V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 464 - Flip and Flop

[kelber at mindspring.com]

And keep in mind that a flip flop is a type of electronic circuit composed of two transistors  - a sort of basic unit of a binary code system (on or off).  This is going to tie in with the band pass filter circuit mentioned in the next chapter (which I'll hopefully start posting on in the next day or so).

Just some associations:

Government girls = Flip and Flop = flip flop circuit = technology = military/industrial complex [Chapter 15]
Kilroy Was Here = band pass filter circuit = technology = (British and American) imperialism [Chapter 16]

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
>Sent: Feb 20, 2011 6:59 PM
>To: Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 464 - Flip and Flop
>
>"'I'm Flip,' said the blonde, 'and this is Flop.'
>
>Pig groaned momentarily nostalgic for Hanky and Panky. 'Fine," he
>said,  'That is Benny and I am - hyeugh, hyeugh - Pig.'
>
>'Obviously,' said Flop. But the girl/boy ratio in Washington has been
>estimated as high as 8 to 1. She grabbed Pig's arm, looking around the
>room  as if those other spectral sisters were lurking somewhere among
>the  statuary.
>
>Their place was near P Street, and they had amassed every Pat Boone
>record  in existence. Before Pig had even set down the large paper bag
>containing  the fruits of their afternoon's sortie among the booze
>outlets of the  nation's capital - legal and otherwise - 25 watts of
>that worthy, singing Be  Bop A Lula, burst on them unaware."
>
>********
>
>
>COMMENTS: The "government girls" Flip and Flop don't serve much
>obvious purpose other than to give Benny and Pig something to distract
>themselves with while Stencil (possibly) conducts some sort of
>unexplained business at the State Department.  The girls' names do,
>however, hearken back to that striking and mysterious passage in
>Chapter 10 when McClintic Sphere develops his concept, based on his
>conversations with studio engineers, of flip-flopping - a kind of
>binary version of karma or nemesis [the relevant passage - pp 319-320
>in the Harper's Perennial Edition -  is copied below.]  I take the
>passing entanglement with two girls named after a piece of electronic
>circuitry to be one more sign of Benny's descent to a level of reality
>on which his actions and the actions of those around them is at once
>as random as a quantum state but likewise predetermined.
>
>Flip and Flop's obsession with Pat Boone is symptomatic, one presumes,
>of their generally de-spirtualized condition.
>
>
>From Chap 10:
>
>This word flip was weird. Every recording date of McClintic's he'd got
>into  the habit of talking electricity with the audio men and
>technicians in the  studio. McClintic once couldn't have cared less
>about electricity, but now  it seemed if that was helping him reach a
>bigger audience, some digging,  some who would never dig, but all
>paying and those royalties keeping the Triumph in gas and McClintic in
>J. Press suits, then McClintic ought to be  grateful to electricity,
>ought maybe to learn a little more about it. So  he'd picked up some
>here and there, and one day last summer he got around to  talking
>stochastic music and digital computers with one technician.
>
>Out of  the conversation had come Set/Reset, which was getting to be a
>signature for  the group. He had found out from this sound man about a
>two-triode circuit  called a flip-flop, which when it was turned on
>could be one of two ways,  depending on which tube was conducting and
>which was cut off: set or reset,  flip or flop.
>
>'And that," the man said, "can be yes or no, or one or zero. And that
>is  what you might call one of the basic units, or specialized 'cells'
>in a big  'electronic brain.'
>
>'Crazy," said McClintic, having lost him back there someplace. But one
>thing  that did occur to him was 1f a computer's brain could go flip
>and flop, why  so could a musician's. As long as you were flop,
>everything was cool. But  where did the trigger-pulse come from to
>make you flip?
>
>McClintic, no lyricist, had made up nonsense words to go along with
>Set/Reset. He sang them to himself sometimes on the stand, while the
>natural  horn was soloing:
>
>      Gwine cross de Jordan
>
>       Ecclesiastically:
>
>       Flop, flip, once I was hip,
>
>       Flip, flop, now you're on top,
>
>       Set-REset, why are we Beset
>
>       With crazy and cool in the same molecule . . .'
>
>
>'What are you thinking about,' said the girl Ruby.
>
>'Flipping,' said McClintic.
>
>"You'll never flip."
>
>"Not me," McClintic said, "whole lot of people."
>
>After a while he said, not really to her, "Ruby, what happened after
>the  war? That war, the world flipped. But come '45, and they flopped.
>Here in  Harlem they flopped. Everything got cool - no love, no hate,
>no worries, no  excitement. Every once in a while, though, somebody
>flips back. Back to  where he can love . . ."
>
>"Maybe that's it," the girl said, after a while. "Maybe you have to be
>crazy  to love somebody."
>
>"But you take a whole bunch of people flip at the same time and you've
>got a  war. Now war is not loving, is it?"
>
>"Flip, flop," she said, "get the mop."
>
>*******
>
>From the WIkipedia entry on the flip-flop circuit:
>
>
>The first electronic flip-flop was invented in 1918 by William Eccles
>and F. W. Jordan.[1][2] It was initially called the Eccles–Jordan
>trigger circuit and consisted of two active elements (vacuum
>tubes).[3] Such circuits and their transistorized versions were common
>in computers even after the introduction of integrated circuits,
>though flip-flops made from logic gates are also common now....
>
>Early flip-flops were known variously as trigger circuits or
>multivibrators. A multivibrator is a two-state circuit; they come in
>several varieties, based on whether each state is stable or not: an
>astable multivibrator is not stable in either state, so it acts as a
>relaxation oscillator; a monostable multivibrator makes a pulse while
>in the unstable state, then returns to the stable state, and is known
>as a one-shot; a bistable multivibrator has two stable states, and
>this is the one usually known as a flip-flop. However, this
>terminology has been somewhat variable, historically.
>
>....According to P. L. Lindley, a JPL engineer, the flip-flop types
>discussed below (RS, D, T, JK) were first discussed in a 1954 UCLA
>course on computer design by Montgomery Phister, and then appeared in
>his book Logical Design of Digital Computers.[11][12] Lindley was at
>the time working at Hughes Aircraft under Dr. Eldred Nelson, who had
>coined the term JK for a flip-flop which changed states when both
>inputs were on. The other names were coined by Phister. They differ
>slightly from some of the definitions given below. Lindley explains
>that he heard the story of the JK flip-flop from Dr. Eldred Nelson,
>who is responsible for coining the term while working at Hughes
>Aircraft
>
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_%28electronics%29
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-- 
>Richard Ryan
>New York and the World
>~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty
>of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.
>    -- Hannah Arendt