Funny / The Last Continent

• The Last Continent is simply one of the most flat-out hilarious books in the entire Discworld series; Terry just lined up every single thing he knew about Australia that was interesting enough to be worth parodying and let rip. If you're not an Australian it's funny, if you are an Australian it'll slay you.
• The canyon scene: a trickster-god in horse(?) form engineers a new reputation for 'Rinso' as the best rider in XXXX.
• Any time Rincewind proudly declares his own cowardice and/or uselessness.
  • "Luck is my middle name. Mind you, my first name is Bad."
  • And also proudly declaring that he is a Racist — the ten kilometre, the hundred metres, he ran them all. The narration goes on to say that when he learned the popular meaning of the word, he was quite surprised. (And he couldn't be one anyway... since, in his experience, everyone tried to kill him or cause his death in some way; it didn't matter what they looked like.)
• The wizards' attempts to explain sex to the God of Evolution.
  • Mrs. Whitlow, who finally takes over and explains it matter-of-factly. They can't actually hear what she's saying, but apparently there are hand gestures involved, prompting them to wonder if A.) Mrs. Whitlow is a widow, and B.) just what her husband died of.
    • Even more amusing if you recall that, back in Equal Rites, Mrs. Whitlow was introduced as having outlived four previous husbands.
• The Wizards squabble over who is going to bring Mrs. Whitlow a tray of food.
• The wizards' ship has fallen apart, and they've barely made it to the next island. Before, when they were out in the sea, they saw the Bursar swimming away from them slightly, before remarking that they shouldn't worry, he always comes back. He does come back. On a wave. Standing up. Surfing. Ridcully and Ponder watch as he avoids death several times, and when he glides up on the beach, shoving the plank into the sand, what does he say...?
  Bursar: Hooray. My feet are wet. What a lovely forest. It's time for tea.
• Mad relating to Rincewind how he and his family traveled thousands of miles across shark-infested waters to Xxxx. "Why, if it weren't for the the dwarf bread we-" "Never would've clubbed the sharks to death?" "Ah, I see you know your breads."
• The Archchancellor's Keys routine. Especially the overblown way it's done.
• Rincewind is reunited with the Luggage, with the assistance of a wandering troupe of female impersonators.
  Rincewind: Is that a stud? Have you had your lid pierced?
  The Luggage backed away. Its manner indicated very clearly that while it might give in on the shoes, the dress and even the earrings, the battle over the stud would go to the finish.
• Death asks his library for a book about the dangerous animals of Xxxx, and is buried in an avalanche of volumes. Then he asks for a list of the harmless animals there, and gets one piece of paper with the words "Some of the sheep". (It's the "Some of" that really makes it. If the list said "Sheep" it would still be funny, but you have to love the implication that Xxxx has dangerous sheep on it.)
  • Truth in Television. According to an article in a New Zealand newspaper, sheep top the list of the most dangerous farm animals. Apparently rams have a habit of attacking people and sheep in general frequently step on them, injuring human legs, ankles and feet.
• Ponder, fed up with how the rest of the faculty is feuding over Mrs. Whitlow's attention, remarks, "You'd think she was the only woman in the world." To this, Ridcully replies that she just might be.
  Ponder's mind raced and hit a speed bump.
• After getting aged down, the Librarian is described as looking like "he had seen something truly horrific, but this is a baby orangutan's natural expression and in any case he was looking at the Dean."
• A gentle mocking of the Signature Scene from Robinson Crusoe:
  "I had this book when I was a little lad," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. "It was about this man who was shipwrecked on an island such as this and he thought he was all alone and then one day he found a footprint in the sand. There was a woodcut," he added.
  "One footprint?" said the Dean, sitting up, clutching his head.
  "Well...yes, and when he saw it he knew that he -"
  "-was alone on an island with a crazed one-legged long-jump champion?" said the Dean. He was feeling testy.
• Ridcully's Brain Bleach reaction to learning how much sex is involved in everyday things.
  "I used to like walking through the woods on a nice spring morning, Stibbons. You're telling me the trees were at it like knives the whole time?!"
• In-universe: Rincewind confronting Scrappy, who's currently in the form of a sheep:
  "Is that you?
  "Ha, good one!"
• Rincewind's late-night cooking, fueled by lack of sleep and possibly one beer too many. The cooking scene itself is mainly a lot of Insane Troll Logic rambling about what an amazing idea it is to make beer soup with vegetables and lots of salt... then the next morning, a much more sober and coherent Rincewind is less than impressed with the results. We even learn that this isn't the first time he stayed up too late and got "creative" with cooking, with disastrous results:
  Yeasty vegetable soup, what a wonderful idea. Exactly the sort of idea that sounds really good around one o’clock in the morning when you’ve had too much to drink. Now he remembered, with a shudder, some of the great wheezes he’d had on similar occasions. Spaghetti and custard, that’d been a good one. Deep-fried peas, that’d been another triumph. And then there’d been the time when it had seemed a really good idea to eat some flour and yeast and then drink some warm water, because he’d run out of bread and after all that was what the stomach saw, wasn’t it? The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always had some logic behind it. It just wasn’t the kind of logic you’d use around midday.
  • And the result of this particular venture should sound pretty familiar if you've ever tasted it.
  Odd, though... It was kind of horrible, but nevertheless Rincewind found himself having another taste.
• Rincewind's personality being completely inverted when he's drunk: becoming cheerful and eager to take the lead, a stark contrast to his usual pessimistic disposition.
• In case you needed more proof that the slightest understanding of everyday life is not a prerequisite to being on the UU faculty:
  Ponder: Er... you just take some cotton and... hammer it flat, I think... and you get handkerchiefs.

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