And just like that, we’re at the end of Part I…. Lots to like in this last stretch: The dual identities of Blinky Morgan. The Aetherists and their Asylum. That oily Zombini (“I don’t suppose you’d have a spare electrical coil around?” (68) — how could Merle not see trouble brewing?). “Skip” the ball of lightning, who seemed like a distant cousin to “Byron the Light Bulb” of Gravity’s Rainbow fame.
A foul-mouthed Finn. A talking Tesla. An attack on the current administration even? (“Why, you could write a whole foreign phrase book just on what Republicans have to say.” (93)) A slice of Scarsdale Vibe’s past, the Traverse clan, and a rising extrasensory shimmer from Foley and Miles. All that, plus The Chums of Chance and their turn toward the Center, wherein Rodney and I get an excerpt from that Chums novella we crave….
Also: How creepy would it be to get sneered at by a guy named Darby Suckling?
Also also: On page 112, a passage that could have been plucked from Gravity’s Grainbow — the description of the rocket’s ascent, followed by Darby shouting “Stop, stop! …it sounds like Chinese!” — as if TP’s promising that we won’t be going back down that road this time around.
My thanks to Steve E. for his summary notes in the comments. They’re a great condensed way to give us a quick-glance back over the last week’s reading. Steve, if you find the time, please keep ’em coming….. (and if anyone’s looking to review them, search “steve evans” on the W2 comments page.
Tuesday 2/20: We’ll plant our dynamite sticks at the bottom of page 170, right next to “the purity, the geometry, the cold.”
(in other words: use this thread to comment through page 170. Try to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
Pugnax!
-Cecil
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
CoC novel title of the day: The Chums of Chance Almost Crash into the Kremlin.
I’m with the So-called Bill. I laughed out loud at that one.
Suffering through our own nasty midwestern weather and “bad ice after midnight” (page 135) this week, many of us have been getting mighty hungry sitting in our lonely cabins waiting for our streets to be plowed. Myself, I got a real hankering for some Meat Olaf, but sadly, there are no franchises of Narvik’s Mush-it-Away Northern Cuisine in walking distance of my neighborhood. Somehow, Lean Cuisine doesn’t have the same cachet as something from Narvik’s.
And not to hog my post here, but I really am finding some profundity every couple of pages in this book. My latest “oh my” moment can apply to queues of all types, notably the “waiting at a traffic light” queue, an event that always defies the laws of physics, as well as Walmart Queues, which have their own laws, physics or no.
Here’s Pynchon’s summary of this so-called law of physics: (page 135): “Not only was the line intolerably slow–often it did not move, for fifteen minutes–but when it did move, it ratcheted ahead only A FRACTION OF THE SPACE a single body would occupy. As if some of those waiting were, somehow, only fractionally present.”
Oh my.
On page 148 “It was understood at some point by all the company that they were speaking of unfortunate events to the north, the bad dream I still try to wake from, the great city brought to sorrow and ruin.�
On page 154 Hunter Penhallow is “stricken to remembering a nightmare too ancient to be his alone�
Something about the first line made me think of Joyce’s line “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.� Seeing the second somehow reinforced it. There’s always been a strong leaning toward Joyce among Pynchon scholars. I do wonder if TRP was paying a little tribute himself.
I particularly enjoyed this week’s (week three’s) reading–with its description of the double refracting Icelandic spar and its ability in providing a double image also to provide a ‘space’ between the two images, a space that can be occupied and inhabited, where ‘Hidden People’ exist, its discovery paralleling “the discovery [creation?] of Imaginary Numbers, which also provided a doubling of the mathematical Creation.” (p. 133)
“Down where the ‘Hidden People’ live. . . .Iceland spar is what hides the Hidden People, makes it possible for them to move through the world that thinks of itself as ‘real,’ provides that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen.” (p. 134) Reminds me of Emily Dickenson’s–
This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond–
Invisible, as Music
But positive, as Sound– [# 501]
Similarly, where the Narrator talks about “The Book of Iceland Spar. . .containing a record of each day of this very Expedition now in progress, even of days not yet transpired.” (p. 133)
“Fortune-telling! Impossible”
“Unless we can allow that certain texts are–”
“Outside of time,” suggested one of the
Librarians.
Again, I’m reminded of Emily Dickenson, where she says of the poet–
Of Portion–so unconscious–
The Robbing–could not harm–
Himself–to Him–a Fortune
Exterior–to Time– [# 448]
I just saw a car with the following bumpersticker on it: My other car is a Pynchon novel. Right outside my office in the Temescal in Oakland. Before I leave a note under his windshield to join us, I figured I’d check & see if it is one of us.
How many novels can successfully incorporate Tetris into their character descriptions?
“Padzhitnoff’s own speciality being to arrange for bricks and masonry, always in four-block fragments which had become his ‘signature,’ to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors.” p123
I can hear the 8-bit theme music now…
“Iceland spar is what hides the Hidden People, makes it possible for them to move through the world that thinks of itself as ‘real,’ provides that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen.” -Thomas Pynchon
“Their hand is at your throat but you see them not. They walk serene and unsuspected, not in the spaces we know, but between them.” -Abdul Alhazred
Loved this section–yes, like Computilo, loved Narvik’s–and WHAT IF THE ICE COULD TALK? The polar cap respond to all that damage and melting? What if the gnomes had ways of getting back at us for all we’ve extracted? What’s the global warming meme if not just that–a myth (which isn’t to say “just a story”) of Earth’s apocalyptic revenge?
But impressed too with the 9/11-via-Lovecraft attack on New York, which–who knows?–may be about the clearest-eyed account of that event, and the history of the city it happened to, we’ll get this lifetime. Don’t know, just saying.
Remembering now all the dyads in Gravity’s Rainbow, seeing it played out here in the up (electromagnetic vectors) and down (diamond/gold/spar/ice) imperialism of capital and its handmaid, science. But also in the Thing Brought Back From The Ice, its suggestion that the cosmos is a balance, and that for every action there will be an equal and opposite reaction, one that sort of buries our linear notion of time and opens us up to something a little more unseen and weird. All the characters I like in this book so far are alive to the unseen and weird.
I was going to sit this one out, but after a wine-soaked conversation with Cecil, I succumbed and bought the thing today. 170 pages in the next 4 days–I knew this march would be about tardiness and guilt, and I’m starting off perfectly.
The initial description of the Vormance expedition bringing back the discovered “object” reminds me of the 1951 horror movie called The Thing, in which a frozen being discovered in the artic thaws and wreaks havoc on its rescuers. Anyone else get that sense?
Similarly, once the thing (I’m back in AtD now) or the force of “the object” (or visitor) is released (p. 145) even a simple journey to the depot proves an “Odyssey.” While as far as I can tell there’s no Ulysses (or Bloom) in Against the Day, it does seem there’s a clear allusion to Ulysses: “the bad dream I still try to wake from” (p. 148) is strikingly similar to Stephen Dedalus’ “History. . .is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” and “the great city brought to sorrow and ruin” (p. 148) described in the next section (pp. 149-55) can almost be taken as a fleshing out of Stephen’s “I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.” Or am I considering too curiously to consider it so? Dr. Vitz?
Wow.
The success of the Vormance expedition and subsequent destruction of the city. I haven’t seen The Thing, but the Lovecraft flavor is lovely. All of those horror movies of the 1950’s, it seems, are about the destruction we bring upon ourselves.
All that paled, for me, in comparison with Fleetwood Vibes experience in Joburg. “(deep descents into the abysses of the gold reef minor next to the moral plunges available, indeed beckoning, at every hand)” (p.169)
chugging along (around page 138 right now) and really enjoying the book — what a great section this week. One nice surprise: reading the comments from folks who are ahead of me has only helped; I run into a line that’s been mentioned here, and it’s like finding a trail marker laid down to show I’m headed in the right direction.
-Cecil
So here it is mid-February in the Midwest, with nights below zero and days in the teens, and I’m reading about Arctic expeditions and unearthing destructive entities from the frozen wastes. I can’t say I understand it all, but I can definitely feel it.
comments part 1: okay, this last section, what a bizarre and amazing romp. i enjoyed this section immensely. i have no idea where to begin. maybe some random notes i took as i proceeded along. blundell’s ‘of the metawarble of blibfloth zep’ (zumbledy bongbong!). for a while i was looking up things, like dr. (kokichi) mikimoto (pearl farmer), iceland spar, eugene sue, somehow surprised they were real references, finding several things ‘of interest’ with regard to the book, like for example the fact that sue, the french novelist whose book pugnax seemed to be reading at one point, was plagiarized, later adapted, and then later incorporated into a notorious anti-semitic hoax. well. and forgive me if i’m repeating anything here as i like to make my ‘first’ comments before reading the others (thinking i’ll go back & make more comments after reading, which i’ve yet to do…). the sleight of hand narration in various sections. lutine — a reference to teasing? continuing to sweep thru historical metaphors, jarring reminders of occurrences in the book (and history) in relation with the real now. meat olaf (meat loaf?)….
comments part 2: journeying thru the center of earth! the book of iceland spar included ‘a record of each day…even of days not yet transpired.’ how wrought with humor this book is, especially racist humor. living ice — ice and the escape thereof — reminded of ibsen. constance’s fear of the goodbye letter from hunter becoming a blank sheet (memorylessness, a lack of posterity). ‘nunatek’ = nuclear? bilocation capabilities (magyakan). the consciousness & ancient purpose of the figure that is taken out of its territory and therefore brings mass destruction. the poetic, vague, beautiful, hellish disaster (9/11, hiroshima, etc.). in this section i start to feel like there’s a lot i’m not getting and wonder about the game of red herrings and infinite references. vaseline, eddie’s maid. roles in book played by electricity, ghosts or unseen figures, music, race, colonization, portals (invisible or otherwise). he keeps turning history on its head, looking at things from a fictional but poignant perspective. but why? just for fun? the lure of exploration (we as readers). that’s plenty enuff for now…
i love the book. so much poetry and intrigue, it’s hard to choose, but i have my eye on the parent-child threads for now.
start with those lost boys, the chums of chance, and a number of slapstick scuffles over jokes about mothers (right up to the mother/reindeers joke mentioned last week).
and then this mysterious family–merle, the absent erlys, dally, and skip the ball lightening; dally says of skip, “‘Him’? Sure, of course, you always wanted a boy” [74]–but the need, parent for child, child for parent, not mysterious. and so gently written.
at the end of week two’s reading, there’s the parent-child tangle of the traverse family. everyone’s got secrets of course, all that’s unsaid reminding me of our last march with woolf.
reef, about his father, webb–
“But always, Reef noted, that part withheld that you felt you couldn’t get to. The other Webb who rode by night, invisible.” [94]
and webb, about his son reef–
“He gazed at Reef in almost unconcealed envy, failing completely to recognize the darker thing, the desire, the desperate need to create a radius of annihilation that, if it could not include the ones who deserved it, might as well include himself.” [95]
and when webb blows it with kit, there’s mayva, kit’s mother, at the station with kit, who’s “pretending not to understand why nobody else had showed up” and mayva: “‘I’ll never see him again.’ No. She didn’t say that. But she might’ve, so easy. A look from him. Any small gesture of collapse from his careful, young man’s posture back into the boy she wanted, after all, to keep.” [106]
in the midst of all this adventure and beautiful language, there’s such delicately drawn familial love and misunderstanding.
Beautiful post, e. I think also of Hunter and Constance Penhallow, and of the elder Vibe’s “tell” of looking away when addressing Fleetwood and his siblings. That absent, non-disclosing look.
I did put together some summary notes on the third leg of our march, though I’m worried that in jotting down my take others (yours!) might get veiled. So if they seem an interference when you read them tomorrow, don’t hesitate to let me know (backchannel or here or through Cecil).
Omitted from those notes: the sense that the book revealed, after the charming madcap of its opening scenes, something of what’s really at stake, emotionally and every other way, in this novel. That made the reading more difficult in a way, as I was more aware than on the previous two legs of the gap between what I was getting and what was there to be gotten (again, emotionally, i.e. not “just” intellectually). Drew to a halt more than once, and did more rereading, too. But pleasure and the sense of effort repaid continues high.
And the action in these comments is so welcoming and humorous and affirming. I won’t visit the Wiki or do “outside research” but the talk here I find just perfect: I check in at least once a day to get the news. Thanks to all for that!
S.
A ship named for physicist Etienne Louis Malus! This was…cringeworthy…I never did well in physics. Studying light is so damn tricky because even the nobel winners don’t completely understand it–or so I used to argue in class. I only wish I could have read The Book of Iceland Spar (“like the Ynglingasaga only different”) while reading the physics textbook for class. But I’m no believer in “foreknowledge”…at the time I was certain I was going to fail and I made out with a C+…
I’ve caught up with the end of week 2, done so while sitting in a chair at the salon for 4 hours. I fear I’m failing yet again in a Death March, however, and wonder if I’ll be able to hang on. I LOVE this book for a couple of reasons others have covered here far more eloquently than any attempt on my part and I’m thoroughly enjoying reading everyone’s thoughts as they go.
Before I make the decision to fall off the wagon, I’ll see how far I get within the next week. Consider this my obligatory post in the off-chance I can finish. You bet I want that magnecup if I do!
E.
Third Leg of the March (provisional map &/or serving of madeleines). Best consulted after reading. Key: section number, chapter number (counted consecutively from start), subsections as letters, } see later passage, { see earlier passage, ff flash forward. Only way to do this is quickly, so apologies for mistakes that creep in. –SE
2.11a-g (121-137). (a121-25): Chums. The “Ray-rush.� I.G.L.O.O. The BOL’SHAIA IGRA, Capt. Igor Padzhitnoff. Previous run-ins. The unnameable (“if it found them it would eat them, without necessarily killing them first�). Pugnax reading Eugene Sue. Into the zone of emergency. (b125-26): The “extra man.� Ground leave. Inukshuk miniature in blue ivory. (c126-29): Background on Étienne-Louis Malus. Polarized light. Iceland ditty. Constance Penhallow witnesses arrival of the Malus. Her grandson Hunter Penhallow. Pre-Christian ancestors (“suicidally cheerful�). Harald Hardrade, the Ruthless, his expedition north. Ginnungagap. Near miss at extinction. Our source: Adam of Bremen. Conspiracy of ancestors “against the future.� Penhallows made their money in Iceland spar. Hunter joins Vormance Expedition. (d129-31): Hotel Borealis, headquarters. Hunter’s painting (ff to his “Venice� and “London� periods). Voices of the ice. Unnamed glacier. Restorative salsa. Passage from parrot’s world to ice-scape effected by chant of “Cuidado cabron� (“preferably with a parrot accent�). Fleetwood Vibe present at Scarsdale’s request. (e131-34, v. dense): Transnoctial Discussion Group. Heavenly City, Zion. Colonization of time. Dr. Templeton Blope. Hastings Throyle. Quaternionism. Square root of minus one. Dr. Rao. Ice creaking, “as if trying to express some argument of its own.� Luminiferous Aether.Blope: “It’s obvious Something doesn’t want us to know.� Otto Ghloix, expedition alienist. Icelandic “tradition of ghostliness.� The Book of Iceland Spar (or: Against the Day?). Mineral consciousness. The Hidden People. (f134-37): Sun’s unnameable device. Constance & Hunter’s last night together. Into town for food. Narvik’s Mush-It-Away Northern Cuisine. The proprietors’ jokes. Two Venice’s. Hunter’s “translations.� The ice. (g136-37): Mid-morning, the Malus departs. Hunter’s letter to his grandmother.
2.12a-b (138-148). (a138-46): From the Journals of Fleetwood Vibe. Nansen and Johansen ditty. Malus and Inconvenience converge. Making the nunatak visible. Aetheric Impulses. The caul/veil. Warnings against disturbing site. The odalisque of the snows. Face and open eyes. Practical concerns prevail. Buri, Odin, the first gods. Frozen visitant. Eskimo members of team depart. Uncritical buoyancy. Dodge Flannelette. Hastings Throyle. Magyakan’s arrival via bilocation. His prophesy. Christian time and shamanic time. Pugnax and the sled dogs. Canine labor union. C of C take leave. Docked. The “unbounded part.â€? “Those who claim to have heard it speak as it made its escape….â€? The terror commences. (b146-48): The Explorer’s Club in DC. Exchange with General. Transvaal. Rand shares (}167). Rumors of murder (}169). Parable of Nansen’s dwindling sled dogs (cannibalism, capitalism). The American Corporation. Disrupted time? The “bad dream I still try to wake from, the great city brought to sorrow and ruin.â€?
2.13a (149-155). Inconvenience attempts to outrace Malus. The meteorite alibi. Board of Inquiry at the Museum of Museumology. The disaster in retrospect. Incendiary figure. Eskimo belief in “ruling component.� Some established facts about the disaster. The creature already known to all. The strike. Cathedral of the Prefiguration. Negotiable Christian imagery. That “terrible all-night rape.� Propitiatory structures. Hunter Penhallow’s experience that night. The city grid distorted in destruction. Monumental gateway. A meeting in progress. On the way to refuge.
2.14a-d (156-170). (a156-62): The Yale-Harvard game (late November). Kit Traverse meets his benefactor. Scarsdale laments “the crockful of cucumbers I have sired.� Colfax Vibe. His prowess at sport. Kit’s vectorism. Cragmont Vibe and his trapeze girl bride. Fleetwood Vibe in Africa. Scene shifts to Vibe Manor on Long Island. “The forbidden level.� Mrs. Edwarda Vibe, née Beef, of Indianapolis; resides with her maid, Vaseline, in Greenwich Village, next door to R. Wilshire Vibe, decadent and composer of musical dramas. Eddie, the “Diva of Delmonico’s.� (b162-63): Kit with Cousin Dittany Vibe in the stables. And in the palmetto tent. Strange music. (c163-68): R. Wilshire’s ditty on African cannibalism, disliked by Fleetwood. Interview betw. Kit and Fleetwood. The “hidden place.� In East Africa with Yitzhak Zilberfeld. Heavenly City, Zion. The modern state. Nomads vs. settlers. Elephant charge interrupts conversation. Uncompensated kindness. “Buy Rand shares� ({146). Scarsdale Vibe: “I hate these climber sons of bitches worse� than communists. (d168-70): Fleetwood in Africa (from “a sickbed of remembrance�). In Johannesburg, eGoli, “City of Gold.� Forcing Kaffir into the void. “The American stain, after all, would not be eradicated.� Dead man’s face. The karmic ledger. Vormance Expedition as way out.
is this what we are to expect of a accountable, self-reflective sovereign people??? any excuse to become the monster their total depravity incites them be. parallels to our begruding bitch of a country are palpable:
” Out of that night and day of unconditional wrath, folks would’ve expected to see any city, if it survived, all newly reborn, purified by flame, taken clear beyond greed, real-estate speculating, local politics– instead of which, here was this weeping widow, some one-woman grievance committee in black…begrudge every goddamn single tear…developing into the meanest, cruelest bitch of a city, even among cities not notable for their kindness” (153-154).
How exactly does one be purified by fire when there is no respect for the truth of the matter?
fleetwood’s logical paradoxes may be the language of this ‘city’ which lies to itself about the truth of its self-worth. that the following statement is false is true.
what is this “expression of a truth beyond the secular” (126) the chums of chance long to capture, esp. considering the apparent religiosity of those inhabitants of the unpurifiable city; those who walk around with icons of their protector ? there was at least one other allusion to the same idea of obfuscating secularity.
this section has me deep in the next…
Okaay, so THIS is why I should not procrastinate til the last minute. Anybody feel that Pynchon makes normal sentences almost too prosaic to bear? And yet his are almost unbearable at times (no, ‘insufferable’, because of the obvious intentionality).
Well, I love the baleful ice-beast and the city in torment, possibly in part because my mewling, pitiful mind could sink its blunt teeth into content there. It was so vivid, and I must admit brought me a really new understanding of people’s fascination with the frozen North.
And I noticed Pynchon’s ‘glass-green sea’ homage (sorry, haven’t the tome with me at work) to Joyce’s ‘snot-green’… and the bitch in Portrait was the sea, I think, and not the city, but all very yummy.
Onward. Oh, and Blope… new favorite name!
late, behind, under water, using a snorkel. but not giving up yet!
Pynchon: The Transnoctial Discussion group discusses The Nature of Expeditions and wonders what will happen as man colonizes the Sky, somewhere in which God dwells in God’s Heavenly City. Will God withdraw before our advance? Will God send back divine Agents to help or turn us away?
And then today, on a late night car ride home from grandpa’s, our son looked up skyward and said, “the moon looks like a big eye, like God’s eye, like its watching over the world.”
And I thought, that was kinda cute. And I wondered how it is that he talks about God so much. And I thought, if nothing else, I can use that it my, literally, 11th hour deathmarch post. And I realized that I like to start my sentences with the word “And.”
And of note, as noted by others: the ice creaks as if trying to express an argument; the Book of Iceland spar records even days which have not yet transpired; fractional patrons moving up a line fractionally; Pugnax as canine organizer!
And of note, perhaps not as yet noted: Who is laboring for who; people evolve into corporations who attain the Supreme Court sanctioned status of “persons” and attain added rights to do as they see fit; the museum of museumology.
I also liked the quick reference to the post-destruction National Guard regrouping in the great state of New Jersey, from which all manner of diminished persons and entities seek to rise again like a phoenix from the ashes.
still behind but can’t wait to read about the iceland sparring… i might be totally off here, but i couldn’t help but notice the similarity to the last episode of LOST where they touch upon time travel and the universe somehow “course-corrects” itself… or was that a dream i just had where Skip comes out of the sky…?
Buffo- wonderful…
“I cannot but wonder what is to become of those unfortunate devils,” brooded Chick Counterfly.
The sombre brown landscape of north Canada, perforated with lakes by the uncountable thousands, sped by, a league below them. “Great place to buy lakefront property!” cried Miles.'(149)
[how can’t you relate the remarks and wonder what will become of us unfortunate devils (punning on ”fortune”)?]
“Oh, good. Logical paradoxes. Them I understand O.K.” (164)
{Reminding me of page 20: “Somebody out there”, Zip said solemnly.”Empty space. But inhabited.”
“This making you nervous, Chick?” teased Darby.
“Nawh. Thinking about who ants that last apple fritter there.”}
which comes first the paradox or the logic?
I found the beginning of Iceland Spar haunting in a way that’s getting to be familiar, i.e., funny, but…:
‘Daily skirmishes were now being faught, no longer for territory or commodities, but for electro-magnetic information, in an international race to measure and map most accurately the co-efficients at each point of that mysterious mathematical lattice-work which was by then known to surround the earth.’
The film of ‘Against The Day’ is a film I WANT to see.
I’m behind. But for good reason. I was downtown at the Indiana Statehouse protesting SJR7 yesterday and digging cars our of the snow over the weekend.
Am I too late to post for week 3? I’m still plugging away at it. My daughter asked me why I wouldn’t read this book on my own, without a group like this. i said, well, there isn’t much of a plot….
Debra
20 pages behind as of tonight. Grinding away.
Debra — not too late at all. The target is to post before the new post goes up. Today that’ll probably be around 3 pm PST.
Other Dan & Bluebeard — glad yer still with us!
-Cecil
I’m still behind, even on posting. But I’m enjoying everyone’s comments.
Maybe I’ll just resign myself to reading only the comments as a sort of Cliff’s Notes version of the book.
Then again, if I were to do that, then I’d likely end up wanting a Cliff’s Notes version of the comments. (Hey, Cecil….you’re a great writer and editor and all that — what’s your one-word summary of the comments on AtD so far? Sum it all up for me big guy, with your usual poetry.)
Heading for catch-up crunch time…..
M
I’m enough of an old-timer to be confused by this Tuesday phenomenon. Whatever happened to the Deathmarch week beginning on Wednesday?
I’m impressed by Pynchon’s language in this week’s portion, and by his characters, but a bit disappointed in his sequencing. Yes, brilliant to bring shades of the The Thing or Godzilla into 9/11, and blending the Journey Through the Center of the Earth with the Earth’s retribution upon cities–all good, all effective at merging the two great fears of the 21st century: urban cataclysm and natural disaster. (Pompeii? Paging Pompeii?) Yes, there should be a monument in Dante’s city for those who rise from self-inflicted pyres as bitter bitches.
But out West, no such disaster parallels the burned city. And the fears, the cataclysm, are after all universal; in our century, the death of urbis would be felt everywhere, it would be the death of civilization, and the environmental calamities are not localized. That is the nature of globalization, in all its forms; and Pynchon’s world, with its Tesla antipodes and lines of radiance, is perhaps even more interconnected than the one we live in.
The only catastrophe in the West is a single dynamiting of a single man.
So is the firebeast merely a local nuisance? Can Babylon the Great truly be overthrown and yet go unnoticed in the heartland?
Raptor — I forgot about that we’d done some Wednesdays. Tuesday was actually the Gravity’s Rainbow day, so I guess we’re kicking it old school. Not to worry though — you’re in for the week.
-Cecil
Couldn’t find arnophilia in my dictionary, but the thought of aquamarine colored sheep kind of makes me arnophobic.
reattaching something like my original comment,
In which the return of zoro to the primordial death march is announced without fanfare and the attempt to catch up begins.
And, I have to wonder what Steve E is talking about, but hope to understand when i get there.