Difference between revisions of "Chapter 2"
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| + | '''Leptandra'''<br /> | ||
| + | Leptandra is a plant used in herbal medicine as a laxative. This may be saying something about her personality, but it is more likely referring to her name, as Leptandra's common name is Veronica | ||
'''mitvzah'''<br /> | '''mitvzah'''<br /> | ||
Revision as of 07:47, 28 November 2013
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Contents
Page 8
Reg Despard
As for name connections... Edward Marcus Despard (1751 – 21 February 1803) was an Irish soldier
who served in the British Army. During the American War of Independence Despard led a force to victory at the Battle of the Black River, securing the British presence on the Mosquito Coast. Following the war Despard was appointed Superintendent of what became British Honduras. He was recalled to London in 1790 after questions were raised about his conduct. Despard soon found himself in jail for debt. He later took up revolutionary politics, becoming involved with the United Britons movement, and was executed for high treason for his part in the failed Despard Plot. Wikpedia
And there is the fictional foreign wizard named Dragomir Despard, in the 7th Harry Potter novel by J.K. Rowlings, and in the movie "Deathly Hallows Part 2." Ron Weasley is disguised as Despard when, with Hermoine, disguised as Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry, in his cloak of invisibility, they break into Gringotts. Hermoine introduces Dragomir thus, "This is Dragomir Despard. He speaks very little English, But he is in sympathy with the Dark Lord's aims. He has travelled here from Transylvania to see our new regime."
Page 9
leading edge
Rhymes with "Bleeding Edge."
LexisNexis, HotBot, AltaVista
Early search engines, before Google became popular.
Page 10
certified badass
In an essay, Pynchon once defined a badass:
- "There is a long folk history of this figure, the Badass. He is usually male, and while sometimes earning the quizzical tolerance of women, is almost universally admired by men for two basic virtues: he is Bad, and he is Big. Bad meaning not morally evil, necessarily, more like able to work mischief on a large scale. What is important here is the amplifying of scale, the multiplication of effect." From Pynchon, Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?
hashslingrz
A hash slinger is a cook or food server in a cheap restaurant, especially one who is discourteous or inattentive to customers. However "hash" has a very different meaning on the Internet:
From Webopedia:
Producing hash values for accessing data or for security. A hash value (or simply hash), also called a message digest, is a number generated from a string of text. The hash is substantially smaller than the text itself, and is generated by a formula in such a way that it is extremely unlikely that some other text will produce the same hash value. Hashes play a role in security systems where they're used to ensure that transmitted messages have not been tampered with. The sender generates a hash of the message, encrypts it, and sends it with the message itself. The recipient then decrypts both the message and the hash, produces another hash from the received message, and compares the two hashes. If they're the same, there is a very high probability that the message was transmitted intact. Hashing is also a common method of accessing data records. Consider, for example, a list of names:
- John Smith
- Sarah Jones
- Roger Adams
To create an index, called a hash table, for these records, you would apply a formula to each name to produce a unique numeric value. So you might get something like:
- 1345873 John smith
- 3097905 Sarah Jones
- 4060964 Roger Adams
Then to search for the record containing Sarah Jones, you just need to reapply the formula, which directly yields the index key to the record. This is much more efficient than searching through all the records till the matching record is found.
Page 11
Except maybe for 666
"This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666." (Revelation 13:18)
Also, for what it's worth, some biblical scholars agree that 666 is in fact gematria for Nero.
paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen . . .
Maybe we can add this to the Proverbs for Paranoids in Gravity's Rainbow?
Page 12
Horst Loeffler
"Loeffler" is the German name of a bird, the Eurasian Spoonbill. Wikipedia
tramp container vessel M/V Aristide Olt
A "tramp" vessel means that a ship has no fixed schedule or published ports of call. "Hungarian" may be a joke as Hungary, a landlocked country, has no ports. Aristide Olt was a stage name used by Bela Lugosi when he made silent films in Hungary. Source The Marshall Islands is an island country located in the northern Pacific Ocean, part of the larger island group of Micronesia.
Page 13
Page 14
Duck stamps
Pynchon mentions rare stamps and stamp collecting in many of his works. Bill Gross is a a billionaire fund manager who owns a leading stamp collection. Apparently duck stamp collecting is a real thing. Robert Steiner is an American artist known as the master of duck-themed stamp artwork. An article on Steiner
"the 301 point 83"
301.83 is the classification number of borderline personality disorder in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Page 16
the Perejil Massacre
Also called the "Parsley Massacre." A 1937 massacre of Haitians living on the border, ordered by Dominican President Rafael Trujillo. It resulted in the death of 20,000 ethnic Haitians.
According to Wikipedia, Dominican soldiers would hold up a sprig of parsley to someone and ask "What is this?"; how the person would pronounce the Spanish word for parsley (perejil) would determine his/her fate. French and Haitian Creole pronounce the word differently than Dominicans, so if the person could pronounce "perejil" with a trill, the person was considered to be Dominican and allowed to live, but if the person pronounced "perejil" without the trill, the person was considered to be Haitian and executed.
Manzanillo Bay . . . Pepillo Salcedo
This is a port in the Dominican Republic.
Love, exciting and new, as they used to sing on The Love Boat
The Love Boat was an American TV show (1977-86) about a cruise ship. The first words of the theme song were "Love, exciting and new . . ." You can hear it here.
Page 17
Leptandra
Leptandra is a plant used in herbal medicine as a laxative. This may be saying something about her personality, but it is more likely referring to her name, as Leptandra's common name is Veronica
mitvzah
In Judaism, a biblical commandment. Also, more colloquially, a good deed.
real estate injustice
By way of explanation to readers unfamiliar with NYC real estate, many people live in apartment buildings where rent is controlled and managed by co-op boards, which can have large amounts of control over things like transferring the property. NYC is famous for long, protracted legal battles involving co-op boards, divorces, and/or trusts. RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) is a law used to combat organized crime.
Page 18
Eight Circle
in Dante's Inferno, the eighth circle of hell was reserved for those who commit fraud or
treachery.
Page 19
Bad Accountant
Perhaps an allusion to the 1992 NC-17 film starring Harvey Kietel, a gritty crime-drama with heavy religious overtones about a corrupt NYC policeman's struggles to change his ways.
| Chapter 1 pp. 1-7 |
Chapter 2 pp. 8-19 |
Chapter 3 pp. 20-29 |
Chapter 4 pp. 30-40 |
Chapter 5 pp. 41-52 |
| Chapter 6 pp. 53-67 |
Chapter 7 pp. 68-79 |
Chapter 8 pp. 80-86 |
Chapter 9 pp. 87-95 |
Chapter 10 pp. 96-111 |
| Chapter 11 pp. 112-120 |
Chapter 12 pp. 121-133 |
Chapter 13 pp. 134-144 |
Chapter 14 pp. 145-159 |
Chapter 15 pp. 160-171 |
| Chapter 16 pp. 172-184 |
Chapter 17 pp. 185-197 |
Chapter 18 pp. 198-210 |
Chapter 19 pp. 211-218 |
Chapter 20 pp. 219-229 |
| Chapter 21 pp. 230-238 |
Chapter 22 pp. 239-246 |
Chapter 23 pp. 247-255 |
Chapter 24 pp. 256-264 |
Chapter 25 pp. 265-273 |
| Chapter 26 pp. 274-287 |
Chapter 27 pp. 288-300 |
Chapter 28 pp. 301-313 |
Chapter 29 pp. 314-326 |
Chapter 30 pp. 327-337 |
| Chapter 31 pp. 338-346 |
Chapter 32 pp. 347-353 |
Chapter 33 pp. 354-364 |
Chapter 34 pp. 365-382 |
Chapter 35 pp. 383-394 |
| Chapter 36 pp. 395-407 |
Chapter 37 pp. 408-422 |
Chapter 38 pp. 423-438 |
Chapter 39 pp. 439-447 |
Chapter 40 pp. 448-462 |
| Chapter 41 pp. 463-477 |
