Zipf, Loaf, GRGR 1,6

[Michael Bailey]

Glenn Scheper wrote:
>
> I applied the following sed scripts to convert the already
> [a-z]* character sequences of GR and KJV to simple lengths
> (x), or alternating vowels and consonants (~syllables) (ab).
.....................
>
> Is there anything to be seen therein?

On the rank-frequency graph, would you use the whole list or just the top ~ 10?
The logarithmic axes would both be numbered 1, 10, 100, 1000, right?
Would rank be the x axis?
If you're using sed, is it a Cygwin tool or did you do that in *nix?
Is there a free graph drawing tool somewhere?
Yeah, I'm being lazy.  Will have to draw these graphs or expire of shame now.

All those AB things - are they illustrative of the POLE?
They look like noses to me

Do you think Pynchon skewed his word count deliberately (I wouldn't
put it past him) - I read where virtuoso Jimi Hendrix could play notes
on a guitar that would spell out words on an oscilloscope - the hint
in Gloaming's speech is that normal speech will form a straight line,
schizophrenic speech will form a bow - and he mentions paranoid speech
but doesn't tell what shape to expect for it.

Milton Gloaming's sampling is probably at least as thorough as that
used for many political polls and medical double-blind studies -
He's kept records of many seances, so his word count should be quite high.

GR has enough words to graph meaningfully, though the scope of meaning
wouldn't be "all of human speech" but rather "this artist's intent"
Through the portal of Zipf, many subtleties, the ribald humor, the
plotting, the wordplay, the characters, all disappear (the poet, the
lover and the fool, of imagination all compact)
-------------------------------
> I did not see the role of the unfortunates, as much
> as the role of that alternate, original, fantisizer.
>

he goes "over the wall" to the feast - leaves the confines of the
imperial compound and goes to a gathering of the oppressed peoples.  
For Pirate to conceive of doing this is to transcend the boundaries of
his "lascar" personality.

But instead of a nice anarchic bash, it's centered around a cult of
personality in the making (those false Messiahs always get people into
trouble)

Further, there's an element of man-on-man carnality that Pirate won't
believe comes from himself.  (I read some fiction somewhere, where the
recruiters of assassins look for men with strong homoerotic tendencies
and even stronger denial mechanisms - so maybe this is the element
They promoted him for)

Apparently Pirate confronts Loaf about it, and either Loaf reports it
up the chain to Them or They get wind of it because Pirate is vocal or
violent with Loaf -- or perhaps there is really no Loaf -- like in
that movie A Perfect Mind, where the guy didn't actually have a
roommate -- since Pirate lives in the subjunctive as much as in
reality ("she would have laughed") this deepens the phantasmagoria

> ------------------------------
1,6 musing
Pirate is a hard case.  Roger and Jessica, the young lovers, have
become hardened to a degree, but they can escape into their version of
love (while Pirate seems to only have his fantasies, painful as they
are - "masturbating under these conditions is exquisite torture" p 35,
ln 38)
Is there really an N beyond which one doesn't care?
and what does he mean, his mother is the War?