Any Questions?

[Jane]

Isn't it mostly the dwarves who spell badly?

Most everyone on the Disc spells badly.
The little excerpt I posted was something that William de Worde wrote, and he had a rich person education at a boarding school.

 

[Dotsie]

Yes, but he was writing it for someone else though, wasn't he? When he wrote the newsletters for foreign dignitaries he used better spelling and grammar.

 

[Jane]

He still abuses capital letters, though. Sacha does that too.

And finally, on the lighter Side, it is being said that the Dwarfs can Turn Lead into Gold...

Haha, he's such a wonderful, pun-loving character. ^__^
My teachers would hate him.

 

[Doughnut Jimmy]

In one of the books a cow has Red Bugge (or something like that) can anyone remember which book it is

and any suggestions as to what it is

 

[Tonyblack]

I'm bumping this again for new members.

 

[Lyssian]

Here's one: What's with the cabbages?

I don't know if it's a cultural in-joke somewhere, but it seems like they're mentioned at an unusually high rate.

The post office issues a cabbage stamp (with cabbage flavored glue, if I remember correctly, which was explosive or something), a carriage (in Thud, I think) runs on a bit of magic that seems to make cabbages explode as it passes them, and passing references to cabbage fields or cabbages themselves appear in just about every one of the books.

I feel like I'm missing something that should be funny, but maybe it's just that "cabbage" is an inherently funny word. It's starting to look like a made up word as I'm writing it, in fact.

...cabbage cabbage cabbage.

 

[Tonyblack]

Here's one: What's with the cabbages?

I don't know if it's a cultural in-joke somewhere, but it seems like they're mentioned at an unusually high rate.

The post office issues a cabbage stamp (with cabbage flavored glue, if I remember correctly, which was explosive or something), a carriage (in Thud, I think) runs on a bit of magic that seems to make cabbages explode as it passes them, and passing references to cabbage fields or cabbages themselves appear in just about every one of the books.

I feel like I'm missing something that should be funny, but maybe it's just that "cabbage" is an inherently funny word. It's starting to look like a made up word as I'm writing it, in fact.

...cabbage cabbage cabbage.

Cabbages are funny!

It seems to be the main crop grown on the Sto Plains and therefore very importanat to their economy. Actually it puts me in mind of the time I drove through central France and saw endless fields of sunflowers. It was a novelty at first but soon got very boring.

I'm fairly sure (but am drawing a blank) that the idea of making paper, stamps and even ink from a local crop so that you could send the 'smell of home' to family living far away, is something that happened in real life. I have a feeling it was with onions, but can't find a reference.

 

[Penfold]

Tony just beat me to the answer, but here's what Wiki has to say on the subject.

The Sto Plains are the rough analogue to Western Europe on the Discworld. They are a land of rich black loam, upon which rests a great squat forest of cabbages. The cabbage has an almost mythic status among the people of the Sto Plains, and is an emblem of its largest and dominant city, Ankh-Morpork. Most young people who leave the farming areas of the Plains for life in the big city would happily never see a cabbage again.
Although they have been an empire in the past, the Sto Plains currently exist as a loose collection of independent city-states, ruled over by a close-knit (and probably interrelated) ruling class. The Sto Plains could be thought of as being similar to Germany prior to the unification of the states into the German Empire, with no overall authority. According to Mort the area was to be united in the coming decades. As reality was given a retcon in the book, the Duke who united the Sto Plains was Mort, and he did it by diplomacy rather than conquest. In Soul Music, a footnote states various facts of the region:
• Principal export: Cabbages
• Flora: Cabbages
• Fauna: Things that eat cabbages and do not mind not having any friends

 

[Anonymous]

*looks around*
Any 'word of god' about Skazz, btw? He sorta vanished from the disc after building HEX.

 

[Lyssian]

Cabbages are funny!

It seems to be the main crop grown on the Sto Plains and therefore very importanat to their economy. Actually it puts me in mind of the time I drove through central France and saw endless fields of sunflowers. It was a novelty at first but soon got very boring.

I'm fairly sure (but am drawing a blank) that the idea of making paper, stamps and even ink from a local crop so that you could send the 'smell of home' to family living far away, is something that happened in real life. I have a feeling it was with onions, but can't find a reference.

So it's just incidental that it's cabbages and not, say, rutabagas? I just found another reference, a cabbage trust bank with a sculpture of a cabbage over the door (in Going Postal). It was in Sto Lat, though, so that would fit in with your explanation.

Thanks!

 

[Tonyblack]

I suspect it's like any area where a particular crop is the main livelyhood. I'm thinking Idaho and potatoes, Kansas and grain, Wiscousin and cheese. Cabbages are just funnier.

 

[Tonyblack]

*looks around*
Any 'word of god' about Skazz, btw? He sorta vanished from the disc after building HEX.

We hear about Big Mad Drongo aka Adrian Turnipseed again in Unseen Academicals, but as far as I know we never hear about Skazz again.

 

[DaveC]

His wasn't the most fully formed of characters anyway though, was he. Looks like he was just created in was it Hogfather or Soul Music? to illustrate the senior wizards confusion at the students, and to give them strange emo/goth names.

 

[Tonyblack]

Soul Music I think. He was one of the students that Ridcully called upon when the Faculty lost their faculties.

 

[The Mad Collector]

Soul Music, and never seen again.

It was the one known as Skazz. He looked about seven stone and had the most interesting haircut Ridcully had ever seen, since it consisted of a shoulder length fringe of hair all round. It was only the tip of his nose poking out which told the world which way he was facing. If he ever developed a boil on the back of his neck, people would think he was walking the wrong way.

 

[Dotsie]

Maybe he got a chair. Once a wizard gets a chair, he loses his name & gains a title instead.

 

[Bouncy Castle]

Incidentally, The Bank of England is in a street in London named Threadneedle Street. It was named this after the erm... Seamstresses who worked in that street. Before it got that name it had a much more vulgar nickname, which I won't be able to post on this forum.

PM ME. PM ME!

 

[Quatermass]

Incidentally, The Bank of England is in a street in London named Threadneedle Street. It was named this after the erm... Seamstresses who worked in that street. Before it got that name it had a much more vulgar nickname, which I won't be able to post on this forum.

PM ME. PM ME!

I just looked it up on Wikipedia. You sure you'd want to know it? You might live to regret it. It starts with 'G', is made of two words, one of them an expletive. That's all I will say here.

 

[Bouncy Castle]

I'm a big girl, I can handle it!!

Actually, I thought it might be something of that ilk.

 

[Bouncy Castle]

I, too, have always wondered about Terry's thing with cabbages.......... and Robert Rankin's thing about sprouts.

Strange dudes!!