-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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Indeed. It was one of the very very very few threads around here to actually serve some real purpose.
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TORI
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posted
No kidding? I thought I was pissing you guys off... The problem was that I thought it is difficult for you to answer because you haven't read the book recently and the things may mean a lot of things. But if you enjoyed this, I can carry on. (But you can still check the alt.cyberpunk news if you want to...)
here we go then...
273 IN the cab to Transamerica he closes his eyes, seeing the watch he gave the boy, where time arcs in one direction only across a black face, interior time gone rudderless now, unmoored by a stranger's reconstruction of Lise's face. The hands of the watch trace a radium orbit, moments back-to-back. He senses some spiral of unleashed possibility in the morning, though not for him. ??? interior time gone rudderless now
275 As he comes up to the shop he hears the sound of someone sweeping broken glass, and sees that it is the boy, flatfooted in his big white shoes, and sees that the kid's done quite a good job of it, really, down to rearranging things on the surviving shelves. That silver piece of hardware, like an oversized cocktail shaker, enjoys pride of place, up behind the glassless frame of Fontaine's counter, between lead soldiers and a pair of trench-art vases beaten from the Kaiser's cannon casings. ??? trench-art ???Kaiser - is it a tank or something? http://www.advancenet.net/~rkeller/Mecha/Kaiser.html - I found just this one link - isn't it made up?
277 Silencio peers through his loupe at the damp biscuit of metal. He scores the rust with a diamond scribe. "Stainless," he admits, knowing the boy will know that that is good, though not good as gold. Worth the price of a meal. ??? diamond - diamond-shaped or made from diamond?
Silencio places the watch on the bed. They watch as it rises smoothly on edge, as if of its own accord, and then seems to sink, impossibly, as if through the shallow bed and the glass beneath. Vanishing like a coin set into soft mud... ??? ... as it rises smoothly on edge - so the watches tilted and sank into the resetoration bed, right? (I mean the edge was the edge of the watches, wasn't it?)
146 Fontaine looked over his shoulder and saw the boy, still seated on the floor, down his third iced-guava smoothie. ??? guava smoothie
posted
7 Durius had finished sweeping up. He held the big industrial dustpan carefully, headed for the inbuilt hospital-style sharps container, the one with the barbed biohazard symbol. That was where they put the needles, when they found them. ??? sharps container
9 ALL that summer Rydell and Durius had been night security at the Lucky Dragon, a purpose-built module that had been coptered into this former car-rental lot on the Strip. ???coptered - delivered by a copter?
21 Yamazaki was deep, Rydell told himself. He'd never actually figured out what it was that Yamazaki did. Sort of a freelance Japanese anthropologist who studied Americans, as near as Rydell could tell. Maybe the Japanese equivalent of the Americans Lucky Dragon hired to tell them they needed a curb check. Good man, Yamazaki, but not easy to say where he was coming from. The last time he'd heard from Yamazaki, he'd wanted Rydell to find him a netrunner, and Rydell had sent him this guy named Laney, a quantitative researcher who'd just quit Slitscan, and had been moping around the Chateau, running up a big bill. ??? running up a big bill - does it mean he was drowning in debt or does it mean he was spending large amounts of money? (I know this has been answered already, just want to make sure - I ran into a different opinion)
20 (about Rydell having been dumped) "Bet that one burned your ass," Creedmore said, his eyes slit with spirits. He was a small man, lightly built, but roped with the sort of whipcord muscle that had never seen the inside of a gym. Ditchdigger muscle. What Rydell took to be several layers of artificial tan were wearing off over an inherent pallor. Bleached hair with dark roots was slicked straight back with some product that kept it looking like he'd just stepped out of a shower. He hadn't, though, and he was sweating in spite of the air-conditioning. "Well," Rydell said, "I figured it's her call." ??? Bet that one burned your ass, = "You must've been pissed about that."? ??? "I figured it's her call." = I said to myself it was up to her.
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I'm not sure what "interior time" refers to (possibly the character's "internal clock", or something?), but "rudderless" is presumably a metaphor referring to boats. If a boat doesn't have a rudder, you can't steer it, and it will just go whichever way the water carries it.
"Trench art" was art pieces created by World War I soldiers while they were stuck in the trenches. The Kaiser in question is, of course, Kaiser Wilhelm, the ruler of Germany at that time.
I assume the "diamond scribe" is a pen that has a small diamond in the tip, rather than ink. They're used for writing on things like metal and such when you want to scratch the words or marks into it.
"On edge" appears to be referring to the watch's edge, yes.
A guava is a kind of fruit. A smoothie is a drink made out of fruit and ground-up ice.
A sharps container is exactly how it's described there. It's a plastic box, usually found in hospitals, used for disposing of sharp objects like needles.
You're right about "coptered".
The phrase "running up a big bill" by itself doesn't specify whether or not he actually had the money to pay the bill. It could be either, really.
You're correct about the meanings of those last two phrases, also.
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I don't believe smoothie's are normally made only with fruit and ice... isn't there usually a dairy component, like milk or yogurt?
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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The only thing better than a smoothie (though I prefer a freeze myself, which at the location I frequented was like the smoothie only minus the yogurt) is the sweet embrace of oblivion, so you are missing out.
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-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Tim may not have "smoothies," but what else would you call those yummy glasses of frozen Lard and Butter he must enjoy? Chunkies?
Registered: Oct 1999
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TORI
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posted
I see you are big fans of smoothies. Good for you.
***
33 Chevette had found the trainer her second day here, and she'd ride two or three times a day or, like now, late at night. Nobody else seemed to be interested in it or ever to come into this little room off the garage, next to the laundry room, and that was fine with her. Living on the bridge, she'd been used to people being around, but everybody had always had something to do up there. The sharehouse was full of USC media sciences students, and they got on her nerves. They sat around accessing media all day and talking about it, and nothing ever seemed to get done. She felt sweat run between the headband of the interface visor and her forehead, then down the side of her nose. She was getting a good burn on now; she could feel groups of muscles working in her back, ones that didn't usually get it. ??? She was getting a good burn on now
142 She'd started on Creedmore's Redback out of boredom, when she spotted the singer himself headed their way. He had borrowed someone's meshbacked cap and pulled it on backward, over his weirdly wet-looking bleach-blonde hair. He was wearing an electric-blue cowboy shirt with the store creases still in it, horizontal across the chest, and the white pearlized snaps open halfway down the front, revealing a pale, white, decidedly concave chest that wasn't at all the color of his face, which she figured was painted on. He had what looked like tomato juice in each hand, in a tall glass with ice. "How do," he said. "Saw that Maryalice over here. Thought I'd bring the old girl a drink. I'm Buell Creedmore. You ladies enjoyin' your beer?" ??? decidedly concave chest
48 Fontaine leaves nothing of value in the window at night, but he dislikes the idea of an entirely empty display. He doesn't like to think of someone passing and glimpsing that vacancy. It makes him think of death. So each night he leaves out a few items of relatively little value, ostensibly to indicate the nature of the shop's stock, but really as a private act of propitiatory magic. ??? propitiatory magic
52 Fontaine picks up the watch, affords himself a quick squint through the loupe. 'Whistles in spite of himself. "Jaeger LeCoultre." He unsquints, checking; the boy hasn't moved. Squints again, this time at the ordnance markings on the caseback. "Royal Australian Air Force, 1953," he translates. "Where'd you steal this?" Nothing. "This is near mint." Fontaine feels, all at once, profoundly and unexpectedly lost. "This a redial?" Nothing. ??? translates – he is translating the markings and symbols into verbal language, right? (Because if it was verbal, it would have been in English…) ??? This a redial? – “has the dial been replaced?”
58 "Hard to get good help these days." Laney kills the projector and removes the massive eyephones. In the sudden gloom, his face is reduced to a child's drawing, smudged black eyeholes against a pallid smear. "The man who was taking that call-" "The one who spoke?" "He owns the world. Near as anyone does." ??? Near as anyone does = “If someone owns the world, it is him.”
66 "I've got three more in the car," Tessa said, pulling a sleazy-looking black control glove over her right hand. She experimented with the touch pads, revving the platform's miniature props and swinging it through a twenty-foot circle. ???sleazy-looking = apparently worn or heavily used?
69 "Camera loves you. You've got a body makes boys chew carpet." ???… makes boys chew carpet – is it a common expression (or an idiom) or would you recommend to translate this literally?
79 She'd watched the maker craft and braise a hilt of brass, rivet slabs of laminated circuit board and shape them on a belt grinder. ???braise
propitiatory magic ==>> I'm guessing he's trying to appease passants
he is translating the markings and symbols into verbal language, right? ==>> yep, I think so
redial ==>> fake (not sure though)
sleazy-looking = apparently worn or heavily used? ==>> right on
makes boys chew carpet; is it a common expression (or an idiom) or would you recommend to translate this literally? ==>> I'd use an expression, the equivalent of "she's a real looker" perhaps
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"Decidedly" means something along the lines of "definitely". Basically, it means there's no question about it. "Concave" means his chest curves in rather than out.
I'm guessing the word "translate" was used because he wasn't actually reading the words off the watch. Presumably, the "ordnance markings" consisted of some sort of symbol, or maybe "RAAF", or something. So, whatever the actual marks were, he translated them into what he said.
"Near as anyone does" is pretty much what you thought. It means that, even though no-one actually owns the world, he's the closest thing you'll find to a world owner.
Braising is a way of cooking food. I have to assume it's being used as a metaphor here.
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TORI
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148 The crystal-clear shot of Carson was eclipsed by a close-up of Tessa, eyes wide with amazement and about to burst out laughing, just as Creedmore found one of the nipples he was after, and Chevette, in pure reflex, let go of his neck with her left arm and punched him, as hard and as discreetly as possible, in the ribs, going in with all the knuckle she could leverage. ??? with all the knuckle she could leverage = with as many knuckles of her fist as possible?
149 Turning to see a face she knew, though she couldn't put a name to it. Ragged pale hair above a thin hard face, bad scar snaking his left cheek. A sometime messenger from her Allied days, not part of her crew but a face from parties. "Heron," the name came to her. "I thought you were gone," Heron said, displaying broken teeth. Maybe something broken in his head too, it struck her. Or maybe just some substance, tonight. ??? Ragged = cut unevenly ??? broken - I feel the resonance with the "broken" in the next sentence, I just want to be sure - it was "ragged" or "misaligned", right?
229 Rydell turned, hand pressed into his side. "Got any adhesive tape? The wide kind?" Fontaine did have a first-aid kit, but it never had anything anyone ever needed. He had a couple of crumbling wound compresses circa about 1978 in there and an elaborate industrial eye bandage with instructions in what looked like Finnish.
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