Difference between revisions of "ATD 615-643"

Revision as of 07:49, 3 January 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 621

Reckon yo tengo que get el fuck out of aquí
Macaronic Spanish/English: Reckon I'd better get the fuck out of here.

Zum Mickifest! Komm, komm!
German: To the Mickey party, come, come! "Mickey Finn" = knockout drops such as chloral hydrate (see any film noir).

K.O.-Tropfen
German: K.O. (= knockout) drops.

Page 622

Group-theoretical implications
Introductions to group theory often use "symmetry under rotation" as an illustration. You can rotate a square 90 degrees and get the same square, and likewise 180 and 270 degrees, so the square has fourfold symmetry. Here Gottlob applies a similar concept to the printed words pun and und, which alternate with every 180 degree rotation.

Gottlob! Wo ist deine Spritze?
German: Gottlob, where is your syringe?

"Streng reserviert für den Elefanten!"
German: Strictly reserved for the elephant (not elephants).

Page 623

Noncommutative . . . Asymmetric
A relation like "cures" is commutative if "A cures B" implies that "B cures A" and vice versa. Here the situation is fuzzier because a total cure is not at issue: "Chloral alleviates the effects of strychnine" and "Strychnine alleviates the effects of chloral" are both true, so noncommutative doesn't quite apply, but one is more true than the other, so asymmetric is a better choice of word.

Verfluchte cowboy!
German: Damn cowboy!

Achtung, Schwester!
German: Hey, Nurse!

Klapsmühle
German: nut factory. (Er hat einen Klaps means "He's nutty"; Mühle is a mill.)

one of his canonical outfits
"Canonicals" is a term for priestly vestments.

Dr. Willi Dingkopf
German: Thinghead.

Page 625

Kolonie
German: colony, compound.

someone . . . whom Kit . . . assumed was a guard
Outright grammatical errors in the narrative voice are quite rare. Parse this as "someone who/whom (Kit assumed) was a guard" and the correct choice of pronoun becomes clearer. Another way of looking at the phrase: did Kit assume someone? No, he assumed a proposition about someone: "someone was a guard." When the subject of that is transformed to "who/whom" for the purpose of linking it into the sentence, it remains the subject, not the object: "who was a guard." Volver 06:47, 3 January 2007 (PST)

So Gut Wie Neu
German: as good as new.

Dirigible Field
The inmates' occupational therapy is a disguise for constructing this landing facility.

Doofland
German doof means comically stupid (possibly an origin of English "doofus").

O Tempora, O Mores
Latin: Oh, the times! Oh, the customs! (Was there really music under this title?)

The Black Whale of Askalon
???

Page 626

the head of Jochanaan
In Strauss' opera Salome the title character asks for and receives as tribute John the Baptist's head on a platter. John in the opera is called Jochanaan.

the Five Jews
???

Judeamus igitur, Judenes dum su-hu-mus
German university students used to sing Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus ("Then let us be joyful while we are young men"); the melody forms the climax of Brahms' "Academic Festival" overture. Dr. Dingkopf, obsessed or haunted, sings in bastard Latin, "Then let us Jew while we are Jews."

Ich Bin Ein Berliner
JFK said "Ich bin ein Berliner" at the Berlin wall in 1963. According to Wikipedia, there is an urban legend:

Kennedy should have said "Ich bin Berliner" to mean "I am a person from Berlin." By adding the indefinite article ein, his statement implied he was a non-human Berliner, thus "I am a jelly doughnut". The statement was followed by uproarious laughter.

There is no grammatical error in Kennedy's statement; the indefinite article does not change its meaning. In German, the statement of origin "Ich bin ein Brandenburger" (I am a Brandenburger) is more common than "Ich bin Brandenburger" (I am Brandenburger), but both are correct. The article "ein" can be used as a form of emphasis: it implies "just one of many." As Kennedy did stress the "ein", the usage was, according to German linguist Jürgen Eichhoff [1], "not only correct, but the one and only correct way of expressing in German what the President intended to say."

--Btchakir 07:51, 19 December 2006 (PST)

And Kennedy's motto drew tumultuous cheers, not laughter; the Berliners had no trouble understanding what he meant. --Volver 07:49, 3 January 2007 (PST)

Page 638

[S]louching away into the yellow opacity, he invited them all up to a wingding [...] that evening.

Compare with T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening

remy 09:52, 28 December 2006 (PST)

Page 642

[T]hat dirty li'l back-shootin Bob Ford.
Ford shot notorious outlaw Jesse James in the back on April 3, 1882; Ford himself was shotgunned to death in 1892. The event inspired one Billy Gashade to pen the verse that became the popular folk ballad "Jesse James," recorded by Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and many others.
bnilsson 01:41, 2 January 2007 (EDT)

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