It was beautiful day. The snow has finally started to give way to spring. There’s little rivers everywhere.
Spring and fall are the seasons I like best. There’s something about watching life wax and wane that makes me feel at peace. The air smells best in fall and spring. At home, that’s when you can smell the ocean when the wind’s right- it’s not so far, and the salt carries for a long time. Come Friday, I’ll be home with quietgirl, celebrating our two year anniversary.
I read Terry Pratchett a lot. Angua the werewolf guard is my favorite character. A close second is Death. I enjoy Pratchett’s Death. He tries but just doesn’t get humanity. I like that. And then there’s Neil Gaiman’s Death, who is basically a super goddess babe. She’s cool too.
Yesterday a freshman lacrosse player had a heart attack and died. Today the new librarian who had been working for just two days had a heart attack and died in the middle of the special collections.
We just started flying the flags at full mast for the first time since the Zantops were murdered.
And they wonder why admissions are down.
I know that’s a sick thing to say, but it’s what we’re saying to each other. What is there to say? People have just gone numb. It’s spring and death and Passover and Easter and sex and grief and life going on and on and on…
When I die, I’d like the Grim Reaper to have a too-literal sense of humor. It fits.
It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.
– (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
and, my other favorite on Discworlds Death…
I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.
“Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?”
– Death consults a job broker (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
Death visits my campus, too. Sometimes he takes students who binge on alcohol - usually it was someone that just turned 21, and tries to celebrate with 21 shots of Old Overcoat. Sometimes it’s a car-bike, car-pedestrian, or even bike-pedestrian accident. Sometimes it’s in another form - I have a flyer on my desk announcing a sorority fundraiser in memory of the daughter of a co-worker, who died last fall when her horse lost his footing and fell on her.
Death is natural and inevitable; sometimes it’s a blessing, others it’s a thief that takes the rarest of treasures right out of our grasp.
Death’s down the hall and he wants to dance? Oooh, ask him to save the next dance for me! I’ve been flirting with him for years and I think he might be interested in me . . .
It’s not death I fear, but the many ways of dying, some quite unpleasant…
I’d rather die like my grandfather, peacefully in his sleep, not screaming in terror like his passengers!
Actually, I would prefer to die in my sleep, peacefully, after a good day.
Otherwise, if I have to go violently, I want it massive, and I don’t want to see it coming; a 30 mil round to the back of the head would do nicely. I had a commander who went quickly. After a full day of water skiing, he stretched, commented on what a great day it had been, and fell, dead before he hit the planks, of a massive coronary.
I picked that up from Mike Royko, the chicago columnist that died what, 5 years ago? The guy who often wrote about Slats Grobnik, his fictional everyman. If you’re anything close to being as witty as Royko was, you’ve got a lot going for you.
Geez, andygirl, maybe we should try to convince you to go somewhere else…we’d hate to lose you, too…
(I’m also reading T. Pratchett right now…I was bad. When I was in California, I bought all the books I could find of the ones that were originally only published in the U.K. Right now I’m reading “The Color of Magic”…where it all began…)
“When you are old, Death stalks you at every turn…Death!”
“Grandpa, that’s just Maggie”
“Oh…[Sees Birdbath]Death!!”
(The Simpsons of course.)
It sounds kind of blunt, but you have to die to live. But yeah, it also sucks that your uni has had that many blows so fast.
As for me, I love PTerry, and am breathlessly awaiting The Last Hero! One more month…Me, my favorites are Death (of course), The Librarian (Ooook!), Lord Vetinari, Detritus, and Ponder Stibbons (The geek in me).
