The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 29: Eric Pt.1 (Corporate Nonsense Demon)

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Eric”. We’re back! Loins! Jungle! There are bees here, leave immediately! Aubergines! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Robert Pattinson: A Dispatch From Isolation - GQWatching Twilight on a poorly hung projector screen - RedditBBC America Reveals A New Cast Photo From ‘The Watch’ And Fans Of Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ Are Not Pleased - ScienceFiction.comDracula (TV Mini-Series 2020– ) - IMDb"Weird Al" Yankovic - Lame Claim to Fame - YouTubeFictional Aisle by Tall Boy Special - YouTubeDoctor Faustus (play) - WikipediaGoethe’s Faust - WikipediaI'm R.L. Stine and it's my job to terrify kids. Ask me anything! - RedditThe Magic of Terry Pratchett (an interview with Marc Burrows) - TTSMYFElephant tumblr screenshot - imgurShort Story:The Hades Business - Lspace wikiPassive-aggressive Google Doc chat - imgurNewton's Cradle (Entry 835.1C1311) - OmnibusSimple English Demonic Evocation Guide - Become a Living GodIpos  - WikipediaA Salute to the Wheel - Smithsonian MagazineRai Stones - WikipediaMS-DOS - Microsoft WikiThe Annotated Pratchett Files - Eric - p21Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

How's that? Is that looking better? Okay, does that sound all right? Yeah, you sound good. Okay, cool. That's where it should be. I'm singing. Let's now head over to myself. Head to you. How do I delete myself from the distance? Okay, there we go. I have no pronouns. Do not address me. Okay, okay, okay. We're in business. We're rolling. Awesome. We're going to be super focused and do this without too much rambling today on the basis that I have really nice food in the oven that I'm excited about eating when we're done.

All right, cool. What have you got in the oven? I'll start off on a really focused note. Yeah, really focused. I've made like a kind of bollocksed up aubergine parmesan thing. So like some slices of griddled aubergine and some pan-roasted cherry tomatoes and rucosa mixed with caramelised onions and garlic and thyme and parmesan. That sounds good. I'm really glad I just ate a big bowl of leftover bolognese or I'd be very hungry listening to that. Would you like to see the puppy? Yes, I'd like to see the puppy. Oh my god. She's so precious. I miss her. Cool, cool, cool. So how's your August been?

Wow. Obviously, I haven't seen you in. You saw me two hours ago, Francine. Yeah. Due to events, we have been in each other's social bubble since July because that was necessary. It's been a fun month for what we did on the holidays. Moved house. Moved house, yeah. Bought some plants? Bought a lot of plants. I have the most amazing, I don't know if I can show you, hang on. Let me put the selfie one so I can see what I'm doing. I have the most amazing aloe plant now, if you can just see that by the curtains. Oh, that's fucking massive. I'm pretty sure it's...

You could get burns all over and saw yourself out there, nice. I'm pretty sure it's part-triphid. Like, I think there is some triphid in its upbringing. But like an aloe triphid would go around soothing people's eyes. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. I want to write that. Yeah. Oh, triphids didn't make people go blind, did they? That was the... No, that was the Martians. Yeah. That was the Martians. It was the green lights in the sky from the dropped space weapons or something. Oh, yeah. Anyway, moved house. I love the day of the triphids. Yeah, you moved house. I have a lot of plants.

Do you love it? I do love it. It's amazing. It's up some stairs, which we found out when we carried the stuff up, but it's... How are you coping with the stairs after a long shift? Stairs after a long shift are fine, like cleaning the flat after a long shift, less fun. Also, I keep thinking like I'm done unpacking and moving in and then more stuff happens because we're still clearing out my mom's old place. So it's like really clean and organized. And then I got a vinyl collection and then really clean and organized. And then I got a sewing table and bags of fabric, which is cool. This is all really cool stuff.

But now I have to find places to put all the really cool stuff and I have so much fabric. It's a really cool fabric. Some of it has bees. I'm going to make... It's like a light blue silk with embroidered bees on and I'm totally making a blazer out of it when I learn how to make a blazer. Bee blazer. Bee blazer. You'll be covered in bees. I'll be covered in bees. I'm very excited about that. Also, there's some apron fabric ready cut into aprons. So I guess I'm going to make some aprons. So yeah, that was what I did on my holidays. What did you do in your holidays, Francine?

Fewer dramatic things. I'm learning how to write properly. That sounds weird. I'm learning how to use a pen properly and fountain pen and write in cursive and things, which we don't learn at school here. We're meant to learn how to write joined up, but I was given up on fairly quickly. And then the same friend who got me the pen for my birthday got me some wax seal stuff. So I've also been playing with that. Fun. Now I can monogram my letters when I finally get around to sending some. Yeah. I mean, as I've said before, if you send me an elaborate wax seal letter, I will respond with a text message. Yeah, that's fine.

I just... Or possibly a carrier pigeon. That's beautiful. It's mainly for my satisfaction. Yes. No, I'm fully aware. I approve. Oh, I also started jewelry making. That was fun. Oh, yeah. You're really good at that, too. So we're done. Yeah. So check me out with my Etsy shop soon, because I cannot not monetize a hobby. Yeah, I did put some watercolour up on Redbubble. I approve. Do you? Because we said we wouldn't, but...

Yes, but we are trash people and also my living... It's like broke, so... Yeah, I was going to say my living expenses doubled in the last month. So something slightly more relevant, you were going to tell me some things about the watch series, which I have found out very little about on the basis that it'll probably make me cross and you're better at it. Yeah, that's fair. I actually... I never take notes for the soft open, because the soft open is normally just us talking bollocks until we get to pratch it. Yeah, yeah. But because this was released while we were on our holes,

I did actually... I can't believe August happened. What the fuck was that? Like, my August was just fire. Everything was on fire. Everything has been on fire since July, technically, but like... It's nearly time for a Saturday coffee. Yes. So they released some new production stills for the watch series and it has a release date. I don't know if it did before, which is January. Okay. I'm never sure if something has a release date that far in advance, whether it's actually going to happen or maybe I've been jaded by video games because I don't

often. With TV series, generally, they don't announce a release date unless it's done and ready to go. In this case, this was all filmed pre-COVID. Because that new Batman movie that's coming out, the trailer for that has been put together from... They've only done half the filming, I think? Yeah. I read a really weird interview with Robert Pattinson. I highly recommend reading interviews with Robert Pattinson because the man is batshit. Really? Yeah. How so? What kind of batshit?

Well, like, he stopped during the interview to demonstrate this meal thing he was making that was basically microwave cereal and sugar with cheese. Yeah. I'll find... I will find the interview and link to it in the show notes. It's amazing. Robert Pattinson is slightly deranged as you would expect if you'd been in the Twilight films. Oh, I'm never going to get over that. Fuck it. Just that short video of them playing a bit of Twilight on the sheet that keeps waving. I've never even seen that movie, but that minute-long clip, whatever it is, is just one of the favorite things I've ever seen. Wait, have you never seen Twilight?

No, I shouldn't have admitted that, should I? I'm totally... Oh, my God. It's a classic. How can you not see? I'm going to start doing that. Thank you, and fuck Apocalypse now. Yeah, no, I will watch that with you, though. That's one I do want to watch with you and one of our snarkier friends because I'm willing to just giggle through that one. Oh, yeah. No, that's not something we will watch and take seriously. Apart from the baseball scene, which is cinematic masterpiece. Okay, gosh. The Vampire Movie has a cinematic masterpiece baseball scene, does it?

It involves music super much as a black hole. Oh, I do like that song. Yeah, the music in the films is weirdly good. Anyway, okay. What are we talking about? I have no idea. Oh, the watch. The watch, yeah. This new production still and release date came out for the watch series, so obviously there has been discourse on the Twitters.

Discourse for the capital D. There has been discourse. I think everyone's just ready to hate it. We did tweet about it a little bit, but I figure... I did. And now I know how people must feel if they've got like a spokesman. It's like in Yes, Minister. You announced this, did I? Do you ever know how often I forget which Twitter account I'm logged into?

Our podcast Twitter account. Very nearly tweeted about wanting to be freed from its flesh prison today. Oh, actually, do you know what? Yeah, that's fine. I feel like our podcast account is pretty much just you, so that's fine. Yeah, during lockdown, there was like a Doctor Who tweet along, and it was for the episode where the thing happens with Donna, and I was live-tweeting it from the podcast account and my account, and got just massively mixed up between the two of them

while crying about what happened to Donna Noble. Why are you live-tweeting Doctor Who from the podcast account? David Tennant's in it. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Fucking the watch, God. Right, the watch. Okay, so thoughts.

Because lots of people are totally ready to hate this thing, and I get it. This production still did have in it the whole cast, so what's meant to be Angua, who's like very short blonde hair and quite androgynous looking. We have the young, thin Sibyl. First, I get to try this, who actually looks pretty cool and like a troll. Oh, yeah?

We've got Cheery, who is not a dwarf in this, but is non-binary and is being played by a non-binary actor. Okay. And lots of people have thoughts. So are these thoughts entirely based off the stills? Were we going completely off aesthetics? Not just the still, but like all the news that's been released around the show

and what it's going to be. Like the fact that we have young, thin Sibyl, who is vigilante. The fact that there is... I'm trying to talk about this without any spoilers for the Discord books, but the fact that there is a character called Keele in it at the same time as Vimes, and they are played by acts of a different race. Right, yeah.

That's weird. Yeah, I don't dislike that because I'm racist. I dislike that because of something that happens in the books. I really feel I need to clarify. The thing is, like, so Rihanna Pratchett and some of the official, like, Terry Pratchett channels have basically tweeted and said, this is inspired by not based on,

and pretty much said they're not happy about it. I did see Rihanna retweet something saying blah blah based on going inspired by not based on. So yeah, so everyone's kind of ready to hate it, especially because, like, the estate and Rihanna don't really approve of it. And I totally get that. But the thoughts I had were, like, A, adaptation in general, it's never perfect.

The original property already exists. Yes. Sometimes it's better than others, and sometimes the good ones are the ones that aren't particularly accurate. Like, I love the Lord of the Rings films. I also love the Lord of the Rings books. The films lose a lot from the books, but they would be shit films if they had everything from the books.

Oh, my God, can you imagine? Yeah. Somehow you'd have to put in, like, just interspersed it with 20 minutes of nice stock footage of the scenery to make it through to the books. Exactly. Also, the films make it slightly less sausage-festy. Not by much, and it's still very much a sausage-fest.

Is it past the Bechamel test? It can't. God, no, no. The Lord of the Rings in no way. Bechamel. Bechamel, not like the sauce, like the... Yeah, the Bechamel test. Lord of the Rings does not pass the Bechamel or the Bechamel test.

Both of us talking to each other about Bechamel does pass the Bechamel test, though. Excellent, well done, us. But so the Lord of the Rings are great films, despite the fact they're shit adaptations, whereas the Hobbit films just suck. We don't talk about the Hobbit films. They don't exist.

There is no Hobbit films in Bossing Sai. Please watch Avatar, so you understand this reference. Oh, my God, I tried for, like, 20 seconds, and then I turned to Buffy. What do you want? You to watch All of Avatar and All of Buffy, and then tell me... There's so much of both. Avatar is free time.

Avatar is three seasons, and they're all 20-minute episodes. How many episodes per season? Like, 50, because it's... Like, 20. A cartoon, right? Yeah. Like, 20 episodes per season. It's not that many.

All right, fine, only 60 episodes, fine. Yeah. Isn't that, like, a part two as well? There is a sequel series, which you should also watch, but... Right, yeah, here we go. I will accept you just watching Avatar. By the time you finish Avatar, you will want to watch the sequel series.

All right, fine, I'll get to it. Okay, so, the watch. We are so focused today. But I will say, like, an adaptation that's not super accurate and is really good is I'm watching the new Dracula series. I think it came out last year. Mark Gattis and Stephen Moffat made it.

And it's in no way... I've only seen the first... It's, like, three feature-length episodes. I've only seen the first one so far. It's fucking bad shit. It's not even close to the book. It's gay as fuck. There is a sarcastic nun.

I love it. Is it, like, annoyingly Stephen Moffat? Or has the other person had enough input? It is quite Stephen Moffat, and it's Stephen Moffat and Mark Gattis. But it's, like, first season of Sherlock Level, Stephen Moffat, I'd say. It's very campy.

Okay, not 30. Okay, not 30. Yeah. It's quite campy. I like campy. Campy's fine. It's just when they... Stephen Moffat just goes into a fucking

Wankfest with himself. It's not quite... Yeah, it's not... It's not at that point, but I've only seen episode one, so it might get to that point by episode three. Okay, cool. Well, keep me updated on the Wankfestery level.

So, yeah. So, looking at the watch thing, I mean, change in an adaptation not, like, massively faithfully sticking to the source material can be good. Sure. This is... Someone has made, like,

an interesting cyberpunk series that if it wasn't linked to Discworld at all and just I looked at the description of the series, I'm so on my alley. Is it cyberpunk-y? Yeah, they've made it a bit cyberpunk-y. There's graffiti in the background. I saw one really interesting Twitter thread

pointing out, like, if graffiti with aerosol cans existed, then there would have been, like, a very interesting, pratchety thing about the development of aerosol cans. So, little things like that I can get. Yeah. But I had a look at the Twitter feed of the guy who's kind of made this and directing it,

and he does seem to have this genuine love for it and this genuine love for what he's made. So, while it's not the adaptation we want or the adaptation that's super faithful, maybe this is what the guy has taken from the book. I do think there's a genuine love for the books here. But fucking young, thin, Sibyl. Yeah, I think we already have thoughts about that, didn't we?

Yeah, I have nothing against, like, racially blind casting, gender blind casting. I, you know, I don't care that they've made the patrician female. I do care that they've made one of the wizards female because there's, like, a whole book on why that's not the thing. I was going to say, gender blind casting is fine up to a point that if quite a lot of the plot hinges on the notion of gender, even if gender is bullshit, not everyone thinks that,

and that's part of the book. Yeah, the thing is, you could have a female wizard if you were going to then put the story of equal rights in as, like, a B-plot over the series. All right, I suppose if you're just going to completely ignore the law of the wizards, which you may as well do if you're ignoring half the squared law, law within R. Yeah, and also with the cheery thing.

Like, I think going with making the character non-binary and casting an actually non-binary actor is a really great idea, but they've made cheery not a dwarf and cheery dwarfness and the relationship that means that they have with another character. There's not so much I can say without spoilers, but I think they've lost a lot of opportunities for storytelling there by doing that. I think they have, but that might be the point.

Assuming this isn't going to be a 10-season long affair, there's only so much of Pratchett's law you can put into this thing. True, but I think it cuts. And if you want to start getting into the culture of the dwarves, you've got, well, A, you've got an incredibly complex thing, and B, you've got a little bit of treading a line on antisemitism. Well, yeah, but I think there's enough in the books that you can work from.

I think it just cuts off an opportunity for storytelling. And that was the point I was kind of building to with this, is I'm still going to watch this. It might still be a good TV show in its own merit, and I will try and take it as that. But A, I'm bitter about not getting the opportunity to have an older, larger woman on screen, a badass in a non-vigilante way.

Like, Sybil's character is really cool because she's not another fucking vigilante character. Yeah, exactly. She's nice. Yeah, well, you know dear listeners, we did some three episodes. Waxing lyrical. She operates within the bounds of society, and she's very good at manipulating those bounds of society and operating within them.

That's what her character brings to the table. Her ability to move through high society, and her ability to be very polite. But I think the most frustrating thing about this TV series is because we're getting this, we're not getting the super-faithful adaptation that would be so doable. Like, to the point where I started writing a series outline

for how I would adapt the watchbooks into a TV series. Is it, is the door closed to that from other people? I don't think the door's closed to that from other people, but I think because this exists, it's going to be a while before anything like that happened. But you could so easily do Guards, Guards as like a six-hour-long episode as a first season. But you could, and it wouldn't have to be totally 100% faithful.

You can start planting seeds for other books. You can start looking at Dwarven culture in it because you have carrot there. Yeah, you've got the benefit of that foresight, I suppose. Yeah, you can bring in characters like Angua slightly early. So again, not a total sausage first. Because that is kind of the big criticism you've had with Guards, Guards is that there is literally

only one female character, really. You could even still do genderblind casting and make veterinary female, but you could adapt that book. You could adapt that whole watch series. You could do a series that is kind of around the truth but brings the police aspect of the truth in a bit more. The truth is in the book, not just like... Yeah, the truth.

It's not the truth. Through the TV show and six-hour-long episodes, I don't see what the problem is. So if anyone from Narrativia is listening, like I have this outline pretty much done, I'm ready to go. Because I'm a nerd. How does one make an outline for a TV series that space heavily on books?

Well, I kind of... I break down the book into how I'd split it into six-hour-long episodes where you still have enough action in each episode. You've got cliffhangers. And then I thought about actually writing a pilot episode and realise that that would be taking it too far. Like a script. Well, it wouldn't be taking it too far,

but then I started working 40 hours a week again. When I clear off some of my actual two-write pile, because hopefully returning to the world of theatre with some radio plays or something. More news on that, especially for our listeners coming. I need to check in with how building his recording studio is going because he's moved house as well. Oh, yeah.

Somebody would bring for a recording studio. I mean, it's a cupboard. Yeah, well, fine. I also have cupboards, but mine are full of fabric and bubble wrap. Which would make for good recording, but there's not actually room for me in them. Oh, you know how all the American podcast hosts are like,

oh, yeah, I've been recording in my closet for the last few months. Yeah, they were giant walking closets. Yeah, exactly. They've all got fucking mansion-sized cupboards, is why. I finally saw a picture, one of them took of one of the others, I guess. I was like, oh, well, that makes a lot of fucking sense. If you can fit an en suite in there. I mean, look at eyeing up my cupboard.

Like, oh, I've got a cupboard under the stairs, which if it wasn't full of three machetes and quite a lot of flammable liquid. Yeah, that could work. Live with groundskeepers, and it has pros and cons for people. So at some point, I might write a spec script for the watch. Again, if anyone from Narrative Viewer is listening,

I don't think that's particularly likely, but... Well, let me know. Yeah, one day we might make it to the years of re-enabrasher. I might have an in. Maybe, kind of, not really. Okay, cool. Thanks for managing expectations. Well, okay, so the Henson Company is doing,

I think, the Wee-Free Med adaptation, possibly the Amazing Morris adaptation, is in, like, Jim Henson, the puppets. And I know someone who has worked for them in the past and might work for them again, so. Cool. Kind of. No, I know someone who knows someone.

Cool. 18 degrees of separation. And well, thanks, Liberty Stories. I can't remember the tune to that. No, me neither. Lame claim to fame. Lame claim to fame, thank you. God, lame.

Lame claim to fame. Weird Al. What a guy. God, I love my Al. More I learn about Weird Al the more I love him. I'm sure it's going on about that on the podcast. Yeah, that long read you sent me about his writing process was very cool.

Oh, you did get to it. Oh, no, you did get to it. Jack, I've been nagging for months to read it. He never reads things I sent him. Which I guess is fine because he doesn't really read a lot on the Internet. And what he does is usually about B-movies and blood bowls. So what can you do?

And machetes. No, no, no, he's got enough machetes. Still learn about machetes if you have them. What are you going to learn about them? I mean, one of the beautiful things about machetes is it's a fairly simple tool. Sharp end goes flat. Sharp end?

Swap. Do not slap a machete, children. I'm very upset. Our children do not do anything with machetes. I'm very upset that I don't have better artist skills so I couldn't make an image of you saying machete goes flat with the comic book style. With the flap speech bubble.

See, that is a good word. One of those comedic words there. Oh, recommendation listeners. There is a small ridiculous band called Tall Boy Special who we just found the other day via a TikTok video shared on Reddit because everything has five degrees of separation from itself now. And Fictional Isle is a very funny song. It is very funny.

I enjoyed that. For some reason, these three American boys are very good at surrealist humor. So try that. Tall Boy Special is my recommendation of the week. Oh, we should make that a feature. No, then it's pressure. Oh yeah, good point. If it comes up, we'll pretend we meant to.

Okay, cool. I like that plan. Okay, so we should do a podcast? Yeah, do you want to make a podcast? Yes. I'm going to put the kettle on first, though, because I have no respect for my sleep hygiene. Yeah, that's cool.

Joanna's wandered off before me and I just want to say that looking at her dimly lit flat through a grainy webcam, it's very much like a haunting as well to happen. I can hear you. I was talking about you. I was saying that looking at your dimly lit flat through a low-res camera is like a haunting was about to happen.

I was watching some paranormal investigation. Oh, cool. And then you came back. So I guess it came true. Burn. All right, I'm going to go and have an emotion. Timing. We just managed to return perfectly simultaneously.

We did. That was amazing. Okay, focus, because I want to get to my overgreens. Okay, sorry. I don't understand how you can say we're not focused. It's taken us only 45 minutes to cover those two points. Which we're all soft open. Yeah, yeah.

Hello, and welcome to The Two Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time, in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of Eric. We are a spoiler-light podcast.

Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on, Eric. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Long and arduous journey through the rest of 2020 and beyond.

And so this book is called Eric, subtitle Faust Crossed Out. And it's an unusually explicit parody, actually, having Faust crossed out like that. It's not that Pratchett isn't heavy-handed in things like Weird Sisters, but he's not usually like, this is what I'm parodying. So we're going into this.

But, and this is, that's my disclaimer at the start. I'm given to believe that if I knew Faust properly, I would enjoy this as a parody much more. And I'm willing to accept that. See, I've not read Faust, but like I said, I did study Faustus. And I did reread it at the beginning of 2018 because I wrote a Faustus parody,

which our listeners might get to experience, called The Accidental Satanist. So I have read it like in the last few years. And I can't say that enhanced my enjoyment of the book that much. Apparently it's the other one, that it's like a straight parody of the next one, which is the one I've started reading,

but I don't want to say, because I don't know how to pronounce his name. I think it's that, he's Dutch or something, because it's Johan. He's German. German, oh, fuck. Ghosts. We're just going to call him ghost until someone corrects me.

Listeners, please send us pronunciations. They don't have to be accurate. We'll believe you. Anyway, it's a collaboration between Pratchett and Dove Kirby. Pratchett wrote the story with Kirby's illustrations in mind, but most coffees need some publication bullshit. Don't have the illustrations, including mine. Joe's does.

So that's good. At least we have one coffee as it should be. It was released in 1990, the year before I was born, and therefore the world got immeasurably better. It was a very prolific year for Pratchett. He also released Moving Pictures, Good Omens, Diggers and Wings in 1990.

So two disc worlds and three knots. Five books in a year. Five books in a year is just insulting, honestly, to the rest of us, but as it's him. Did you know that RL Stein is just one dude? Really? Goosebumps. Yeah, you know a lot of these young adults,

well not even young adult children's authors, they're conglomerates. Yeah, I always assumed Goosebumps was ghost-ridden. No, RL Stein, one incredibly prolific, talented children's writer. I used to love the Goosebumps. I fucking loved Goosebumps. I want to get my hands on some of the Choose Your Own Adventure ones still. We should do like a bonus episode

where we do like a live Choose Your Own Adventure Goosebumps. Oh my god, yes. That would be so fun. Yes, we should. Anyway, but we're talking. I was about to say before I, I'm not going to do this because I'm not committing myself to anything, but what would be fun would be writing our own Choose Your Own Adventure Discworld.

That would be so fun. For the sake of the podcast. I'm not doing that. No, all right. Maybe next pandemic. If our listeners want to know a little bit more about what happened with the publication of Eric and the whole process of the illustrations happening,

there's some good stuff about it in Mark Burrow's book, The Magic of Terry Project, which has become a very handy part of my project reference section for the podcast. Yeah, because Mark Burrow is after we interviewed him on the podcast in the last episode, which if you haven't listened to it, you really should. Very kindly sent us a couple of signed copies. He did for the, for the Project Library archive. But I'm bummed.

Summarize for me. Where are we? Where are we going to? We're somehow splitting this tiny book into three. We are. So section one takes us up to, well, I shall tell you what happens in section one, and takes us up to page 50 in the modern, the illustrated Eric,

which is 50 whole pages with lots of pictures. Aren't we doing well? Love pictures. We open on death, attending his bees in his garden, done up in stylish shades of black. He is unfortunately interrupted by a discorporated sweary jogger. It's him. Next up, and more pork in a heat wave.

Imagine the smell. Don't. As dogs lay panting on the pavement, the librarian calls off in the licentious section of the UU library. His slumber is rudely interrupted by the same patter of panicked feet. The discorporated being continues to run through the city, wreaking havoc in its wake. The wizards call a council to ascertain the origins

of the boys running through the city and agree to perform the rite of Ashkent. Death turns up to let them know that it's Rincewind wreaking havoc. Death explains that Rincewind is trying to get home from the dungeon dimensions via a somewhat weakened reality. The wizards, slightly embarrassed by their actions in sorcery, decide that the things are best left as they are really. Nothing to worry about.

It'll all sort itself out. Poor Rincewind, but can't be helped. Our hapless hero, Rincewind, wakes up somewhere apparently human. He finds himself trapped in the magic circle of a young hopeful demonologist named Eric, having been summoned by a mistake. After a brief explanation of demons, summoning circles and the eight circles of hell,

we meet Astafagal, current king of hell, sulking about RSVPs from the gods and wondering why one of his demons isn't corrupting young Eric as we speak. Eric almost gives up and lets Rincewind go, but the sudden appearance of the luggage and its dear little legs convinces him that Rincewind must be a demon after all and Eric makes his wishes known.

The world, a beautiful woman and eternal life. A snap of the fingers has Rincewind showing Eric a whole new world. Ownership of the disc isn't enough for the young lad who demands tributes from the disc's leaders. Another snap of the fingers takes our merry band of misfits to the inner jungles of Klatch.

And so we are ending this section just as we meet the Tezumen tribe. Cool. Quick check-in on a helicopter and loincloth watch. Nothing explicitly stated, but I am honestly assuming that with the tribal stuff, there are probably some loincloths around. There is mention of a leopard-

For example, yes. Yep. There is mention of a leopard-skinned loincloth, but no one is actually wearing it. It's just a concept. Well, I think conceptual loincloths can count for this incredibly tenuous section, so yeah. Yep, cool.

Conceptual leopard print loincloth. So in a season. Sorry. The word loin is starting to lose all meaning. Well, it already did, didn't it? Because it's meant to be fucking lower back or something and everyone's like, sex loin.

What? Jesus. Oh, sex loin. Going on your gravestone. Favorite quotes, I think yours is first. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or is it? Oh, there's the book.

So I've gone for a footnote, stealing your thing somewhat. The wizards are finding out from death on page 16, but it's Rincewind having a little run around in the netherworld. And he says he got blown up when there was all that business with the sorcerer, didn't he?

And the footnote is, there have been some desultory talk about putting up statue to Rincewind, but by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in these sensitive issues, this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the roll of honor, and finally a motion of censure

for being improperly dressed. Which is just a lovely summary of how things work in the university, I think. Yeah, and in the universe. Yes, Joanna. I enjoyed that. This is very near the end, as we've made it to the central jungles of Klatch.

Jungles surrounded it. It wasn't nice, interesting open jungle, such as leopard skin cloud heroes might swing through, but serious real jungle, jungle that towered up like solid slabs of greenness, thorned and barbed, jungle in which every representation

of the vegetable kingdom had really rolled up its bark and got down to the strenuous business of outgrowing all competitors. The soil was hardly soiled at all, but dead plants on the way to composted. Water dripped from leaf to leaf. Insects whined in the humid,

spore-laid nair. And there was the terrible breathless silence made by the motors of photosynthesis running flat out. Any yodeling hero who tried to swing through that lot might just as well take his chances with a bean slicer. I'll tell you what.

I think we are on slightly different pages. That was a beautiful bit of description. I haven't been able to find it while you were reading it. It doesn't really matter. It's only two pages. All right. Anyway, characters.

Yeah. So, if you're reading the one without illustrations, do read it. Your section ends on page 46. Next time. Next book we'll have matching editions. Yeah. Characters.

Death. Death. As always. Death. Opening on death, rather than opening on the world turtle. Oh, yeah. A bit of a change.

I like that he keeps bees. Yeah, he should. He should. Death's got a bit of witchy-ness to him, I think. He does, and a bit of bratchy-ness. And definitely a bit of bratchy-ness. Project Beekeeper. But I also, I very much approve of his goth garden,

and I really like his entrance during the Rite of Ashkent, where they're waiting for him to materialise in the middle, and he's just sort of joined in the circle. Yeah. What are we all waiting for? Inside. Oh, sorry.

I like the sort of... Step back in. He's only really loosely controlled by this ritual, but in itself, they do very dramatically when it can actually be done with 10 cc's of mouse blood. Yeah. He's just polite enough to go along with it. Yes.

So, that's very sweet. We are spending time with the Librarian. I forgot... I kind of forgot, like, because sorcery just isn't one of my favourites, and I don't reread it that often, although we did it. I kind of forgot that, like, the Librarian and Rincewind had this little friendship.

It is nice that the Librarian still cares enough to make a bit of a fuss. But also, the nature of the Librarian does get explained again, and why he is an orangutan. Ah, yes, yes. We've continued one hour on that, haven't we? Yes.

We have a cool little cameo from Heron of the Hennehead, Herodon. Yeah, I noticed that. That was cool. That made me smile. Just hanging it out in the pub. With the girls? Getting a drink knocked over.

And, well, drink turned... Hastily replaced. Drink turned into a small yellow elephant. If we assume that they're not talking about men, which I think we can, we've passed the Bechdel test already. Yes. Well, it just says girl talking a game of canasta,

so I'm assuming they're talking about canasta. I've never played canasta. Oh, I googled that, and then forgot what it was immediately. Yeah. But I still feel like this is very only just passing the Bechdel test. We'll allow it, but I forgot...

About the Bechdel test. Well, no, because the drinks became elephants. Ah, yes. Oh, Pachyderm corner, whatever I called it. Irrelevant elephant. Irrelevant elephant. There they are. Have you got an irrelevant elephant fact for us, Francine?

No, because I just realised they were there. I could probably think of one. Bees are... Here's one that ties in with bees. In some parts of Africa, bees are used on fences to keep elephants away in a non-destructive fashion, because elephants are very scared of bees.

One of my very, very favourite stupid tumblr posts that a screenshot of does the round of a lot is, elephants have a noise that means there are bees here, leave immediately. Why don't humans have a noise that means that? Humans do. It's, there are bees here, let's leave immediately. Is this a fucking teenager thinking they were being so deep?

It will never not bring me joy. Yes, that's also one of my favourites. I'd never got into tumblr, but I'm so glad people started taking screenshots and posting them everywhere else. There is definitely a particular kind of surreal humour that I don't think really works on any other platform. No.

Anyway. The way we write, I think, has been indirectly, to write to each other, communicate by text, has been indirectly influenced by that. Black of punctuation and dry earnest sarcasticness. Millennial. As I said the other day, Joanna, you are the most millennial,

millennial, whoever millennium is. Yeah, but I don't really like avocado toast. Well, that's why you have a house. I mean, I don't own it. Oh fuck, yeah, no. What? It was a lie. It was capitalism all along. Jinkies, it's all pancapitalism.

Um, what were we talking about? Terrible culture. Oh, that's very millennial. No, wait, sorry. Herona. We've had Herona. We're now on Ezra Lift churn. Oh yeah, who I'd forgotten existed completely.

Well, I think he's only in this book. We've missed that. We've missed him out in all of our brief discussions about how many art chances. Yeah, no. Is this the last one before our proper one? Yeah, I think the proper one gets introduced in the next book. Moving pictures.

Yes, because that's a wizard. Yeah, yeah. Oh, good job. No, excited. I do love the wizard people. I think the reason I'm not, I wasn't so excited about Eric, like it's not one of my favorites.

And in my case, I'm not super into the rinse bin stories, but it falls between two of my favorites. It's like pyramids I wasn't fussed about because it was between like weird sisters and guards, guards. Yeah. It's a bit like, oh, I want to... It's like a cucumber sorbet in the middle of two. Is cucumber sorbet a palette cleanser?

Yeah, yeah. And it's an offense to humanity. Christ, sorry, I've had it. You don't want to. I just really offended Joanna by bringing up cucumber sorbet. You're just a silhouette, and I can see your face somehow. Sorry, Joe.

Wow, I'm much more offensive to you all the time. Why don't other things happen? I never get that look. Why don't elephants have a face that's like, cucumber sorbet is disgusting? They do. It's this. Can you make a...

Cumber corbe is disgusting. Can you make a gif of that that I can tweet, please? Yeah, I'll try and remember. I will remind you. Okay. Yeah. So, Ezrealith Chern. Ezrealith is pretty much relevant.

He's just an old art chance, though, who's vaguely amusing, by dint of not being at all interested or completely conscious. Yep. But we've also got the Berser. Berser! Berser!

Who is... Yeah, the Berser is still fairly normal. I assume he's the same Berser we've had throughout, then. Yeah, well, he's the only kind of named one who's popped up lots of times, isn't he? But although it's always his job title. Yes. So, there could be many Bersers,

but I've assumed it's just the one. Yeah. So, skipping over onto somebody a bit more relevant. Eric. Artitula Eric. Name of the thing in the thing. The name of the thing in the thing. Thing in the thing.

Yeah, titular. This is Eric. Thursley. Demonologist. Midlane. Thudophilus. What's the, what's the, what's the... Help me out.

The name of the... Like, if you've got an album and the album title is the name of the track, that track is the... Title track. Yeah, no, fuck, not for this then. You know what I mean? Eponymous.

There's a word. Eponymous, thank you. The eponymous Eric. Yes, the eponymous Eric. Yeah, he's in Thudophilus, is he? He is. Because in my head, he was in Antmoorpork, and then just as I was rereading a bit,

it mentioned the whole in Thudophilus, so... Yeah. Because this is... I clearly missed the line where he moved from Antmo... Where the narrator moved from Antmoorpork to Thudophilus. Yeah, well, it moves via Rincewind waking up on the floor. Yeah, well. We only learn it's Thudophilus.

It's not traditional. We only learn it's Thudophilus because Eric provides his address next door to the tannery. Ah, yes. Okay, cool, cool. The parrot. I hate him.

I hate him as well. Why do you hate him? Cring 2.0. The parrot is Cring 2.0. The fucking was-named thing. The was-named thing is funny. Yeah, there's too much. He says it because he can't remember words,

and he's got limited memory capacity. Ha, ha, ha, got it. Like, half paid to go. I was really glad when he went away. Yeah, no, it made me very happy when he went away. Like, I get that it's kind of a techie joke and that perhaps he was probably dealing with technology that wasn't up to what he wanted it

to be able to do for his writing, especially with what technology can remember. Yeah, yeah. Because the parrot is probably functioning as some demonologist equivalent of tech here. But it doesn't quite land, and it's just irritating, and it reminded me of Cring.

That's too much. You didn't hate Cring as much as I did. I didn't hate Cring as much as you did, but what I did dislike about Cring was that the joke got tired. Like, if Cring had been around for as long as the parrot had as many paragraphs, then I wouldn't pay it Cring as much.

But also, like, it's... This character is here for some exposition, and then we'll bugger them off when we don't need exposition anymore. Yeah. Which, you know, fair enough for me, it's just a little romp, isn't it? Yeah, no.

It's not like everything has to be the best writing in the world, and there are going to be weak points. But it's more noticeable with Pratchett because he's such a good writer, and he's normally so good at delivering exposition that to have the heavy-handed exposition character combined with a joke

that gets tired so quickly is like... Yeah. I wonder if it would annoy me so much if it was another writer. It's quite unfair, isn't it, on Pratchett, really? Yeah. Like, I expected more of you, so... Yeah, we have a higher standard.

Tot at your parrot, mate. Darling. Darling, tot at your parrot. Not tot at your parrot. Yeah. So, because I have... I've improvised the pronunciation of astifugal, because...

I've added in some random vowels. Well, astifugal. Astifugal. Yeah, he's the... King of the demons. Demon god, yeah. Oh, demon king, yeah. Yeah.

He's darling little horns. Yes, and he's trying to bring the demons into the new millennium. Now, are you imagining something quite stylish or are you imagining a cheap Halloween costume? I'm imagining the latter. I'm kind of like cheap Halloween costume, but worn by someone who really wants to be stylish.

So, like, my dress sense in... When I was a teenager. Oh, yeah, I like it. Cool. Yeah. Except he's probably not wearing like a lacy miniskirt and combat boots. It doesn't explicitly say he's not.

Okay, so astifugal's wearing a lacy miniskirt. I mean, I have the illustrious tradition. Which I think is... Conceptual miniskirt. I'll talk about the illustrations more later on. But I thought the astifugal thing was interesting. I checked out. I've got in the little black Terry Pratchett book

that we got in our gift bags at the memorial. It's also in... Little Flex. Yeah. It's also in one of his short story collections that have been published, like posthumously. I can't remember which one. The Hades Business,

which was the first published story he wrote back in 1962. Ah, when he was but a youngster. When he was much, much a youngster. And he, like, hates... Yeah, he wrote it when he was 13. It was the first thing he wrote that ever got published. But it has the devil in it. And the devil is very much astifugal.

So I kind of like that he had this idea of, like, the devil in a suit being a businessman. I love the fact he was also hating on corporate nonsense when he was a kid. So that's very much my jam. The Hades Business story that he wrote when he was 13 is about the devil hiring an advertising agency to improve Hell's PR.

So I like that, although he's really embarrassed by this story he wrote when he was 13, like, something of it lingered and came back here. Like, the idea stuck and he sort of did it again in a bit better, this executive devil thing. So yes, astifugal. It did make me giggle. Yeah.

We'll talk more about corporate hate in the next section, shall we? Yes. The luggage is back. Hi, luggage. The luggage. Oh, darling, little luggage. We love him so.

And he's a hero. He's a hero, darling. He is. Not on purpose, but even so. He's dear little legs. Oh, he loves Rince Win. Oh, he does. We love luggage.

He's bonded to you. I'm not sure what the feeling is exactly, but he's following Rince Win. Yes, there is a relationship there. So my latest ridiculous hill I'm going to die on is that Bells are characters now. Yeah. So honestly, you can live on the hill if you like

because I'm not fighting you on this. It's named. So sure. Why not? So I don't know if this is the first time. Sorry. I'm going to minimize Zoom for a sec so I can actually find the thing ahead up

because I can't run your screens. Oh, that's creepy. Oh, it's because the laptop's lighting me. Yeah, yeah. So old Tom is. What did you make up? Oh, no, I just meant my face is creepy. Oh, right.

Old Tom is the unseen university's Bell who is broken and rings out sonorous silences every hour. Yeah, which we like because that's the concept in many books, which is the thing on the other side of the thing. Yeah, I did have like a little bit of a Google of named Bells. And so these are the heaviest Bells in the country. That was the list I ended up finding. But why not?

It is traditional like Bells in churches, abbeys and universities are named. That's a tradition. OK. So I could have gone down a much deeper rabbit hole and found out how they all got the names they have. But then I ran out. I thought I wouldn't have gone to work.

But I have a job. And I was doing this while also making a bracelet with my left hand. Oh, my God, Joe, learn to do one thing. No, eight things all the time. So just a few samples from this. So St Paul's Cathedral Spell is named Great Paul. Sure.

Obviously, the House of Parliament have Big Ben. That is the name of the Bell. Not the name of the Prime Minister, as everybody thinks. Yep. Who thinks that? Whitten Heimel. Their Bell's name is Joe O'Heimel. Cool.

And Oxford's Bell is Great Tom. So I'm assuming that's where old Tom might have got its name from. Does Oxford's Bell also ring out loud magical silences? I've never been to Oxford, so I can't. As someone who has only been to the outskirts of Oxford to go to a very weird Chinese restaurant with a Tory, I'm going to say, yeah, it definitely does. Cool.

People from Oxford write in and tell us why we're wrong. On a podium, please. Or send an albatross. You know, the usual. Or, you know, send us a castle and some snacks. See, I really regret that when I had to move house, I moved into a flat and not a castle full of snacks. Yeah.

I mean, I understand the property market's a bit depressed, but right move really could have pulled some stops out on that. Look, I looked for a castle. If I know, I know, I'm not blaming you. I'm blaming the letting agents. Listeners, please feel free to send me an albatross with a castle. We've got to get a postal address so we can actually get some postcards. Yeah.

I will get as a P.O. box eventually. Yeah. Locations. So. Location, location, location. Ank more pork. Yeah. Briefly.

Yeah. We're there for a bit. We go to the drum to see her and the henna-haired Harrodon. Very good. I really cannot say that today. And it is currently the mended drum. Oh, good. That you can track.

I do like to keep an eye on. Are we keeping track? I know we said it every time, but have we kept track? Oh, no, not even slightly. Okay, cool. Because we could draw some kind of graph. You know, I like graphs. Okay.

Well, I'll let you keep track and then you can make a spreadsheet and then you can make a graph. Okay. Thanks. I just wanted you to. Well, do it on Google Sheets so you can have passive aggressive chats. I didn't mean to be passive aggressive. I know.

It's just funny. Sorry, I'll post a screenshot. When you leave a chat on one of the Google documents, it says that in this case, Joanna has left. It's like, wow, okay, fuck. It's much worse than leaving me on red. I love it. Okay.

Yeah. We don't go there, but we hear about the lost continent of Ku or Q. We can't go there because some time ago it took some time to sink. It took 30 years to subside. The inhabitants spent a lot of time waiting and it went down in history as the multiverse's most embarrassing continental catastrophe. Probably what's going to happen to Holland. Yeah.

Again, I tried. All those poor bicyclists. I tried researching like subsiding land masses and then started learning about tectonic plates and then realized I had to go and compose a symphony. So I stopped Eric's bedroom in which some of the description is fantastic. So this is a teenage demonologist bedroom

and honestly, it's not that different from my teenage bedroom. A bench all down one wall contained a selection of glass where apparently created by a drunken glassblower with hiccups, which is a great description but has been used before in equal rights. Yes. I thought it sounded familiar. The skeleton hung from a hook in a relaxed fashion and the stuffed bird and it says whatever sins it had committed in life,

it hadn't deserved what the taxidermist had done to it. But as this is referring to Korean 2.0, the fucking parrot. I'm going to say it deserved it. Yeah, absolutely. So that's Eric's bedroom, which is in Pseudopolis. Great name means fake city. Yeah. I only know police mean city because of the guards books.

Yeah. Yeah. Pandemonium, we get the city of pandemonium, which is at the center of the eight circles of hell. From paradise lost originally, right? Yes. See, it's eight circles of hell rather than sevens because of the connection to the number eight and wizardry and everything.

Yes. Within the disc world. But yeah, pandemonium is literally all the demons. All the demons. It's fun, isn't it? Like, unless I'd really thought about it, I wouldn't have thought that the word pandemonium meaning chaos meant with like a literary reference.

Yeah. There's lots of things you kind of... It's like the whole like Shakespeare invented almost every other fucking sentence. Clutch. Clutch. Clutchy and jungle. Yeah.

Clutch in previously kind of thought of as a bit of a deserty state. Apparently has a big South American style jungle in the middle of it. Because like maybe in the first book it talked about. The jungles of Clutch. Yeah. So I guess Clutch is super big. Yeah. Clutch is massive and has desert and jungle.

Yeah. Well, we're in the Clutchy and Jungle. We don't meet any Amazons, but we do meet the Tezamen people. We were like a very blatant Aztec parody. You can tell because of all the constant consonants. Demons and Aztecs have that in common. Exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and it's mass human sacrifices in honour of

quiz over coitle. That's how we're pronouncing the God's name. Yeah, that's cool. I have a lot more to say about Aztecs and tribal cultures and depictions of tribal cultures in media and colonialism, but I'm going to save it for the next episode. Okay. But once again, it was colonialism all along.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. I'm not really heavily critical of project in it. No, yeah, no, I'm not. I'm more, my groan was more that I kind of hadn't even thought of that. Yeah. I've just taken a joke about the Aztecs and hadn't been like, yeah, and then the massacres.

I'm like, oh yeah, fucking colonialism. Fucking massacres. So yeah, so that's all the places we visit in this section. Oh, the places we will go. Oh, the places we've been, the places we'll go, and the places that Rincewind has run through screaming. Well, at least he's had a nice bit of exercise. I've stopped jogging.

I need to start jogging again, but now I have like a 40-minute walk to work every day. Yeah, I think you're probably all right. I'd be proving my heart rate is the thing. Walk faster. Tired. It's the morning fronting. I don't want to.

It'll get your blood pumping. Yeah. So talking about getting the blood pumping. Little bits we liked. There is, there's a footnote that proper made me giggle, which is early on the librarians hanging out in the erotic section of the Unseen University Library. Literally.

And the footnote clarifies that it's just erotic, nothing kinky, and then describes the difference between erotic and kinky is the difference between using a feather and using a chicken. I did think of you when I read that. Yeah. I wondered if you would find it amusing or offensive. Someone, actually, you know what? No, I won't finish that sentence.

I've never used a chicken. Good. Just going to clarify for our listeners, now that I have in fact never used a chicken during sex, live or otherwise. Excellent. Good to hear. You were talking about sacrificing one earlier.

And or cooking dinner. I was a bit confused. To be honest, I was basically just hungry and looking for an excuse to roast a chicken. I didn't in the end. I'm eating aubergines, but now I really want roast chicken. I had some amazing roast chicken the other week. Aubergine.

Now the kinkiest of vegetable. No, it's not even kinky. It's so basic. Like who decided aubergine was the emoji symbol for male genitalia? I don't know. Whoever noticed it was shaped vaguely like a penis. I know, but like if you look at, I don't know, can bear an aubergine to like a carrot?

Like I'm just saying when people take photos of amusingly shaped vegetables for the paper, as we may discuss in a later book, I don't think aubergines are going to come up that often. Right, right, right. It's more likely to be a turn. Like, okay, but you've got to think of it from the dude's point of view. If we look at keywords for these vegetables,

purple and bulbous is probably more what you want than orange and hairy. Oh, the word bulbous should never be used. No, I hate myself for using it. Please never say the word bulbous again, Francine. Okay, deal. When death is explaining to the wizards about whether or not rinsewing can come back

from the Dungeon Dimensions, he said it is exactly a million to one chance. And we all know that millions of one chances. But I thought this was interesting because there are certain things that really stick, especially in Pratchett and Erd's minds. But the million to one chance thing is one that comes up. There are a few others as well,

but this isn't one I can talk about without spoilers. This was a plot point in Guards, Guards. When we did the interview with Mark, he was talking about the fact that Pratchett was really good at giving interviews because he was a journalist. So he knew how to give a pithy quote that a journalist could cling to,

and he was very good at putting that across. But I think it comes across in his actual writing as well. He's very good at putting in a pithy concept that a little hook that can come back to in lots of books. So the million to one chance thing comes up again and again and again. It's like staying in a school. Yeah.

I used to move your reference too. But yeah, so it's a little thing that comes back again. There are other examples, which I'm going to keep an eye out for as we go through because we're still pretty early on. We're not at book 10 yet. God, yeah. We're not even a quarter of the way through.

I hope you like talking to me. We'll be doing this for a while. Oh, I do. I mean, we'll probably just be talking about other nonsense if we haven't started this. Or we'd still be talking about Pratchett. We just wouldn't be recording it. We did originally just replace on Monday afternoon coffee

with the podcast recording before everyone's schedule changed and then the world caught on fire. Yes, that damn pandemic. So yeah, so I thought there was a fun thing to look out for is the little Pratchett stings. And I think it does come from his journalism background. He knows how to put this sort of sting in. Yeah, yeah.

I agree. The other little thing I liked was desk things. So many things within a thing. I nearly put that in before I saw you. Yeah. Yeah. For once, I actually finished my notes before you did. I'm a counter, but I wasn't working a 10-hour shift.

So King, how do you pronounce it? Ask the the? Astrophugal. Astrophugal. King Astrophugal is a corporate prick. And he has cool things on his desk. He has notepads with magnets for paperclips, handy devices for holding pens,

and those tiny jotters that always come in handy, incredibly funny statuettes with slogans like, you're the boss, and little chromium balls and spirals operated by a sort of ersatz and short-lived perpetual motion. No one looking at that desk could have any doubt that they were in cold fact, truly damned. I like this for a couple of reasons. Number one, I fucking hate that kind of

cheerful corporate bootlicking nonsense. It is. And clearly Pratchett does as well, which is me. Yes, I agree. Did you see the tube adverts that I was tweeting? Yes, you know I did because I retweeted you and then retweeted it again with my own comments because I couldn't shut up about it.

Yeah, it is, let me find the actual thing because this is exactly that nonsense. While you do find that, I'm going to recommend our listeners listen to an episode of the OmniBus, which is one of my favorite podcasts about random nonsense, on Newton's Cradle. It's very good. Newton's Cradle being that chromium ball thing

with brief perpetual motion he's talking about. And it has quite a lot about just desk toys in general, which is cool. I just can't imagine ever wanting to spend enough time at your job that you'd personalize your workspace. My granddad had a Newton's Cradle on his desk at home. Yeah. But that was quite cool.

I'm not sure it's so much wanting to spend so much time obviously in this case it is, but I think a lot of people do it because, you know, whether you like it or not, you're spending at least eight hours a day at that desk. Yeah, I guess I will make it not horrible. But obviously I've never really worked a desk job, so I wouldn't really know.

No. Okay. Yeah. No, this is this corporate wank that's become too bad verse. This is like, I think it's encouraging people to go back into the office because the pandemic is not fucking over lads. Second wave is coming. Hearing an alarm, putting on a tie, carrying a handbag,

receptionist, caffeine, filled air, taking a lift, seeing your second family, water cooler conversations, proper bants, the boss's jokes, plastic plants, office gossip, those weird carpets, face-to-face meetings, not having to make lunch, CCing, BCCing, accidentally replying all, hearing buzzwords, leaving early for a cheeky afternoon in the sun.

Like this is all that makes it sound fucking awful. It's a fucking disinfectant, like advert thing as well. Is it? Yeah, it says at the bottom like disinfect surfaces we use throughout the days. We can do it all again tomorrow. The little things we do help protect the little things we love. I this whole corporate nonsense thing just fills me with fire.

I can't imagine, the thing that really bugged me the most was the second family thing. So though I don't work in an office, I work with people. And it's this weird thing of like, yeah, you're work friends and you have your work wife and everyone's so close to each other. I'll tell you what, from experience, any workplace that refers to itself as a family will treat you like shit.

What they mean is we will expect you to treat us as your loyal family and work overtime for no money. And we probably won't treat you like proper employees with things like rights. Yeah, for God's sake, anyone who sees, well, right now I guess people take whatever jobs they can, but as a rule, if they say, oh, it's like a little family here, that's not a good thing.

Yeah, I have a whole social life outside of my job. I've worked where I am for nearly six years now and I am not like close friends with anyone I work with because I already had a close friendship circle before I went into the place. Is that it? Anywhere, again, it's not even like the necessarily weird abusive situations like the old family work thing.

But anywhere where people are super close and have all these fucking incestuous relationship things going on, it's not a healthy working environment. No, because... We both know what I'm thinking about here. Yeah. And it's just... Professionalism ends up going out the window

and that means that you can be taken advantage of. Anyway, how do we get here from desk things? We hate corporate nonsense. I have a spreadsheet to prove it. I hate any kitschy little ornamenty things. I have nice ornaments and I have some of the disc world figurines, which I love, but like little kitschy plastic. I got you this for Secret Santa rather than actually

getting to know you in any way, shape or form. Like the concept of Secret Santa, again, fills me with rage. Why do I hate Christmas so much today? I don't know. Usually you're all right. Yeah. I think you might just be hungry.

Yeah, probably. You know you get hypercritical of capitalism when you're hungry. Rest of the time, I'm just... I'm always hungry. Yeah, so I don't like little figurines. I don't like little classroom things. And I don't like corporate nonsense. They do make really nice clicks, though,

those new integrators. So I guess that's a little thing I hate. What's the last little bit you like? It's not even really like, but I thought it was fun to point out. When they're in the Clatch in Jungle and Eric being a teenage boy, his imagination's running away with him. And they're talking about lost kingdoms in the rainforest of Clatch. He's like, you mean mysterious ancient races of Amazonian princesses

who subject all male prisoners to strange and exhausting progenitive rights? And eventually a footnote explains that the manly jobs that the Amazonian princesses have done by these men are plugs and putting up shells and sorting out the funny noise and attics and mowing lawns. I didn't want that. Yeah, so you know, a little bit sexist, but we'll allow it because it's playing on a trope.

Yeah, that's funny sexism. You can take that out of context and smoke it. Wow, I've gone from really cheerful to really not. Hold on, let's turn this steam drain around. We can rally, Francine, we can rally. There's very little in like, because Amazon, the Amazon women, the Amazonian women, it's a mythology thing. Herodotus wrote a lot about them.

Fucking Herodotus. Herodotus. Herodotus. There's not much in the original stories of Amazonian women about them subjecting men to pregentative rights, but the idea was... Really? Yeah.

I'm shocked. I know. They did like, sort of have things where like, they'd go and shag another tribe once a month to get a few pregnant so they could keep going whilst keeping their female-only society. Sorry, is the source Herodotus still? Largely.

Okay, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Apology in general. Yeah, I mean, those were the stories that became they kicked nap men and shagged them and... I see, I see. Yeah, death by snoo snoo. From Herodotus to Futurama in three easy steps.

Okay, so let's go to some actual talking points. Jo, question. You've read Eric before, but this is the first time you've read the illustrated version. So we read it like you're meant to read it. Did it enhance it? Did you enjoy it more? Did you enjoy it less?

Can you not really remember? I did enjoy the illustrations. I can't say whether I enjoyed it more or less than the one other time I read it because the one other time I read it was 11 years ago. Cool, cool. The illustrations are amazing. They're beautiful.

It's incredible, Josh Kirby stuff, and I enjoyed them. But Rince Wind is still drawn as an old beardy man, which is still very much not how I picture him. And the astrophagal depiction is like all the demons look at these green skinned things with horns. And astrophagal is just wearing like a kind of weird. I'm trying to find the illustration now. 26.

Yeah, he's got this kind of red suit on with some curly toes and things, and he's got his trident, but it just looks like a demon. He doesn't look like the kind of corporate nonsense demon that I was picturing. Okay. So they are beautiful illustrations, and it's fun to pause and look at the illustrations

and the detail in them because obviously Josh Kirby is amazing, but I wouldn't say they massively enhance it. Okay. There is, however, though, it is worth getting the book just for, and I will send you a picture of this one. There is an amazing full double-page illustration of the whole disc on the turtle with the stars behind it, and it is an incredible image.

So Francine, how do we summon a demon? Oh yeah, so this is how I spent my afternoon finding out how, not actually summoning one, as you can tell, but a lack of demon in my life and lack of wealth, beautiful wife, immortality, that kind of thing. Yeah. Shall we try and summon one now?

We could, we could, actually. I don't usually go through my research process, but today's was enlightening. So I made some notes about how I got to where I ended up after reading some old things about demonology in the aforementioned Ancient Encyclopedia, which is very interesting, but really led me to a lot of even older books,

which I did not have time to track down, read. So I thought I'd Google it, see if there were like modern instructions on how to summon a demon. As you'd expect, first barrier, fucking anime. There's some anime called How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, so once I'd filtered that out, I found quite a promising looking web page, and there was like a list of things you needed

and quite detailed instructions. But then I hit this line, which was, the demon summoned will be exceptionally strong, good promising, i.e. eight hit points per die. So that turned out it was instructions from a 1999 blog post about Aralith, which is an admittedly quite cool looking D&D RPG site, which looks like it's still active, where this blog was dormant.

Then I found a more, less gamified site and accompanying YouTube channel. Which had some lectures and quite serious looking demonology things, you know, as far as you can say that. And it had a pretty large and again earnest catalog of material. But unfortunately, well, it didn't take very long before I realized the writers were also massively anti-Semitic. Oh, fun.

Like literal Nazis. So cool. So I won't be citing them as a source or telling you where to find that website. But it was noteworthy as the first site I've ever found that's violently anti-Christian and pro-Hitler. You know, it was a little post it note in the archive of disgusting shit I found on the internet.

Anyway, eventually, I did find a couple of people on Reddit. Thank you, Reddit, who seemed to be taking it seriously and who also aren't, you know, raging fucking Nazis. As far as I can tell, I guess you can't be sure. But where I'd gone wrong, apparently demono later is the modern term for demonologist. So one AMA thread I found wasn't particularly popular, but it did have comments from the OP saying

they summon ancient pagan spirits who've been branded demons by Christianity and so on. Excellent. Finally, easy instructions, which I can link in the show notes. So here's my four pages instructions. Please, dear listeners, remember all of this research when our bonus content comes out at the end of the month. Yes, yeah.

Because this is how it starts, Francine. OK, so this guide is intended to be both simple and easy to translate, which is good. If you're not sure whether magic is safe, it's magic with a K, so I think we're probably OK. Or whether you should take the risk. Do not perform any vocation, which is summoning. Well, you might just become more worried than unhappy.

Oh, so don't take LSD if you're anxious, because you're more likely to have a bad trip. Yeah, exactly. It's like, obviously, if you think it will help, summon a demon to kind of give you your every whim and possibly have sex with you, but practice self-care. So you'll need the sigil of the spirit you want to call. And I've decided that we're going to get someone called Iphos.

That's because I can pronounce his name. This is, can you see? This is a sigil. Cool. It's got to be in black or red pen. This is a black pyro, which isn't probably entirely appropriate, but I didn't want to curse my new fountain pen. Yeah, that's fair.

I just used a pyro. And then you need the N of that spirit. That's E-N-N. Right. Which is a short sentence in demonic language. I don't know what that is. I checked. It's not Latin.

I tried to put it through Google Translate that calls this demon. And this is why I picked Iphos because it's short. It's Dessa and Iphos Aya. I'll text it to you. I'm going to text you a couple of pictures this week, guys. So keep your phone up. This is now a multimedia experience. This is great podcast content.

Dessa and Iphos Aya. We mean no offense to actual Wicca practitioners who might be listening, by the way. This is just insaneness for us. Okay. It's not Wicca. No. This is like sanism.

Oh, okay. That's fine. But not even that, really. I don't know what this is, but I kind of mean offense to it. You need a black or a red pen, which you've got got my black pyro. Piece of clean paper. I mean, I've got the back of this.

That's fine. Yeah, that'll do. Notebook. Take notes. Always have a notebook. Time to be alone after sunset. Is sunset gone? Is it dark now?

Yeah, yeah. The sun was setting inside when we took the break earlier. Right. Do not evoke a demon if there is a child, an elderly person, or a sick person in the next room to be safe. Are we good? Okay. I mean, I don't know what my neighbours are like.

Cool. You may also want to light a candle. I'm guessing that's self-care because it doesn't say it's compulsory. So just if you want to. I mean, I had a candle on the table, but I moved off to make room for the podcasting equipment. So I'll light one after that.

Let's say there's an important note that says, when you evoke a spirit, you have to give them some energy so they can enter the world. And this involves visualisation. You need to be able to visualise the space they're going to come into, basically. Okay.

I mean, I don't have a lot of room because of the blanket fort, so are they materialising in your living room? Yeah, sure. Or just on the Zoom call. I could open up the gallery view. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Cool, cool. So basically, you draw the spirit sigil out. Got that. Write that N in the notebook. I've done that on this piece of paper. That's fine. Wash or take a bath and put some clean clothes on.

See, I'm feeling like this is just a self-care guru disguising herself as a demonologist, but we'll find out. Do you monolater? Or just wear the best clothes you have. So, like, you can put clean clothes on or just wear the best clothes you have, which I'm assuming are dirty.

My filthy ball gown. Turn your lights down so you aren't distracted by bright light. Right. Face south. I am actually facing south. I do not know which way south is. That's cool.

Stand up or sit down, but you may feel safer or less vulnerable if you stand up. I'm going to blanket for it. Yeah, you're fine. Visualize the room growing a bit darker. Okay. So, your first picture.

You need to reach out your right arm towards where you want the spirit to appear. And I'm sending you this picture to make it very clear that it's not a Nazi salute. Okay. Like this. You need to do it in an airy, fairy way, not in a militaristic way.

Okay. So, I'm going to gesture towards the screen. Oh, yeah, sure. It's coming on gallery view. And then, you need to call three times. Spirit's name. Ispo. Is that his name?

Yeah. Ispo. Ipos, sorry. Ipos. Come, appear before me, Ipos. Come, appear before me, Ipos. Come, appear before me, Ipos. Come, appear before me, Ipos.

Do this in the language that feels most natural to you. Say English, I guess, Frost. Yeah, I haven't learned Russian yet. Next, start to repeat the end of the spirit you're calling. It is helpful to rock backwards and forwards, as you repeat it. So, do you want to do that, Bert? Okay.

Dessa and Ipos, Ia. You know, how I acted doesn't make you join a cult before. Oh, wait, no, it's on purpose. Like, I wrote you a vow and everything, okay? Dessa and Ipos, Ia. Yeah. After doing this for a short time, look down at the sigil and keep looking at it.

Can you hold on to the sigil? Yeah, yeah. Then, when you feel ready, look up in front of you. Visualize a man standing in front of you. He's wearing a cloak like this, and he has horns, so I need to send you the picture, Shepa. Okay.

Am I still meant to be rocking back and forth and challenge you? Oh, I think you can probably stop. Okay, thanks. Making me divvy. So, here's a lovely picture for me to send you, while you're sitting on your own in a dim flat. Oh, that's cute. Why has he got like a brick wall behind him?

That's like very fashion. Yeah, he's a hipster demon. It's like millennial pink as well. That's such an Instagram photo. Isn't it? So, you need to visualize him. Okay. Write down anything you see here.

Okay. Make your request. Oh, we didn't think of a request. Oh, see, I was coming to that. That was going to be a... All right. Well, let's go for your talking point, and we'll come back to the invocation.

Could you just hold on a minute, Epos? Well, yeah. So, my talking point was like, what would you wish for from the demons? So, like, Eric wants everlasting life, all of the kingdoms of the world, and the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife. Sure.

So, what would you ask for? Obviously, immortality. Yeah. I want to put them on that. And immortality for my dog. Yeah, that's fair. And Jack, I guess, but he doesn't really want it. So...

Yeah. I want to give Jack the choice of immortality. I suppose. So, yeah. I'm putting that all under one wish. See, I always feel like saying stuff like, wild peace is such a cop-out, so I'm not going to do that.

No, this is totally selfish. You don't have to wish for shit that, like, benefits the world. If you're going to be immortal, like, eventually, you'll achieve world peace anyway. Yeah, sure. Okay, so I want to be able to change my appearance however I want.

I'm not that far. Like, I can go for whatever man I want, I'm guessing, if Jack decides to die, you know? Yeah, yeah. Because I'll be able to change my appearance to however I want. And obviously, my personality is, like, fucking agreeable that nobody's going to reject me

based on that. Um... And then... You actually based on looks. You're stunning, darling. Stunning. People have typed. Oh, yeah, I suppose.

And now I can't think of a third one. What's your one? Okay, so I'm going to go with, like, you've talked me around to the whole idea of immortality. Yes. Immortality, buddies. But it has to be immortality where, like, I can fully function,

especially when it comes to food and cooking. Yeah, yeah. I always feel like we need to be able to also opt out when we want to. I want to be able... Yeah, I want to be able to opt out when I want to and I also want to still be able to, like, eat real food and taste real food.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, none of this monkey's poor shit Yeah, no. We know your game. We've thought the clause is out. Yeah, I'm guessing also this happens in Fouts, and it all goes wrong.

I should probably read the end of this play for before I summon my own demon, but whatever. No, fuck it. What's the worst that could happen? Forge blindly forwards. So we're doing the immortality thing, which goes into my second wish,

which is basically just unlimited time to make whatever the fuck I want. So I guess the financial situation that means I can just spend all of my time making whatever the fuck I want. Yeah, that's true, because immortality, like, you'd eventually get there, but it's been a bit of a fucking grind.

Yeah, I want to be there now. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Basically, I want the demon to get me out of having to spend 40 hours a week in a fucking kitchen because my back's gone. For sure. Oh, I want all animals to like me. That's my last one.

Oh, that's good. I think for my third one, I want, like, a really, really massive lighthouse that's also a castle to live in. You're nicking my lighthouse idea? Well, because we were going to live in the lighthouse together, but, like, we're going to have a lighthouse that we can have separate kitchens.

Okay, yeah, that's right, yeah. Like, lighthouse castle kitchen. Lighthouse slash castle with multiple kitchens for the two of us. Okay, sweet. That sounds good. And snacks. I mean, yeah, obviously. I feel like snacks are a clause

of the lighthouse castle thing. So, you know. Yeah, well, all animals like me, so I can just get an albatross to go to Tesco for us. Waitress, come on. Okay, fine. I guess we're rich now, yeah. I made that wish.

Okay, so, yeah. So, those were our wishes. Okay, yeah. So, now we have our wishes. Shall we finish the invocation? Well, oh, yeah. So, sorry. I'm rocking back and forwards.

Okay, did you hear that, Epos? Did you write that down? Cheers. Yeah, cheers. Cheers, lad. Tell the spirit not to harm anyone unless you've called them to curse someone. I love how fucking friendly and airy-fairy this is,

until she's like, unless you've caused them to curse someone. Like, all right. Why did neither of us think about cursing anyone with our wishes? Because we've got immortality. We can go fuck them up ourselves. All right, yeah, fair point.

Don't hurt anyone, Epos, obviously. Yeah, Epos, please don't hurt anyone. That's not what we're after. Watch again, see whether it moves. So, I guess it's meant to be here now. Okay, so I'm, like, focusing on it on the screen. Now, see, look, I disabled the meeting room. So, he should just be able to pop in when he wants.

Maybe they don't show up normally on Zoom calls. Maybe he's just, like, in the wires, whatever. When you feel the time is right, you stay to do wish, be heard, raise your right hand once more towards the spirit and say, I thank you, Epos, now depart in peace. I thank you, Epos, now depart in peace. I thank you, Epos, now depart in peace.

Clap your hands once. Sink the audio and bow your head. Jesus, this is all very theatre. Okay, visualize it fucking off. Visualize, blah, blah, cleansing, blah, blah, blah. Your candles. And go and do something very normal, like washing clothes or making food

or finishing the podcast. Is it saying finishing the podcast? You're laughing at this, but I used to do this stuff based on things I found on the internet all the time as a teenager. Like, we would light candles and do invocations over them. Was it fun? Did anything ever happen? Or did you feel as if anything ever happened?

No, but I always pretended I did and said to my friends, I think we were just trying to, like, confirmation bias the fuck out of each other. See, that's nice, almost. It's like a bonding lie. I think, you know, that's lying to get intentions. This is why I've never been black and white about honesty. Okay, now, this is my favorite instructions

to dispose of the sigil, which I'm not going to do because it's on the back of my notes. So it's basically a silhouette of a hand in the position. And what you want to do is turn. This is a family podcast. Is it? It's to hold it up like this with two fingers out and then move it three times in a circle over the sigil.

As someone who possesses a vagina, I'm going to recommend not doing that. And then burn it. Okay, cool. Not the vagina of the sigil. Anyway, it finishes off with the author's personal tips. Just a tips, which has a few boring bits about language. Also, don't have sex with a spirit if you're a beginner.

If you're not intermediate, it's okay. Yeah, well, I think so. Sex opens up your energy field and you may become obsessed with that spirit and end up working for them. Who fucking invokes a demon to fuck it? Actually, why am I asking you a question? That's the entire history of demonology.

Yeah, all right. Don't offer your blood to a spirit until they have helped you and you are certain you can trust them. Blood is very important. Don't waste it. Who the fucking knows? Probably me, but I watch a lot of bad teenage vampires. He is looking really reproachful at me.

Your dog does not approve of demonology. I'm sorry. I love you so much. I'm very sorry that I'm this way. Anyways, that's that. I can only assume we're now immortal rich and in a white house. Yeah, no, I don't think it worked. No, I feel like maybe we didn't do the candles.

I think that might have been it. Well, it sounded like they were optional, but you know how these instructions are. Exactly. Okay, yeah. You probably put it in upside down. Yeah. Oh, my God.

There's a parody in there somewhere about IKEA instructions for demon summoning. Okay, I've already written the demon summoning parody. Yeah, I know. But I might just squeeze that in. I'm still kind of rewriting it. Okay, so... So that was really long, so I'm very sorry.

No, I enjoyed every minute of that invocation. So Francine, did the Tasman people, in fact, invent the wheel? Oh, shit. I forgot I had another thing. No, because who invented the wheel was someone else. The oldest axon wheel found was in Mesopotamia, 3,500 BC. And then it was a few hundred years until it was used for transport. Do you know the biggest manufacturer of tires in the world?

Is it Michelin? It's Lego. Oh, that's cool. Which has a fun historical parallel, because the earliest wheels found in North America were on toys. So in North America, they were made out of ceramics. It was probably made by some potter, mother or father, and little toy things.

But it wasn't really used for transport in North America until Europeans came and in fact, everything. But it wasn't twice, so I just thought it was a nice parallel with Lego being the biggest manufacturer of tires. I suppose it didn't, though, because Jack was telling everybody that for a couple of years. Yeah, but like Jack told me a lot of facts. Yeah, fair enough.

Oh, also, also, I did have another thing on wheels. Do you know about the island of Yap? No, what's the island of Yap? It's a good name, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's in Micronesia and it uses stone disks with holes in for money. Right. Which is vaguely interesting at its own, but they can be up to four meters in diameter.

Jesus. Which means they can't really be moved, a lot of them. And so instead of actually physically changing hands, it's kind of the monetary system relies on oral history. So people remembering which stone belongs to who. That's really cool. Yeah, right. That's fascinating.

Yeah, they got hold of the disks from like hundreds of years ago. They did an expedition to Palau, which is like 290 miles away. And they mined from the limestone quarries and there's no limestone on Yap. So they're really valuable. So I'm guessing the excess just got turned into this economy. Right. Yeah.

That's amazing. So on that note, we've learned about wheels. Do you want to now take us to even more obscure reference finial, Francine? We have. I'm sorry, I've been talking shit for ages now. No, it's great. It's just how it kind of ended up this week. Yeah, so a brief obscure reference finial or off,

as I like to put it in my notes. The grimoire that Eric summons Rincewind from, or rather uses to summon Rincewind, is called the malificarem sumpter diabolica... Oh, is that Jack getting home? Fuck. Ocularis singularum. The initials of which spell MS-DOS,

which is an operating system popular in the time that Patrick was writing this. Yeah, it's like late 80s, early 90s, Microsoft. And from the annotated Pratchett files as well, I'm just making this straight from it. The dog Latin translates more or less to evil making driver of the little one eye devil. Perfect. I like all the Pratchett jokes about tech. It's just I have to check things like the annotated Pratchett file to get them,

because like modern day tech jokes go over my head, let alone early 90s tech jokes from before I was born. Yeah, I quite like obscure tech jokes. But I did, I had to look up this Latin because I can't even translate dog Latin really. You're better at that than me. I can when it's really obvious stuff. So, yeah, so that's all I've got printed out, yeah. I don't actually know where part two is ending yet,

because I haven't finished doing the posters. Okay, cool. But yeah, I'll actually try and make sure we're in the same place, because my wheels fact came from a page after we were technically meant to finish, but whatever. That's fine. So, yeah, so that is part one. We will let listeners know what part two is when we know.

In the meantime, dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram at the true show makey fret. So you can find us on Twitter at makey fret pod. Find us on Facebook at the true show makey fret. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castle snacks and albatrosses at the true show makey fret pod at gmail.com. Please send us snacks. We're very hungry.

Ever so hungry. I'm not, but Joanna's been waiting on this aubergine for two and a half hours now. Very patient. Well done, Joanna. I'm so ready for the aubergine. Please rate and review us, especially on Apple Podcast, because it helps other people find us,

and they might enjoy our particular brand of nonsense. And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. So it's pretty good timing, because Jack's got home. So I'm going to love you and leave you. No worries. But yeah, we managed a decent amount of content, considering we were really worried we wouldn't for this one. Yeah.

Thank God for fucking weirdos on the internet, huh? Yep. Next week, we'll have some Trojan War stuff. So, uh... Ah, yes. I'll let you have the mythology Trojan War stuff. I'll find something more obscure to sink into. Perfect.

All right. Have fun. Of course, Jack. I will. Love, love. Love, love. Bye. Bye.