Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Chapter 8

2015-03-12T15:37:12Z

Ingenhop:

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==Page 80==
'''cheese danish''' 
A reference that cannot help but invoke memories of Slab's hilarious obsession in V to paint this pastry.
“The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab’s. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. ‘Monet spent his declining years at his Home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,’ reasoned Slab. ‘He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember.”

==Page 81==
'''hawala''' 
"an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala Wikipedia]

'''"Kim Novak comes floating down the river"''' 
The 1955 film ''Picnic'' features a small town festival, where every year a woman is named Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards). Kim Novak floating in the boat can be seen in the final seconds of the film's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw trailer]

Is there any reason, other than a typo, that the film in "Bleeding Edge" is said to have come out in 1956? Wiki says it had a limited release in November 1955 and went nationwide in 1956.

Odd trivia fact about "Picnic." This is the film that James Vicary in 1957 lied about containing subliminal messages that successfully caused people to drink more Coke and eat more popcorn. [http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp Read more] about the famous hoax.

==Page 82==
'''sharia-compliant workarounds''' 
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God—as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws (fiqh). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia WIKI].

==Page 83==

'''Nigerian emails''' 
"Internationally, Nigeria is infamous for a form of bank fraud dubbed 419, a type of advance fee fraud (named after Section 419 of the Nigerian Penal Code) along with the "Nigerian scam", a form of confidence trick practiced by individuals and criminal syndicates. These scams involve a complicit Nigerian bank (the laws being set up loosely to allow it) and a scammer who claims to have money he needs to obtain from that bank. The victim is talked into exchanging bank account information on the premise that the money will be transferred to him, and then he'll get to keep a cut. In reality, money is taken out instead, and/or large fees (which seem small in comparison with the imaginary wealth he awaits) are deducted." Wikipedia

'''pigeon drop''' 
"Pigeon drop is a confidence trick in which a mark or "pigeon" is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money, or more valuable object. In reality, the scammers make off with the money and the mark is left with nothing." Wikipedia

'''Tomcat''' 
Baretta 3032 Tomcat: a small, semi-automatic pistol designed to be easily concealed

==Page 84==

'''AMONG MAXINE'S MORE USEFUL SENSORS is her bladder.''' 
Does this remind anyone of Tyrone Slothrop's (''Gravity's Rainbow'') bodily sensor?

==Page 85==
'''toilet wall''' 
Recalls these scene in ''Crying of Lot 49'' where Oedipa Maas sees the W.A.S.T.E. horn written on the bathroom wall.

==Page 86==
'''chick who did the tarot deck''' 
Pamela Coleman Smith died penniless despite doing the illustrations for a tarot deck whose design has been sold millions of times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Coleman_Smith Wikipedia]
<blockquote>This deck is referenced heavily in ''Against the Day'', with it being a major plot feature for T.W.I.T.</blockquote>

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}

Chapter 8

2015-03-12T15:24:05Z

Ingenhop: /* Page 84 */

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==Page 80==
'''cheese danish''' 
A reference that cannot help but invoke memories of Slab's hilarious obsession in V to paint this pastry.
“The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab’s. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. ‘Monet spent his declining years at his Home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,’ reasoned Slab. ‘He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember.”

==Page 81==
'''hawala''' 
"an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala Wikipedia]

'''"Kim Novak comes floating down the river"''' 
The 1955 film ''Picnic'' features a small town festival, where every year a woman is named Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards). Kim Novak floating in the boat can be seen in the final seconds of the film's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw trailer]

Is there any reason, other than a typo, that the film in "Bleeding Edge" is said to have come out in 1956? Wiki says it had a limited release in November 1955 and went nationwide in 1956.

Odd trivia fact about "Picnic." This is the film that James Vicary in 1957 lied about containing subliminal messages that successfully caused people to drink more Coke and eat more popcorn. [http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp Read more] about the famous hoax.

==Page 82==
'''sharia-compliant workarounds''' 
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God—as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws (fiqh). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia WIKI].

==Page 84==

'''AMONG MAXINE'S MORE USEFUL SENSORS is her bladder.''' 
Does this remind anyone of Tyrone Slothrop's (''Gravity's Rainbow'') bodily sensor?

==Page 85==
'''toilet wall''' 
Recalls these scene in ''Crying of Lot 49'' where Oedipa Maas sees the W.A.S.T.E. horn written on the bathroom wall.

==Page 86==
'''chick who did the tarot deck''' 
Pamela Coleman Smith died penniless despite doing the illustrations for a tarot deck whose design has been sold millions of times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Coleman_Smith Wikipedia]
<blockquote>This deck is referenced heavily in ''Against the Day'', with it being a major plot feature for T.W.I.T.</blockquote>

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}

Chapter 8

2015-03-12T15:23:08Z

Ingenhop: /* Page 84 */

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==Page 80==
'''cheese danish''' 
A reference that cannot help but invoke memories of Slab's hilarious obsession in V to paint this pastry.
“The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab’s. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. ‘Monet spent his declining years at his Home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,’ reasoned Slab. ‘He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember.”

==Page 81==
'''hawala''' 
"an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala Wikipedia]

'''"Kim Novak comes floating down the river"''' 
The 1955 film ''Picnic'' features a small town festival, where every year a woman is named Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards). Kim Novak floating in the boat can be seen in the final seconds of the film's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw trailer]

Is there any reason, other than a typo, that the film in "Bleeding Edge" is said to have come out in 1956? Wiki says it had a limited release in November 1955 and went nationwide in 1956.

Odd trivia fact about "Picnic." This is the film that James Vicary in 1957 lied about containing subliminal messages that successfully caused people to drink more Coke and eat more popcorn. [http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp Read more] about the famous hoax.

==Page 82==
'''sharia-compliant workarounds''' 
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God—as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws (fiqh). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia WIKI].

==Page 84==

'''AMONG MAXINE'S MORE USEFUL SENSORS is her bladder.''' 
Does this remind anyone of Tyrone Slothrop's bodily sensor?

==Page 85==
'''toilet wall''' 
Recalls these scene in ''Crying of Lot 49'' where Oedipa Maas sees the W.A.S.T.E. horn written on the bathroom wall.

==Page 86==
'''chick who did the tarot deck''' 
Pamela Coleman Smith died penniless despite doing the illustrations for a tarot deck whose design has been sold millions of times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Coleman_Smith Wikipedia]
<blockquote>This deck is referenced heavily in ''Against the Day'', with it being a major plot feature for T.W.I.T.</blockquote>

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}

Chapter 8

2015-03-12T15:21:33Z

Ingenhop: /* Page 84 */

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==Page 80==
'''cheese danish''' 
A reference that cannot help but invoke memories of Slab's hilarious obsession in V to paint this pastry.
“The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab’s. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. ‘Monet spent his declining years at his Home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,’ reasoned Slab. ‘He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember.”

==Page 81==
'''hawala''' 
"an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala Wikipedia]

'''"Kim Novak comes floating down the river"''' 
The 1955 film ''Picnic'' features a small town festival, where every year a woman is named Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards). Kim Novak floating in the boat can be seen in the final seconds of the film's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw trailer]

Is there any reason, other than a typo, that the film in "Bleeding Edge" is said to have come out in 1956? Wiki says it had a limited release in November 1955 and went nationwide in 1956.

Odd trivia fact about "Picnic." This is the film that James Vicary in 1957 lied about containing subliminal messages that successfully caused people to drink more Coke and eat more popcorn. [http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp Read more] about the famous hoax.

==Page 82==
'''sharia-compliant workarounds''' 
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God—as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws (fiqh). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia WIKI].

==Page 84==

'''AMONG MAXINE'S MORE USEFUL SENSORS is her bladder.'''

==Page 85==
'''toilet wall''' 
Recalls these scene in ''Crying of Lot 49'' where Oedipa Maas sees the W.A.S.T.E. horn written on the bathroom wall.

==Page 86==
'''chick who did the tarot deck''' 
Pamela Coleman Smith died penniless despite doing the illustrations for a tarot deck whose design has been sold millions of times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Coleman_Smith Wikipedia]
<blockquote>This deck is referenced heavily in ''Against the Day'', with it being a major plot feature for T.W.I.T.</blockquote>

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}

Chapter 8

2015-03-12T15:21:02Z

Ingenhop: /* Page 84 */

{{BE PxP Header}}

==Page 80==
'''cheese danish''' 
A reference that cannot help but invoke memories of Slab's hilarious obsession in V to paint this pastry.
“The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab’s. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. ‘Monet spent his declining years at his Home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,’ reasoned Slab. ‘He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember.”

==Page 81==
'''hawala''' 
"an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala Wikipedia]

'''"Kim Novak comes floating down the river"''' 
The 1955 film ''Picnic'' features a small town festival, where every year a woman is named Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards). Kim Novak floating in the boat can be seen in the final seconds of the film's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw trailer]

Is there any reason, other than a typo, that the film in "Bleeding Edge" is said to have come out in 1956? Wiki says it had a limited release in November 1955 and went nationwide in 1956.

Odd trivia fact about "Picnic." This is the film that James Vicary in 1957 lied about containing subliminal messages that successfully caused people to drink more Coke and eat more popcorn. [http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp Read more] about the famous hoax.

==Page 82==
'''sharia-compliant workarounds''' 
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God—as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws (fiqh). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia WIKI].

==Page 84==

AMONG MAXINE'S MORE USEFUL SENSORS is her bladder.

==Page 85==
'''toilet wall''' 
Recalls these scene in ''Crying of Lot 49'' where Oedipa Maas sees the W.A.S.T.E. horn written on the bathroom wall.

==Page 86==
'''chick who did the tarot deck''' 
Pamela Coleman Smith died penniless despite doing the illustrations for a tarot deck whose design has been sold millions of times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Coleman_Smith Wikipedia]
<blockquote>This deck is referenced heavily in ''Against the Day'', with it being a major plot feature for T.W.I.T.</blockquote>

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}

Chapter 4

2015-02-16T18:05:27Z

Ingenhop: /* Page 37 */

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==Page 30==
'''Leuzinger High School''' 
Leuzinger High School is a public high school (9th through 12th grades) in Lawndale, California. It opened on January 27, 1931, with an enrollment of 268. It was named after Adolph Leuzinger in recognition of his 25 years of service on the Board of Trustees of the Inglewood Union High School District. The school is in the Centinela Valley Union High School District. As Leuzinger's first senior class graduated while the 1932 Summer Olympics were hosted in and around nearby Los Angeles, the school's mascot became the "Olympians". From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuzinger_High_School WIKI]

==Page 31==
'''statues of the Buddha''' 
The Buddhas of Bamiwam were two 6th century statues of standing buddha carved into the side of a cliff that were destroyed in 2001. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan Wikipedia]

'''F#ckin rugriders''' 
a "rug rider" is a derogatory term for a person of Middle Eastern / East Indian descent (as in flying carpet).

'''if the Buddha's in your way . . . it's OK to kill him?''' 
A famous koan attributed to Zen Master Linji: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."

'''"If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!"''' is also the title of a popular psychology book from the early 1970s, written by a man with the Pynchonesque sounding name of Sheldon P. Kopp.

'''Wahhabists''' 
Wahhabism is an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam (though some people dispute that a Wahhabi is a Sunni). It is a religious movement among fundamentalist Islamic believers, with an aspiration to return to the earliest fundamental Islamic sources of the Quran and Hadith, with inspiration from the teachings of Medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyyah and early jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabists WIKI].

'''The Brady Bunch''' 
When someone once asked Pynchon's sister, "What's your brother likely to be doing right now?", she reportedly said "Watching The Brady Bunch." [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/bio/influences.html Source] The episode where Jan gets a wig is titled "The New Jan Brady." It's also [http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_17#Page_310 discussed] on ''Inherent Vice'' Wiki (page 310):

:"What kind of wig?"
:"Brunette, I think. She gets tired of being a blonde?"
:"Tell me about ''that''. Still not the same as changing your politics, I guess."

Here's the clip...
{{#ev:youtube|1Lg3OVrytOM}}

'''krav maga''' 
Krav Maga is a tactical martial system developed in Israel that consists of a wide combination of techniques sourced from boxing, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Judo, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and grappling, along with realistic fight training. Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and extremely efficient and brutal counter-attacks. It was derived from street-fighting skills developed by Slovakian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler, as a means of defending the Jewish quarter against fascist groups in Bratislava in the mid-to-late 1930s. In the late 1940s, following his immigration to Israel, he began to provide lessons on combat training to what was to become the IDF, who went on to develop the system that became known as Krav Maga. It has since been refined for civilian, police and military applications. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_maga WIKI].

==Page 32==

'''Disrespect and The Contaminator''' 
Other superheroes invented by Pynchon include Fatal Four in ''Gravity's Rainbow''... any others?

'''krav maga... kidon''' 
a martial art developed in Israel. Kidon is the name of an alleged secret department within Israel's Mossad. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidon Wikipedia]

'''Emma Levin, who's rumored to be ex-Mossad.''' 
Surely an allusion to the NCIS character Ziva David, an ex-Mossad, deadly, female agent.

==Page 33==
'''Shabtai Shavit''' 
Shabtai Shavit was director general of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996. Shavit first joined the Israel Defense Forces, where he served in the Sayeret Matkal. From 1958 to 1959, he was military governor of the Southern Command. In 1964, he joined the Mossad, where he worked his way up to director general. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabtai_Shavit WIKI].

'''A store something like Fairway...''' 
Fairway Market is an American grocery chain. Founded in the 1930s, it is one of the United States' highest grossing food retailers per square foot with 14 million customers per year. Fairway has had significant store expansion in the New York area, with 13 locations in the tri-state area including 13 food markets and 3 wine and spirit shops. The flagship store still occupies the original Broadway location at West 74th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with larger locations in Harlem; the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn; Paramus, New Jersey; Plainview, Long Island; Pelham Manor, New York; Stamford, Connecticut; and Woodland Park, New Jersey. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairway_Market WIKI].

'''Fresser''' 
Glutton (German and Yiddish)

==Page 34==
'''What Giuliani would call quality-of-life issues''' 
This being Spring 2001 it is the final days of the reign of Giuliani whose infamous application of "Broken Windows" theory of criminology still carries currency today.

For more information see Wikipedia "Broken windows theory" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory]

==Page 35==
'''what Bob Barker might call 'right'''' 
Bob Barker used to host a TV game show called ''The Price is Right''.

'''VC''' 
Venture Capitalist. Someone who has money to support new companies or projects.

==Page 36==

'''preempt''' <br\>
pre-emptive bid. Vyrva's company is presumably shopping itself around, planning to sell some or all of itself to the highest bidder. It looks like hashslingerz is hoping to avoid a competitive auction, and has made them a take-it-or-leave-it buyout offer for 100% of the company. This in turn would suggest that hashslingerz believes Vyrva's company has underestimated the true value of their software and hopes to do a deal for a price that seems generous but is actually a steal.

==Page 37==

'''IPO''' 
Initial Public Offering. Up to this point, Vyrva's company has been privately owned by the founders and probably a handful of investors or venture capitalists who have lent them money while they were developing their software. The IPO would sell a large fraction (usually more than half) of the company to the public, with the shares being traded on a stock exchange such as NASDAQ. This is usually a cash windfall for the original investors. "red herring" suggests that the management does not want to become public just yet, and has been circulating false rumors about an IPO, possibly to get a better deal for more private funding from the venture capialists and private investors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering

'''Beneish model''' 
A math model that identifies whether a company has manipulated its earnings using said company's financial statements.

'''tarball''' <br\>
a compressed archive containing all of the source code. Tar is the standard compression format for source code, rather than zip or rar. Often used in linux and other open source projects.

==Page 39==

'''…the Princess Diana Beanie Baby?''' 
Beanie Babies are a line of popular stuffed animals, made by Ty Warner Inc., which was later renamed as Ty Inc. in late 1993. Each toy has an inner "posable lining" and is stuffed with plastic pellets (or "beans") rather than conventional stuffing (see PVC and PE), giving Beanie Babies a flexible feel.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie_Babies

Diana, Princess of Wales died on August 31, 1997. Warner announced the Beanie Baby Princess on October 29, 1997 in honor of Princess Diana.[10] Warner said that all proceeds would be donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. The Princess Diana Beanie Baby was sent to vendors to distribute in the second week of December 1997. Some vendors had to wait until February 1998. Only 12 Beanie Baby Princesses were released to each vendor initially, but this changed due to strong demand.

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Chapter 2

2015-02-11T07:56:40Z

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==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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Despard 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==

'''with your neo-Brechtain subversion of the diegesis''' 
Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, theatre director, and Marxist. Most likely Pynchon is referring to one of Brecht's most important principles called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect").[62] This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them".[63] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht#Theory_and_practice_of_theatre
Oh, and diegesis means a narrative or plot found in film. (Greek orgin. diēgēsis means 'narrative'). http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/diegesis

'''leading edge''' 
Rhymes with "Bleeding Edge."

'''LexisNexis, HotBot, AltaVista''' 
Early search engines, before Google became popular.

'''Stuyvesant genius''' 
Stuyvesant H.S. is a magnet school in Manhattan. The school is noted for it's many Nobel Laureates in math and science. http://www.stuy.edu/ The school moved from its old building at 345 E 15th street (near 1st Avenue) to 345 Chambers Street (right next to Ground Zero). The first day of classes in the new building was September 10, 2001.

'''Eric Outfield''' 
Eric Outfield may refer to Eric Lander, 1974 Stuyvesant H.S. graduate. He was captain of the math team, a silver medalist at the International Math Olympiad and winner of the Westinghouse Prize for a paper on quasiperfect numbers. In H.S. he started a cult around the number 17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lander

==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, [http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html 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 [http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/hashing.html Webopedia]:
<blockquote>
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.
</blockquote>

'''p/e ratio''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93earnings_ratio Price-earnings ratio]. Market price per share divided by annual earnings per share.

==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 [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P Proverbs for Paranoids] in ''Gravity's Rainbow''?

==Page 12==
'''Horst Loeffler''' 
"Loeffler" is the German name of a bird, the Eurasian Spoonbill. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Spoonbill Wikipedia]
:Significance = god only knows. [[User:Benvolio|Benvolio]] ([[User talk:Benvolio|talk]])

'''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. [http://biographies.knoji.com/bela-lugosi-the-man-who-brought-dracula-to-life/ Source] The Marshall Islands is an island country located in the northern Pacific Ocean, part of the larger island group of Micronesia.

==Page 13==
'''SonyVX 2000''' 
Pynchon here continues his display of camera wonk knowledge and reference to popular, populist cameras, see Frenesi's Canon Scoopic 16 [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_10#Page_200] The SonyVX2000 was a popular model of the time first among skate videos of the 90s before its aesthetic appeal expanded and the convenience of digital video made it the shooting standard. Fits perfectly with Reg's listed filmography.

[[File:SonyVX2000.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Sony VX2000''']] 
'''Filene's Basement''' 
Dating back to 1909, this was one of the first "bargain basements", with locations throughout New England. Separate from (but affiliated with) Filene's Department Store, the Basement bought and resold surplus, factory clearance, overstock, or closeout merchandise, with an aggressive, fixed schedule of price reductions to ensure rapid turnover.
 

==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 [http://brookmanstamps.com/welcome.htm a real thing]. Robert Steiner is an American artist known as the master of duck-themed stamp artwork. [http://www.steinerprints.com/master_of_duck_stamps.pdf 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).

'''DSM''' 
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the U.S. So if it's not in the DSM, it's either not considered "real", or not distinct from another, similar disorder.

==Page 15==
'''walked away from the table with enough, had it been real money, for a short trip to Saks''' 
Popular and pricey clothier and luxury department store chain, with a flagship store on Fifth Avenue. Just shopping at Saks is itself a status symbol among New Yorkers.

'''Mason-Dixon Line''' 
Possibly an allusion to Pynchon's novel, "Mason & Dixon" (1997).

==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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_Massacre 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.

'''yaniqueques''' 
AKA "Johnnycakes" (also jonnycake, johnny cake, journey cake, shawnee cake and johnny bread) is a cornmeal flatbread that was an early American staple food and is prepared on the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Jamaica.[1] The food probably originates from the native inhabitants of North America. It is still eaten in the West Indies, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Colombia, and Bermuda[2] as well as in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnycake

'''chimichurros''' 
Possibly a misspelling of "chimichurris"? The Chimichurri burger (usually called "Chimi burger", "Dominican burger", or simply "chimi") is a traditional snack dish (sandwich) served in the Dominican Republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimichurris

'''mamajuana''' 
A drink from the Dominican Republic that is concocted by allowing rum, red wine, and honey to soak in a bottle with tree bark and herbs. The taste is similar to port wine and the color is a deep red. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_Juana

'''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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_wFEB4Oxlo 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.

'''... jittery mess, the atomic clock...''' 
I think this is playing on Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. There is no real fix point in the jittery world of quantum mechanics.

==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.

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}

Chapter 2

2015-02-11T07:18:37Z

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Chapter 2

2015-02-11T07:15:52Z

Ingenhop: /* Page 18 */

{{BE PxP Header}}

==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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Despard 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==

'''with your neo-Brechtain subversion of the diegesis''' 
Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, theatre director, and Marxist. Most likely Pynchon is referring to one of Brecht's most important principles called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect").[62] This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them".[63] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht#Theory_and_practice_of_theatre
Oh, and diegesis means a narrative or plot found in film. (Greek orgin. diēgēsis means 'narrative'). http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/diegesis

'''leading edge''' 
Rhymes with "Bleeding Edge."

'''LexisNexis, HotBot, AltaVista''' 
Early search engines, before Google became popular.

'''Stuyvesant genius''' 
Stuyvesant H.S. is a magnet school in Manhattan. The school is noted for it's many Nobel Laureates in math and science. http://www.stuy.edu/ The school moved from its old building at 345 E 15th street (near 1st Avenue) to 345 Chambers Street (right next to Ground Zero). The first day of classes in the new building was September 10, 2001.

'''Eric Outfield''' 
Eric Outfield may refer to Eric Lander, 1974 Stuyvesant H.S. graduate. He was captain of the math team, a silver medalist at the International Math Olympiad and winner of the Westinghouse Prize for a paper on quasiperfect numbers. In H.S. he started a cult around the number 17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lander

==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, [http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html 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 [http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/hashing.html Webopedia]:
<blockquote>
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.
</blockquote>

'''p/e ratio''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93earnings_ratio Price-earnings ratio]. Market price per share divided by annual earnings per share.

==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 [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P Proverbs for Paranoids] in ''Gravity's Rainbow''?

==Page 12==
'''Horst Loeffler''' 
"Loeffler" is the German name of a bird, the Eurasian Spoonbill. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Spoonbill Wikipedia]
:Significance = god only knows. [[User:Benvolio|Benvolio]] ([[User talk:Benvolio|talk]])

'''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. [http://biographies.knoji.com/bela-lugosi-the-man-who-brought-dracula-to-life/ Source] The Marshall Islands is an island country located in the northern Pacific Ocean, part of the larger island group of Micronesia.

==Page 13==
'''SonyVX 2000''' 
Pynchon here continues his display of camera wonk knowledge and reference to popular, populist cameras, see Frenesi's Canon Scoopic 16 [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_10#Page_200] The SonyVX2000 was a popular model of the time first among skate videos of the 90s before its aesthetic appeal expanded and the convenience of digital video made it the shooting standard. Fits perfectly with Reg's listed filmography.

[[File:SonyVX2000.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Sony VX2000''']] 
'''Filene's Basement''' 
Dating back to 1909, this was one of the first "bargain basements", with locations throughout New England. Separate from (but affiliated with) Filene's Department Store, the Basement bought and resold surplus, factory clearance, overstock, or closeout merchandise, with an aggressive, fixed schedule of price reductions to ensure rapid turnover.
 

==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 [http://brookmanstamps.com/welcome.htm a real thing]. Robert Steiner is an American artist known as the master of duck-themed stamp artwork. [http://www.steinerprints.com/master_of_duck_stamps.pdf 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).

'''DSM''' 
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the U.S. So if it's not in the DSM, it's either not considered "real", or not distinct from another, similar disorder.

==Page 15==
'''walked away from the table with enough, had it been real money, for a short trip to Saks''' 
Popular and pricey clothier and luxury department store chain, with a flagship store on Fifth Avenue. Just shopping at Saks is itself a status symbol among New Yorkers.

'''Mason-Dixon Line''' 
Possibly an allusion to Pynchon's novel, "Mason & Dixon" (1997).

==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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_Massacre 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.

'''yaniqueques''' 
AKA "Johnnycakes" (also jonnycake, johnny cake, journey cake, shawnee cake and johnny bread) is a cornmeal flatbread that was an early American staple food and is prepared on the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Jamaica.[1] The food probably originates from the native inhabitants of North America. It is still eaten in the West Indies, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Colombia, and Bermuda[2] as well as in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnycake

'''chimichurros''' 
Possibly a misspelling of "chimichurris"? The Chimichurri burger (usually called "Chimi burger", "Dominican burger", or simply "chimi") is a traditional snack dish (sandwich) served in the Dominican Republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimichurris

'''mamajuana''' 
A drink from the Dominican Republic that is concocted by allowing rum, red wine, and honey to soak in a bottle with tree bark and herbs. The taste is similar to port wine and the color is a deep red. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_Juana

'''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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_wFEB4Oxlo 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.

"... jittery mess, the atomic clock..." 
I think this is playing on Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. There is no real fix point in the jittery world of quantum mechanics.

==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.

{{Bleeding Edge PbP}}