This character is introduced alongside the word "flatline" -- Considering some details of his personality, I would argue that his name was inspired by Dixie Flatline from William Gibson's Neuromancer.
Dizzy is introduced "creeping around behind some auditing team, average age of twelve"
Let me reformat that: "creeping around behind soME AUDITing team, average age of twelve"
There is a sequence of letters in common here with V.'s "Melanie l'Heurmaudit" ballerina girl - I think she was aged 15. She is in a chapter of V. that begins with some specific timings listed at the beginning of it. Her surname means "the damned hour" in French (In Chapter 4, Shawn cuts an emotherapy session short after glancing at his "TAG Heuer" watch)
... Got it?
Has anyone here heard of John Pynchon. I think he was William Pynchon's son. Between 1640 and 1649, John took some notes on lectures by George Moxon (the surname kinda sounds like the name Maxine, doesn't it)- Here's an excerpt:
"do nothing though we car never so much as Christ says in another cass which of y can add one cubitt to his stattur & thus when we hau done what we can yet att Last we must cast or care on God E itt should teach us so to do att"
Link: http://www.congregationallibrary.org/sites/all/nehh/series2/pynchonjohn/PynchonJohn_Transcription.pdf
Just wanted to point out his spelling of the unit of measurement as "cubitt" - It ain't usually spelled that way! Generally, I think it would be spelled "cubit" ... It's one of those ancient measurement units that no one uses anymore. I think it's derived from a measure of the space between the middle finger and the elbow. Kinda like how our measurement of "foot" ultimately dervies from the size of someone's feet. This is important in Bleeding Edge, especially when one considers the resonance with words like "footage" that derive etymologically from the human foot.
One of the only other characters with this given name in Pynchon is Major Duane Marvy (GR)
More to unpack (some of this stuff could be a big stretch)
DZ kinda sounds like D.C., as in District of Columbia.
"DZ" kinda looks like "Oz" (as in, The Wizard of Oz... but perhaps also as in the unit of measurement ounce ... Consider: "gravity") ... Clues: Dizzy's eyes wide as fairground lollipops (the Lollipop Guild from Munchkinland), the fact that Maxine's son's given names start with the letters O and Z, the section of the surname "cub" - Cubs are baby of bears, tigers, lions (among other animal
... keep reading on reddit ➡Really interesting read about the internals of `undo` in Emacs!
edit: thanks to u/clemera for letting me I forgot the link
At some point in the late 18th century, a Norfolk family (or rather, two, but surely from the same root) produced no fewer than four builders and engineers who, with the son of the first, would change the look of swathes of the British landscape forever and, particularly, the look of London.
I confess to be fascinated by this and I am unaware of any attempt to catalogue all of their achievements, nor to trace their ancestry to convergence. But surely there was something in the Norfolk water or a genetic miracle of sorts in this family's line, because many of their achievements are even now still with us.
When it come to, say, railway building, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and George Hudson are the usual examples of the "primaeval forces" put forth and the Cubitt clan is overlooked. Their collective influence was, however, enormous and possibly surpasses that of either IKB or Hudson.
I'll leave this with the thought that "someone should research this and write it up" and a list of their engineering achievements (culled from Wikipedia), any one of which we might still rely on today:
Family I
William Cubitt 1785-1861
Self-regulating windmill sails; Prison treadmill; Oxford Canal; Liverpool Junction Canal; River Severn improvements; Bute Docks, Cardiff; Middlesborough Docks; Tees Coal-drops; Black Sluice drainage scheme; South Eastern Railway (London-Dover); Croydon Railway (Atmospheric); Great Northen Railway (consultant to son Joseph); Harburg Docks, Hamburg (consultant); Berlin water supply; Paris and Lyon Railway (surveyor); Boulogne port improvements (superintendent); Liverpool Docks main landing stages; Road bridge, Medway, Rochester, Kent
Joseph Cubitt (son) 1811-1872
London and South-Western Railway (part of); Great Northern Railway; London, Chatham and Dover Railway; Rhymney Railway; Oswestry and Newtown Railway; Colne Valley Railway; Weymouth Pier; Great Yarmouth Pier extension; Blackfriars Bridge
Family 2
Thomas Cubitt (elder brother) 1788-1855
London Institution, Finsbury Circus; early speculative housing, Camden Town, Islington, Highbury, Stoke Newington; Bloomsbury, Gordon Square and Tavistock Square; Belgravia (Belgrave Square, Pimlico, Eaton Square); Buckingham Palace (East Front); Thames Embankment (1km philanthropic); Kemp Town, Brighton; Osbourne House, Isle of Wight (Queen Victoria's holiday home); Battersea Park (organiser)
William Cubitt (middle brother) 1791-1863
Covent Garden; Fishmongers Hall; Euston Station inc. Doric Ar
... keep reading on reddit ➡
