Finding the value of tumpty

So this morning I got up, was turning on the computers and changing Andy's diaper, and I don't know what I was thinking about but suddenly the line "Thus ___ doth make cowards of us all" popped into my head.  I couldn't remember what the word was.  It'll come to me, I thought.  I waited a moment.  It didn't. 

I went back to the bedroom to ask Doug,
"What is it that makes cowards of us all?"
"???"
"Thus something doth make cowards of us all."
"Time?"
"No, it's two syllables."
"Ah. Tumpty."
"Yes.  Thus tumpty doth make cowards of us all."

Doug couldn't remember either.  I went to Google to look it up.

One of the many handy things about Google is that you can use an asterisk as a wild card in a search.  So I typed in the phrase like this, in quotes:

"Thus * doth make cowards of us all."

And up popped the answer, right away.  Conscience.  Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.  From Hamlet.  Of course. 

I'm still not sure where that came from.  I'm reading Alcatraz Versus The Shattered Lens,and last night got to the chapter where every line of dialog is a quote from Hamlet, but I don't think that line was in there. Or maybe it was. I'll have to go back and check.

(I should specify that almost every line of dialog in that chapter is from Hamlet--one of the bad guys quotes a line from Macbeth and Bastille kicks him in the groin.)

Tumpty is of course the placeholder for words of two syllables.  Frequently combined with its one-syllable companion tum. Used memorably by Nanny Ogg upon her first encounter with iambic pentameter:

"I suppose you're an expert at theater words?" said Granny sarcastically.  "They'd have to be the proper sort, otherwise people would suspect."

"Shouldn't be too difficult," said Nanny Ogg dismissively.  "I've been studyin' it.  You go tumpty-tumpty-tumpty."

Granny gave this some consideration.

"There's more to it than that, I believe," she said.  "Some of those speeches were very good.  I couldn't understand hardly any of it."

(From Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters)

I love the internet.

An evening with Pterry

Friday evening we went up to the University of Washington to see Terry Pratchett, one of our favorite authors. He's often referred to as "Pterry" online, because of his book Pyramids, which takes place in an Egypt-like setting and features characters with names like Pteppic, and a girl named Ptraci who says all "t" words with a P in front of them.


Our friend Tom, also a fan, came along too. Kate also, perforce, went with us. She did pretty well, though Doug took her out a couple of times. We brought along her Schleich lion and tiger for her to play with, and she got a bit loud with them. She'd say "Raah!" in her cute little voice, and we'd say, "Shhhh!" We didn't want to disturb the people near us who were trying to listen to Terry.

The event was advertised as a reading of his new book Wintersmith, but he didn't actually read anything. He talked for a while and told us about the upcoming Hogfather movie (yay!), and signed books. He's a fun speaker. (Speaking of Nick Tennant, who is playing Nobby in the movie, he said, "He was not born Nobby, but he has achieved Nobbiness.")

For the book signing, they divided the crowd up into groups of a hundred according to the numbers on our ticket stubs. Mine was #422, but a guy who wasn't staying for the signing gave me his ticket #81, so I got in the first group and didn't have to wait long. (Which was great, because by the time we got out of there and went to find some food it was 9:00.)



There were some very creative costumes in the audience. Here Kate checks out Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats.

We have most of the Discworld books at home, but we decided to take along just Where's My Cow? (A Discworld picture book for people of all sizes) and get it signed for Kate. While we don't read it to her every evening at 6:00, it has been in the favorite-book rotation. I remember once reading it six or seven times in one day. She enjoys the animal sounds, and pointing out things in the pictures. There's even a picture of Terry on the last page that she can point to. ("Where's the baby? Where's the ball? Where's Terry Pratchett?") He signed it, "To Kate--Here's your cow!"



We had a fun evening. We'd listened to a Terry Pratchett interview online before, but we'd never seen him in person. Our other favorite author, Lois McMaster Bujold, was the guest of honor at Norwescon this year, but we didn't find out about it till after the fact. Phooey.

Check out Doug's Douggerel page for a Discworld-related poem ("With A-Poe-logies to 'The Raven'").

And since two people in one day sent me this link, I must include it here: Discworld Cake.