IVIV (8): Nixonizing U.S. Currency

[Dave Monroe]

"Next morning, waiting for the coffee to percolate ..." (IV, Ch. 8, p. 117)


"Next morning"

Morning, the eighth day of the narrative, Tuesday, March 31, 1970

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_117


"waiting for the coffee to percolate"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/percolate

Cf. "a watched pot never boils."  Also, tres thermodynamique ...


Sauncho Smilax

Cf. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sancho_Panza
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilax

And recall ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=140976
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=140978
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0908&msg=140982


"a maroon 289 Mustang"

The history behind the special 289 Hi-Po engine started long before it
was ever made famous by the Ford Mustang and Shelby Mustangs.

In 1957, Ford (under the direction of Robert McNamara) hooked up with
Holman and Moody along side Smokey Yunick in an effort to revamp its
racing efforts.  They made famous the 312 c.i supercharged “Y block.”
Due to an ongoing struggle with GM and factory backed racing projects,
McNamara found himself more interested in politics than racing. In
1960 he left Ford.

About this same time, Lee Iacocca stepped in as general manager at
Ford and began rethinking factory sponsored racing....

http://www.6r09k.com/historyof289hipo.htm

Sauncho's classic beach-town ride.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:289_Mustang.jpg
http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_117


"a posse of federales"

Federales is a slang Spanish term for the Mexican Federal Police,
specifically the Federal Investigations Agency (formerly the Federal
Judicial Police) but now extended to the Federal Police (Mexico)
(formerly the Policía Federal de Caminos or Federal Highway Police).
The term gained widespread usage by English-speakers as a result of
being popularized in such films as The Wild Bunch and The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federales


lagan

Ligan (or lagan), describes goods that have been marked by being tied
to a buoy so that its owner can find and retrieve it later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flotsam_and_jetsam


"one connex after another"

Also, "conex" ....

http://www.fbodaily.com/archive/2009/09-September/26-Sep-2009/FBO-01969282.htm

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=85a52843cff04e077f2dbe11ffee237b&_cview=1&cck=1&au=&ck=


"Nixon's face on them"

http://www.psywar.org/psywar/images/cwc_nixon01.jpg


"staring wildly at something just out of sight"

The Nixon Shock was a series of economic measures taken by U.S.
President Richard Nixon in 1971 including unilaterally canceling the
direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold that
essentially ended the existing Bretton Woods system of international
financial exchange.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock

Cf. ...

"In the 15-cent dark green from the 1893 Columbian Exposition Issue
('Columbus Announcing His Discovery'), the faces of three courtiers,
receiveing the news at the right-hand side of the stamp, had been
subtly altered to express uncontrollable fright...." (Lot 49, Ch. 6,
p. 144)

http://books.google.com/books?id=vp2Sv9KO1VUC


"common CIA practice"

As in many propaganda battles whether political or revolutionary,
leaflets in the form of banknotes were produced by both sides.
Propaganda leaflets may be avoided by patriotic or frightened citizens
of a target country, but anyone will pick up a banknote on the street.
That has always been the perfect way to pass insidious propaganda to
an unwary reader. The Americans, British, Germans and Russians all
used this technique in WWII. Half a decade later in the Korean War the
United States once again prepared banknote leaflets.

It was just a matter of time before they appeared again during Cold
War psychological operations and in revolutionary conflicts where one
side sought independence from another. The only difference was that
the banknotes prepared during the shooting wars were government
projects and it was understood that they were authorized by the
military. The Cold War and insurgency notes for the most part were
prepared by civilian organizations, though certainly in almost every
case they were sponsored by some intelligence agency of a
government....

http://www.psywar.org/coldwarcurrency.php


"Fiendish Oriental Provenance"

Fiendish Oriental provenance, huh?

http://www.acronymfinder.com/FOP.html

Ghastly Fop, The
117; Gothick novel; 178; 347; 457; 527; 767

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/mason-dixon/alpha/g.html


"the collectors' market"

http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqcur.htm


"Nixon would have to be dead"

The law prohibits portraits of living persons from appearing on
Government Securities. Therefore, the portraits on our currency notes
are of deceased persons whose places in history the American people
know well.

http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/portraits.shtml


"'That sure narrows it down, Saunch....'"

E.g., ...

http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Nixon_Assassinated
http://www.othertimelines.com/viewtimeline.php?timelineID=1174
http://althistory.blogspot.com/2005/07/amistad-mutiny-nixon-assassination.html


sympathetic magic

Sympathetic magic, also known as imitative magic, is a type of magic
based on imitation or correspondence....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_magic

Sympathetic magic is based on the metaphysical belief that like affects like....

http://www.skepdic.com/sympathetic.html

Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941).  The Golden Bough.  1922.

III.  Sympathetic Magic

§ 1. The Principles of Magic

IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they
will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that
like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and,
second, that things which have once been in contact with each other
continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact
has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of
Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first
of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers
that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from
the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will
affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact,
whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of
Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based
on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To
denote the first of these branches of magic the term Homoeopathic is
perhaps preferable, for the alternative term Imitative or Mimetic
suggests, if it does not imply, a conscious agent who imitates,
thereby limiting the scope of magic too narrowly. For the same
principles which the magician applies in the practice of his art are
implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate
nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity
and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human
actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well
as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an
abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a
statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events
throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic: regarded as
a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compass their
ends, it may be called Practical Magic....
   If my analysis of the magician’s logic is correct, its two great
principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications of the
association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association
of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association
of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of
assuming that things which resemble each other are the same:
contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which
have once been in contact with each other are always in contact. But
in practice the two branches are often combined; or, to be more exact,
while homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself,
contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of
the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two
things may be a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily
become intelligible when they are illustrated by particular examples.
Both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It
could hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the concrete,
though certainly not in the abstract, to the crude intelligence not
only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted people everywhere.
Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and the contagious, may
conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic
Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at a distance
through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to
the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible
ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a
precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can
physically affect each other through a space which appears to be
empty.

http://www.bartleby.com/196/5.html


"those white loafers that Dr. No wears in Dr. No, 1962"

Dr. No (1962)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055928/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._No_(film)

Dr. No (1962), starring Sean Connery, is the first James Bond film.
Based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name, it was adapted
by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather. The film was
directed by Terence Young; white loafers worn by Dr. No,

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=D

See, e.g., ...

http://img2.listal.com/image/263295/500full-dr.-no-screenshot.jpg

In a bit of role reversal the bad guy is wearing the white outfit
while the good guy has on black for Dr. No. Years before Don Johnson
wore similar garb as Det. Crockett on Miami Vice, Dr. No was setting
the trend (along with the matching white shoes)....

http://www.toymania.com/columns/spotlight/ssdrno.shtml