Rambling around plague topic (what would Pig Bodine do?)

Mon Mar 16 23:00:54 UTC 2020

correction: I meant to say It WAS a Triumphant weapon of war during TP's
service during Suez... different beast

On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 6:58 PM gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't mean to suggest a 1 to 1 comparison but we should also understand
> that the US Navy wasn't the sophisticated or triumphant engine of war
> during Pig's service, or more explicitly TP's service during the Suez
> Crisis in 55-56... read Rick Atkinson's (An Army at Dawn: The War in North
> Africa, 1942-1943) depiction of Norfolk before North Africa departure:
> "Naughty Norfolk catered to those looking for sin before shipping out,
> notwithstanding the occasional sign that read "No dogs or sailors allowed."
> The towns iniquity grew with the arrival of each new regiment. Every night,
> thousands of men swarmed down East Mai Street, described as "the largest,
> most solid block of beer joints in the world." Taxis became rolling
> brothels, and fleets of "girlie trailers" served the concupiscent. On
> October 18th, arrested 115 people, in the "largest morals raid in local
> history." His jail cells bulging, Norfolk's police chief asked the federal
> government to "give me a concentration camp...a camp large enough to handle
> two or three women...""
>
> Norbert Wiener published *Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in
> the Animal and the Machine* in 1948. The Pentagon didn't exist yet. The
> complex weapons system that became the US Navy didn't exist yet. It could
> afford to absorb someone like Pig, or Dean Moriarty for that matter... I
> don't want to push the point too far, but Pynchon is, among other things, a
> master satirist... and Pig's bellicosity shouldn't preclude him, especially
> since he's frequently AWOL...
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 2:13 AM Raphael Saltwood <
> PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thanks for the kind words!
>>
>> Neil Cassady somewhat in terms of houndishness in the sexual dept, but
>> the way Kerouac portrays him anyway he’s a working man, a brakeman, a
>> factory hand, a washer of dishes (though concupiscently “googing around” -
>> which I just now got that it might have been a typo for “goofing“ in my
>> high school paperback - with Mary Ann in the dishwashing scene) relishing
>> the rhythms and movements of manual labor - and a would-be thinker/poet,
>> who doesn’t convert homo-erotic urges into violence; although he does a lot
>> of car thefts I can’t think of any altercations involving Dean Moriarty and
>> anyone, the closest even to a disagreement is the urinal scene in _On the
>> Road_ and he gets sad, not mad...though his abandonment of Sal Paradise in
>> Mexico is pretty passive-aggressive...
>>
>> Pig Bodine might accommodate a niche in a military, but it’s hard to
>> picture him in a civilian role due to said bellicosity (which I still think
>> is a key theme in V., Pig at home in the Navy but a menacing outsider in
>> civilian life, and Benny oblivious and slightly uncomfortable in either) or
>> in an intellectual one despite his quoting Sartre on identity.
>>
>> But Bannon, yeah, might not be a perfect analogue. He’s more of a
>> Goebbels media guy type though.
>>
>>
>> ——————————————
>>
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>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, March 15, 2020 1:59 PM
>> *To:* Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
>> *Cc:* Pynchon-l at waste.org <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: Rambling around plague topic (what would Pig Bodine do?)
>>
>> I love this!
>>
>> Viruses are stultifying and mysterious...as dominant in our knowledge
>> we’ve become in the 20th - early21st century, there are still these weird
>> things that exist outside the established five “kingdoms” of life...
>>
>> The problem with statistics is who does the counting and how they do
>> it... as the 2008 mortgage backed securities as well as 2016 national polls
>> showed... its easy to propagate error, and incorrectly measure reality...
>> computers, while big data shows promise in this field, still are just Rain
>> Man counting pennies in a preset jar...
>>
>> I love that Tim Leary quote! And it might have manifested itself in the
>> sense that Japan’s Corona numbers are mysteriously low...
>>
>> Lol I’ve always thought of Bannon as less as Pig Bodine and more of like
>> “Bloody” Chiclitz or Marjor Marvy... Pig, in my opinion, is more like the
>> old Non-PC Counter Culture. I see him as something of a Neal Cassidy
>> type... Bannon is an old Goldman guy, after all...
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> > On Mar 15, 2020, at 1:30 AM, Raphael Saltwood <
>> PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > 
>> >
>> >
>> https://www.longdom.org/scholarly/viral-immunity-journals-articles-ppts-list-1099.html
>> >
>> >
>> > First line of defense is one's own immune system - zooming out, isn't
>> it true (I think I read somewhere) there are more viruses wandering around
>> all over the place than all the critters put together and viruses predate
>> them all.
>> >
>> > So like logically in a scientific sense, they are proto-life, little
>> strings of genetic material not yet hopeful monsters - aspiring to be
>> hopeful monsters - "idiots studying to be morons" - no offense, viruses and
>> virus-lovers.
>> >
>> > Like, the creation abounds with chemicals and energy - well, anyway it
>> seems like a lot to me but after listening to Khan Academy videos about
>> astronomical distances and time frames, it's clear that there's a whole lot
>> more nothing (as Crowley once wrote, "nothingness with twinkles. But oh!
>> such twinkles!")
>> >
>> > But in this fortunate solar system with a solar power source and then
>> all the chemicals being subjected keep combining in different ways to
>> constantly change and at this point we, the people, the crown of creation,
>> exist as exemplars of many of the interesting things that can be made of
>> stuff...
>> >
>> > But human cells are outnumbered even in a human body by other
>> organisms, and even human DNA contains long sequences that originated when
>> pre-primate life forms incorporated viruses and passed them on, and
>> although this accretion has slowed way down in terms of viruses earning or
>> inveigling a special place in the genome, we never actually got rid of a
>> bunch of them.
>> >
>> > So, virus qua virus is not an unfamiliar element in the environment;
>> and Mother Nature will probably keep popping them out - it's human life
>> that's relatively new and unfamiliar on this globe. One of the givens of
>> human life is that there are more and less desirable outcomes for the
>> individual, and large scale apoptosis is firmly in the "undesirable" column.
>> >
>> > Since the same biological co-operative logic that led to human
>> creatures also led to a social order that has spawned the ability to study
>> various phenomena, including the apparently ceaseless cascade of new viral
>> varieties, I for one would like to take a moment to be grateful for the
>> opportunity to incorporate reasonable precautions suggested by those in the
>> know (a new form of hepcat) and to learn more about these things we share
>> the planet with.
>> >
>> >
>> > The goal would seem to be to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the virus,
>> but it's pretty inevitable to encounter it eventually. As I view
>> statistics, even more than economics, as the dismal science, it's with some
>> reluctance that I take and recommend measures that keep one out of the
>> groups most likely to succumb -- wouldn't it be great to be the one who got
>> exposed, developed immunity, and passed it on? But the way to do that isn't
>> so clear. Until one has a greater probability (darn statistics!) of success
>> it's probably best to take reasonable  precautions, eh?
>> >
>> >
>> > That said, wondering about various Pynchon characters and their immune
>> responses.
>> >
>> > Would Pig Bodine have become a prepper? Would his Harley now be garaged
>> in a complex in Idaho, near a stockpile of vitamins and canned food? Or
>> would he still be heedlessly scouting the gene pool and social milieu for
>> one night stands and picking fights? In "Lowlands" he appears to have
>> either demobbed or gone AWOL long term. Pushed into theory, I might opine
>> that he's an archetype of that place and time with interesting
>> applicability to this day & age - "what shall we do with the drunken
>> sailor?" The human characteristics of bellicosity and promiscuity, the id,
>> fitting in a certain way into Benny Profane's circles of friends, the
>> military and the civilian world. Pig himself is ensconced within V., but a
>> character *somewhat like* Pig, well, Steve Bannon springs to mind. He's a
>> phenomenon, but clearly not a role model.
>> >
>> > The other Pynchon character that springs to mind is of course Takeshi,
>> who even mentions his "immunity" as a trait that helps him in his quest,
>> his career, of karmic readjustment. Why does he have immunity, and from
>> what? Bear with me, please: I think that his mostly positive outlook allows
>> him to travel among the glum and revenge-obsessed Thanatoids and turn their
>> thoughts into more positive channels. His resemblance to Brock Vond, the
>> standard-bearer for official repression, is no accident. His
>> commercialization of redress-seeking fulfills the need better than law
>> enforcement. (As W.E.B DuBois noted, the best way to change culture is to
>> use economic power.) Although Timothy Leary once called Japan the most
>> advanced culture on earth, shows like "Babies of Wackiness" militate
>> against taking that undiluted: it's not only his nationality, but his
>> enlightened Boddhisattva approach that earns him his immunity, IMHO.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ——————————————
>> >
>> > 350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate
>> crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public
>> actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in
>> over 188 countries. Sign up for important movement dispatches.
>> >
>> > https://act.350.org/signup/join
>> > --
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>>
>