Discworld Annotations - HOGFATHER - part 2 Concluded from last issue [p. 141] "++Error at Address:14, Treacle Mine Road, Ankh- Morpork +++" A common error message on many types of computer tells you that there is an error at a certain memory address, expressed as a number. This information is completely useless to anyone except a programmer. Based on _The Streets of Ankh-Morpork_, it has been suggested that this may be the address of CMOT Dibbler's cellar, mentioned in _Reaper Man_. [p. 141] "'I know it sounds stupid, Archchancellor, but we think it might have caught something off the Bursar.'" Possibly Hex has caught a virus. On the Discworld, there's no obvious reason why a virus shouldn't be transmittable from human to computer or vice-versa. In the early 1970s there appeared a sort of proto-virus called the 'Cookie Monster', which cropped up on a number of computers -- notably Multics-based machines. What would happen is that unsuspecting users would suddenly find messages demanding cookies on their terminals, and they would not be able to proceed until they typed 'COOKIE' or 'HAVECOOKIE', etc. -- in much the same way as Hex is 'cured' by typing 'DRYDFROGPILLS'. [p. 143] "'You don't have to shout, Archchancellor,' said Ponder." In on-line conversations, a common error among newcomers is typing everything in block capital letters, known colloquially as 'shouting'. This causes varying degrees of irritation among readers. There are also some people with vision impairments who use software that purposely uses capital letters, as they are easier to read, but fortunately this software is improving. [p. 143] "Then it wrote: ++Good Evening, Archchancellor. I Am Fully Recovered And Enthusiastic About My Tasks +++" In Arthur C. Clarke's _2010_, Hal says: "Good morning Dr Chandra. This is HAL. I am ready for my first lesson." [p. 144] "What does 'divide by cucumber' mean?" "Oh, Hex just says that if it comes up with an answer that it knows can't possibly be real." The real-world version of this is is known as a "Divide by Zero" error. Dividing by zero is an operation not allowed by the rules of mathematics, and computers will generate an error when asked to perform it. [p. 150] "[...] I can TALK THAT TALK and stalk that stalk [...]" The usual phrase is, of course, "talk the talk and walk the walk", meaning to both say and do the right thing. If anyone can definitively point to the origin of this phrase, I'd be interested to know it -- possibly from the US civil rights movement of the 1960s. It's been mentioned more than once that the Stanley Kubrick movie _Full Metal Jacket_, the character Joker bandies words with a marine called Animal Mother, who answers: "You talk the talk but do you walk the walk?" This encounter may be significant purely because Animal Mother's helmet bears the text "I AM BECOME DEATH". [p. 154] "There are those who believe that [...] there was some Golden Age [...] when [...] the stones fit together so you could hardly put a knife between them, you know, and it's obvious they had flying machines, right, because of the way the earthworks can only be seen from above, yeah?" This speculation has been advanced in the context of, e.g., the ancient pyramids of Peru, where the stones really do fit together almost perfectly, and where the Kuta Lines really can only be seen from above. Apparently the part of Peru where the Inca lived is rather prone to earthquakes, and not wanting their perfectly fitting stones to fall over and break into little pieces when the earth moved, the Inca built all their major buildings with the walls sloping inwards. Many Inca buildings are still standing (less a roof or two, of course), in sharp contrast with California, where modern buildings fall over with distressing regularity. Britain has things called leylines -- ancient sites so arranged that they draw a perfectly straight line across a map, allegedly impossible to trace without modern cartographical techniques. For the most bizarre extrapolation of this belief, see Erich von Daniken, _Chariots of the Gods_, which claims not only that aliens visited the earth in ancient times, but also that they actually started human civilisation. The footnote ties together a number of modern myths about aliens, ending with the "The truth may be out there...", the catchphrase of the 90s TV series _The X-Files_. [p. 155] "'Lares and Penates? What were they when they were at home?' said Ridcully." They were Roman household gods. There are many beautiful shrines to them -- there was at least one in every well-to-do ancient Roman house. The god that saw to it "that the bread rose" was called Priapus, a god of fertility, who was conventionally represented by or with a huge phallus. [p. 155] "'Careless talk creates lives!'" A propaganda poster first used in the First World War bore the slogan "Careless talk costs lives" as an admonition against saying anything, to anyone, about (for instance) where your loved ones were currently serving, in case a spy was listening. (Also: loose lips sink ships.) Interestingly, the Auditors also feel that there is no difference between creating and costing lives. [p. 157] "'Oh, what fun,' muttered Albert." Once again Terry completely inverts the meaning of a song lyric without changing a single word (see the annotation for p. 60). The original song here is 'Jingle Bells': "Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh". [p. 162] "'[...] they say you can Earn $$$ in Your Spare Time [...] '" Refers to the nuisance phenomenon on the Internet called 'spam'. E-mail with subject lines resembling the above are mass-mailed out to thousands of people in the hope that a small fraction of them will fall for it, and be persuaded to perpetuate what was, in essence, a pyramid scheme, and highly illegal in most countries. This sort of 'Make Money Fast' spam is growing rarer these days, being replaced with unsolicited ads for too-good-to-be-true credit cards, mass-e-mail programs and cheap long-distance phone calls. [p. 165] "[...], would even now be tiring of painting naked young ladies on some tropical island somewhere" A reference to the painter Paul Gaugin, who spent his most productive years in the South Pacific doing just this. [p. 166] "The old man in the hovel looked uncertainly at the feast [...]" The episode of the king and the old man is based on the story of Good King Wenceslas. Of course, Terry doesn't quite see it the way of the Christmas carol. [p. 177] "It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not." A common device to help visualise the effect of gravity on the fabric of the universe, similarly useless beyond a certain point. See also the annotation for p. 230/207 of _Sourcery_. [p. 177] "'It's brass monkeys out here.'" The full expression is "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". [p. 181] "[...] OTHER PEOPLE HAVE NO HOMES. IS THIS FAIR? 'Well, of course, that's the big issue --' Albert began." In the UK, _The Big Issue_ is a magazine sold by the homeless. [p. 184] "A large hourglass came down on the spring." Ever since the Apple Macintosh, an hourglass cursor has indicated the computer is busy, often for the indefinite future. [p. 185] "'Remember when we had all that life force all over the place? A man couldn't call his trousers his own!'" For the details of the time Ridcully is referring to, read _Reaper Man_. [p. 190] "'Excuse me madam' said Ridcully. 'But is that a chicken on your shoulder?' 'It's, er, it's, er, it's the Blue Bird of Happiness' said the Cheerful Fairy." In _The Blue Bird_ by Maurice Maeterlinck, published in German in 1909, two children set off on a long journey to find the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to learn that it was in their own back garden all along. There's also a Far Side cartoon wherein "Ned, the Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, is visited by the Chicken of Depression". [p. 192] "According to my theory it is cladisticaly associated with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals." Normally, cladists are those who try to classify organisms in such a way that related species are placed in the same family, not in a family with other species that look the same. This is quite the opposite to Ponder's cladism. This method of classification is called "dichotomous key classification": unfortunately Ponder has left out the conventional first step in this kind of identification, which is something along the lines of "can it move unassisted?" -- if so, go to animal, if not, go to plants. [p. 193] "Sometimes a chicken is nothing but a bird." Freud once said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", for much the same reason. [p. 195] "'Hogswatch is coming, The pig is getting fat, [...]'" There is a song that goes: Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting fat Won't you put a penny in the old man's hat? If you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do And if you haven't got a ha'penny then God bless you. [p. 195] "'-- nobody knows how good we can live, on boots three times a day...'" A standard children's song, once (apparently) popular at Girl Guide camps, went: Everybody hates me, nobody loves me, Think I'll go and eat worms. Long thin slimy ones, short fat stubby ones, Juicy, juicy, juicy, juicy worms. Bite their heads off, suck their juice out, Throw their skins away. Nobody knows how good we can live On worms three times a day. [p. 195] "'Ah, Humbugs?' he said." In Charles Dickens' _A Christmas Carol_, Scrooge has the catchphrase "Bah! Humbug!". [p. 208] "'[...] letting me hire a boat and sail around to the islands of --'" Darwin gathered much of the data for his version of evolutionary theory while in the Galapagos Islands, which he visited on HMS _Beagle_. [p. 212] "'You know what happens to kids who suck their thumbs, there's this big monster with scissors all --'" There is a classic set of children's stories called (in English) _Slovenly Peter_, by Heinrich Hoffman, originally written in German circa 1840. One of the stories is about the scissor man, who comes in and cuts the thumbs off of a little girl who refuses to stop sucking her thumbs. [p. 213] "But she was used to the idea of buildings that were bigger on the inside than on the outside. Her grandfather had never been able to get a handle on dimensions." In the legendary BBC TV series _Doctor Who_, the Tardis is famous for being "bigger on the inside than on the outside". When the series began in 1963, the Doctor was accompanied by his "granddaughter", Susan. However, before jumping to any conclusions, see the annotation for p. 20/15 of _Soul Music_. [p. 219] "'You could get them to open Dad's wallet and post the contents to some address?'" A US television presenter named Soupy Sales was hosting a children's TV show in 1965, and in one famous live episode ad-libbed: "Hey kids, last night was New Year's Eve, and your mother and dad were out having a great time. They are probably still sleeping and what I want you to do is tiptoe in their bedroom and go in your mom's pocketbook and your dad's pants, which are probably on the floor. You'll see a lot of green pieces of paper with pictures of guys in beards. Put them in an envelope and send them to me at Soupy Sales, Channel 5, New York, New York. And you know what I'm going to send you? A post card from Puerto Rico!" That the station subsequently got $80,000 in the mail appears to be a bit of an urban legend, but Soupy's show did get pulled for two weeks before he was allowed back on the air again. [p. 229] "I know I made that mistake with little William Rubin [...]" Bilirubin is formed when haemoglobin is broken down, and is basically the the pigment that makes faeces brown. In _The Silence of the Lambs_, by Thomas Harris, Hannible Lecter at one point says that the killer 'Buffalo Bill' is a former patient of his named Bill Rubin. In Harris' previous book _Red Dragon_ the killer Francis Dolorhyde had no teeth and was known as the Tooth Fairy. Terry explains the name as follows: "Oh, lor'. Billy Rubim is an old medical student joke..." "Like most really stupid jokes, it's one that you won't spot unless you have the right background. Others on here will doubtless explain, but according to one of my informants, a nurse, every batch of medical students learns it anew and Mr Rubin's name turns up in various places to general sniggering." [p. 229] "They don't think twice about pushing off for a month as a big white bull or a swan or something [...]" The Greek gods, particularly Zeus, were fond of incarnating themselves as animals of this sort, usually as part of a scheme to seduce or ravish some unsuspecting young woman. On the Discworld, Om used to do the same sort of thing. See _Small Gods_ for details. [p. 232] "'There *are* magic wardrobes,' said Violet nervously. 'If you go into them, you come out in a magic land.'" A land such as Narnia. See the annotation for p. 22/22 of _Sourcery_. [p. 235] "'I thought you had to clap your hands and say you believed in 'em,' [...] 'That's just for the little shiny ones,' [...]" The fairies in J M Barrie's _Peter Pan_, Tinkerbell in particular, are generally kept happy (and alive) in this fashion. I don't know if there's an earlier reference. [p. 236] "The Dean took a small glass cube from his pocket and ran it over the corpse." A scene familiar to anyone who's ever watched an episode of _Star Trek_. [p. 237] "++Yes. I Am Preparing An Area Of Write-Only Memory +++" "Write Only Memory" is a curious idea, since it could never be read, and would therefore be fairly pointless. Real computers have a type of storage called 'Read-Only Memory', or ROM, in which is stored information that is never erased or overwritten. [p. 239] "Family motto _Non timetis messor_" "Don't fear the reaper" [p. 258] "'I didn't even *have* any of that salmon mousse!'" In _Monty Python's The Meaning of Life_, a dinner party is rather spoiled when Death visits (a Death not entirely unlike the Discworld's). The visit is occasioned by the hostess serving tinned salmon mousse, and the American guest complains that he didn't have any salmon mousse. [p. 265] "what are you waiting for? Hogswatch?" "What are you waiting for? Christmas?" is a mild taunt used to encourage someone to start doing something. [p. 267] "The man was tattooed. Blue whorls and spirals haunted his skin..." The ancient Celts painted blue patterns on their skin using the woad plant, possibly as a means of setting the warriors apart from civilians. [p. 269] "'I remember hearing,' said Susan distantly, 'that the idea of the Hogfather wearing a red and white outfit was invented quite recently.' NO. IT WAS REMEMBERED." The whole concept of the modern Santa Claus is commonly ascribed to a Coca Cola promotion. However, the idea was around long before then. See for details. The modern red-and-white image of Santa derives from the poem _The Night Before Christmas_ (see the annotation for p. 44), first published in 1822. Coca-Cola adopted him as an advertising symbol in the 1920s, and only since then have the colours become 'fixed'. However, it is worth mentioning that St Nicholas was a 4th century bishop, who would have worn red and white robes. [p. 270] "TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE." Desmond Morris, in _The Naked Ape_: "I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape." However, Terry says that he was unaware of this prior use. [p. 272] "...pictures of rabbits in waistcoats, among other fauna." An echo of Beatrix Potter's nursery stories and their illustrations, most obviously Peter Rabbit. The "gold watches and top hats" suggests the White Rabbit from _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_. [p. 281] "One foot kicked the 'Afterburner' lever and the other spun the valve of the nitrous oxide cylinder." Nitrous oxide, when added to water, becomes nitrous acid. Which might throw light on the oft-asked question: "what precisely happened to Ridcully in the bath?" [p. 283] "'as they say, "better a meal of old boots where friendship is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."'" From the Bible: "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." (Proverbs 15:17) [p. 284] "'And god bless us, every one,' said Arnold Sideways." This is the last line of Dickens' _A Christmas Carol_, spoken by Tiny Tim, who also had something wrong with his legs. - o -