"No, Counterfly, I think not, there scarcely being time—moreover, the complexities that would attend rigging Blundell in the necessary paraphernalia would tax the topological genius of Herr Riemann himself."
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This is the math nerd Lindsay Noseworth is referring to:
Bernhard Reimann is basically the guy who came up with the first rigorous definition of the integral of a function on an interval. Eighteen year old me probably would have understood that but forty-nine year old me hasn't done a calculus problem in thirty-one years. I mean, sure, I get the gist of it! But not to the point that I'm going to explain it worse than 99% of the other people explaining it on the Internet. You're on the Internet! If you care, go look it up on the Math Nerd Wiki.
The point of (sort of) explaining who Herr Rimann is (aside from that anybody reading a blog about Pynchon's writing expects the person to explain all the references. But you can find better places for that too!) is to show my appreciation for Lindsay Noseworth's fat joke. If you're going to call some guy fat, it would be crass to simply say, "Blundell's too fat for the parachute rig!" It's much classier to say, "Figuring out how to get all that blubber into all these straps would tax even one of the foremost minds on figuring out the area of Blundell's oddly shaped, curved, and warped body!"
Bravo, Lindsay! If I had a rose, I'd throw it at the wall right now while pretending my wall is Lindsay and then I'd finger bang it.
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