Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Lines 5-6

 "Hurrah! Up we go!"

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In the previous section about Line 4, I forgot to mention that an astute reader with a glancing knowledge of geography might have been confused by the number of nanoseconds it took them to read the next few lines before getting to the phrase "hydrogen skyship." They might have put the book down, looked up quizzically from the uncomfortable chair at the mall turned slightly askew from the table to face Cajun Grill (for reasons they don't need to explain to their wife), and muttered, "Wait a second! Who takes a ship to Chicago?!" Then a stranger sitting next to them with a better than glancing knowledge of geography (is "glancing" even a word that works here? It's meant to convey somebody who really doesn't know that much but knows enough to always be confused by it) might respond, "Probably somebody living on the other side of Lake Michigan, I reckon." Then the first person might have felt a bit humiliated and slammed the heavy book down on the table, startling the attractive clerk at the Cajun Grill, and refused to read any more.

Or maybe I didn't forget to mention all that and was just a little bit embarrassed about it until I thought of a way to tell it as if it happened to a hypothetical person. What that story was meant to get at is that this sentence, "Hurrah! Up we go!" helped that hypothetical person to realize that this wasn't a story about a boat at all (the only story I know about a boat ends with the phrase "out bored Motor" and it was the first Shaggy Dog story I ever knew and one I told to all of my friends to the point that at least one of my friends continued to tell it while making it even longer and more shaggy). If they were a particularly astute reader, they may have thought, "Oh! This is a story about a balloon!" Also if one of their friends once described Against the Day  as "Mason & Dixon in a balloon," they might have remembered that as well.

"Up we go!" also doesn't need to connote a direction; it could be referencing a state of mind. We're going up now into our imagination! Leave the old rules and status quo ways of those Earth-bound jerks behind! We're going elsewheres!

Also the "Hurrah!" is more of that general excitement of the traveler before a long, 1000 page journey! So exciting!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 4

 "Windy City, here we come!"

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"How much can you possibly write about every stupid line like this, Anonymous Blog Writer?" asks the perplexed reader with a better than average perception skill.
    "Well," I reply magnanimously (because, really, I don't even need to respond. Easy access to writers and entertainers doesn't come with the obligation of return engagement!), "I suppose it depends on how much you think I want to write? The shorter the entry, the better, really! Maybe I'll finally find some time to play Torment: Tides of Numenera which I purchased on Kickstarter years ago and then when it finally arrived, I wasn't too keen on playing it, and now it just sits here on my office desk leering at me like some albatross in an Edgar Allen Poe poem."

I should clarify that the albatross was supposed to be a metaphor for "The Tell-Tale Heart" and not for "The Raven" even though I did say poem and it works better substituting one bird for another bird. And also, you know what, I said it was leering so I almost certainly never actually meant "The Tell-Tale Heart" at all. Never mind.

What was I getting at? Oh yeah! Obviously Chicago is meant by the term "Windy City" because it's windy, I guess. I've never been. But windy can also mean verbose or chatty or gossipy or apt to go on and on and on, like a Thomas Pynchon novel or a blog entry by Grunion Guy. I mean by an Anonymous Blog Writer. So this is probably Pynchon poking fun at the idea he's just presented the reader with a thousand page novel. But he (and it seems he assumes the reader should feel the same as well) seems really excited about starting out!

Here we come! I'm excited! How about you?!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Lines 2-3

"Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well! Prepare to cast her off!"

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I know what you're thinking! If only you had three sets of handcuffs and a bottle of vodka, your weekend would be set! No wait! That's what I'm thinking. You're thinking, "But Anonymous Blogger Person! That was two lines! What are you? Stupider than I first thought (which was pretty stupid)?!"

Now, I can't say that I'm not stupider than you first thought. That's a philosophical conundrum. But what I can do is explain myself. I don't normally set rules in my life which probably explains some things I'd rather not discuss in a public forum. But early on, I decided I should probably treat sentences within one set of quotations as a single sentence. This, like everything in life, is not a hard and fast rule. The only hard and fast rule I live by is "If you touch it, I will love you forever." Every other rule must be judged by the variables and context of the situation. People often think precedents in law help keep everything fair, so that everybody is judged by the same standard. But often precedents ensure that everything is not fair at all in any way. Life is complicated and we should never treat one situation as if it were identical to a previous situation with some of the same variables.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah! I will be presenting more than one sentence at times but almost exclusively if it's within the same set of quotation marks. Partly because I don't want fifteen hundred entries where I discuss what Pynchon was thinking when he had that character say, "Hello." Or "Yes." Or "Hallelujah!" If you're not as flexible as I am, you might get angry at some of my arbitrary decisions. Also did you notice how I avoided the obvious sex joke about how flexible I am?!

"Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well!"
So the first sentence must be Pynchon telling me how to read every line. He's asking me, "Please, be kind, buddy." Or he's just cheering on my efforts, maybe! I bet Pynchon is way too confident to think, "I need to beg for the reader to enjoy my work which I enjoy immensely since it's totally been written for my own amusement." He's probably just thinking, "Come on! You can do it! That's it!" Or, if I had to get into Pynchon's mind to think exactly how he'd phrase it, "Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well!"

"Prepare to cast her off!"
The second sentence is exactly what it is. "Here we go!" It's exactly how all books should begin! Instead of "Call me Ishmael," it should have been, "Prepare to cast her off! You can call me Ishmael." Or, a better example (or can there even be a better example being that Moby Dick was also about sailors and ships?), "Prepare to cast her off! A screaming comes across the sky."

Oh! Maybe "A screaming comes across the sky" is Gravity's Rainbow's "Prepare to cast her off!" It's sort of the written opening line version of throwing a Pynchon book at some jerk's head. "Hey! Read this, jerko!"

That's a pretty good opening line too, right?! I should get to work on my new novel!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 1

 Now single up all lines!"

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This is it. The stupid first line of this stupid book that made my brain vomit-scream the idea "You should do a blog where you just write about each individual line of the book!" as I was trying to stop repeatedly playing the old Animaniacs theme song in my head in an effort to remember the lyrics they changed in the new Hulu series. I guess the vacuum that was created sucked in this other terrible thought because my brain has no respect for the amount of time I have to do all the things I already want to do every day. My brain apparently thinks I'm a lazy piece of excrement that needs more projects that I'll never finish not because I abandon them but because the "never finishing" bit is a feature. Here are a few projects I've given myself over the years that I knew I would never be able to finish as soon as I created them:

An online comic based on both Dungeons & Dragons and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo called Dwarflover. Admittedly, this project has a terminus built into it: the capture of all thirteen ghosts. But the execution was purposefully expansive to give me too much to write about. Eventually the Photoshopping took its toll on me and the project was abandoned after two ghosts (Freddy Kreuger and Acererak) were captured after finishing one dungeon (The Tomb of Horrors). I had the theme and plot of the next dungeon (Dungeonland) figured out in my head with the first chapter written and the second and third chapter basically plotted out in my head. Maybe I'll return to this when I retire.

Reading every holy book (including Dianetics because, I mean, right?) as an areligious person who is mostly unfamiliar with the dogma of the religion and trying to interpret the text as literally as possible. This project was a lot of fun but ultimately abandoned (maybe until I retire from retirement?) after writing 335 pages on the first 45 pages of Genesis. This might still be my favorite project I ever abandoned. It was written in the style of a study guide and included sections like Science vs Faith, Drawing Time, Historical Facts, and Know Thy Enemy. The science versus faith section was always based on some theme in that particular section of The Bible (the subject of the last section I wrote about Joseph in Egypt was "Magicians") and a good amount of the historical facts were actually facts about the television show Lost (this was because I often confused Abram with J.J. Abrams). One entire section was just the first episode of the old Star Trek series inserted and discussed as if it were a chapter of The Bible. It used to be on the Internet (and still might be archived in weird Way Back Machines managed by top hat wearing cows) but I took it down when I thought, "This could be my first book!"

A blog discussing every book DC comics published when they flushed their entire universe and began The New 52. This was just the culmination of a dream I had when I was 12 where I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to be able to buy every single comic DC publishes so I can keep up on the entire story of all their characters?!" The answer turned out to be "No, it's not great. Not at all. Especially when they picked up all of Marvel's worst writers for the project."

Places & Predators, a roleplaying game based on The Game of Life. Technically this isn't exactly a project with "never being able to finish" baked in. I could have completed the basic game and then the "never finished" part would be continually writing modules and building the world. But seeing as how the "never being able to finish" is just a part of my DNA, I kept rewriting the rules. Over and over and over. Ultimately I did put out a finished project based on Cribbage and not The Game of Life. But I did add a character class, Cult Member, and a cult within that class who believe the world they're living in is a pale imitation of the actual world and that world is the original game I created. So I can still force all of my work back into this game! Also, the new game based on cribbage is also just based on the original world so it's not like I've thrown out all the writing I did. It's all still viable! This project actually exists in the real world and you can buy a copy of the basic rules with a starter module on Amazon Kindle!

Can I include "reading Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night" as a project since I've been reading that three volume monster for over ten years now? No, probably not.

I guess none of that was about this line from Against the Day, was it?

If the first line wasn't Pynchon telling the reader to pay attention to every individual line then I'm wasting my time. Because if every line of Pynchon's text is simply plot related then Pynchon isn't as interesting as I first thought. Also, I would have to learn about singling up lines and whatever that means. I know it has to do with launching a ship (an airship in this case!) but it's easier to jump straight to the possible subtext because that's all speculation that takes place in my head! Learning about the actual meaning of "singling up a line" means having to do outside reading. And who wants to read?! I'm a Writer not a Reader!

Oh, the other reason I decided to do this blog is because I've been complaining recently about my old college Children's Lit professor in my Gravity's Rainbow discussion over on my other blog and how she always tried to get us to write entire essays based on one line from the text. And she was insistent on keeping it out of context of the rest of the novel as much as we could! What was she, crazy?! How do you even do that?! I have no idea because she always marked me down for going too wide on my discussions and not focusing in enough. Maybe I'll finally learn how to do it on this blog!

I will, however, be writing a lot about me because that's all a sociopathic narcissist really knows about.