the inimitable Terry Pratchett strikes again

If you’ve nev­er had the plea­sure before, you owe it to your­self to read some­thing by Ter­ry Pratch­ett. He’s a humor fan­ta­sy nov­el­ist who actu­al­ly makes me laugh out loud on a fair­ly reg­u­lar basis.

I just fin­ished his most recent book and stum­bled across these two lit­tle snip­pets that tick­led me.

Thud! (Discworld, Book 30)

[Nob­by said,] “There’s a lot that goes on that we don’t know about.”

“Like what, exact­ly?” Colon retort­ed. “Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about. There–you can’t, can you?” (page 42)

And lat­er…

“War, Nob­by. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dun­no, Sarge. Free­ing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol–well, okay.”
“Defend­ing your­self against a total­i­tar­i­an aggres­sor?”
“All right, I’ll grant you that, but–”
“Sav­ing civ­i­liza­tion from a horde of–”
“It does­n’t do any good in the long run is what I’m say­ing, Nob­by, if you’d lis­ten for five sec­onds togeth­er, ” said Fred Colon sharply.
“Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?” (page 50)

The Big Tent

Fresh­man arrived on cam­pus today, and so we were there as well.

There’s an event spon­sored by the Office for Reli­gious Life called “Frosh & Faith.” It’s actu­al­ly more for par­ents than for stu­dents. It hap­pens with­in a few hours of par­ents bring­ing their chil­dren to cam­pus and is meant to reas­sure them that there is at least a rem­nant of stu­dents who strive for right­eous­ness. At least, that’s my take on it.

Any­way, we always set up a table there along with the oth­er groups and try to meet fresh­men like crazy.

Today the weath­er threw us a curve­ball.

It rained.

In Palo Alto in Sep­tem­ber.

It rained.

I was stunned.

I was also dry, hav­ing had the fore­sight to bring a canopy. I was also soon alone, as all the oth­er groups had neglect­ed this cru­cial bit of prepa­ra­tion.

At first the oth­er groups strug­gled through. We invit­ed those at adja­cent tables to shel­ter with­in our tent, lead­ing to the nev­er-before-heard state­ment from an ordained Assem­bly of God min­is­ter (moi) to an ordained Uni­tar­i­an Uni­ver­sal­ist min­is­ter (Dean Scot­ty McLen­nan), “Come on in–the Assem­blies of God tent is big enough for you.”

Heh. That made me hap­py.

By the end it was us and one or two oth­er groups. Even the Office for Reli­gious Life bailed.

A rather aus­pi­cious start to the school year–all the frosh have been bap­tized and now we just need to get them to show up.

Rat Redux

We thought our rat prob­lems were over.

No such luck.

Like the Sith, our rats come in twos. We have slain the appren­tice, but the mas­ter is still at large. Lurk­ing. Wait­ing.

We found strong scat­a­log­i­cal evi­dence that the rat had spent some time brow­ing around our bed­room, and Paula was so freaked out that I thought we were going to have to pack up and move into a new apart­ment on the spot.

We here­by declare a state of war on any and all rodents which have the mis­for­tune to be found in our apart­ment. And to all “bystanders” just remember–you are either with us or you are with the rats.

Dembski Does Daily Show

William Dem­b­s­ki was on the Dai­ly Show tonight for a pan­el dis­cus­sion on evo­lu­tion. He did much bet­ter than I expect­ed, although it was obvi­ous that Jon Stew­art did­n’t real­ly under­stand the dif­fer­ences between old-school cre­ation sci­ence and the intel­li­gent design camp (or per­haps he sim­ply did­n’t care about those dif­fer­ences). In addi­tion, I found it inter­est­ing that Dem­b­s­ki and Edward Lar­son were basi­cal­ly agree­ing with one anoth­er on most of the points and that Stew­art did­n’t seem to pick up on it.

Redesigned PreachingToday.com is Sweet

The redesigned PreachingToday.com is real­ly nice. The new media sec­tion is espe­cial­ly good (although it’s a bit hard to find the media brows­ing page–it’s http://preachingtoday.com/media/browse.html–and there are a few glitch­es they still need to work out).

Over­all, I’m quite hap­py. I’m an annu­al sub­scriber and I’ve always got­ten far more than my mon­ey’s worth. Now it’s dou­bly true.

The Rat Is Dead

In response to our cri­sis we set out two rat traps last night, behe­moths capa­ble of remov­ing your toes. We awoke to find a dead rat.

Thanks to Jerod for the advice, we’ll keep it in mind for the future.

Happy Donuts Is The Bomb

To all my Spring­field friends, you can keep your Mud­house. I have Hap­py Donuts. Open 24/7, free wifi, and donuts. Hmmm… donuts.…

If Curt Harlow Had An Evil Twin

Paula and I were watch­ing tele­vi­sion a while back and real­ized that Jonathan Antin is the evil oppo­site of Curt Har­low. Seriously–if you know Curt watch Blow Out and pre­tend Curt was com­plete­ly wrapped up in him­self and had cho­sen to go into hair styling rather than col­lege min­istry.

Mothers-In-Law and Rats

Note to self: my moth­er-in-law does not appre­ci­ate me sneak­ing up behind her, hurl­ing a ball at her leg, and yelling “SQUEAK!”

Rat-Pong

So we have a rat in our apart­ment. At least some of the time.

We’re not cer­tain of this, but our best guess is that he’s a refugee from our neigh­bors’ place. They’ve been try­ing to evict a rat for months.

And last night Paula and I saw him in our din­ing room.

We set out traps. He ate the food off of them and laughed at our anti­quat­ed tech­nol­o­gy. He must be a stain­less steel rat (how’s that for a gra­tu­itous geek ref­er­ence?)

Our oth­er neigh­bors have cats, and so we asked for a cat toy to set out. We were oper­at­ing under the the­o­ry that rats fear cats and that the smell would dri­ve him to safer realms. Alas–this is a bold rat who enjoys play­ing with cat toys.

So as a last-ditch effort, Paula and I are resort­ing to psy-ops.

We left a note on our neigh­bors’ door to woo him home.

Dear Rat,

Please come home. Our food is organ­ic and bet­ter-tast­ing. Also our kid is cute and wants a pet.

With much love,

Dirk & Emi­ly

In a very can­ny move, how­ev­er, our neigh­bors demon­strat­ed that they have careers in coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence in case oth­er things don’t pan out. The fol­low­ing was affixed to our door, direct­ly fac­ing the note that we had placed on their door.

Dear­est Rat,

Ignore the sign on the oth­er door–they just want to kill you! We looooove you!! And our kid is at a devel­op­men­tal­ly appro­pri­ate age to appre­ci­ate rodents. The oth­er kid will try to eat you. Or your poop.

Love,

The Davis­es

For­tu­nate­ly, Paula dis­cov­ered a hand­writ­ten mis­sive from the rodent at large which she deliv­ered to Emi­ly moments ago.

Dear Davis Fam­i­ly,

Thank you for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty. You place was a great vaca­tion spot. But now that the Robin­sons are back I think I should go home. After all, win­ter is com­ing and their kid would be more use­ful in a bliz­zard, if you know what I mean.

I appre­ci­ate the thought behind your note, but I know the Robin­sons quite well. After all, we share a bed­room (heck, some­times we share a futon).

Signed,

The Rat

Yes, it actu­al­ly says, “Signed, The Rat” at the end. Rats don’t get much instruc­tion in writ­ing let­ters at ele­men­tary school.

Any­way, I’ll keep you post­ed as devel­op­ments war­rant.