VLVL2 (9.5): "Nukey"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Thee other man tightened his lips, frowning. 
'Mm-hmm.'  He returned to his computer game, something
called 'Nukey,' which included elements of sex and
detonation, though the cheapness of its early chips
reduced orgasm to a thin rising whine, broken into
segments as if for breath, and made the presumably
nuclear explosions, no more than symbolized here by
feeble bursts of white noise, even less satisfying."
(VL, Ch. 9, pp. 159-60)


p. 160 "Nukey"  Orgasm and atomic detonation meet in
one of Pynchon's most awful/wonderful puns (nuke =
nookey).

http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/chapter9.htm

nookie   n   1. sexual activity or intercourse.
Generally considered a fairly inoffensive term. ("I
went home last night and got some nookie.")

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wrader/slang/n.html


"his computer game"

http://www.klov.com/M/Missile_Command.html

http://markn.users.netlink.co.uk/Arcade/missile.html

http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/summer99/missile.html


"elements of sex and detonation"

"Tacked to the wall next to Slothrop’s desk is a map
of London.[...]  The stars pasted up on Slothrop’s map
cover the available spectrum, beginning with silver
(labeled 'Darlene') sharing a constellation with
Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye
strays Alice, Dolores, Shirley, a couple of
Sallys—mostly red and blue through here—a cluster near
tower hill, a violet density about Covent Garden, a
nebular streaming on into Mayfair, Soho, and out to
Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath—in every direction
goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling
firmament, Carolines, Marias, Annes, Susans,
Elizabeths.  But perhaps the colors are only random”
(GR, Pt. I, p. 19) 

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/gr3.htm


"a thin rising whine"

Cf. ...

"A screaming comes across the sky." (GR, P1. I, p. 1)

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3928/pns3.html

Main Entry: come 
Pronunciation: 'k&m
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): came  /'kAm/; come; com·ing 
/'k&-mi[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English cuman;
akin to Old High German queman to come, Latin venire,
Greek bainein to walk, go
Date: before 12th century
intransitive senses
1 a : to move toward something : APPROACH <come here>
b : to move or journey to a vicinity with a specified
purpose <come see us> <come and see what's going on>

[...]

2 a (1) : to arrive at a particular place, end,
result, or conclusion <came to his senses> <come
untied> (2) : AMOUNT <the taxes on it come to more
than it's worth> b (1) : to appear to the mind <the
answer came to them> (2) : to appear on a scene : make
an appearance <children come equipped to learn any
language> c (1) : HAPPEN, OCCUR <no harm will come to
you> (2) : to come to pass : take place -- used in the
subjunctive with inverted subject and verb to express
the particular time or occasion <come spring the days
will be longer> d : ORIGINATE, ARISE <wine comes from
grapes> <come of sturdy stock> e : to enter or assume
a condition <artillery came into action> f : to fall
within a field of view or a range of application <this
comes within the terms of the treaty> g : to issue
forth <a sob came from her throat> h : to take form
<churn till the butter comes> i : to be available
<this model comes in several sizes> <as good as they
come> j often vulgar : to experience orgasm

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary


"white noise"

White noise is a type of noise that is produced by a
human can hear and combined them together, you would
combining sounds of all different frequencies
together. If you took all of the imaginable tones that
have white noise. 

The adjective "white" is used to describe this type of
noise because of the way white light works. White
light is light that is made up of all of the different
colors (frequencies) of light combined together (a
prism or a rainbow separates white light back into its
component colors). In the same way, white noise is a
combination of all of the different frequencies of
sound. You can think of white noise as 20,000 tones
all playing at the same time.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question47.htm

White noise is a sound that contains every frequency
within the range of human hearing (generally from 20
hertz to 20 kHz) in equal amounts. Most people
perceive this sound as having more high-frequency
content than low, but this is not the case. This
perception occurs because each successive octave has
twice as many frequencies as the one preceding it. For
example, from 100 Hz to 200 Hz, there are one hundred
discrete frequencies. In the next octave (from 200 Hz
to 400 Hz), there are two hundred frequencies.
 
White noise can be generated on a sound synthesizer.
Sound designers can use this sound, with some
processing and filtering, to create a multitude of
effects such as wind, surf, space whooshes, and
rumbles. 

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213526,00.html

White noise is noise with autocorrelation function
zero everywhere but at 0, and is also called Johnson
noise. It has a 1/f frequency spectrum. The noise
produced by a resistor is white noise.

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/WhiteNoise.html

DeLillo, Don.  White Noise.  NY: Viking, 1985.

http://www.theobvious.com/noise/

"It's about fear, death, and technology. A comedy, of
course." -- DeLillo quoted in 1984.

http://perival.com/delillo/whitenoise.html

http://www.unibas.ch/anglist/delillo/banner.htm

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