V-2nd - Chapter 8 - Meanwhile, over to Roonie & Mafia's place...

[Mark Kohut]

Nice, nice.....

12 destroyers, 12 pornos....NOT a coincidence!


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, October 1, 2010 7:24:34 PM
Subject: V-2nd - Chapter 8 - Meanwhile, over to Roonie & Mafia's place...

Goodness me, remember Bermuda shorts?  Do they still make those?
well, de gustibus and all that!
Roonie finds Pig Bodine irritating.  I always found Bermuda shorts a
bit irritating.

In fact, most everybody in the WSC is a bit irritating.  Yet they must
like each other: they're in and out of each other's lives, apartments,
beds.

What I find interesting in Pig Bodine's sea story:

a) they routed the captains out of bed for Pig's FLASH.  This is 2
carriers, twelve destroyers, and some other unspecified "heavies" - a
lot of captains.  Pig's posse is tight-lipped, since every captain's
log would have to show some kind of due diligence in finding the
perpetrator of the false alarm.
I started to write, "couldn't happen today", but ya know what folks, I
bet it could...one of our data techs from my work environment is in
the reserves and on some kind of extended duty in the Caribbean, and
I'd bet if he had a mind to, he could probably find a way...

b) FLASH (first contact with enemy forces) would seem to be the
ultimate priority, wouldn't it?  The 2nd porno goes out under
"precedence Operational Immediate", and "It was followed by other
high-priority efforts", but I think Pig's brazenness was
unsustainable...his imitators wouldn't dare abuse that code again, and
it looks like he just sent the one.

c) 12 destroyers in the fleet, 12 pornos filed by Pig under F - coincidence?

d) again, about FLASH - if you are sending out pornos under that
heading, then by implication, even if only in a Freudian subterranean,
or submarinean way, porn is the enemy?

e) and where do they all end up?  In Pig's library.

f) but his vigilance flagged, and with it his fortunes...