GR translation: A Raketen-Stadt Charlie Noble

Mike Jing gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Thu Apr 14 03:28:34 CDT 2016


V738.37-739.5, P753.23-32   I recall the time Christian found an old alarm
clock, and we salvaged the radium, to coat our plumb-bob strings with. They
shone in the twilight. You’ve seen them holding bobs, hands
characteristically gathered near the crotch. A dark figure with a stream of
luminescent piss falling to the ground fifty meters away . . . “The
Presence, pissing,” that became a standard joke on the apprentices. A
Raketen-Stadt Charlie Noble, you might say . . . [Yes. A cute way of
putting it. I am betraying them all . . . the worst of it is that I know
what your editors want, exactly what they want.

In the Companion, Weisenburger says Charlie Noble refers to Charles
Carmine[sic] Noble, atomic engineer (see
http://apps.westpointaog.org/Memorials/Article/11847/ ), but it seems
far-fetched to me.

A quick search shows that it's a slang term for a ship's smokestack:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=yXY0yQnvmmUC&pg=PA199&dq=charlie+noble&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP6I661o3MAhWJm4MKHYwrC2s4HhDoAQgyMAQ#v=onepage&q=charlie%20noble&f=false

https://books.google.ca/books?id=h0mcBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA152&dq=charlie+noble&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP6I661o3MAhWJm4MKHYwrC2s4HhDoAQhAMAc#v=onepage&q=charlie%20noble&f=false

Does this make more sense here?
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