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 All meanwhile stared or squinted avidly, attempting to verify the reported apparition.

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Imagine growing up in a time when you were so starved for images of naked people that you were desperate for a good squint at one hundreds of feet below you while you were riding in a balloon. Most of you youngsters who grew up post-Internet have no idea how difficult it was for some of us! Sure, cable television really helped for people interested in boobies. But if you wanted more than that, you were in for quite the quest. Especially if what you wanted was an image of an erect cock.

In the 70s and early 80s, your best bet was to search through the bushes of your local high schools. You'd definitely find dozens of empty beer bottles and hundreds of bottle caps and, if you were really lucky, you'd find a stash of hardcore pornographic magazines. I don't know what people in the 60s did to see naked people. Went to a concert or an orgy or Golden Gate Park any day of the week in San Francisco? I bet seeing naked people peaked in the 60s and then the 70s made it a little more difficult and then the 80s made it practically illegal. Thank AOL for the People's Internet in the 90s!

In the 50s, I think you had to get married to see a naked person. At least one of the opposite gender. You definitely still had to shower with people who had the same equipment as you in school (this really sort of lasted until the 70s, I think?), so gay people were the only ones getting lucky in the seeing naked people that titillated them regard. Lucky bastards. I mean, obviously they weren't lucky in all the ways that society was built to oppress them! But they were seeing all that naked junk, at least!

In the Edwardian Age, to see a naked woman, you had to go to war in Europe and visit a French brothel. In the Victorian Era, you had to join a club that published erotic literature and then all of the images were pretty much line drawings.

Oh! That reminds me that another way to see naked women was to purchase the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual published in 1978. The amount of times I jerked off to the Succubus picture is none of your business! Also I was only 7 in 1978 so it was at least zero times in that year.

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 There was an "eager stampede" to the rail, and a joint attempt to wrest the telescope from Miles, who, however, clung to it stubbornly.

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Why is "eager stampede" in quotes? I bet it was the name of a dance that was popular in 1893! Or maybe it's just to indicate that it's not literally a stampede because you wouldn't want to confuse readers. "Wait. There are cattle on the airship?" is something I did not ask to nobody in particular before asking the barista to read all 154 previous lines to make sure I didn't miss anything. She pointed out, "Maybe it's a gentle callback to the idea that the immigrants and people of Chicago have been treated like bovines their entire lives, and the Stockyard imagery? I don't know. Please buy something or I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Did you laugh at the idea of Miles clinging stubbornly to his phallus while the others grabbed at it? I bet you did if you remembered that you're reading a Pynchon novel and everything that looks like a phallus is literally a boner.

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 "Professor!" cried that lad, peering incredulously through the burnished cylinder, "the unclad figure I reported—it is not that of a chap, after all, but rather of . . . a lady!"

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Ever notice how telescopes, which are used to leer at things, are phallic and radio receiver satellite dishes, which are used for listening, are yonic? Really makes you think, doesn't it?!

Or does it? I don't know. I don't care. Be stupid forever!

Or be smarter than me forever yet totally without whimsy by pointing out all the scientific reasons why telescopes must be shaped the way they're shaped and satellite dishes must be shaped the way they're shaped and how similarity to genitals has nothing to do with it! I'd rather have fun making up crazy theories!

Except now right wing politicians have ruined that for everybody. Remember when it was fun to be a fan of things like In Search of . . . and The X-Files and Kolchak: The Night Stalker? Remember when wild conspiracy theories were just fun to rap about because believing or not believing them didn't actually change your world much? So what if somebody thought you were nutty because you believed in The Bermuda Triangle or the Abominable Snowman? At least believing that wouldn't cause them to hate half of America because they thought a Jewish Cabal was trying to institute a New World Order to enslave humanity while also killing off a good percentage of humanity and also maybe destroying white people or something. I don't know! All those political conspiracy theories ruined the fun of the really wild ones, like David Icke's revelation that the royals and many more were lizard people! The whole second series of The X-Files was ruined (aside from Darin Morgan's episodes. Always so good!) because it centered around the new kinds of political conspiracy theories, the ones mainstream people had embraced thanks to Fox News, rather than the fringe ones like our small pox vaccinations were an attempt by the government to store all of our DNA for experimenting in alien/human hybrids.

I wish I'd kept up my subscription to The Fortean Times but I let it lapse when I forgot all about it after I changed addresses in 2003. It came so irregularly that I just forgot I was subscribed! And it's just too expensive to buy every issue off the newsstand here in America.

Wait. What. Really? "Newsstand" is spelled with two S's? That's weird!

Anyway, look! Miles found a naked lady!

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 He was interrupted by a gasp of terror from Miles.

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One thing I think horror movies don't take quite enough advantage of is how many people have inappropriate reactions to mundane things. Like here, the tension is raised because the ship was almost crashing while 3/5ths of the crew (if we ignore Pugnax entirely) hardly cared. The disaster was just barely averted when suddenly, looking over the side of the ship, Miles gasps in terror! IN TERROR!

For readers who have yet to read the next line and who were suddenly interrupted by a knock at the door or an incoming text so they had to put the book down, their mind might be racing. "What could possibly be happening now to these poor, beleaguered kids?! Maybe it's some kind of The Twilight Zone wing gremlin!" they might think if they're too dumb to understand what an airship is like and how it doesn't have wings.

Just from the gasp, Randolph was probably ready to go to Red Alert! You don't gasp in terror unless something terrific is happening! I'm using "terrific" in the original sense and not in the post-1920s era meaning. Although if you have read the next sentence, you'll know something post-1920s terrific is definitely happening: Miles has seen a naked lady! Which, I guess if we're firmly in the Victorian Era, that might fill a kid with terror. So maybe his reaction was spot on and not inappropriate at all. Pynchon would know better than me!

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 "Come, Blundell," Randolph arising from where he had fallen, "there is quite enough to be done at the moment without more idle shenanigans—"

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If Miles Blundell doesn't start a cream pie fight at some point, I'll have to admit that Thomas Pynchon doesn't actually know what he's doing. I don't want to admit that because I've actually expended energy into understanding Gravity's Rainbow and if he didn't know what he was doing while writing that and it's all just a bunch of idiotic bluster, I'll have to reckon with how I've wasted more of my life on inconsequential nonsense than a person who knew they were too dumb to get through Gravity's Rainbow in the first place!

Although I already know I've completely wasted most of my life on idle shenanigans. There's definitely quite enough to be done and I don't do any of it because most of it takes the kind of confidence that allows a person to take responsibility not just for their own life but, often, the lives of others. Like a doctor or an airplane pilot or an, um, vet? I don't know. Maybe a firefighter or a clerk at 7-Eleven! I know there are more people out there who would qualify who also aren't police officers because I would never praise police officers. Not until they can monitor and criticize the bad behavior of their own forces.