Newbie needs help with "Gravity's Rainbow"

[Mike Jing]

Hi!  I am new here.  And I need some help with Thomas Pynchon's 
Gravity's Rainbow.  Specifically, I have several questions about the 
paragraph on page 13 (Penguin 2006 Deluxe Edition):



1.  What is the meaning of "...you're apt now and then to get a bit of 
lime-green in with your rose, as they say"?  Is this an idiom of some 
sort?  Google found no reference except to the novel itself.  



2.  What does "...and goes back to when he was carrying, everywhere he 
went, the mark of Youthful Folly growing in an unmistakable Mongoloid 
point, right out of the middle of his head" mean?  The mark of Youthful 
Folly is explained in many places, but what is a Mongoloid point?  
Again, no reference can be found.  



3.  What about "...your sound will be the sizzling night..."?  Is it supposed to be poetic?  Out of the mouth of a bum?



4.  And lastly, "...they'd been part of the usual list of prizes in a 
Competition grown crowded and perilous, out of some indoor intervention 
of charcoal streets...".  I cannot make sense of this at all.  What is 
he talking about?



Hope this is an appropriate topic for the list.  Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Mike Jing

P.S.  Some background information:  English is a second language to me, although I have been living in North America for almost 20 years.  I am also trying to translate the book into Chinese so that I can share it with my mother who doesn't know any English.  There is already a Chinese translation published a couple of years ago, but as you might expect, it's full of errors of all kinds.
 		 	   		  
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