Can you communicate with the aircraft?
NE 5 You should proceed with great caution; hostile vessel sighted
NH 1 Are you clear of all danger?
EA Have you sighted or heard of a vessel in distress?
ZL Your signal has been received but not understood.
QF I cannot go ahead MBP Onset was sudden.
PG 2 I am dazzled by your searchlight. Extinguish it or lift it.
[IB 4 The extent of the damage is still unknown.]
MHB Tongue is dry. YS I am unable to communicate… DV 1 I am adrift.
MBE The whole body is affected. IX Fire is gaining.
FD 1 My position is indicated by rockets or flares.
PG I do not see any light. EP I have lost sight of you.
MY 2 It is dangerous to proceed on present course.
AE 1 I wish to abandon my vessel, but have not the means.
GC 2 I have searched area of accident but have found no trace of derelict or survivors
My first encounter with Terry Pratchett was The Colour of Magic, as read on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. I was a young journalist and I reached out to his publisher for an interview, and thus became the first journalist to interview Terry Pratchett, in Bertorelli's Italian restaurant, in Gower Street. (We remembered it as a Chinese Restaurant in Goodge Street, demonstrating either the fallibility of memory or our fondness for Chinese food.) We became friends.
I was lucky enough to read Terry's books as he wrote them, to become one of his beta readers, and then to collaborate with him. Terry had a brilliant eye for the places where reality and narrative tradition intersect: he had a science fiction writer's mind, let loose on a fantasy world, and he loved to explain and show how things came to be. The last time we saw each other he told me I had to read a book about feeding Nelson's navy – and I still wonder, had he lived, about the Discworld novel he would have written, about ships, and naval battles and all, and the lessons he would have taught us. Because at his best, Terry was a teacher. The kind who makes you laugh while simultaneously realising that everything you have taken for granted so far is utterly wrong. I miss him.
So amazed they looked at these carbonised, burned lumps that used to be scrolls, that would crumble to dust if just looked at the wrong way, and thought Hey let's preserve these because we don't know what future technology will arise to help uncover evidence of the past
i keep trying to reread wyrd sisters but i can't get further than this cause every time i see it i have to turn my phone off and close my eyes for twenty minutes.....this is SO funny. you just know there's a little recipe book in goodie maysherestinpeace whemper's old cottage with an entry that says RECIPE FOR HOT LEAD BONES: step one you get some lead step two you put it in their bones