I REGRET NOTHING.
“Ah.” ‘The Wall,’ for those of you who are unaccountably unfamiliar with the history of Early Modern archeology, was a hasty fortification thrown up by PCU scholars in the immediate aftermath of the Discovery, when the forest magic was running wild and savage. They filled it with whatever was at hand: rubble, heavy plastic, metal… and every book they could spare, since the questing, rampaging roots seemed to instinctively avoid paper products. After things calmed down, the University kept the walls up, because they worked just as well against bandits. Eventually they forgot about the interior materials.
But one man’s junk is another man’s doctoral thesis: about twenty years ago somebody rediscovered all the stuff buried in The Wall, and we’ve been mining it for artifacts and papers ever since. Nine hundred years inside a stone fortification isn’t the best place to store a book, but the Old Americans made them tough at the end and restoration magic exists for a reason… but I digress. The point is, the University staff used the books they considered useless, which means the site is a great source for a lot of odd information, which has led to some significant discoveries. Those of us with a weakness for esoteric puns refer to the results as being ‘Off The Wall.’
Trust me, it’s a really funny line in Old American.
Some of the greatest story seeds are planted by reading WAY to far into euphemisms.
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For example: This week I learned that the Russian word “[Sera]” can mean both “Sulphur” and “earwax”, apparently.
Gives some very different meanings to “que sera, sera” ..
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Que sera sera .. sulfur or ear wax .. did the author mean wax .. or is sulfur intended ..
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Yeah, filk was never my strong point.
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Mew
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p.s. Russian cop show “Irredeemables” is on Amazon Prime .. and is surprisingly watchable. (provided, of course, you don’t mind subtitles)
I’ve not gotten to Bujold’s “sharing knife” series yet. I understand one of the leads is named “Fawn” and that .. at some point, another character replies to Fawn with “yes, deer” ..
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There’s really nothing wrong, in other words, with Moe’s off the wall comment.
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Mew