posted
??? decidedly concave chest This is also intended to imply that this person is physically weak or perhaps cowardly. It's bad posture, really, the slouched shoulders of these music icons.
???sleazy-looking = apparently worn or heavily used? You are right about it meaning worn or heavily used, but it can also imply a cheapness. That it is a product of shody workmanship.
???? makes boys chew carpet ? is it a common expression (or an idiom) or would you recommend to translate this literally? It's an idiom. It means she's got a totally incredible body. I don't know whether it would translate literally. You could change it to '...You've got a body makes boys cry.'
???braise The cooking procedure came from the real metal-craft thing. Braising is a process like welding or soldering. It's a process commonly used in plumbing, but here apparently in metal-working artisanship. You use a torch to melt brass to weld two pieces of metal together (or to coat a single piece of metal as I think is happening here.)
??? 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? The first instance is refering to actual jaggedly broken teeth. The second sentence I think is more referring to the person's state of mind. This person is 'broken' in the head or in an altered state of reality. Crazy or perhaps as she guesses he's on some sort of drug.
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
TORI
Ex-Member
posted
77 Tong's fake-classical theme cracked and hollowed, weird bass notes rumbling in just above the threshold of the subsonic. ???cracked and hollowed
80 And so far, she thinks, she's not seen a single face she knows from before, and no one has greeted her, and she finds herself imagining the bridge's entire population replaced in her absence. No, there went the bookstall woman, the one with the ivory chopsticks thrust into her dyed black bun, and she recognizes the Korean boy with the bad leg, rumbling his father's soup wagon along as though it should have brakes. ??? rumbling his father's soup wagon along as though it should have brakes = suggesting he was going so fast that he should have brakes?
80 Perfect for Tessa, she thinks: the bridge people maintaining their interstices. Doing their little things. But Chevette has seen them drunk. Has seen the drugged and the mad dive to their deaths in the gray and unforgiving chop. ??? chop
82 Shadowed where she remembers light, and she sees that the bulb, above, in this enclosed space, is missing. This is the lower end of Skinner's "funicular," the little junkyard elevator trolley, built for him by a black man named Fontaine, and it was here that she'd lock her bike in her messengering days, after shouldering it up another, less covert ladder. ??? junkyard elevator trolley
83 "Have you seen this girl?" Movie-looking white man, face painted dark like they do down the coast. How they dress when they had time to think about coming here, everything worn out just right. Leather jacket like he's left his old airplane around the corner. Blue jeans. Black T. ??? face painted dark
86 The store on Sunset had had a finish that ate graffiti. The gang kids would come and tag it; twenty minutes later these flat, dark, vaguely crab-like patches of dark blue would come gliding around the corner. Rydell had never understood how they worked and Durius said they'd been deve1oped in Singapore. They seemed to be embedded, a few millimeters down into the surface, which was a sort of non-glossy gel-coat affair, but able to move around under there. Smart material, he'd heard that called. And they'd glide up to the tag, whatever artfully abstract scrawl had been sprayed there to declare fealty or mark territory or swear revenge (Durius had been able to read these things and construct a narrative out of them) and start eating it. You couldn't actually see the crablegs move. They just sort of nuzzled in and gradually the tag started to unravel, de-rez, molecules of paint sucked down into the blue of the Lucky Dragon graffiti-eaters. ??? Durius had been able to read these things and construct a narrative out of them - narrative - like there was actually some story to tell? ??? de-rez - losing resolution
90 ... her parents' (Praisegod's) sect identified all things federal as aspects of Satan. ???aspects of Satan = impersonations of Satan?
91 Rydell was instantly engulfed in a fog of vodka and errant testosterone. He turned and saw Creedmore grinning fiercely, quite visibly free of the human condition. Behind him loomed a larger man, pale and fleshy, his dark eyes set close together. "You're drunk," snapped the security guard. "Get out." "Drunk?" Creedmore winced grotesquely, miming some crippling emotional pain. "Says I'm drunk..." Creedmore turned to the man behind him. "Randy, this motherfucker says I'm drunk." The corners of the large man's mouth... ???fleshy ???would you say the other man (Randy) was fat or tall or whatever?
97 THE apartment is large and has nothing in it that is not of practical use. Consequently, the dark hardwood floors are bare and quite meticulously swept. Seated in an expensive, semi-intelligent Swedish workstation chair, he is sharpening the knife. This is a task (he thinks of it as a function) requiring emptiness. ???function - which one of the following meanings fits? (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=function)
IP: Logged
posted
I would say you're correct about the brakes, the narrative, and "de-rez".
chop == waves, usually small but rough
"Face painted dark" might be literal, suggesting the guy's face is covered w/ some kind of dark makeup.
"Aspects" doesn't mean "impersonations". More like they're saying those institutions are actual manifestations of Satan on Earth. Basically, it means these people think anything federal is evil.
posted
194 "Whole new game here," Laney opens. "How so?" Klaus appears to suck his teeth. "Harwood's had 5-SB. And you know it too, because those chilango kids of yours just told me. How long have you known?" ???chilango kids (for those who have read ATP - "chilango kids" means Libia and Paco)
IP: Logged
posted
"Chilango" seems to be a slang word in Mexican Spanish meaning "someone from the city." I'm not sure if Mexico's stereotypical city kid is similar or not to the US stereotype.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by TORI: ???function - which one of the following meanings fits? (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=function)
#3, really, with the subtextual implication of 1 & 2. The idea being that this character does not percieve the sharpening of his knife as something which he must do out of obligation, but more of something he does as a symbolic or ritualistic act of respect.
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
Printer-friendly view of this topic
