Percy stormed over to the magical cooler. No one tried to stop him. He knocked open the lid and rummaged throught the ice. There had to be one. Please. He was rewarded with s silver-and-red can of soda. He brandished it at the dolphin warriors as if spraying them with bug repellent. "Behold!" Percy shouted. "The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!

Tallow turned the corner into Bat and Scarly's office to be greeted by a large plastic robot on the bench waving its arms and shouting, "Say hello to my l'il frien'" in an electronically processed voiced as a small plastic penis repeatedly jabbed out from its groin on a short metal piston.Bat emerged from behind the thing. "Don't judge me," he said. "I got bored.

Monsters are getting more uppity, too," said another. "I heard where this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door-""Pour encourjay lays ortras," said one of the listeners."Right, and you know what? Its mum come and complained. Its actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained. That's the respect you get.

Letters rarely got written in that mine. Work stopped and the whole clan had sat around in respectful silence as his pen scrittered across the parchment. His aunt had been sent up to Varneshi's to beg his pardon but could he see his way clear to sparing a smidgen of wax. His sister had been sent down to the village to ask Mistress Garlick the witch how you stopped spelling recommendation.

And visitors say: how does such a big city exist? What keeps it going? Since it's got a river you can chew, where does the drinking water come from? What is, in fact, the basis of its civic economy? How come it, against all probability, works?Actually, visitors don't often say this. They usually say things like, "Which way to the, you know, the...er...you know, the young ladies, right?

The next morning after finishing my interviews, I found myself with some time to kill before the bus arrived to return me to Whitby. The term "time to kill" suddenly sounded awfully harsh.Was "time to waste" better? No, "waste" is so un-Benedictine."Time to spend"? Too much of a material ring."Time to bum around?" Yes, it had just the right balance of self-effacement and no fixed address. Like Jesus.

I thought you were a drunk.""A drunk?""Bloodshot eyes, dirty clothes, getting home in the wee hours of the morning, making a lot ofnoise, grouchy all the time as if you had a hangover… what else was I to think?"He rubbed his face. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking. I should have showered, shaved, and dressed in asuit before I came out to tell you that you were making enough noise to raise the dead.

Giving her ten thousand Lifeless is enough to make even me consider my drunk-monkey theory.”“The one who chooses names and titles of the Returned?”“Exactly,” Lightsong said. “I’ve actually considered expanding the theory. I am now proposing to believe that God-or the universe, or time, or whatever you think controls all of this-is all really just a drunk monkey.

When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

Er, why do you need to work in a dark room, though?" he said. "The imps don't need it, do they?""Ah, zis is for my experiment," said Otto proudly. "You know zat another term for an iconographer would be 'photographer'? From the old word photos in Latation, vhich means - ""'To prance around like a pillock ordering everyone about as if you owned the place'", said William."Ah, you know it!

He felt an appetite for once, one that it'd take more than a drink or two to satisfy. He strolled along for breakfast at Harga's House of Ribs, the habit of years, and got another unpleasant surprise. Normally the only decoration in there was in Sham Harga's vest and the food was good solid stuff on a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.

No swamp dragon could ever terrorise a kingdom, except by accident. Vimes wondered how many had been killed by enterprising heroes. It was terribly cruel to do something like that to creatures whose only crime was to blow themselves absent-mindedly to pieces in mid-air, which was not something any individual dragon made a habit of. A race of, of whittles, that's what dragons were. Born to lose. Live fast, die wide.

Upstairs, in what had been until then the cash office, Young Sam slept peacefully in a makeshift bed. One day, Vimes hoped, he would be able to tell him that on one special night he'd been guarded by four troll watchmen. They'd been off duty but volunteered to come in for this, and were just itching for some dwarfs to try anything. Sam hoped the boy would be impressed; the most other kids could hope for was angels.

As I was walking to my car, a crow that was sitting on a wall suddenly scooped down and did number two on my head. Luckily I was holding a newspaper on my head at that time because sun was very strong and I didn’t want to become tanned. So thanks god my blow-dried hair didn’t get spoiled. People say it is a good amen when a bird does potty on you, but I am sorry, what’s so good about your head being used as a toilet?

Just a minute," said Lobsang. "Who are you? Time has stopped, the world is given over to...fairy tales and monsters, and there's a schoolteacher walking around?""Best kind of person to have," said Susan. "We don't like silliness. Anyway, I told you. I've inherited certain talents.""Like living outside of time?""That's one of them.""It's a weird talent for a schoolteacher!""Good for marking, though," said Susan calmly.