#making money
Moist had always been careful about disguises. A mustache that could come off at a tug had no place in his life. But since he had the world’s most forgettable face, a face that was still a face in the crowd even when it was by itself, it helped, sometimes, to give people something to tell the Watch about. Spectacles were an obvious choice, but Moist achieved very good results with his own design of nose and ear wigs. Show a man a pair of ears that small songbirds had apparently nested in, watch the polite horror in his eyes, and you could be certain that would be all he would remember.
– on disguises | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
“Watchmen in our bank? Shut the door on them!”
“Times have moved on, Auntie. We can’t do that anymore.”
“When your great-grandfather pushed his brother over the balcony the Watch even took the body away for five shillings and a pint of ale all round!”
“Yes, Auntie. Lord Vetinari is the Patrician now.”
“And he’d allow watchmen to clump around in our bank?”
“Without a doubt, Auntie.”
“Then he is no gentleman,” the aunt observed sadly.
– on Vetinari’s failings according to the wealthy | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
The money looked after itself. It sailed down the centuries, buried in paperwork, hidden behind lawyers, groomed, invested, diverted, converted, laundered, dried, ironed and polished, and kept safe from harm and taxes, and, above all, kept safe from the Lavishes themselves. They knew their descendents – they’d raised them, after all – and so, the money came with bodyguards of trustees, managers, and covenants, disgorging only a measured amount of itself to the next generation, enough to maintain the lifestyle with which their name had become synonymous and with a bit left over for them to indulge in the family tradition of fighting among themselves over, yes, the money.
– on old money | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
And she left, taking the wretched golems with her.*
*The dwarfs didn’t think to count them and see if any had been left behind. It wouldn’t have made any difference, but later on the king might not have shouted at them so much.
– on attention to detail | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
Ah, yes. It was all about the city, right? Underneath, he wrote, in large ornate letters:
Ad Urbem Pertinet
And, in smaller letters, after some thought:
Promitto fore ut possessori postulanti nummum unum solvem, an apte satisfaciam.
Signed, Moist von Lipwig pp The Chairman
– It’s all about the city | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
“Perhaps you could assuage my curiosity, madam?” he said. “Since the ink is drying on the lease?”
Miss Dearheart looked around the room conspiratorially, as if the heavy old bookcases concealed a multitude of ears.
“Can you keep a secret, Mr. Blister?”
“Oh, indeed, madam. Indeed!”
She looked around cautiously.
“Even so, this should be said quietly,” she hissed.
He nodded hopefully, leaned forward, and for the first time in many years felt a woman’s breath in his ear:
“So can I,” she said.– she remains an icon | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
Some of the things you could learn up a drainpipe at night were surprising. For example, people paid attention to small sounds – the click of a window catch, the clink of a lock pick – more than they did to big sounds, like a brick falling into the street or even (for this was, after all, Ankh-Morpork) a scream.
These were loud sounds, which were, therefore, public sounds, which, in turn, meant they were everyone’s problem and, therefore, not mine. But small sounds were nearby and suggested such things as stealth betrayed, and were, therefore, pressing and personal.– on sound ownership | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
Incredibly underrated Discworld twist:
When we’re introduced to Mr. Bent in Making Money and the story piles up the evidence for him secretly being a vampire but then it turns out he’s actually on the run from his past as a circus clown
And… oh gods, they’d printed his picture. His actual picture! Him and Vetinari and various notables last night, all looking up at the new chandelier! He’d managed to move slightly so that the picture blurred a little, but it was still the face that looked out at him from the shaving mirror every morning. All the way to Genua there were people who’d been duped, fooled, swindled, and cheated by that face. The only thing he hadn’t done was hornswoggle, and that was only because he hadn’t found out how to.
– it’s a complicated procedure | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
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Never give up on your dreams. Or you’ll work for someone who didn’t the rest of your life.
THE CLOWN WHO opened the little sliding door in the Fools’ Guild’s forbidding gates looked from Vetinari to Moist to Adora Belle, and wasn’t very happy about any of them.
“We are here to see Dr. Whiteface,” said Vetinari. “I require you to let us in with the minimum of mirth.”
The door snapped back. There was some hurried whispering and a clanking noise, and one half of the double doors opened a little way, just enough for people to walk through in single file. Moist stepped forward, but Vetinari put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pointed up with his stick.
“This is the Fools’ Guild,” he said. “Expect…fun.”
There was a bucket balanced on the door. He sighed, and gave it a push with his stick. There was a thud and a splash from the other side.
“I don’t know why they persist in this, I really don’t,” he said, sweeping through. “It’s not funny and it could hurt someone. Mind the custard.” There was a groan from the dark behind the door.-Making Money
this april fool’s day, JUST SAY NO to silly pranks!
“I know exactly what you never said. You refrained from saying it very loudly.” Vetinari raised an eyebrow. “I am extremely angry, Mr. Lipwig.”
“But I’ve been dropped right in it!”
“Not by me,” said Vetinari. “I can assure you that if I had, as your ill-assumed street patois has it, ‘dropped you in it,’ you would fully understand all meanings of ‘drop’ and have an unenviable knowledge of ‘it.’”
“You know what I mean!”
“Dear me, is this the real Moist von Lipwig speaking, or is it just the man looking forward to his very nearly gold chain? Topsy Lavish knew she was going and simply changed her will. I salute her for it. The staff will accept you more easily, too. And she’s done you a great favor.”
“Favor? I was shot at!”
“That was just the Assassins’ Guild dropping you a note to say they are watching you.”
“There were two shots!”
“Possibly for emphasis?” said Vetinari, sitting down on a velvet-covered chair.
-Making Money, Terry Pratchett
1: a hand-operated kitchen utensil used for beating, stirring, or whipping; especially : a rotary device for these purposes
“Good heavens, potatoesare worth more than gold!”
“Surely not!”
“If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?”
“Yes, but a desert island isn’t Ankh-Morpork!”
“And that proves gold is only valuable because we agree it is, right? It’s just a dream. But a potato is always worth a potato, anywhere. Add a knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you’ve got a meal, anywhere.Bury gold in the ground and you’ll be worrying about thieves forever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand percent.”
Terry Pratchett, Making Money
My job hunt hasn’t progressed as well as I’d hoped. It was my goal to get a full-time position, or barring that, two part-time jobs. So far I have one part-time, and my luck, as of late, has led me to ponder the trail my career has followed.
The highest paying job, per hour, I have ever been offered was as a nude model for a drawing class. A college was going to pay me $25 per hour to sit still as a stone buck naked in front of 18 young people who don’t yet know what it feels like to be able to lift excess flesh in their hands and shift it to other places on their body. I didn’t take the job.
I know plenty of people are quite comfortable with their bodies throughout each decade they are lucky enough to still be alive. I actually feel pretty good about myself, but the thought of over a dozen people studying each mole and hair follicle, and their eyes are following the uneven lines that make up my hips, insecurity seeps in. A friend of mine reminded me that, after all, I wouldn’t be modeling for porn pictures; it was art. But what I was doing it for wasn’t the hang-up.
What it really boiled down to was dimpled fat. You women know, that fat on your thighs that looks like grapefruit skin. I could not show my dimpled fat to all those college students who look like they could count their blemishes on two hands. They’ll see it soon enough when they pass thirty.
My ego aside, what’s sad about this job offer is what I said earlier. This is the only job I’ve ever been offered that paid so well. I’ve worked with mentally challenged adults, taught art to children in wheelchairs, planned state conferences for art administrators, and I’ve been commissioned to write plays for children. Of all the things I’ve done for art in my fourteen year career as an arts administrator, showing my butt to it was the most lucrative.
For any of you my age or older who have ever dropped your pants for art, I salute you. I hope you showed those college students what they’re headed for and were proud of it. My pants may still be on, but my hat is off to you.
When I lived in America I was a regular on Spindale public radio in North Carolina. These essays are from my collection that aired on WNCW.
Cathy Adams was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first novel, This Is What It Smells Like, was published by New Libri Press, Washington. Her short stories have been published in Utne, A River and Sound Review, Upstreet, Portland Review, Steel Toe Review, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, among others. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop and now lives and writes in Xinzheng, China, with her husband, photographer, JJ Jackson.
“You were just flirting to get what you wanted?”
Adora Belle stopped dead in the middle of the square to confront him.
“And?You flirt with people all the time. You flirt with the whole world! That’s what makes you interesting, because you’re more like a musician than a thief. You want to play the world, especially the fiddly bits.”
-Terry Pratchett’s Making Money
“Tell someone you were going to rob them and all you got was a reputation as an honest man.”
-Terry Pratchett’s Making Money
“There were meetings. There were always meetings. And they were dull, which is part of the reason they were meetings. Dull likes company.”
-Terry Pratchett’s Making Money
