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 "Out to the Fair, maybe down to the Yards, duck soup."

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"down to the Yards"
Privett is obviously concerned with what the immigrants and the unionizers down at the Stockyard might be up to. Throwing it out there as an afterthought to flying above the Fair practically stands up and takes an oath on The Bible that the Yard is what he's truly interested in. What could really be happening at the Fair? If there's trouble there, it's not like Privett or his employees will have any role in dealing with it.

"duck soup"
A task that is easily accomplished. Like a midnight run! And both sayings have had movies named after them!
    This is where I would research how the phrase "duck soup" came about but I read one essay about it and I have determined that it is a mystery lost to the ages. There were suggestions about why it might exist as a phrase to mean an easily accomplished task but I don't truck in speculation! At least not other people's speculation, anyway.

Chapter 1: Section 3: Page 25: Line 86 (371)

 "Take our man up on a short trip or two's about all it'll amount to," the sleuth-officer now, it seemed, grown a bit shifty.

* * * * * * * * * *

Now it seems he's grown a bit shifty? I was on board with his shiftiness as soon as I realized he was probably a drunkard! I understand that says a lot more about me and how quick I am to judge but I don't care. I'm a full blown supporter of Randolph and his crew, as well as the immigrants and unionizers, and this guy began the entire conversation by showing his contempt for the labor movement. Now here he is playing it cool, like his man won't be getting up to any unethical shenanigans. He's just going to have a quick look-see and report back, easy peasy.

Hey! I just realized another possible suggestion by Nate Privett's name: privations, "a state in which things that are essential for human well-being such as food and warmth are scarce or lacking." That about sums up what I think of his attitude. Either he's lacking that which makes him human, or he's an instigator of privation among the masses. I guess either one presupposes the other!

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 "We have carried up to a dozen well-fed adults with no discernible loss of lift," replied Randolph, his glance not quite able to avoid lingering upon Mr. Privett's embonpoint.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Mr. Privett's embonpoint"
Privett has a few extra pounds is what Pynchon is saying. Probably from all the drinking.

"a dozen well-fed adults"
Hmm. Like the Last Supper, right?! This could suggest more supranatural evidence that the Chums of Chance and their balloon aren't quite what they seem. Maybe not the Second Coming, which a new Last Supper aboard the Inconvenience might suggest (and what would be more inconvenient than the Second Coming?!), but certainly a suggestion of a Godly or religious hand in what the lads are doing.
    Or maybe Randolph just looked at Nate's gut and thought, "Eleven, maybe twelve, adults worth of pudge there?"

Chapter 1: Section 3: Page 25: Line 84 (369)

 "Got room on your ship for an extra passenger?"

* * * * * * * * * *

They probably need an extra passenger after dumping all those sandbags on landing earlier.

The extra passenger is going to be an observer. There's probably some "observer effect" subtext here that I'm not smart enough to figure out. The changing nature of our world due to discoveries in physics and technology is a major theme in this book (I think?) so I definitely shouldn't rule out that this passenger, this observer, is going to slightly corrupt the goings on aboard the Inconvenience.

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 "Of what exactly would our services consist?"

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Randolph already knows that the boys will be used as spies in the air, keeping an eye out for any trouble during the Fair but now he needs specifics to look our for. "Trouble" almost certainly means "union activity." But I'm sure Nate will have a nice euphemism for it, like "anarchism" or "terrorism" or "socialism" or "left-wingism" or "cancel culturism" or "antifa-ism" or "social justicism" or "wokism." You know, anything that capitalists realize they have no real control over so they need to paint it in a negative light for their moronic, sycophantic followers who are so bored with their own lives that they need the dopamine spikes that come with being angry at anybody different than themselves.

I'm sure Slothrop had some Proverb for Paranoids that covered this Fox News shit.

Chapter 1: Section 3: Page 25: Line 82 (367)

 Randolph was used to it, but determined to proceed in a professional manner.

* * * * * * * * * *

The composure on this kid. And he is just a kid. I don't know how old, maybe seventeen? Nineteen? Who knows since Pynchon hasn't told us. Imagine being thought of as less than nothing by everybody you interact with when you're on the ground and having the maturity to just let it go so you can get your job done. I've never been able to do it but then I tend to mirror people. So if they're an asshole, they usually leave our encounter thinking, "God. What a fucking asshole that guy was." At least I'm entertained by it!

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 He was peering at Randolph now with that mixture of contempt and pity which the Chums in their contact with the ground population were sooner or later sure to evoke.

* * * * * * * * * *

Judging by this look Randolph expects to evoke from everybody he meets, maybe I'm an aeronaut!

It has been stated already, in various ways, that the boys in the sky, these Chums of Chances, are persons of higher quality than those bound to the earth. Metaphorically, they are above everybody else. They have higher ideals. They see the world more clearly and they know their purpose and their duty. When somebody rolling around in the muck of human passions and desires and, well, life in general, struggling with one existential crisis after another, meets somebody with a greater dignity, or a surer sense of themselves, or a strict code of behavior that they don't take for granted, well . . . that somebody can easily hate that seemingly self-righteous bastard. The contempt comes from knowing they have encountered somebody with actual ideals, somebody maybe willing to die for those ideals, and comparing that with what they know of their own sorely lacking beliefs. They must hate this better man because to admire him is to admit their own faults, their own intellectual laziness, and their careless disregard for their fellow creatures. Following closely on the contempt is the need to pity this creature because they don't know what they are missing. One must believe that choosing to live by any code means choosing to forgo freedom.

The righteous man turns a mirror on the unrighteous man. And where the unrighteous man thinks he feels contempt and pity for the righteous man, he is really being forced to feel those things for himself. But he will not acknowledge it, for self-reflection is a chore for which a free man has no patience.

Or maybe Nate is just such a capitalist hater of anarchists and lover of alcohol and money that he's forced to feel hate and sorrow for a person whose life is not ruled by money. What else even is there?!

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 "Sounds crazy. But, we'll have our legal folks draw up some language we can all live with, how's that?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Not making an easy buck when it's being offered sounds crazy to Nate Privett. Can you believe somebody exists who isn't trying to line their own pockets at every opportunity?! In America?! Those who have no system of ethics cannot believe that other people do. Oh, sure, Nate probably espouses certain ideological and moral beliefs. But when it comes right down to it, somebody offers him a free slug of whiskey, he's going to take that free slug and try to turn it into two free slugs, even if he's not supposed to be drinking on the job. Because when it comes right down to it, who's it hurting if you break your own code of ethics?! It's not like you're going to start strangling babies! I mean, you're probably not going to. Everybody has their price, right?! And that price needs to be written up by my lawyer because I'm not going to become no baby murdering patsy just to have you stiff me on it!

Chapter 1: Section 3: Page 25: Line 78 (363)

 "For here at Unit level, our compensation may not exceed legitimate expenses."

* * * * * * * * * *

In other words, the Chums of Chance can't accept tips.

Chapter 1: Section 3: Page 25: Line 77 (362)

 "That is between you and our National Office," Randolph supposed.

* * * * * * * * * *

If I'd previously read this book, I could explain what Randolph's National Office was, answering the only real question anybody might have about this line. But that's not the way I do things. I don't watch a movie in preparation of watching a movie, mainly so I can answer my Aunt's stupid questions every thirty seconds. I just consume the media I'm consuming and figure it out as I go, maybe not totally understanding it until I write about it or talk it out with a friend later. Currently, I don't really have anybody who wants to talk with me about Against the Day (certainly not at this excruciating pace). If you've stumbled on this blog to find out an answer to what Randolph's National Office is, you're out of luck here. I'm sure there's an Against the Day wiki somewhere online that can answer all of your questions in the most boring and matter of fact way. Which I've come to learn is the way most Internet denizens like their facts. If they get a whiff of hyperbole or facetiousness or whimsy, they . . . no, you know what? They'd never recognize it in this context. If it isn't a stupid meme that they've seen five hundred times before making fun of something somebody else loves, they simply read whimsy or facetiousness as plain old ignorance and stupidity. They only like finding a joke in a discussion that's supposed to be intelligent and rational so that they can completely miss the humor, take the whimsical statement literally, and tell the person who made the joke exactly how stupid they are.

Why am I even on the Internet? I hate this place so much! That's why I call it "Dad."

"National Office"
I should at least speculate, right?! The National Office is probably an agnostic or atheistic scientific organization making observations of the world so they can sit in a stuffy office and nod knowingly at the predictions they all make based on the data. Then they do nothing to change the world for the better because they're too busy sitting around seeing if their predictions come true so they can pat themselves on the back. Oh! Like this blog! That's what I'm really doing with this blog! Putting in writing how well I understood this book while I was reading it without any outside input about it!
    Oh, I also think the National Office is like the Federation in Star Trek. But instead of going where no man has gone before, they just fly around above where men have gone and keep a spying pervy eye on them.