CoL49 Group Reading Ch3 38,39

[Michael Bailey]

The muted posthorn makes its first appearance, in a graffitied come-on on
the "latrine" wall which also mentions WASTE.

She's "heading for the ladies' room" - but sees the graffiti on the
"latrine wall" - so that would be in a stall?

She copies it, "thinking : God, hieroglyphics" ("God" as an expostulation,
modifying, or clucking over, the idea of hieroglyphics on a bathroom wall.)

After quietly expostulating that they weren't supposed to have seen the
mail call (but if the whole thing's been arranged by Pierce, then of course
they were supposed to have seen it) Fallopian explains to them about the
mail service. It's more of a startup and a proof of concept, nothing much
of interest being sent, piggybacking on Yoyodyne's inter-office delivery
service unbeknownst to Yoyodyne. This doesn't seem sustainable, as
Yoyodyne's security people already have suspicions and there's a lot of
turnover among their delivery people.

The example letter, like Maas's letter to Oedipa, come to think of it, is
"newsless" - if the entire alternate postal system is like this, it's no
better than the regular one.

But it does serve to introduce the topic of Mike's book, "a history of
private mail delivery in the U.S., attempting to link the Civil War to the
postal reform movement that had begun around 1845.

Just goes to show that conspiracy-minded thinking can find unpleasant
plotting even in something seemingly benign as stamp collecting.

these guys have no idea!
xkcd: Degree-Off <https://xkcd.com/1520/>

A-and is she gonna sleep with Fallopian?

"All Oedipa would remember about him at first, in fact, were his slender
build and neat Armenian nose, and a certain affinity of his eyes for green
neon."

-------Sharing the fruits of my Armenian nose research - (I'm not making
this up)
Armenian People (armenianexplorer.com)
<https://www.armenianexplorer.com/article/armenian-people>

"A major distinctive feature of Armenian people is their nose....average
length 58 mm...second-largest in the world after the Kurds....The noses of
prominent Armenian cultural figures, such as Arno Babajanyan, Mher
Mkrtchyan, and Yeghishe Charents, are clearly expressed in their
statues....It is no coincidence that the most popular medical intervention
in Armenia is nose surgery."