One of my favorite parts of this book so far is the chapter entitled "Santa Monica" starting on 442. Waterhouse's description of Santa Monica pier, and especially the plants and design of the area is hysterical and quite true. "The are too geometric and perfect. They are schematic diagrams for plants sketched out by some impossibly modern designer with a strong eye for geometry but who has never been out in a woods and seen a real plant. They don't even grow out of any recognizable organic matrix, they are embedded in sterile ochre dust that passes for soili n this part of the country."
All the beach towns in Southern California have this feel- beautiful but somehow not real. Santa Monica to Venice Beach to Laguna- they're perfect for those TV dramas. Of course, there is the litter and the screaming kids and the too-many-seagulls, but the landscaping is very much other-worldly.

Has anyone downloaded the rest of the article on the Cryptonomicon website called "In the beginning (there was the command line)"? The first part is pretty interesting, but my stupid new Vista system won't let me see the rest of it. I apparently don't have enough internet administrator privileges for the ensuing coolness.

It's interesting how Bobby Shaftoe knows Glory has his child. He seems completely sure, even know he can't really be sure. Yet he's willing to find his way back to manila for Glory and the child.

It's also interesting to see how the ancestors' personalities show up in their descendants. Randy has similar social leper moments like Lawrence Waterhouse. Amy and her father have very Bobby like qualities.

I was highly amused at Amy's way of dealing with her emotions. Namely, running Randy off the road. She so tough but, in a very realistic moment, shows her insecurities about Randy's affection.

These books are so similar in the weirdest ways. The word antimacassar (antimacassars are the little cloths that hang on the arms of couches) is so rare and yet it has been in 3 of the books. But more importantly, the jeepney that Randy takes into the jungle is called "Grace of God" as in, "but for the grace of God" which straight up took me back to Infinite Jest and Joelle's ranting.

I think that Stephenson does a really good job of connecting the personalities of Randy and Lawrence. The first thing I noticed was that they are both described as having trouble remembering names. I recently noticed a paragraph on page 488 about Lawrence, that reminded me of Randy's idea of License-Plate-making. "The rest might seem like glorious conquest to people like the General, but to Turing, and now to Waterhouse, it just looks like tedious mopping-up. It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers.

I've been thinking a lot about the way that the books we've read so far have protrayed World War II. i guess that mostly means Cryptonomicon and Gravity's Rainbow, but maybe a little bit of Underworld. It's interesting that both Cryptonomicon and Gravity's Rainbow are books about World War II, but somehow it doesn't feel like that because they are set in locations or ways that don't reflect what we would traditionally think of when we think fo WWII. Why do you think that these books focus on this other part of the war that we aren't used to? When I'm reading, I forget about the European co

I thought that Randy's email to his partners was hilarious, besides being informative (pages 525-528 deal directly with the gold). I thought it was interesting that he anticipated all of these issues and problems and came up with several plans from the point of view of the "questioner," but then still couldn't find a way to get the gold out of the jungle in a sufficient manner. It was also interesting that there is SO much gold just sitting there in the jungle, and that some old lady happened to tell Randy about it. How has it stayed there for so long? I suppose that the transportation issues are the major reason.

So, someone mentioned in class the video of the THK. Here's a link to a video of the VT killer that he sent to NBC. You don't see people dying, but it's still really disturbing hearing his justifications for his actions.
http://www.dailymotion.com/us/cluster/news/featured/video/x1r6o7_
virginia-tech-april-16-2007-cho-seu

It's interesting. In my Victorian/gothic lit class, we always discuss how the the literature of that era really reflected the anxieties and paranoia that the Victorians felt. They were apprehensive about technology and advancement in general; they experienced the Industrial Revolution, drug addictions, and imperialism, and with that, came a fear of the unknown, whether it was science or foreigners. England had undergone a lot of change in a short amount of time and they didn't want to believe that horrible things could happen IN England, at home. If horrible things did happen, it was because of something foreign. A lot of those fears haven't gone away and in my Victorian lit class, I always mention the novels we read for this class because I always see connections. It's cool to see how these apprehensions have translated from one genre to another and how similar they are, even though they are separated by two centuries.

Ever since we brought it up today in class, I've been thinking about the part on page 399 where the concept of holocaust was discussed. Here are a couple points that have bubbled up as important in my mind:
1. Is it a rude stereotype to automatically assume that a Jew would think the worst thing that ever happened was the Holocaust, capital H? Or is it legitimate to say, if you know someone? Or is it just that someone would be most likely to believe that the tragedy most personal to them is "the worst"?
2. If the Aztecs killed their neighboring tribes, which they did, does that make them less sympathizable (not a word...) in the face of their own wiping out? Traditionally it has been seen as the West being the perpetrator, so it's good to have a dissenting opinion on the party most at fault here, but I don't know that that necessarily precludes acknowledgement of their own personal tragedy.

"The Yanks call this type of plane "Betty," an effeminatizing gesture that really irks him. Then again, the Yanks name even their own planes after women, and paint naked ladies on their sacred instruments of war! If they had samurai swords, Americans would probably decorate the blades of nail polish." (335) That screamed "UNDERWORLD" to me. The last part was particularly amusing. There's nothing wrong with painting on things with nail polish...I do that all the time...On a more serious note, though, I think it's interesting that the American men who painted women on planes considered it good luck, but the Japanese (or at least Stephenson's Yamamoto)thought it was effeminate and a stupid/disrespectful practice. Meanwhile, Japanese soldiers were raping women, sometimes in ways that would serve as a good luck charm and protect them in battle.