Difference between revisions of "Chapter 40"

Revision as of 18:39, 22 November 2014

Page 450

She's innocent...She's so fuckin innocent
Echos of Britney Spears from page 7? Maybe, maybe not. It's just that at the end of this novel there are so many references to previous happenings that one just can't be sure, can one?

Hypnotiq
Misspelling/typo of Hpnotiq, a turquoise liqueur?

Page 451

The Geek That Couldn't Sleep
Playing on the 1939 animated short The Bear that Couldn't Sleep?

bagpipe players, improvisiong grace notes on "Candle in the Wind"
I thought I was going to have to be the one to take one for the team by being the one to annotate this oppressively ubiquitous Elton John song associated with the deaths of Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe, but I'm thrilled to say YouTube has a dude playing it on bagpipes. Thank you, dude and YouTube.

Page 452

CMU
Carnegie Mellon University, see WIKI.

leading indicator...bagpipe players would get a heads-up before the next one happens?
Little bit of Slothrop here, as well as a bleeding edge?

The Montauk Project
Just a refresher, on page 117 March explains "The Montauk Project is every horrible suspicion you've ever had since World War II, all the paranoid production values, a vast underground facility, exotic weapons, space aliens, time travel, other dimensions..."

Cue the theremin music
Refers to the theme song of the original TV series Star Trek (I think?), which used the eerie sound of the theremin. Relates to the extra terrestrial/sci-fi activities at Montauk mentioned a few lines earlier.

It more likely is an allusion to the music from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I don't believe there is a theremin in the original Star Trek theme

Two things. One: apparently the vocal style of the Star Trek theme song really was meant to imitate specifically the theremin, and not just to sound 'spacey.' Two: The Day the Earth Stood Still gets referenced on page 100.

Page 454

Igor's ZiL-41047
The ZIL-41047 is a limousine built by ZIL of Russia. Production of ZIL models ceased in 2002 due to their previous customer base turning to more modern Western vehicles.[1]

See p. 160

shmaravozka

(шмаравозка) Russian slang, "pimped-out ride" (Pynchon's use of the term in a novel set in 2001-02 may be anachronistic.)

nichego
(ничего) Russian, "nothing."

vory
(воры) Russian, "thieves."

Page 455

govno
(говно) Russian, "shit"

Austin Powers ... shagadelic<br\> Austin Powers was a character portrayed by Mike Myers in a series of three action-comedy movies parodying the James Bond flicks. Shagadelic was first coined by him in the 1997 film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the first of the trilogy.

Page 456

fake barn and silo of Stew Leonard
Stew Leonard's is chain of four supermarkets in Connecticut and New York which Ripley's Believe It or Not! deemed "The World's Largest Dairy", with Fortune magazine listing Stew Leonard's as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For". "Anyone who comes from Connecticut or thereabouts knows this landmark chain of grocery stores where mechanized cows sing and roosters crow," according to a writer for the Sun-Sentinel of Florida. A typical Stew Leonard's store will attract customers from a wider geographic area than a typical supermarket because customers are willing to drive longer distances. The store's fame comes from its innovative in-store marketing, which includes a barnlike wood decor, a winding path for shoppers instead of straight, parallel aisles, and animatronic singing animals perched above the shelving. In 1993, Stew Leonard Sr. was convicted of committing tax fraud through an elaborate scheme including short-weighting to divert more than $17 million in cash register receipts over a ten-year period. He was sentenced to 52-months in jail. Court documents indicated that Stew Leonard Jr. played a role in the tax fraud. However, in the interest of protecting his son and the store, Stew Leonard Sr. pleaded guilty in exchange for an agreement from the prosecutors to not bring charges against Stew Leonard Jr. From WIKI.

... Chimpan Zee bridge.

The Tappan Zee Bridge.

DDT's road anthem "Ty Nye Odin" (You Are Not Alone)...and the soulful ballad "Veter"
Ty Nye Odin and Veter on YouTube.

Anyone else getting a slight whiff, a silage, perhaps, of the nihilists from The Big Lebowski?

Formed in 1980, DDT were one of he most popular Russian rock bands of the 80s and 90s. The song "Veter" (The Wind), in particular, would be known to any Russian who grew up at that time.

Vladimirskii Tsentral

Well-known prison in the city of Vladimir dating from the reign of Catherine the Great and still in use today. (It is, however, very unlikely that petty criminals like Grisha and Misha would have served time there.)

Page 457

Mohawk for 'firefly'
This page says "tewattsirokwas" does mean "firefly."

Camp Tewattsirokwas ... the Gimelmans from Cedarhurst The camp and the Gimelmans are, as far as I can tell, fictional.

You will need a lot of watts (a terrawatt?) to operate a server farm and a lot of cooling (Lake Heatsink)

So is it named after a way of producing light without heat, or after Groucho Marx character Rufus T. Firefly?

the Schachtman unpleasantness
Max Shachtman (1904 – 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He evolved from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL-CIO President George Meany. In 1938, Shachtman shocked Trotsky by publishing an article in the New International in which James Burnham declared his opposition to dialectical materialism, the philosophy of Marxism. Although Trotsky reassured Shachtman, "I did not deny in the least the usefulness of the article you and Burnham wrote," the issue would soon be revived as Shachtman and Trotsky clashed on the outbreak of World War II. [2]

Marching to Astoria
Reference to Archie Bunker's version. Actually Marching to Pretoria, which was sung at many upstate sleepaway camps. http://youtu.be/Hap0jqU0WsQ

Zum Gali Gali
a Hebrew folk song

aaahhh! Wesley Epstein!
Perhaps one of Maxine's crushes at summer camp?

spiel from the Geek's Cotillion
This would be Ice's speech at the Tworkeffx party in | Chapter 28 (p. 310) wherein he says that the thing to do is "to go north, set up server farms where heat dissipation won't be so much of a problem [...] Domed communities across the Arctic tundra."

Ride Wit Me
YouTube. Help the view count pass the 31 million mark.

Page 458

Po khuy
(по хуй) An obscene Russian expression of indifference, cf. "don't give a fuck" in English. Its usage seems somewhat out of place here. A contemptuous "na khuy" (на хуй) (= fuck it!; to hell with it!) would be both far more common and much more to Grisha's point.

nyaschetchka
(няшечка) Russian Internet slang, "cutie pie." (I suspect its use here is thoroughly anachronistic, as I can't find any citations for the word that are older than 2010.)

one of those vircators
A vircator (VIRtual CAthode oscillaTOR) is a microwave generator that is capable of generating brief pulses of tunable, narrow band microwaves at very high power levels. Vircators have been used as electromagnetic (EM) pulse generators and for generating X-rays.[3]

This scene sounds like it came from Repo Man wiki

Page 459

Gaussian blur
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauß (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physical scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, electrostatics, astronomy, and optics. Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum (Latin, "the Prince of Mathematicians" or "the foremost of mathematicians") and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. From WIKI.

Gaussian blur is a well known technique for smoothing or blurring images using an algorithm based on Gauss' mathematical work (using a 'Gaussian function'). Its effect is to simultaneously make an image appear smoother (and potentially more pleasing to the eye) but also to destroy detail in the process. The idea of a Gaussian function relates to the mathematical distribution of V2 rocket strikes in Gravity's Rainbow.

Article 272
This is, indeed, the relevant article in the revised Criminal Code of the Russian Federation adopted in 1997, notable for including cybercrimes for the first time.

Page 460

Deimos-and-Phobos
In Greek mythology, the twin sons of Ares and Aphrodite. They personify "terror" and "fear" respectively.

Overflow exploit, denial of service

Buffer overflow: In computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory. This is a special case of violation of memory safety. Buffer overflows can be triggered by inputs that are designed to execute code, or alter the way the program operates. This may result in erratic program behavior, including memory access errors, incorrect results, a crash, or a breach of system security. Thus, they are the basis of many software vulnerabilities and can be maliciously exploited.[4]
Denial of Service (DoS): In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of efforts to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet.[5]

Anasha can do funny things to a man
"Anasha" is Russian for the dried resin exuded by female indian hemp plant, aka hashish

HALO... HAHO
High-altitude military parachuting (or military free fall (MFF)) is a method of delivering personnel, equipment, and supplies from a transport aircraft at a high altitude via free-fall parachute insertion. Two techniques are used: HALO (high altitude - low opening) and HAHO (high altitude - high opening). In the HALO technique, the parachutist opens his parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time, while in the HAHO technique, the parachutist opens his parachute at a high altitude just a few seconds after jumping from the aircraft. HALO techniques date back to 1960 when the U.S. Air Force was conducting experiments that followed earlier work by Colonel John Stapp in the late 1940s through early 1950s on survivability factors for high-flying pilots needing to eject at high altitudes. In recent years, the HALO technique has been practiced by civilians as a form of skydiving. HALO is used for delivering equipment, supplies, or personnel, while HAHO is generally used only for personnel. From WIKI.

praporschik
A grade of NCO in the Russian army. WIKI

Page 461

Spetsnaz
See p. 139.

dzhef
Russian, "dope." (One of Pynchon's lamer cross-linguistic puns. "Everything (is) dope," of course, makes sense in English. In Russian, it would make no sense at all, as джеф doesn't have the adjectival slang usage of "very good" that "dope" does in English.)

Wahhabist bullshit front
See p. 344.

hedgehog in the fog
English translation of the Russian animated film Yozhik v Tumane mentioned on page 273.

Page 462

The padonki exchange a hopeful glance.
Padonki (Russian: падонки) is an an underground, nonconformist counter-culture within the Russian-speaking Internet that originated in 1997. It's most famous for using a distinctive slang, known as padonkaffsky jargon or, alternatively, as Olbanian. They pride themselves on their ability to creatively disrupt, question and make fun of mainstream culture. A padonok is any individual who has the ability to detach from social, cultural, ideological, and political norms. The singular of padonki is padonok (Russian: падонок), an intentional misspelling of podonok (Russian: подонок), which means riff-raff, scoundrel, or scum. [[6]]

Do svidanya Maksi! Poka, byelokurva!
"Goodbye, Maxi! So long, Ditzy Blonde!" (До свидания, Макси! Пока, белокурва!) The term белокурва is more than a little obscure, with only a few hundred G-hits, many of which are to dictionaries of slang and jargon. Some of the Russian Pynchon uses in BE is bog-standard for anyone familiar with the language, but it seems probable that Pynchon was also relying extensively on this site for some of the more colorful (and highly improbable) expressions Igor, Misha and Grisha use.