at least tangentially P-related: Class of all classes

[Monte Davis]

David Payne sez:

> So Yashmeen (ATD 589) is not so much sinuous and curvy as she 
> is angles, points, and lines--all elbows, knees, and neck? 
> 
> Of course the math reference may be metaphorical, referring 
> to Yashmeen' s turn-on-a-dime life full of disappearing acts -- 
> a lifestyle desired by that Polish undertaker in Gravity's 
> Rainbow (677-678, Penguin).

That works well for me. Well-behaved, calculable (in Pynchon's metaphorical
cheme = amenable to calculus) processes, biographies, timelines, histories
can all be co-opted. Hope always lies in the irruptive, unpredictable "path
of a punctured hairspray can ricochetted off a wall"

 -- which sounds like a Newtonian billard ball at first, but only with
idealizing assumptions. When you get down to the crunchy details of the
*exact* shape of the puncture, the *exact* turbulent flow of escaping gas,
the *exact* distribution of force and crumple and rebound each time can
meets tile... oops, chaos crept in somewhere, and by the third or fourth
bounce, no prediction is worth jack.